It was the usual layout: sweet stalls and tables spread with buckets and spades, toys, colouring books, leftover paper flags and souvenirs, haberdashery, fancy goods. Netta was pushed to the back of the store where the hardware was stacked high and began to feel queasy and faint, light-headed and short of breath. She turned to get out of the door but the thronging shoppers were bearing down on her and she clung to one of the counters to steady her rising panic. She couldn’t find the way out and her chest began to tighten, her throat constricting so she couldn’t breathe. I’m dying, she thought. I’m going to die on this dirty floor if I don’t escape. The room was spinning around her head.

She woke up on the floor with someone waving a paper over her face. They carried her to a chair by the door and her head was shoved unceremoniously between her knees. A glass of water appeared and she was fanned like an oriental princess by one of the young assistants. Netta felt like a freak show with everyone staring at her. ‘I’m sorry, it must be the heat. This has never happened to me before,’ she lied. In fact it was becoming an all too frequent occurrence in crowded places when she was tired or upset.

She drank in the fumes and smell of horse dung on the busy road as the traffic crawled through the town. It felt safer now, in the fresher air and the shaded part of the street. She thanked everyone and made for Finkle Street to a corner café up a flight of stairs that was her usual stop for tea and scones. She lit a cigarette to steady her nerves, ordered an iced lime soda, slurping the fizzy pop through a straw and scooping out the creamy ice with a long spoon. It cooled her thirst and reminded her of childhood treats at Angelinas. She relished the blast of cold on the back of her throat and wished Gus was there beside her to share the sensation.

Netta fingered the package of photographs that she had stuck in her large straw handbag. There were enough here to start another album after all: a special tartan one with tassels. Here was her mother and herself, tiny specks on the shoreline taken when she was five, more school snapshots, some of her letters packaged up and a printed card of her very first sewing venture in its infancy. She fingered the gold lettering lovingly. Where would she be now without her dressmaking?

5

Citrine

‘Sacred colour of midday,
Worn for purpose of mind and spirit
For wisdom and courage on the journey.’

In the Winter of 1947