Hotham River Angel

A short story set in Boddington WA, previously published in Minimag

Hotham River Angel

Lewis Woolston

Her name was Cameron Woods.

When she was about thirteen she went through a phase of telling people that she’d been named after Cameron Diaz. The story she told was that about a month or so before she had been born her parents went to the cinema to see the newly released Jim Carey movie The Mask. Her father, she claimed, had been rather taken with the on screen presence of Cameron Diaz and had decided to name his daughter after her.

It was of course a total figment of her imagination, a story concocted in the fertile mind of a thirteen year old girl who felt a need to belong and wanted to feel a little bit special.

The only thing true about the story was that she was born roughly a month after The Mask was released in 1994 and her parents had seen the movie.

Her parents were already, at the time of her birth, on a downward spiral. The casual drinking of their younger years had increased and then soured into the use of harder drugs. Cameron’s conception was unplanned and not really wanted and although she never knew it she came very close to being an abortion, only the residual guilt of her father’s Catholic upbringing saved her life. For a brief time it seemed like she might save her parents. They cleaned up their act for a while after finding out they were expecting, for the first year or so of her young life they were almost normal, responsible parents.

But the gutter is a powerful magnet to people fated that way. They started drinking again, a little bit of weed began to be smoked here and there, then some powders made their entrance into their lives again and before they knew it they were skinny, sketchy drug addicts unfit to raise their own daughter.

Cameron had no memory of it but she was taken away by social services a few times in her babyhood and toddler years. Once or twice placed with foster parents for a few months, once or twice given to her grandparents to take care of, each time her parents temporarily cleaned up their act and were given approval to take her back.

The final straw was also Cameron’s only memory of her parents.

She was nearly five when it happened. She had been told to get out of the house and stay out by her parents. She went next door and played with the neighbours kid’s. She was scruffy, dirty, slightly underfed and shoeless and she should really have been removed from her parent’s custody again but they’d managed to fly under the radar for a while.

They were living in one of the housing commission ghetto suburbs of Perth at the time. Dismal streets of fibro houses with badly maintained lawns and a distinct lack of hope in the air. Cameron played with the neighbour’s kids on their poor excuse for a front lawn for several hours until their mother called them in for dinner. Cameron stood on the front lawn and wondered what to do now. Her parents had told her not to come back home until they said it was okay. It was getting dark and all the other kids were inside.

‘Cameron sweetie isn’t it time you went home?’ The mother of the children she’d been playing with was slightly concerned at the sight of this poor child just stood there on her front lawn.

‘Mum and Dad said not to go inside until they said it was okay.’

Something about this reply bothered the neighbour and she was just debating if she should stick her nose in and demand they take proper care of this girl when it happened.

The amateur amphetamine lab Cameron’s parents had been running in their bathroom exploded and killed them both.

Years later remembering it as an adult certain details stuck in Cameron’s mind. For starters there was no big window shattering, knock you to the ground, type explosion like you see in movies. She remembered a sound like a firecracker and the windows sort of collapsing in little fragments as though they’d been terribly fragile all along and then a single tongue of flame that briefly punched its way out the window like a dragon’s fart. Then the smoke and the stink of toxic chemicals started.

The neighbour woman quickly dragged Cameron inside and sat her down with her own kids at the dinner table while she rang triple zero in a state half terror and half excitement.

Years later Cameron remembered sitting at the table with the other kids eating a small portion of tinned spaghetti and toast while fire engines, police and ambulances dealt with the disaster next door.

There was no saving Cameron’s parents. They’d been killed more or less instantly. Their charred corpses were discreetly removed from the scene while Cameron watched TV with the kids next door. A Police Officer took the responsibility of contacting social services and a temporary foster home was arranged for Cameron. All her clothes and what little worldly possessions she had were in the now burnt out house, she had not put on shoes when she’d gone to play with the kids next door, she was literally a shoeless orphan with only the clothes on her back.

Her grandparents on her father’s side were contacted by social services and they were eager to take her in, it was arranged with a minimum of fuss.

They were decent people, they lived in the small town of Boddington about two hours south of Perth and had done so for most of their lives. They were the sort of traditional country people who don’t really fit in with the modern world and prefer to stay in their little town away from all the fuss.

They had raised their son as best they could, imparted to him the values they believed in, church, family and community, taken pains with his education and upbringing. So it was a mystery and a source of deep despair to them that he’d ended up the way he had. They quietly resolved to do better with their granddaughter, to make right whatever mistakes they had made with their son by doing better with her.

They took her in and she began to thrive. Her grandmother was a great cook and she soon weighed what a five year old girl is supposed to weigh. Both grandparents adored her and showered her with love and attention. Cameron had been denied both of these things from her addict parents, too often she’d been shoved in front of a TV or left to play outside while her parents had spent their time destroying themselves in chemical dreams. To have her grandparents read her a story, take her to the park and just generally pay proper attention to her was a luxury she thrived on.

Her grandparents were active in the local community of Boddington, they were faithful attendees at the local Catholic Church, her grandfather was also part of the Lions club and her grandmother a member of the CWA. They included her in all their activities and soon everyone in town knew “young Cameron, the Woods’ girl” as they put it.

She began school, Boddington had a small school that was perfectly fine for the local population although city people might have looked at it and thought it too tiny. She made friends with the other kids and took part in school sports with the encouragement of her grandparents. She discovered she was fairly good at Netball and played for the school team.

Her life was very happy and she began to really thrive in the normal way of a young, healthy, country girl. She had school during the week, friends and sport on a Saturday, Church with her grandparents on Sunday morning and plenty of good food, fresh air, exercise and activity. It seemed the perfect recipe for raising a healthy and happy young person but her grandparents had quiet, nagging doubts, they had raised their son in much the same way and he had gone so badly wrong. What would happen when Cameron got older? The thought of her going down the same path as their son was a nightmare to them. But what could they do to prevent it?

Every so often they took Cameron to the little cemetery on the outskirts of Boddington to put a few flowers on her father’s grave. Her mother’s body had been claimed by her family, a large extended tribe of Polish immigrants based around the Midland area, so she couldn’t visit her grave. Instead they visited this little bush cemetery and the simple grave of her father.

Her grandparents debated how to explain her parent’s death to her. It was fairly simple when she was five to say that there had been a bad accident and her mummy and daddy had gone to heaven but that wouldn’t wash as she got older. But how to explain the concept of an amphetamine lab explosion to a child?

In the end they waited until she was nearly thirteen before they told her the full story in all its squalid detail. They knew she’d done a drug education class at school so that she would understand the basic concept of addiction.

They had the conversation one Sunday after church, after the service they had got some fish and chips from the local takeaway place and driven to the cemetery. They ate in the car and her grandparents, carefully and compassionately told her the full story of her parent’s addiction, death and neglect of her. She absorbed it all in silence as she ate chips and drank Fanta in the back seat of the car.

They finished their explanation and asked if there was anything she wanted to know.

‘Am I a crack baby?’

For a few seconds the question stunned them into silence.

‘Where did you hear that term?’ her shocked grandmother asked.

‘We saw a video in health class about pregnancies and how what the mother does affects the baby, they showed all the crack babies in America, how they’re born retarded because their mums smoke crack while they’re pregnant. Did my mum smoke crack while she was pregnant with me?’

They rushed to assure her that nothing could be further from the truth.

‘Your parents cleaned up their act when they found out they were going to have you. Your mother didn’t touch drugs while she was pregnant, you were born normal and healthy darling.’

Cameron pondered this for a few moments.

‘So I’m not a crack baby?’

‘Absolutely not sweetheart, you’re a perfectly healthy normal girl.’

Cameron went silent for a few minutes again, she thoughtfully ate the last of her chips and drank some Fanta before asking another question.

‘If they stopped when my Mum was pregnant with me why didn’t they stay stopped? I mean, if you can do it for nine months why not do it for life?’

Her Grandfather sighed, he had often wondered the same thing himself, he thought his son should have known better in the first place but he reasoned that perhaps it was an almost excusable piece of youthful foolishness. But to go back to it after having stopped for a while? To return to a path you knew was without a future when you’ve just had a child? What was his son thinking?

It was a mystery to him. This simple, decent, country man just couldn’t understand how or why his own son had gone so wrong. He looked at his granddaughter with love and thought to himself that he could never abandon this child no matter what. Why hadn’t his son felt the same? Why hadn’t he held little Cameron in his arms when she was born and decided then and there to walk the straight and narrow path in order that she might have a proper upbringing?

He gave Cameron the best answer he was capable of.

‘Addiction is a powerful thing sweetheart, nobody really understands it completely but it seems that once it’s got its hooks in a person they just aren’t entirely themselves and they don’t make good decisions. I wish it was some other way sweetheart but we all have our cross to bear.’

Cameron said nothing in response to this. They finished their lunch and got out of the car to lay flowers on her father’s grave as they did every few weeks.

Cameron felt something different this day. She stood there with her grandparents and looked at the simple inscribed stone marking her father’s final resting place. A hollowing sense of loss and numb anger began to build inside her. The life she might have had if her parents had got their shit together played in her mind. The possibilities that were now denied to her and the extra burdens placed on her because of her father’s degenerate stupidity weighed down on her as an intolerable and undeserved punishment for a choice she hadn’t made.

A dam broke inside her heart.

She kicked the simple stone in a fit of rage and succeeded only in stubbing her toe. She changed tack and began to stomp down on it bring her weight to bear as if the blunt force of her heel on the stone could punish her father.

‘Cameron stop that! Have some respect for the dead!’ Her grandparents were horrified.

She continued to stomp on the stone and began to scream at it.

‘I HATE HIM! I HATE HIM! Why’d he do it? Why couldn’t he stop for me?’

Her grandfather wrapped his arms around her, restraining her to the best of his ability and moving her away from the stone as she began to cry.

They stopped taking her to lay flowers on her father’s grave after that. When they felt the need to do so they did it while she was at school or off with her friends. A ritual that had been for all three of them became a thing for the two of them only.

Cameron kept growing and the normal developments of a girl’s life happened to her as she got older. She took an interest in boys and when she was almost fifteen and a half had her first boyfriend and first love.

His name was Richard Kennett and his father was the shire clerk and well known and respected in the district. Cameron’s grandparents knew him and his family well and quietly approved of the young romance. They thought Richard a good boy from a good family and although not a church goer like themselves they believed him to have been raised right and likely to observe the decencies of behaviour around their granddaughter.

The two lovebirds spent every minute they could together although they were prevented from consummating their relationship by the vigilant eyes of the respective families. They would hang out in Richard’s room at his house and Richard’s little brother would always prevent them from being entirely alone while the rule of Cameron’s grandparents was that the bedroom door would remain fully open at all times while they were in there together.

Nonetheless their love blossomed and deepened to the point where they were thought of as the “serious couple” by all the other teenagers and even some of the teachers at school. Many people quietly thought that they would be the couple to stick together through school and into adult life, some quietly predicted a wedding and a family in a few years once they had finished school, they seemed that serious.

They told each things in their quiet moments together. Cameron told him about her parents and the cold, hollow sense of loss she felt at being an orphan. Richard told her about how he hated Boddington and his dull little family and longed to go and make something of himself in the city. They pledged their love to each other, they promised to stick with each other through thick and thin and build a better life together one day.

At the end of year 10 Cameron was offered an apprenticeship with the only hairdresser in Boddington. The owner was a friend of her grandparents and Cameron didn’t take long to decide to accept it. She did well right from the start and was well thought of by her boss and the customers. It also made her feel a bit more adult. She now had a bank account and a tax file number and a regular, if small, wage coming in. She went into Narrogin for TAFE once a week and worked the rest of the week.

Richard continued with school, his sights set on University and leaving Boddington for the city. He began to focus on what degree he wanted to do. He started talking about studying medicine at UWA an ambitious goal for sure, but one he felt he could attain. His father was overjoyed at the thought of his eldest son becoming a doctor, ‘Dr Kennett will see you now’ he’d joke when Cameron came around to visit, Cameron thought it was mildly funny the first time but was sick of it within a month. Richard told her all about his plans.

‘UWA is the place to go Cammie, all the best people go there, it’s got the best facilities and everything, great scene too, all sorts of bands and theatre and comedy and things like that. It’s the happening place to be. I can’t wait to get the fuck out of Boddington Cammie, I’m so sick of this place and nothing ever happening. If I thought I was going to live here forever I’d shoot myself now.’

Cameron wasn’t entirely comfortable this talk but wasn’t sure what to say to it. She was quite fond of Boddington herself although she had very little to compare it with.

Richard looked to see if his little brother or his parents were hovering near the door to the bedroom before speaking again.

‘So um, you know Mike from school right? Well his family is going to Margaret River for a week and I’ve talked him into giving me a spare key to his house we just have to clean up after we’re done and not let anyone else know.’

It took Cameron a second or two to realise what he was asking her.

‘Clean after what? …oh…’

The look on her face as the penny dropped made Richard chuckle to himself.

‘I’m not sure Richard…’

He held her hand in his and drew her close to him, the way he always had, the way that made her feel safe and loved.

‘Babe it’s okay, we love each other don’t we? We’ve wanted to do it for ages we just never had a private place, well now we have a place.’

Cameron still had her doubts.

‘I dunno babe, I can’t get pregnant, it would break my grandparent’s hearts and ruin everything. You can’t get me pregnant Richard, I mean that, I’m not taking any stupid risks.’

Sensing that she had agreed, in principle at least, to having sex with him Richard rushed to reassure her.

‘It’s okay, I’m not an idiot, I’m being responsible Cammie.’

He pulled open his bedside drawer, the bottom one, and underneath his socks he pulled out a packet of condoms, still wrapped in plastic, and showed them to her like a spy showing a fellow spy a secret file.

‘I’ll look after you Cammie,’ he spoke as he hid them away again, ‘it’ll be special, just you and me, just love.’

Cameron loved him then, the feeling of being wanted and needed, of having this young man utterly devoted to her, was intoxicating. The hollow sense of loss she felt whenever she thought about her parents was a million miles away right now. Replaced by belonging, by a union, Cameron and Richard, Richard and Cameron, Woods and Kennett, Kennett and Woods. Boddington’s own perfect love story for the ages, like Romeo and Juliet but without all the murders and drama.

‘Ok then, just you and me, just love.’

‘Just love’ Richard echoed.

Mike’s family left for Margaret River on a Friday. They decided to wait until Saturday afternoon. In a small town like Boddington sport is a huge thing. That particular Saturday both the local footy team and the local Netball team had home games. Most of the town would be involved in and around the games and the aftermath. The streets would be almost deserted, no eyes to see them go into a house that wasn’t theirs, no neighbours to report.

They met up in the main street and walked the short distance to Mike’s house. Richard let them in the front door after looking around to make sure nobody was watching. They walked in and locked the door behind them.

For a few moments they stood there in the lounge room unsure what to do next. They’d been in Mike’s house once or twice before but it was always with Mike doing something social. To be here alone, illicitly, felt plain strange.

They silently walked from room to room, assessing the situation, they looked through the kitchen first, opened the fridge and the freezer to see what there was, took note of the microwave ready meals stacked in the freezer, moved on to Mike’s bedroom which seemed basically the same as Richard’s bedroom to Cameron, the same teenage boy funk and disorder. They looked in Mike’s sister’s room with its girly touches and moved on to Mike’s parent’s room.

The sight of the big double bed sobered them and brought to the front what they were here for.

‘So are we going to…you know…in here?’ Cameron tentatively asked.

‘Yeah, it’s okay, we’ll just remake the bed afterwards, it’ll be fine.’ Richard tried to sound confident but even in his voice the nervousness was showing, it was his first time as much as Cameron’s and he had no more experience than her. They were both scared and eager in equal parts.

‘You brought the things right?’ Cameron asked, she felt that if she focused on something practical the nervousness might die down a bit.

‘Yeah, of course, got them here.’ Richard pulled the little box out of his back pocket and held it in front of him like a treasure map.

Cameron took the little box with it’s corporate logo and held it in her hands a moment or two. She broke the plastic seal and opened it as if to satisfy herself that they were actually in there. Seemingly happy with the contents she put it down on the bed and turned to Richard who was gazing at her with all the love in his heart.

Without needing words they each took off their jumpers almost in perfect unison, they kept pace with each other, removing each item of clothing together so that neither one of them was ever more naked than the other. Eventually they stood as Adam and Eve no more than a foot or two apart.

‘I love you Cammie’ Richard spoke softly and sincerely.

‘I love you Richard’ Cameron replied equally heartfelt.

They joined together on the bed, there was a brief moment where Richard struggled to get the condom on but other than that the operation went smoothly. Cameron felt a little pain on her first time but not as much as she’d expected or been led to believe by older girls at school. Richard was able to focus and managed not to cum too quickly despite it being his first time. In the end, with a plaintive cry of “my Cammie, oh Cammie” their relationship was finally fully consummated and they were no longer virgins.

They lay for a while afterwards in Mike’s parent’s bed and said nothing, they held each other and gazed into each other’s eyes with love and post-coital bliss.

‘How long can we stay here?’ Cameron eventually asked.

‘Well they’re away a whole week but the neighbours might notice if there are lights on after dark.’

‘I’m really hungry, I didn’t eat much in the way of breakfast this morning, can we eat something here?’

‘Well we could help ourselves to some of those microwave ready meals, just got to remember to replace them before they get back, should be alright.’

‘Why do they have so many stacked in the freezer? Don’t they cook?’

‘Mike’s mum works late sometimes and Mike’s dad can’t be arsed cooking, they either get takeaway or ready meal on those nights, Mike hates it.’

They decided they were hungry enough for ready meals and reluctantly got out of the bed and got dressed. They looked through the pile of boxes in the freezer and eventually Cameron decided to take a chance on the roast chicken with potato and veggies while Richard accepted bangers and mash as a vaguely edible option. Richard was shocked to discover that Cameron had never eaten one of these things before.

‘What? Never? Your grandparents never have a night off cooking?’

‘Well if they do we get something from the takeaway shop or we eat dinner at one of their friends places, if we’re home Grandma cooks, it’s never been any other way.’

‘Well I’d say you’re in for a treat but I’d be lying.’

Richard got the microwaving process underway putting Cameron’s meal in first, while they waited and listened to the hum of the microwave they held each other and kissed standing barefoot in the kitchen. Cameron thought this must be what marriage was like, leisurely sex followed by a meal and warm affection. For a moment the deep empty hole inside her that had opened up when she became an orphan felt like it could be filled.

The microwave beeped and Richard extracted her steaming ready meal from it before putting his own in, Cameron let it sit on the bench while she waited for him, not wanting to eat without him. She went into the loungeroom and idly flicked on the TV, there was a WAFL game on, East Fremantle Vs Swan Districts, she accepted it as the best there was likely to be. Richard’s meal was done so they sat down together on the couch, tea towels on their laps underneath the steaming heat of their ready meals.

Cameron discovered that she hadn’t missed anything by never eating a ready meal before. Nonetheless she was absurdly happy and filled with a warmth and love more intense than she had ever known. They slowly ate their crappy food and leaned on each as they half-watched the footy on TV, it felt like a honeymoon to them both.

Cameron finished her food and put it aside, Richard already given up on his, she reached her arms around Richard and nestled her head into his chest closing her eyes to better feel his warmth and hear his heartbeat just as the fourth quarter of footy began on TV. Richard reciprocated her affection and stroked her hair and held her close to him as Swan Districts took the lead with three goals in rapid succession. By some unspoken mutual consensus they got up off the couch and went hand in hand back to the bedroom just as East Fremantle were mounting a credible fightback in the middle of the quarter.

Without words being necessary they took off their clothes again and got back on Mike’s parent’s bed. They were more relaxed and confident this time, the sense of urgency was gone as was the fear of getting it wrong, they took their time and were warm and loving to each other.

Afterwards, although Cameron wanted to lie there next to him forever, the question of when to leave had to be faced. Richard was adamant that they should get out before it got dark, lights on would give them away to the neighbours instantly, he said, we need to be out of here before we need to turn on lights.

Reluctantly Cameron agreed and they started to get moving, Cameron made the bed while Richard sorted out the bins, disposing of the two used condoms and the two empty ready meal boxes.

Cameron stopped and looked at the bed she’d restored to something resembling its previous condition. You couldn’t tell from a casual glance that anything had happened here today, she thought, Mike’s parents probably would never know. But something had happened in here today, she assured herself, she had an overwhelming desire to tell herself that she was a woman now but worried that it would sound silly she restrained the urge. Then she heard the back door open as Richard went to put the rubbish in the wheelie bin and she decided to indulge her first impulse.

‘Cameron Woods, today you became a woman.’ She spoke to the empty bedroom and the bed she had just remade. An image came into her mind of herself as that five year old shoeless orphan being taken into care by a social worker as the Police sorted out the charred corpses of her parents. Then, despite her best efforts to stop it, the empty hollow inside her made itself felt, forcefully displacing the warmth and love she’d felt today with Richard.

She didn’t hear him come back inside so absorbed was she in her own feelings, it wasn’t until he put his arms around her that she snapped out of it. She melted into him, grateful for his temporarily casting out the darkness.

‘We’d best get a wiggle on.’

She nodded agreement and let him lead the way.

They exited the house carefully, Richard trying to see if the neighbours were watching, as soon as they were out on the street they saw that they needn’t have worried. Boddington was as quiet as the grave. Most people were probably still at the footy or whatever BBQ or piss up was scheduled for after the game. They walked hand in hand unbothered by the world.

They came to the point where they would have to separate and go home. They stopped and held each other on the side of the street.

‘I love you Cammie’

‘I love you Richard’

They kissed and like tectonic plates, they separated.

Cameron walked home feeling more alive than she ever had. The air felt different and there was something electric at the back of everything she saw, something vivid and full of life.

When she got home her Grandma was getting dinner ready.

‘Cameron sweetie, how’s your day been? Done anything interesting?’

‘Just been hanging out with Richard.’

The lie came naturally to her and didn’t trouble her conscience at all.

‘Oh that’s nice dear, would you be a sweetie and help me with the veggies? I’ve got to keep an eye on this meat or it’ll burn on me.’

Nobody suspected anything. Richard and Cameron went back to Mike’s house twice that week and nobody seemed to notice. The last time they went Richard brought a bunch of ready meals from the supermarket to replace the ones they’d eaten. When Mike’s family came back from Margaret River they said nothing so it seemed they had gotten away with it.

A week or so later Cameron was working at the hairdressing salon. It was time for lunch and she decided to go to the café for a pastie and an iced coffee. As she was getting her food Richard’s dad Frank was behind her.

‘Young Cameron! How’s it going darling? Mind if I join you for lunch?’

Cameron said it was fine and sat down. Frank joined her once he’d got his food.

‘Good news young Cameron, I’ve got nothing but good news today, you see this bloke who came in with me? Old mate up there at the counter?’

Cameron hadn’t paid any attention to him until now but nodded anyway.

‘Well he’s a big deal with the State Government up in Perth, Department of Local Government, in tight with the Premier and everything. Anyway he’s come down here to approve a shitload of funding for the Shire. Roadworks, tourism development, sporting facilities upgrades, all sorts of things. Yep, the Shire of Boddington is going ahead, believe you me!’

The idea of the Shire of Boddington “going ahead” seemed strange to Cameron but she smiled politely for Frank’s sake. They were joined at the table by the man in question a few seconds later.

‘Now Bill, this lovely young lady is Cameron Woods, she is not only the top gun hairdressing apprentice in all of Boddington but she also happens to be the sweetheart to my eldest son Richard. They are a pair of absolute lovebirds and I am quietly confident that one day in the near future there will be wedding bells and baby seats.’

Cameron almost spat out her iced coffee in surprise and embarrassment but Bill seemed to roll with the joke in that blokey way older men had.

‘Pleased to meet you Cameron, now why would you marry into such a down at heel family as the Kennett’s? Surely even Boddington has better to offer?’

Frank Kennett laughed sycophantically at his wisecrack.

‘Ah well Bill, no doubt young Cameron could do better and is marrying beneath herself but this is real, honest-to-goodness true love we’re talking about here. You should see the two of them together, flowers bloom and birds sing, the whole deal. My only hope is that the grandchildren they give me will be gorgeous like her side of the family.’

‘Hopefully they’ll be smart like her side of the family too.’

The two of them cracked up laughing at their own Dad-joke wit. Cameron wasn’t sure if she wanted to blush or roll her eyes.

The two older men settled down and began to talk about the various shire projects that were getting funding. Cameron was mildly interested but kept mostly quiet, eventually she finished her pastie and iced coffee and went to leave.

‘Got to get back into it aye Cameron? Well you have a great day and keep that son of mine on his toes alright? Mark my words put him under the thumb now and you’ll have less problems later on.’

‘Speaking from experience there Frank? Spent a lot of time under the thumb have you?’

The two men laughed at each other’s wit again and Cameron left them to it. When she got back to the salon she told her boss Jenny all about it and relayed the conversation they’d had.

‘That Frank Kennett is a bit of drip at times but I have to admit he does his job at the Shire pretty well and he works hard getting things for the town, good on him for making the wankers in Perth cough up some money. God knows the place needs it. I wouldn’t take any of the shit they talked to heart Cameron love, that’s men in suits big noting themselves, nothing more. Frank’s quite fond of you I think, he probably really hopes you will marry his Richard and give him Grandkids, I don’t think he meant any harm love.’

Cameron shook her head.

‘No, I know he likes me and everything, I just find it weird the way men talk to each other, the stupid jokes and everything. Maybe if I’d had brothers I would understand it a bit better.’

‘There’s nothing to understand about men Cameron, they think with their dicks and their stomachs, everything else flows from that.’

The conversation went sideways after that.

Cameron and Richard stuck together through the next year. When they could get privacy they had sex, when they couldn’t they had to do without but they loved each other no matter what. Everyone in town thought of them as a serious couple, both Richard’s parents and Cameron’s grandparents fully expected to attend their wedding in the near future and see babies born, hopefully in that order.

Cameron continued with her hairdressing apprenticeship while Richard was focused on his studies and getting a place at UWA. As he got closer to exams he enlisted her help in studying, the two of them sat on the couch at his house and she asked him questions from his text books and he tried to answer. His parents watched this from the kitchen with benevolence. They were happy their son had his head screwed on, they were happy Cameron had her head screwed on as well, the future looked bright.

One evening they she had helped him study and was staying at the Kennett house for dinner. They were sitting around the table after dinner and Richard and his brother got up to help their mother with the dishes leaving Cameron with Frank. A thought popped into her head and before she could stop herself she asked the question.

‘Frank, did you know my father back in the day?’

There was a moment, barely a second, when she wondered if she had gone too far but Frank took the question in good faith.

‘Oh yes, he was, let me think, a year? No, two years below me at school. Funny lad, always had a laugh and a joke, got to be a bit of a loose unit as he got older though, sad how he ended up of course.’

‘What did he…I mean…did he have like, dreams or plans for the future or anything when he was young?’

Frank stopped and thought about it for a minute before replying.

‘I can’t recall anything specific young Cameron but I do remember he always talked about getting out of Boddington and going to the city. Seems to be a common thread with the young ones who come to bad ends, always desperate to get to the city, never happy in a little town, me personally, I love our little town, community is worth a lot more than money if you ask me.’

‘So you never wanted to leave Frank?’

‘Well I went off to University but I always planned on coming back. Got my first job at the City of South Perth, that gave me experience with local government, but I always kept my ear to the ground for anything going back home, eventually a position opened up and I came back. Best thing I did too, better lifestyle down here.’

He stopped and looked at his son helping his mother in the kitchen, Cameron could almost see the wheels turning in his head and he frowned in Richard’s general direction.

‘Keep a tight reign on this one young Cameron, he’s likely to go chasing silly ideas in the city if he doesn’t have a good woman to keep him in line.’

Richard realised they were talking about him and turned to catch the conversation while he was drying the dishes. Cameron winked at him.

‘Oh don’t you worry Frank I’ve got him well trained’ she smiled and made a whip cracking sound in Richard’s direction which made Frank laugh while Richard just looked like he’d missed the joke.

Richard did his exams and ended up being Dux of the school, he got accepted into medicine at UWA just like he wanted, his parents were overjoyed. Cameron already had her licence but now she used her savings to get a basic but reliable car so she could visit Richard in the city on the weekends. Richard had organised a sharehouse with some other students about half an hour’s drive from the campus. The first weekend Cameron drove up was like a honeymoon for them both.

Cameron met his housemates on the Friday evening when she arrived. There was a girl with a pixie cut and a Sonic Youth T-shirt named Tasha, an Asian kid with glasses who was introduced to her as Charles and an older lad with a goatee called Tom who told her and Richard all about some movie he wanted to see which had won prizes at the Berlin International Film Festival.

Cameron politely extracted them from the conversation about arthouse films and more or less dragged Richard into his bedroom.

‘Come here College boy!’ she joked as she pulled at his shirt.

They made love with abandon and intensity, for the first time ever they didn’t need to hide or sneak around and could have a good, honest fuck without fear of parental discovery. It felt like they were adults finally.

Afterwards as Cameron lay with her head on Richard’s sweaty chest she took a good look at the room.

‘What’s that poster?’ She asked.

‘Tilda Swinton, it’s from one of her really early films, “Cycling the Frame” it’s really good, Tom turned me onto it, he’s totally in the know about cinema, he’s turned me onto so much cool stuff already.’

‘We should go see a movie while I’m in the city, make a night of it, maybe go have dinner somewhere as well.’

‘We can do that if you want, or we could just stay in bed until you have to leave.’

They melted into each other again.

They settled into a rhythm over the next few months, Cameron would come up most weekends and stay with Richard, they’d make love, go into the city and see what it had to offer, enjoy themselves. Richard began to take her out to things he was interested in, arthouse films, indie bands, parties with various people he’d met on campus.

Cameron began to notice things, Richard talked less and less about his medical studies, he no longer asked her to quiz him from his textbooks, he talked more and more about the music scene and the film scene around campus. She also noticed how the parties and events he took her to were big drinking events, she saw people casually smoking weed or sniffing a bit of powder at these scenes and it disturbed her. The terrifying sense of insecurity half remembered from her childhood made itself felt again like a crow at a funeral.

The thought that Richard might be drifting away from her made itself felt one Sunday afternoon as she drove back to Boddington. It stood there, cold, terrifying and monolithic in her mind, as she tried to focus on the road. She struggled to process the idea that one day she might not have him anymore. It was like a void on the map of her imagined future, an empty space, cold and nullifying.

She focused on the road and made it home but the horrible, haunting fear of loss, fuelled by the memories of the great loss of her past, wouldn’t quite go away. She did a load of washing and helped her grandmother with dinner but felt it like an ice-filled horizon dooming her future. She slept uneasily that night and was still troubled when she left for work in the morning.

Things eventually came to a head a few months later. Richard took her out to a party to celebrate some fellow student’s film which had recently been released to an adoring audience of about a hundred people at most. Cameron was halfway through her second wine and not loving the party, she didn’t feel right with these people, didn’t understand them at all and didn’t like the vibe. Plus Richard kept disappearing on her.

She decided to find him and tell him she wanted to leave. The party was sprawling and messy but she eventually found at a table in the backyard doing lines of coke with the filmmaker in question. Richard and the filmmaker were both talking at or over each other at considerable speed, evidently it was very good coke.

‘Richard I want to leave, let’s go home.’

Richard dismissed her with a casual wave and continued his off-tap conversation.

‘Yeah but if you think about it, like, everything since the French New Wave has been living in its shadow and we really haven’t made an authentic cinema since then, not in the sense of…’

Cameron stormed out, she called a taxi and headed back to Richard’s place, got her things and drove off to find a motel to stay in. Richard didn’t notice she was gone until the party was over and he had no ride home. As the alcohol and drugs slowly faded from his system he began to realise what he’d done and how badly he’d fucked up. He remembered Cameron telling him about her parents and how abandoned she had felt, he remembered promising her that he would never do that to her. The haunting fear that he might lose her sobered him up somewhat.

He called her as he got home, it was already daylight and he felt fucked but he knew if he didn’t call her now her might not ever be able to fix it.

‘Cammie, babe, I’m so sorry, I just…I got a bit carried away and forgot about you, I’m so sorry, it won’t happen again.’

Cameron was silent. Richard felt her anger as an almost physical force down the phone. He was genuinely frightened at how badly he’d fucked up. After what felt like a thousand years she spoke.

‘You can’t do this to me Richard, not now, not ever, you know why, I’ve told you what happened to my parents and why I’m an orphan. I won’t get hurt by a loss like that ever again. If you want to do drugs with idiots you can do so without me in your life. There is no wiggle room on this, there is no exceptions, do you understand me Richard?’

Richard grovelingly accepted her terms and promised to do better in the future. Cameron told him she would be driving back to Boddington without seeing him again and that he should think long and hard about their future together before he came back home for the holidays. She hung up and left him to stew in it.

Richard came home to Boddington for the two-week term break. Cameron met him after work, he waited for her outside the hairdresser’s and she glared at him straight up as if daring him to do anything stupid.

‘I’m sorry Cammie, I really am.’

Cameron remained silent making him squirm some more.

‘I know I fucked up; I’d never want to hurt you Cameron, I’ve gone off the rails, I admit it, but I’m getting back on track now, this is a big wake up call, I’m flying right from now on.’

Cameron reluctantly accepted this and ceased her silent torment of him.

‘You can’t do that shit if you want us to be together Richard, you know this, first and last time I’m ever letting this go past the keeper, you do that shit again and we’re done, understood?’

Richard put his hands up in unequivocal surrender.

‘I know Cammie, believe me, I know, I’ve well and truly fucked up since I moved to Perth. I’ve failed my exams and I have to re-do the last semester, my parents don’t know yet and I’m going to have to think about how I break it to them.’

Cameron was shocked, this was news to her as well.

‘What the fuck have you been doing up there for the last six months?’

Richard shrugged and mumbled something non-committal, he saw immediately that Cameron wasn’t satisfied with the answer so he braced himself and explained properly.

‘Look Cameron…’ He paused; on some level he knew how pissweak his excuses were going to sound but he sensed that he had no option but to tell her the truth.

‘Cameron, it’s just…look I always thought of university as a gateway to something else you know? Like I know I said I wanted to do Medicine but really I’ve always wanted to get into something creative, you know, like the film scene or the music scene or something like that. University was just a good place to make the right connections I thought.’

‘So you never had any intention of finishing a medical degree and becoming a doctor? Is that what you’re telling me? If you wanted to do something creative why didn’t you just do an arts degree?’

Richard got huffy and impatient, rolling his shoulders against the question.

‘Because my parents were never going to fund me doing an arts degree! My Dad literally can’t see anything in life other than get an education, get a sensible white-collar job and settle down to a boring family life. That’s his entire outlook on the world. I’ve had it rammed down my throat my whole life and all I want to do is escape that shit. There’s a whole world out there where interesting people are doing amazing, creative things and all my Dad can see is a steady career and settling down with a good woman in some little town. I want so much more out of life than that, I want to create, I want to be something more than a dull middle-class wanker.’

He stopped and breathed out as though the expression of this emotion had cost him great physical effort. He looked happily deflated, as though this speech was something he’d needed to say for years, as though he was relieved to finally get it off his chest.

Cameron had the awful feeling that this was how Richard had felt about things for years. If so then a lot of things he had said to her, a lot of the pictures he had painted of their possible future life together, were lies or at least not things he was not seriously committed to.

The great hollow at the centre of her life made itself felt again. That vast, irreversible loss that she had experienced so long ago crept forward and with ice-cold tendrils laid claim to her life again. Once again she was that five year old girl, shoeless and orphaned, standing on the front lawn of the neighbours house, wondering what was to become of her.

She took hold of herself and turned her anger onto Richard.

‘And where do I figure into these plans of yours? Am I supposed to come along with you while you do all these things? What future do we have together in all this? Has it occurred to you Richard that maybe the ideals your father pushes you towards are also what I might want? Do you understand what security and family means to an orphan? Do you understand what a steady job and a stable life means to someone like me? Have you given the slightest bit of thought to that?’

It was clear from Richard’s blank and defeated face that he hadn’t really thought it through. Cameron’s anger grew and despite the terror she had of losing what little love she’d experienced in life she felt certain what her next step must be.

‘Go home Richard, work out what you’re going to tell your parents and then think about what direction you want to go in life. If you decide to keep partying with idiots then don’t bother calling me again. If you want a future with me then you know what you have to do. Ball’s in your court.’

She stormed off leaving Richard standing there out the front of the hairdresser’s looking like the last soldier to surrender after the war has been lost. Cameron went home and ate her dinner in silence, her grandparents could tell something was up but wisely decided to let sleeping dogs lie.

For a full week Cameron wondered what Richard’s decision was going to be, she wondered if he would come crawling back to her and say that he was prepared to fly right from now on, she was more than willing to take him back if he did. As the week went on with no word from him she began to suspect what his decision was. It was a two-week term break and when a week and a half had passed without her hearing from him she knew the path he had chosen.

This was confirmed a few days later when Cameron walked past the pub after work and saw him in the front bar, visibly pissed and laughing it up with a bunch of lads from the mine. She stopped and looked at him as he laughed and drank, she felt a great sense of loss, total and irreversible, like observing a baby sink beneath the waves after a shipwreck and being unable to stop it. She walked home, shut herself in her room and cried quietly.

A few weeks later she was in the café for lunch again and bumped into Frank.

‘Young Cameron, how’s things? How are you holding up?’

‘Not too bad Frank, how about you?’

‘I’d be fine if that idiot son of mine would get his act together, you know all about it I suppose?’

‘Yeah, he told me when he came down, I told him to call me when he decided to get back on the straight and narrow, haven’t heard from him since.’

‘You did the right thing Cameron, that boy needs a short, sharp shock to wake him up to himself. God knows I’ve tried Cameron, he’s got one more chance with Uni and if he blows that he can join the Army, that’s my final word to him. I’ve laid down the law I have.’

The thought of Richard in the Army was so ridiculous that Cameron almost laughed.

‘Do you think he’ll wise up Frank?’

Frank sighed and shook his head.

‘I really don’t know young Cameron, I just don’t know.’

Cameron finished her sausage roll and went back to work.

Now that she wasn’t going up to Perth on the weekends Cameron found herself getting bored. She decided to play netball again for the local team. There was training on a Thursday night and a game on Saturday followed by a BBQ and social drinks. Cameron found that it filled a social void in her life and got her out of herself for a few hours every week. She was still deeply sad about the loss of the only boyfriend she’d ever had and running around a netball court helped distract from that.

It was towards the end of the season that she met Dennis Chapman.

He worked at the mine, there had been a gold mine in the hills near Boddington for a few years now and it was a boon to the town, there had been a social distinction between locals and mine people for a while but time and more importantly money had blurred the boundaries.

Dennis was ten years older than Cameron and did something technical and managerial at the mine which Cameron didn’t pretend to understand. He was mature and sensible, the exact opposite of Richard, and that was probably the appeal of him.

Cameron chatted to him a few times at the post-game social dos and then he came into the hairdresser’s for a haircut. It was clear he was interested in her, his attempts at small talk in the chair were better than most of the men who came in, Cameron found herself warming to him. Pretty soon they were an item.

As they spent more and more time together and got to know each other better Cameron reflected that there was a world of difference between dating a man and dating a boy. She had begun to see her relationship with Richard as a childish thing, not serious and not important. Whereas this new relationship with Dennis was a grown-up thing that actually might go somewhere. Dennis had a job, an actual career, had a level head on his shoulders, didn’t drink excessively or do drugs, he didn’t have stupid conversations about obscure arthouse films over lines of blow at a party. He owned a house in Perth and went on real holidays. When they eventually slept together Cameron discovered he was much more experienced and competent with a woman’s body. All in all he seemed like a winner.

Eventually Cameron decided to open up and told him about her parents and what their deaths had meant to her. He listened respectfully and sympathetically.

‘Do you understand that this means I can’t ever be with anyone who does drugs? I can’t and I won’t go through that loss ever again, do you understand that?’

Dennis assured her that he understood and that he wasn’t that sort of person anyway. He promised to not let her down, not now, not ever.

Cameron’s Grandparents approved of Dennis, he was invited around the house for dinner several times and always made a good impression. They were getting older and frailer and they wanted more than anything to see Cameron settled down and happy.

Cameron and her grandpa were sitting outside one morning having a cup of tea and watching the birds attack the apricot tree.

‘You think you’ll marry Dennis?’

Cameron was momentarily thrown by the directness of the question.

‘Maybe, yeah I think so, it’s getting pretty serious and he’s a good sort. Maybe it’s nearly time.’

‘I won’t be around much longer, neither will your grandma.’

‘You’ve got a few more years surely?’

‘No, the doctor says my heart is failing, I am on my last lap I suspect, your grandmother isn’t much better, we’re not long for this world.’

Cameron felt that cold, deep pit open up again, the loss of the past threatening to spread like a cancer into the losses of the future.

‘Is there nothing they can do about it?’

‘People get old and they die Cameron, it’s the natural order of things, I’ve had my run and I’m ready to go to God, the only thing that bothers me is getting you settled down into a life of your own.’

He paused and sighed with the burden of all the long years of his life.

‘I only regret that I couldn’t save your father Cameron, I did my best I really did, I don’t know why he went wrong, we didn’t raise him to be a druggie. As far as I know your mother’s family were decent people as well, I don’t know why the pair of them turned out the way they did. It’s a mystery to me.’

He stopped talking, the hurt still red raw after all these years, he reached out for Cameron’s hand and held it tenderly. The birds mounted another assault on the apricot tree as they sat there contemplating their lives and losses.

Cameron finished her apprenticeship and became a fully qualified hairdresser. About the same time Dennis was offered a promotion with the mining company, it would be mainly based at the office in Perth with occasional trips to sites out bush. Cameron’s grandparent’s health continued to decline and it was obvious they were soon to leave this world. The combination of these circumstances led to the decision of Cameron and Dennis to get married.

The wedding was held at the little Catholic church in Boddington which Cameron had attended with her Grandparents all her life. For their honeymoon Dennis took Cameron to a resort on the Whitsunday islands. It was Cameron’s first trip outside the state and her first time on a plane.

Cameron embarrassed herself at the Brisbane airport. She’d gone to get an iced coffee from the little shop and couldn’t find her normal brand, in fact she didn’t recognise any of the brands they had. Dennis saw her confusion and asked if she was okay.

‘They have different iced coffees interstate?’ she replied, rather thrown out by the whole thing.

Dennis laughed but then realised how serious she was.

‘Love, they have different ones in each state, didn’t you know that?’

She shook her head.

‘It’s my first-time interstate remember.’

‘Oh my poor country girl.’

When they got to the resort in the Whitsundays Cameron didn’t know what to say. She struggled to take it all in. She had never thought she would see such a place. They spent two weeks there swimming, lazing on the beach and making love. It was bliss.

On their last day there Dennis was asleep on the deck chair at the front of their cabin. Cameron wandered down the beach to the less crowded, wilder looking end of the island. She found a spot where she couldn’t see the cabins of the resort anymore and she waded out into the water until she was waist deep. The sand was of a white so bright it almost hurt your eyes when the sun reflected off it, the water was so clear you could see small fish twenty metres away with perfect clarity.

She stood waist deep in the water and looked to the horizon, her eyes looking for something in the immensity of the Pacific Ocean that she couldn’t entirely explain. For a moment she saw the vastness of it all, the ocean making a mockery of her tiny little life with its small, almost rustic, concerns and sufferings. No matter how she lived the rest of her life, whatever happened to her in years to come, it would be swallowed up by eternity the way a raindrop gets swallowed up by the Pacific Ocean. She might suffer intensely, the loss and hurt of her parents death might never heal, it wouldn’t matter to the world in the same way the death of a seagull didn’t matter to the Pacific Ocean. Or she might have many good years of love and happiness in her new life with Dennis, again, she thought, the world would be unmoved just as the Pacific Ocean is unmoved at the prosperity of a single fish. As she stood and stared at the empty blue horizon she understood how deeply alone and insignificant she was in grand scheme of things.

She felt almost equal now to the burden she knew she would bear for the rest of her life. She felt strong enough to carry the loss and carve out a new life at the same time.

She got out of the water and walked back to see if Dennis was awake yet.

After their honeymoon they moved to Perth and began their married life. Dennis had a house in a suburb called Ocean Reef which looked exactly the same as all the other suburbs in the vast northern suburban conglomeration of Perth’s urban sprawl. Cameron found a job with a local Hairdressing salon and her social life was mostly spent with Dennis and his friends.

Nearly everyone Dennis knew worked in the mining industry. They went to suburban barbeques where the men stood around the BBQ nursing beers and discussing the state of the industry with occasional conversational forays into politics and sport while the women sat around separately and talked home renovations, schools and consumption of luxury products.

The first time Cameron experienced this she was somewhat thrown aback by it. One of Dennis’ friend’s wives was holding forth in the little women’s circle on the patio and explaining her recent and very expensive decision to renovate her kitchen.

‘I just had to do something with it, every time I looked at it the bloody thing bothered me, that kitchen just wasn’t us anymore.’

Cameron had never heard anyone get this emotionally involved with a kitchen before. She didn’t think there was this much to think about with kitchens. Her grandparents had never renovated their kitchen in all the time they’d had it. She’d never heard of anyone in Boddington renovating their kitchen and she most certainly had never heard anyone complain that their kitchen “wasn’t us” anymore.

She asked Dennis about it afterwards and tried to understand the mentality. Dennis had lived most of his life around these people and thought it was more or less normal.

‘That’s just how people in the city are love, they take these sorts of things a bit more seriously than people in Boddington I suppose. Plus there’s a lot more money up here, Greg is running the Salt Hill project up in the Pilbara so he’s on good coin, good enough to not worry about kitchen renovations when his wife decides she wants them anyway.’

Cameron pondered this for a second before asking a question.

‘So the men dig big holes in the desert and make loads of money and the women stay in the city and spend the money? That’s how it works?’

Dennis laughed at such a crystal-clear diagnosis of the situation.

‘That’s the Australian economy in a nutshell my love, just don’t rock the boat, too many people have a vested interest in keeping it going.’

Cameron adjusted to her new environment and the new people. She was happy with Dennis, married life suited her, and the thought of many good years to come helped keep her hollow darkness at bay for long periods of time. Her job at the Hairdressers was fine, the boss was okay and the customers were agreeable enough. She got used to the women in Dennis’ social circle and made friends with a few of them. She was, as she discovered quite by accident one day, very happy and content with her new life.

They had been married for almost a year when Cameron told Dennis she was ready to start a family. She stopped taking her birth control and decided to let nature take its course.

Just as she was planning this future her grandfather died.

She had been going back to Boddington once a month and every time it seemed both her grandparents were weaker and frailer. They loved hearing from her and expressed deep satisfaction that she was building a happy new life with Dennis in the city.

Now she was returning to Boddington for the funeral.

It was a sad affair; it rained all day and everyone crammed into the little Catholic church and smelt like wet dogs. The priest said his words, they filed out, the hole in the ground at the little country cemetery was next to his son, Cameron’s father, and there was a few centimetres of water in the bottom because of all the rain. They buried him and went back to the house Cameron was raised in for tea and biscuits.

Cameron struggled to find the right words for her grandmother. It was clear she was very frail herself and wouldn’t be too long in joining her husband. This is what the end of a life looks like, thought Cameron, frailty, an old house full of old things and a hole in the ground reserved for you right next to your husband and son in a peaceful country cemetery.

They stayed for as long as they could, offered what comfort they could, before they had to go back to Perth.

A few weeks later Cameron was pregnant. A few weeks after that her grandmother died and they returned to Boddington for another funeral.

Rather predictably her grandmother had left all her worldly possessions to Cameron. There was the house and all its contents plus a respectable amount in a savings account. Cameron was unsure what to do with the house and contents and asked Dennis for advice.

‘Well the mine down there is still going and will be for a few years yet, you’d probably get a good price for it. I mean, it’s old but it’s clearly been looked after. Or if you want to keep it you could rent it out, get a little bit of income from that.’

Cameron thought about it, she thought about what sort of future she wanted for their unborn child, she raised the idea of selling the house and putting the money into some sort of trust fund to pay for a private school education for their child. Dennis thought this was an excellent idea.

They went down to Boddington and went though all the things in the old house. Cameron kept some things like photo albums and other sentimental pieces. They contacted all her grandparent’s friends and asked them if they wanted anything. A few asked for small items with sentiment attached. Most just wanted to chat to Cameron about her pregnancy. They sold most of the furniture online via the local marketplace. In the end the house was empty.

Cameron walked through the echoing house and thought of how much of her life had been spent here. The room she’d slept in had been her father’s when he was a boy as had the bed and the wardrobe. She remembered finding twenty year old porno magazines hidden behind a loose panel in that huge old wardrobe. She could only assume they had been her father’s when he’d been a teenage boy. She remembered all the nights in the dining room when they’d eaten her grandmother’s home cooked food for dinner and chatted happily amongst themselves. She remembered years of happiness slightly tainted by the dark shadow of her great loss.

It was all over now, she thought, a life, several lives, gone by and done with, never to be again. From dust thou art and to dust thou shalt return, she thought, remembering the lines from Church. She walked to the front door, looked back once and then shut and locked it. She went and gave the keys to the real estate agent that was selling the place and then drove back with Dennis to Perth and her life.

The house sold fairly quickly and for a decent price. As planned they squirreled the money away in a trust fund so that their unborn child could attend a good school. Cameron tried to think only of the future and, at times, its brightness was enough to make the deep sadness of the past go away.

Cameron grew too large with child to keep working at the hairdresser’s. She could no longer manoeuvre around the chairs. She was faced with some enforced idleness until the baby was born. During this time she inevitably thought about the past and it occurred to her that her mother’s family must still be living in Perth, she remembered what her grandparents had told her about them, a large Polish family based around Midland, she decided to try and find them.

In the end it was remarkably easy, her mother’s surname was distinctive and not very common at all, a couple messages to people on social media and she found Maria, her mother’s sister. They agreed to meet the next weekend.

Cameron did what research she could, she looked up the address Maria had given her on Google street view, she showed the results to Dennis.

‘Jesus, it’s a proper old school wog mansion isn’t it? I haven’t seen one of them in years, I thought they all got redeveloped or pulled down.’

‘Why do you call it a wog mansion? What does that mean?’

Dennis looked at her curiously before realising.

‘Sorry I forgot, you haven’t seen anything of the world other than Boddington, not many wogs down there is there?’ Well it’s kind of a style or aesthetic I suppose. The old school immigrants, once they started making money, they built houses in this style, lots of concrete, vegie patch with tomatoes and whatnot, the big arches and the fake roman statues, go inside and they’ll be fake tiger skins on the wall, plastic covers to protect the couch, maybe a little bar or something as well. Almost certainly a back patio with grape vines growing up the pillars. It’s the style the old ones liked I suppose. Don’t see many of them anymore because the oldies died off or went into retirement homes and the young folk don’t like that sort of thing anymore.’

Cameron absorbed this information and stared at the picture on the laptop screen.

‘So your mother, she was Polish yeah?’

‘Well she was born in Australia but her family were Polish yeah.’

‘And what’s your dad’s family origins?’

‘Irish Catholic but been in Australia at least a hundred years or so.’

‘So you’re half Irish and half Polish, it’s a wonder you’re not depressed and alcoholic.’

Cameron went to the house on the weekend by herself, she told Dennis that this was something she wanted to do alone. She parked the car in front of the house and looked at it. It was even more distinctive in real life than it had been on Google. Dennis’s explanation had ruined it for her, all she could see now was a wog mansion, the idea of her mother growing up in this house was hard to imagine. She wondered how her mother had gone wrong, had her father led her mother astray or vice-versa? Or was it mutual? Were they both drawn to the gutter by some sort of grimy magnet in their souls?

She got out of the car and went and knocked on the door.

Maria answered, Cameron noted the surprise on her face, the shocked recognition and small moment of hurt as Maria looked at her face. I must look a lot like my mother, Cameron thought, she’s seen a ghost.

‘Oh you must be Cameron, I’m your auntie Maria, come on in and meet everyone, oh look at your baby belly! When are you due? Oh you’re positively glowing!’

Cameron let herself be fussed over and led into the house.

The interior of the house was exactly as Dennis had predicted. Cameron was introduced to another woman named Racheal who she was informed was also her auntie.

‘This is your grandfather.’ Maria said and gestured to an old man with a hard and unsmiling face. Cameron looked at him and found him frightening, he reminded her of those Yugoslavian generals who were convicted of atrocious war crimes after the wars of the 1990’s. His face was like a granite slab betraying no emotion, cold and able to bear the most terrible suffering, contemptuous of weakness in any form.

He grunted when Cameron tried to introduce herself. Maria averted any social awkwardness by sitting Cameron down and plying her with a cup of tea and endless questions.

Cameron found herself explaining almost her entire life to these people. How she’d been raised by her grandparents in Boddington, how she’d met Dennis and gotten married and when the baby was due, she felt some obscure need to justify herself to them, to prove that her mother’s life had not been in vain because it had led to her life. As if one life well lived could make up for another life poorly lived and cut short.

Maria and Racheal began to get out various photo albums and memorabilia of her mother. They showed these to Cameron and explained things to her. Cameron found herself feeling slightly less awkward and almost warming to these people. They just want to reclaim some small piece of their sister, she thought, they mean well and are trying their best to bring me in to the family.

Her grandfather said nothing during this entire process. He sat and stared at Cameron like her existence personally aggrieved him.

Maria showed her something from her mother’s school days. A newspaper clipping from a now defunct local Midland newspaper reporting on a school play which had been performed to much local acclaim at the Midland town hall.

Cameron began to read aloud the caption under the photograph.

‘Midland High School drama students performing Macbeth L to R: Toby Mullane, David Peterson, Esther Czedj….Czedjiic…Cz..’

Cameron vainly tried to pronounce the unfamiliar surname, she realised, with mounting panic, that she’d never actually pronounced it out loud before. She’d read it from scribbles on the backs of old photos but never had cause to say it aloud in front of people before. She began to get flustered and panicky.

Maria, as kindly as she could, corrected her and told her the proper pronunciation.

‘She can’t even say her own mother’s name properly.’

The first words her grandfather had spoken to her.

Wounded and embarrassed, Cameron made excuses and got out of there as quickly as she decently could. As she drove home to Ocean Reef she made up her mind she wasn’t going to stay in touch with them.

The day came for her to give birth. Dennis had forked out for private health insurance so she went to a very nice maternity ward and got the best of care. The birth was neither very hard nor very easy but about average for a woman her age and condition.

It was a little girl and they briefly argued about the name. Cameron had always enjoyed the music of The Cranberries and wanted to name their daughter “Dolores” after the lead singer, Dolores O’Riordan, but Dennis argued that it was far too old fashioned a name. They eventually settled on “Dorothy” as a compromise position and Dorothy Chapman was duly given a birth certificate by the State of Western Australia.

Cameron enjoyed being a new mum and being fussed over. Dennis’s parents helped out and were in love with their new granddaughter from the start. Dennis loved being a father and doted on his little girl with a tenderness that made Cameron’s heart warm.

Cameron began to believe that she’d made it. She’d found the little slice of happiness that she’d always wanted. The vast emptiness and loss she’d known as a young girl could be, if not defeated, at least contained and prevented from expanding, or so it seemed.

Her life as a new mum suited her. She went to playgroups and socialised with the other mums, she took Dorothy to her doctor’s appointments and quizzed the doctor about her health, her baby and her husband filled the horizon of her life and she was happy.

When Dorothy was nearly two years old she was invited to a lunch date with some of her friends she’d made through the playgroup. The lunch was at a restaurant in the Hillary’s harbour complex. A family friendly place that was ideal for a small group of mums with prams and kids. Cameron felt a deep sense of happiness as she parked the car, got Dorothy out and put her in the pram. The sun was shining, her baby was happy and healthy, they were going to have a nice lunch with friends, you really can’t ask for much more, she thought.

They got a table near the play area and the mums all dumped their kids into the play area without ceremony and then sat down and started chatting before deciding what to eat. The children immediately began to run riot inside the small play area but unless one of them cried out in pain they were largely left to their own devices. The mums chatted happily and caught up on each other’s gossip.

The food arrived, the children were retrieved from the play area and induced to nibble on chicken nuggets and tomato sauce before they insisted on going back to the play area and their disrupted games. The mums ate and talked some more.

‘That chef is keen on you Cameron.’

Cameron found herself thrown out by this unexpected input from her friend.

‘What?’ She asked confusedly and felt somewhat horrified, being the object of any man’s affection aside from her husband’s didn’t feel right to her anymore. She’d settled into married life and closed the door on other possibilities.

‘He’s been staring at you from the kitchen ever since you sat down. I think you’ve got an admirer.’

She laughed and Cameron blushed out of embarrassment. Her friend rushed to reassure her.

‘Oh don’t stress about it Cameron, of course you’re not going to do anything about it, don’t be silly, but a little attention is nice sometimes, flattering, helps with body confidence.’

Cameron shook her head and tried to change the subject but her friend insisted she take a sneaky look at the chef. She tried to turn her head slowly and make it look casual. She felt slightly foolish, like a high school girl trying to see if a boy she liked had noticed her. She looked over and saw him.

It was Richard.

Her heart stopped when she recognised him. It must have shown on her face because her friend immediately asked if she was okay.

‘Yeah, I just…I recognise him…I went to school with him. Just a shock seeing him again is all.’

‘Are you going to say hello?’

‘Oh no, I wouldn’t know what to say to him, it’s been years, it’s always awkward bumping into school friends again isn’t it? I never know what to say.’

This prompted her friends to start talking about various times they’d bumped into old school friends and the awkwardness that had resulted. The conversation flowed and everyone was safely distracted from the issue of the chef staring at Cameron.

She tried not to look in the direction of the kitchen for the rest of the time. Eventually all the mums gathered up their kids and began to head out to the carpark. Cameron tried to leave as unobtrusively as possible, hoping against hope that Richard would just let her go, that he wouldn’t try and follow her out and talk to her.

She rushed through the process of getting Dorothy strapped into her baby seat, getting the pram into the boot, she was just fumbling through her bag for her keys when she heard the voice behind her.

‘Cammie?’

Her heart simultaneously sank and leapt as she heard his voice.

She turned and looked at him. He was thinner and looked more worn from life than she remembered. He was wearing a chef’s uniform spattered with the grease and sauces of various meals he’d cooked. He had a plaintive look in his eyes, like a child neglected and abused by an alcoholic parent who nonetheless hopes that this time daddy is really going to stop drinking and be a proper father.

It hurt Cameron’s heart to look at him but she couldn’t look away.

‘Hello Richard, long time no see.’

There was a pause, neither of them was sure of what to say next. Richard broke the silence after a minute.

‘You’ve had a baby.’

‘Yes, look I need to get home, she’s going to need a nap and I’ve got things to do around the house and..’

‘Just take this.’ Richard interrupted her and forced a piece of paper into her hand. She took it almost against her will, looked and saw a phone number scribbled in blue pen.

‘I get Mondays and Tuesdays off, we could go for a coffee or something, bring your baby if you want, I just want to see you again, that’s all.’

He disengaged and walked back to the restaurant before she could object. She was left standing next to her car with a piece of paper in her hand. For a brief second she considered tearing it up or throwing it in the bin but something restrained her. She stuffed it into her purse and got in the car.

She said nothing and did nothing for a week.

It was a Monday morning when she finally gave in and called him. What harm can it do? She thought, we’ll have a cuppa and a chat and catch up and that will be that. There’s nothing there anymore, she reassured herself, it’s all ancient history.

She rang the number.

‘Hello Cammie’

‘How’d you know it was me?’

‘Nobody calls me except work and my parole officer, unknown number can only be you.’

‘I see.’ She wanted to ask about the parole officer bit but felt it might be a little too direct just yet.

‘Um, look if you want to catch up and have a cuppa or whatever we can do it today but it has to someplace family friendly because I have my daughter.’

‘Well the conditions of my parole say I’m only allowed a few places anyway. On my days off I usually go to the public library at Whitfords and then to the big shopping centre next door for lunch. Does that suit you?’

Cameron thought for a moment.

‘Do they still do the story time thing at that library? I went once or twice with my friend and her kids.’

‘Yes I’ve seen all the mums and bubs doing their thing in the kid’s section. I think that happens around ten-thirty or thereabouts. Shall we aim for that?’

‘Ok see you then.’

She got off the phone and felt like she’d crossed some Rubicon. It wasn’t a question of being unfaithful for her husband, it was neither practical nor possible to fuck Richard while she had Dorothy with her even if she wanted to fuck him which she didn’t. It was more a sense of being unfaithful to the new life she’d built with Dennis, she’d got her slice of happiness and now she was looking backwards. She remembered the old Bible stories she’d learned in Church as a child, how the children of Israel had been freed from slavery in Egypt and almost immediately began complaining that they weren’t fed as well as they had been in captivity. Perhaps that was her, she thought, she was freed from that great loss and darkness of her early life, she’d got everything she wanted and now she was missing the food in Egypt.

She told Dennis nothing about all of this.

Monday came and she found herself parking out the front of the Whitfords Public Library. She unpacked the pram and put Dorothy in it before looking around to try and spot Richard.

‘Hello Cammie.’

The cheerful call across the carpark startled her. Richard was striding over towards her with a small backpack slung over his shoulder. She looked at him carefully, he was definitely skinnier than she remembered, there was a distinct pallor to his skin that hadn’t been there before. He looked like he’d been living an unhealthy life for quite some time.

‘Hello Richard.’

She didn’t know what else to say so they stood there rather awkwardly for a few seconds before Richard bent down to look at Dorothy.

‘And what’s your name little miss?’

Dorothy gave no answer but merely chewed on her softy toy while staring at this stranger.

‘Her name’s Dorothy, she’s nearly two years old.’ Cameron added helpfully.

‘Well aren’t you just the spitting image of your mother little lady, such a pretty girl.’

Dorothy took this compliment as no more than her due and continued to chew on her toy with casual unconcern.

‘Shall we go in? They should be starting the story time shortly.’

They walked into the entrance of the library and Richard veered off to the checkout machine pulling books out of his backpack.

‘This is the highlight of my week you know, taking my old books back and getting new ones, about as exciting as my life gets these days. You go on with your little one to the kid’s section while I find something new for the week. I’ll join you shortly.’

Cameron accepted this and trundled over to the kid’s section of the library where there was already a gathering of mums and children ready for the story time activity. She pulled Dorothy out of her pram and let her crawl around with the other kids. The story time began as the librarian sat down in front of the kids and engaged them with enthusiasm.

Cameron felt a terrible and unsettling sense of confusion for a moment. It felt as if two separate timelines had crossed over and upset everything.

She watched Richard from across the library. He was in the fiction section choosing books with an intent look on his face, evidently the picking of library books was a serious matter to him. She wondered about his life, he’d said he had a parole officer so what had he been in prison for? What had happened to medical school?

She felt fairly confident speculating about what had happened but she felt a need to hear it from his mouth. She needed to hear him say it.

Story time ended, the mums stayed and chatted with each other for a while before leaving in a slow trickle with their kids. Richard, seeing that Cameron was now mostly alone, came and sat next to her.

‘Did your little one enjoy that?’

‘Yeah, she’s probably a bit too little to really understand the stories but she likes being with the other kids and playing on the rug.’

‘Wholesome times.’

Cameron looked at him unsure if he was being sarcastic or not. His face betrayed no mockery and appeared to be genuine. She let it go.

‘So what did you get?’

He showed her the books on his lap, there was the new Tim Winton, an old Nevil Shute novel and a book about the Vietnam War.

‘Enough to keep me occupied during the evenings.’

‘So I’m dying to hear about your life since I saw you last. You gonna keep me waiting and guessing or spill your guts?’

He looked awkward and sheepish for a moment, like he’d been caught doing something disreputable by his mother, he shrugged and smiled an uncomfortable smile.

‘Simple answer is I went wrong and it blew up.’

He looked at Cameron as if hoping this would satisfy her. She stared at him unmoved. He realized he was going to have to tell her everything.

‘After I saw you last I flunked out of University, my parents cut off my money in disgust but by then I’d already started dealing a little to support my own use and it just expanded from there. I kept telling myself it was only temporary and that I was going to study again but it just became an all-consuming thing, the drug world will swallow you up if you let it. I started moving more serious amounts and using a bit too. In the end I got caught with a trafficable quantity plus a bunch of dodgy credit cards and various things. The detectives on my case just kept digging and finding things, charge after charge it ended up being. I got a solid whack of time. It was a rude shock I can tell you. Anyway I played the game in prison and was a model prisoner, got a job in the kitchen, they put me on this training course, I ended up getting my certificate 3 in commercial cookery. They gave me day release to work at that place for about six months, I did everything they asked of me and now I’m on parole and living in a halfway house. It’s not total freedom, I still have a lot of restrictions on me, but if I keep on the straight and narrow for another twelve months I’ll be home free.’

He shrugged as if to say “that’s me” and sat in silence waiting for Cameron to respond.

Cameron pondered this tale of woe quietly. It was about what she had expected to happen after the dubious choices she’d seen Richard taking years ago. She felt a certain satisfaction that her prophecies had been proven true. Like the laws of the universe had agreed with her and validated her judgement.

Now where to go from here? Cameron felt unsure what she should say in response to his honesty. For a second or two she had an almost puerile urge to say “I told you so!” in his face and watch the hurt that resulted. But then another part of her, deep in her heart, felt a tenderness towards Richard like a knot that couldn’t be untangled.

For a solid minute or so these two separate impulses wrestled within her, contending against each other like the proverbial two wolves. In the end tenderness and the lingering remnants of the love they’d once shared won out.

‘We should go over to the shopping centre and have something to eat, talk a bit more.’

Richard nodded, quietly relived and feeling like he’d won a small but significant victory. Cameron gathered up Dorothy in the pram and off they went. The first time they’d eaten together in years.

Cameron told Dennis nothing about all this, in the weeks that passed she saw Richard several more times, always at the Whitfords library on a Monday, always going for lunch at the shopping centre afterwards. No further intimacy took place, there was no place they could go and have sex even if they’d wanted to and with Dorothy in tow it wasn’t really an option. But a deeper thing was happening, a plan had been suggested by Richard. At first Cameron had said nothing, but she hadn’t outright refused, then Cameron asked how possible it actually was, but didn’t commit to anything, then gradually she seemed to accept the idea.

She demanded Richard spell it all out to her again.

‘So I was smarter than most when I was dealing. I stashed a lot of my money. Not burying it in the bush like a lot of these idiots do but in offshore accounts in countries that don’t give a fuck about warrants from Australian police. I’ve got enough put away to live comfortably for a couple of years or we could use it to set up a business or something. I’m still on parole for another year but I know a guy who does excellent quality fraudulent New Zealand passports. They’re the best for getting out of the country easily, they don’t check them as much as some other countries, if you have to leave the country under the radar always go a New Zealand or maybe Canadian passport.’

‘Same guy can get us all the ID we’d need to completely hide our lives. We could be different people over in New Zealand and they’d never be able to find us. We could start again, clean slate, I’d raise your Dorothy and love her as my own because to me if she’s part of you then she’s got my heart. We could have a child together in a few years if you want. We could have the life and the love that we were always supposed to have Cammie. We could set things right, the way they were supposed to be before I fucked it up. This is our second chance Cameron, not many people get one but we do, let’s not waste it.’

Cameron sat across from him in a quiet corner of the food court at the Whitfords shopping centre and took it all in.

It seemed to her that she was at some crucial fork in the road. That her whole future could be decided here and now in the food court.

She reached her hand over to tenderly touch Richard’s hand.

‘Okay’

She didn’t need to say anything more. They went to a photo place in the mall and got passport photos for all three of them. Richard assured her he would have it sorted by the next week.

She met Richard the next week in the same place but instead of going into the library for story time Richard got in her car and they drove to the airport.

As they passed through the city Richard was overcome with a wave of nostalgia.

‘This is the last time I’ll see this city Cammie, can’t come back once we’ve gone. Big part of my life this place for good and bad. Lot of memories in the city by the Swan.’

‘What about Boddington?’

‘Couldn’t give a shit, worthless little bumpkin town full of people with such limited vision they can’t see past the hills around their town.’

They drove over the bridge and towards the airport.

They parked in short term parking because, as Richard said, it didn’t matter as they were never coming back for the car anyway.

They gathered themselves together and headed towards international departures.

‘I’ve booked us into a hotel in Auckland under our new names. We’ll stay there for a few days while we get sorted out. Our new lives are just beginning Cammie.’

Richard was joyous and bursting with life. Cameron watched as he practically bounced as he walked. This was his dream coming true.

They went to where they had to check in. Richard was just in the process of producing the fraudulent New Zealand passports when they pounced.

‘Come with me Mrs Chapman.’

The female Federal Police Officer gently ushered Cameron away just as planned. Richard turned to see what was happening and three large male Federal Police Officers cornered him.

‘Mr Kennett you are under arrest.’

Cameron turned back to see the hope and life fall out of Richard’s face. He knew he was done, he knew Cameron had been the one who’d done him, all hope was gone for him.

‘That’s for breaking my heart years ago.’

Cameron whispered knowing he couldn’t hear her but also knowing that he knew what she was saying.

She turned her back on the drama just as Richard decided to hopelessly try and fight the now dozen or so Federal Police who’d surrounded him. The shouting faded in her ears as the female officer led her and Dorothy into a room, sat them both down and offered them refreshments.

A short while later a senior officer came in to speak to her.

‘Well it’s done, we’ve got him on the fraudulent passports and documents, plus the breach of parole and now assaulting several officers. He’ll be going back to prison for a long time yet. With the recording you took at the food court we can easily prove conspiracy. I really can’t thank you enough Mrs Chapman. You’ve helped us immensely.’

‘That’s alright officer, I just wanted him out of my life that’s all. He’s not going to be free for a while is he?’

‘No, he won’t see daylight for some time yet Mrs Chapman.’

Cameron nodded happily.

‘Well can I go home now? This little one is going to need a nap soon, too much excitement for one day. You don’t need me for anything else do you?’

‘No Mrs Chapman, I think this is a wrap, we’ve got enough evidence and you’ve done more than enough. On behalf of the Australian Federal Police I want to thank you again for coming to us with this and helping us. You’ve done the community a great service.’

Cameron smiled weakly and gathered Dorothy and her pram and left.

The drive home was long and soothing. Dorothy fell asleep in her baby seat and Cameron listened to a golden oldies station as she passed through the city and on into the northern suburbs.

She got home and was able to make dinner for Dennis as though nothing had happened. When he asked her about her day she told him she’d taken Dorothy to the Whitfords library for the story time activities and then had lunch in the mall. He accepted this without fuss and played with Dorothy lovingly.

Weeks passed. Cameron followed the outcome of the trial. Richard pleaded guilty to all charges but still copped a lengthy sentence. It seemed that since 9/11 the laws about fraudulent passports had been made rather fearsome and that, added to the other charges, meant a lengthy stay in prison for Richard.

She felt a deep satisfaction about the whole thing. Richard had been paid back for breaking her heart and would not bother her shiny new life again. The past had been buried and the dirt brushed over so that nobody could see that there was ever a grave there. She could live henceforth unbothered by the past and enjoy the slice of happiness she had carved out for herself against all odds.

Several weeks later she woke one Sunday morning before Dennis or Dorothy. She slipped out of the bedroom without waking Dennis, checked in on Dorothy and left them both to sleep. It was still absurdly early and the sun had not yet risen. She wondered why on earth she was waking up so early but decided to just roll with it.

As quietly as she could she made herself a cuppa and sat on the patio furniture outside. She could see no lights nor hear any noises from any of the other houses in the neighbourhood so she assumed that the rest of Ocean Reef was still asleep.

She sipped her tea and thought. Her and Dennis had decided to try for another baby a few weeks ago and they’d made love again last night. She wondered if she’d managed to conceive yet. If there was a life growing inside her right now. She imagined what the future would be like for this child, a happy life here in Ocean Reef, a good school, loving parents, the world would open its arms for this child and life would be a sweet and beautiful thing.

She thought of her own life, the great loss and sadness that still plagued her thoughts in quiet moments like these. She thought of her parents, druggie fuck ups killed by their own stupidity and the world mourned not their loss. She thought of her grandparents, decent, godly people who struggled and strived to maintain goodness and decency against the tide of the world, now dead and buried in a little country cemetery.

She thought of all the loss and death in the world and how little any individual life mattered to the world.

The sun began to rise very faintly, she finished her cup of tea and listened carefully, she could just make out that faint background hum of traffic that you always hear in the city if you listen carefully. When she’d first moved up from the country it had been really noticeable and had at times bothered her. Now it was background noise, barely noticed unless she listened for it.

She heard it now as the house containing her husband and daughter was silent. The sound of people getting up to do whatever it was they had to do with the day, the sound of people going to or from work, the sound of people driving home after nights out, the sound of life being lived.

She decided to make another cup of tea and then if Dorothy stayed asleep she was going to wake Dennis and have sex. She wanted to conceive again. She wanted another baby. She wanted to love and live as much as she could for as long as she could.

There was nothing else, she decided, other than love and life so grab as much as you can.