And here he is. Now her fantasy is her reality, and her fear is thundering into the present. It makes her gasp. Makes her put a hand on the arm of her chair to steady herself.
Almost half a century has passed and she feels it all: the gulf inside her just after they took him away; the chasm that kept widening in the days after he was gone. She wanted to fall down it, and didn’t care what happened if she did. Except she crawled out, on bloodied hands and knees, and took herself to Europe. To a different life that she could stuff full of music and the rapture that comes with it. She was safe inside that life. For all these years, the chasm was closed.
But not sealed.
This letter … it threatens to open it up again.
For all that she has wanted this very thing the letter is promising, she is terrified of it. And she has absolutely no one to talk to about it. Unless Louis suspected something at the time, or does now. He won’t say anything, though; he would think that rude.
There is only one thing to do.
For the first time in weeks, she goes to her cello case, takes out her instrument, tunes it, and begins to play. To keep the chasm closed. For just a little while longer.
CHAPTER TWELVE
‘Because Lucy has to work in her parents’ business after school, her visits to the charity shop take place at lunch. She’s not meant to leave the school grounds, but the teachers and prefects pretend not to notice a whole lot of stuff at this school.
A lot of the kids in the suburb go to private schools in North Sydney and Darlinghurst and Rose Bay and Bellevue Hill – places that require parents to drive them, or take a long time to get to on public transport – leaving the public high school for the kids whose parents can’t afford the private-school fees. Like Lucy’s parents, who aren’t poor but aren’t rich enough for that.
Her mum grew up in Mosman and says the suburb never used to be like this. When she was a kid it was this relaxed place where there were some people who were well off – as there are in most areas – but most people had an average income. It started to change in the 1980s, she said, and now there are people who come here for a little while – some of them from overseas, with big jobs at big companies – and they might only stay for a year or two, but they change the feel of the place. They’re used to Hong Kong and Singapore and London and Zurich – places where they have staff. The Australian labour laws have made it harder toafford full-time housekeepers – when you have to pay someone a minimum salary, the costs rack up – which means there are wives in this suburb who are used to having staff and they’re cross that they don’t here, so instead they talk to shopkeepers and hospitality workers like they’re staff.
That’s part of what’s changed the place, Lucy’s mum says – the attitude that some people are better than others. ‘And they’re not,’ she says firmly. ‘Everyone deserves to be treated with respect.’
Lucy agrees with that, but she also sees that her brother gets treated with more respect than she does. Why else would Russell be allowed to behave the way he does? He can talk rudely to her, shove her,scare her, and her father says she has to make allowances for him, while her mother just mutters that Russell’s ‘not right in the head’ and does nothing.
That’s one of the reasons Lucy likes going to the charity shop: Daphne treats her with respect. Daphne talks to her about her plans and her dreams, and asks what she’s making. She even knows Lucy’s skipped out of school without permission and doesn’t tell her off. Lucy suspects Daphne might be the coolest person she’s ever met, but she wouldn’t say anything like that because she doesn’t know Daphne well enough.
The first time Lucy went to the shop – which is almost directly across the road from the school – it was because she’d seen a dress come through for dry-cleaning and she wanted to find one like it. It was sky blue and high-necked, and had slightly puffy sleeves and a ruffle at the wrist – almost like a Victorian dress. Because Lucy has a long neck and likes to wear her straw-coloured hair up, she thought this style would suit her. And she has an old-fashioned face, so her mother says – ‘like a porcelain doll,’ she tells her. So maybe old fashions will suit her.
That was last year, and Lucy didn’t find a similar dress at the shop but she got talking to Daphne – as she later found outher name was – and discovered that Daphne knowsso muchabout clothes. Over time, Daphne’s told her all about the shop and how it’s changed over the decades, and it’s by talking to her that Lucy realised that she’s really interested in clothes.
She thought maybe she was just a normal amount of interested for someone who has a part-time job at a dry-cleaning business, but one day Daphne said, ‘You retain a lot of detail about clothes, don’t you?’
Lucy shrugged and said, ‘Maybe.’
‘No maybe. You do.’ Daphne looked thoughtful. ‘Perhaps you should pursue that.’
Lucy had thought about it later as she stood behind the counter at her parents’ shop and looked at all the clothes coming through. There are usually a few quiet moments between an item being dropped off and it going into the cleaning process, so she started looking at seams and shapes and cuts, and holding up dresses to figure out how they’re constructed.
It’s especially great when there are designer items. There’s one customer who seems to wear only Carla Zampatti and JAG and Anthea Crawford, and Lucy loves looking at those pieces of clothing. She’s learnt a lot since that day Daphne made her suggestion, and she wants to learn more. It’s another reason why she goes to the charity shop – to talk to Daphne.
‘Hello, Lucy-Lu,’ Daphne says as she enters the shop today.
‘Hi, Daphne,’ Lucy says, trailing her hand over the dresses on the rack next to her. She likes feeling fabric. It’s almost comforting.
There’s another woman standing next to Daphne at the counter – tall, with short hair, around Daphne’s age, she guesses. Lucy saw her last time she was in.
‘You remember my friend Adelaide,’ Daphne says.
The tall woman bobs her head and half-smiles. Like she isn’t that keen to talk to Lucy. Oh well, Lucy’s not that keen to talk to her either. She likes having Daphne all to herself.
But she wasn’t brought up to be rude, so she smiles and says, ‘Hi, Adelaide.’
‘Adelaide is a world-famous cellist,’ Daphne says with pride and Adelaide looks annoyed.
‘Daphne,’ she mutters.
‘It’s true!’