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So says the prophecy that accompanies Fern’s birth. Her mother, fearing the wrath of the baby’s father, is forced to give Fern up for adoption.

Twenty years later Fern is haunted by the feeling that something is very wrong. Her family and friends think she is losing her mind, but Fern is convinced that someone is after her.

Seeking to unlock the mystery, Fern takes flight onto the streets of Sydney, where she meets two unlikely allies: Cassie, a woman cursed with the gift of clairvoyance, and Adam, an ex-soldier tormented by his past. As danger looms, Fern and Adam embark on an adventure which takes them far into the labyrinthine depths of the Tasmanian wilderness, where Fern must finally confront her demons.

Interwoven with myth and metaphor, Flight is a compelling and original story; sometimes eerie, sometimes earthy, always spellbinding.

‘An adventure story that encapsulates both a physical and spiritual journey … interesting and original … with some startling contrasts between the ordinary and extraordinary’
Bookseller + Publisher

At that moment I moved. Well, bounced really. Did a somersault in a small space, causing my mother to double over in pain and think her time had come. It hadn’t. I wasn’t going anywhere. Safety, I thought, lay in the warm fluids that contained me. And I didn’t want to kill anyone, especially my own father, even though I wasn’t exactly fond of him. There’d been words already, white knuckles and fists, sending me curling up into a tighter self-protective ball. My father didn’t love me. Even then I knew that. And he didn’t love my mother. Like me, she stood between him and his plans. He wanted only to conquer her, in the same way he planned to conquer the world. You see, my father had big ideas swirling inside his head. Even then he loved power more than people. Even then he would let nothing stand in his way.
My mother loved my father but for all the wrong reasons. Love, hate and fear were all bound up together for her. She was young and weak and couldn’t distinguish between these things. She wanted me and she didn’t. She was afraid. It’s not unusual. And Simon’s prophecy had filled her throat with the burning need to tell. So when my father arrived a few minutes later, she laughed a kind of brittle nervous laugh and repeated what Simon had said. It was a big mistake, because more than anything my father wanted to live. He was a rational man, or so he claimed, but underneath that rationality lay a deep-rooted superstition. Underneath everything, he knew the power of shadow.
At first he tried to laugh it off but my mother could see the discomfort in his eyes and the tension in his fingers, already bunching up into fists.
‘You should have got rid of it,’ he hissed. ‘I told you.’ Then he hit my mother hard in the belly, the shock and pain spreading through her thin skin and into me.
At that moment I decided it was safer out than in. I fled, bursting the bag that contained me, sending the warm liquid pouring down my mother’s legs, soaking her pants and forming a puddle on the ground under where she sat, her heart beating in terror from the attack, her breath coming in quick panting bursts. Her fear spread quickly into me. In a panic I bounced my head again and again, pushing at her uterus, sending out waves of contractions. She ran, out of the gardens and onto the footpath, winding her way through other pedestrians, doubling over with the pain as another contraction hit, then running again, away from him, away from the agony that was me and that was tearing her neatly down the middle.
It was lunch hour in the city and there were lots of people about. She could see the concern in their eyes but her terror didn’t allow her to respond. Like a panicked horse she bolted, not noticing where she was. It took a Don’t Walk sign to bring her to her senses. Perhaps it was some instinct for survival, or the need to protect me. Perhaps it was fate, for the prophecy had been written in the stars and spoken aloud by Simple Simon, setting it in motion. Or perhaps someone reached out their hand and grabbed her arm or dress, yanking her to a halt. It could have been any of these things that made her stop, only a half-second away from the truck that muscled across the intersection, dangerously close to the kerb, making everyone step back and brushing the wind through her hair just as my head burst free of the birth canal, only to find itself imprisoned in her underpants as she slid, moaning, to the ground, hands reaching out to support her. And all the time my father stood back in the crowd, watching me emerge and wanting to stamp the life out of me but unable to come forward. Yet.
He was biding his time. My father wasn’t an evil man but he had already done wrong, and this deed had set in motion others. Then it was only a matter of time, as the prophecy ate away at him, turning him into its slave. Perhaps the seeds of madness had already been planted deep in his heart, in this life or another. Or perhaps they were sown later; I am not sure, for it is hard to see the beginnings of things.
People always say that children can’t remember. That babies have no language and therefore no memories. That an abandoned baby can’t be traumatised. They are wrong. There are many ways of knowing. The memories we carry in our consciousness are not the only ones. There are others, ones we can’t relate in words, and yet their scar tissue builds up so that we live every day of our lives in reaction to them. I have learned first hand that we carry memory in our cells. Unresolved trauma acts like a cancer, scarring, mutating, warping our cells until they become sick. Remembering is implicit in the decision to enter the labyrinth, to look inside ourselves, at our wounds and our carefully buried strengths. It’s there in the patterns we identify in our lives. And there too in the truths we discover and recognise as having always known. I know these things because I have looked deeply into myself and seen what needed seeing.
I was born in Adelaide on January 2nd 1989. From the beginning, life for me was a serious matter of survival, but it was also something I did not relish at all. There is a contradiction in this, I know, and one that tugged me this way and that, making me strong, yet fearful; determined, yet too ready to give up. A contradiction that for many years trapped me in a half-life, a twilight world of muted colours. A prison I didn’t even know I was in until I made my escape.
I entered this world wearing my mother’s blood and carrying the marks of my father’s fist on my back. Within minutes of my birth an ambulance arrived, its siren sending my heart thumping too fast all over again. There were danger signals everywhere and I could no longer distinguish between what was safe and what was not. But I was a tiny baby, born a month early, and the hands of those men were gentle as they carried me to the relative safety of the hospital.
He tried one more time, in the hospital ward, his large hand grabbing me by the leg and swinging me up and out of the plastic crib and head first into the wall. One swing, but he hadn’t built up momentum yet. My mother’s loyalties were torn, but for that one crucial moment the hormones swilling through her body put her on my side. She screamed. Just once, but there was a tone in it, enough to bring people running. Before the next swing a nurse appeared in the doorway and, reading the madness in my father’s eyes, pressed the alarm.
Already a master of disguise, my father recovered quickly, cradling me in his arms, uttering comforting baby noises while I stared mutely up into his eyes, my heart thudding.
‘I slipped,’ he told the nurse. ‘I almost dropped her. My God, they’re so fragile.’ Then, as a nurse took her from him, ‘She’s alright, isn’t she?’
Uncertain now, the nurse looked at my mother lying there in the crisp white hospital bed, wearing a white hospital gown because there’d been no time to pack, sobbing, milk leaking from her nipples.
My mother looked at each of us in turn, seeing the threat in my father’s eyes, the bewildered fear in mine and the question in the nurse’s. Then, stony-faced, she turned away from us all. She had made a decision.
‘It was an accident,’ she said. ‘He slipped.’
But she did sign the adoption forms. To keep me safe.
Then she wrapped me tightly in a white blanket, placed me back in the plastic see-through hospital-issue crib and wheeled me into a room full of other howling cribs, setting me loose into a sea of indifference with no anchor and no oars, with only the sun, the moon and the stars to navigate by, and no lessons to help me decipher them.

On my original birth certificate there is a blank space next to Father. My mother’s name is listed as Joan Childe. My name is listed as Erica. On my second birth certificate my father’s name is listed as Richard Parsons, my mother’s as Grace Parsons My adopted parents called me Fernanda after an evangelical missionary they favoured at the time. I called myself Fern. More than anything I wanted to fly. But in order to fly, one must first be willing to fall.
This is the story of my journey, following the clues back through the twists and turns that made me into what I was, searching for the moments of definition: the overheard sentence, the intention in another’s eyes, a boy seducing a girl, a fist, a beating and a mother turning away. I had to go deep into the underworld and enter the labyrinth, with no guarantee of return, seeking the threads that I could weave into a rope thick enough to haul me out again.
In this story there are those gifted and cursed with the power of prophecy. There’s a young man haunted by the past and an old man haunted by the future. There is death and corruption and injustice. There is love and passion and hatred, all carried across lifetimes. Occasionally there is compassion. But more often, as in real life, there is fear.
I am there too. Haunted and hollow. An outline, waiting to be filled in. Poised trembling before the entrance to the labyrinth. A shadow of the self I should have been. A shadow of who I am now as I sit here looking for a beginning when there isn’t one, when there never is, because life is simply not neat, and one story hardly ever ends before another begins. Instead they span time and space, reaching back into a past that extends beyond our first breath and into a future that extends beyond our last, through a multitude of lives and tied only by the threads of souls and their patterns.
In the absence of a clear beginning I will draw an artificial line through time and begin on that stiflingly hot afternoon, in the attic room of a run-down terrace in the inner suburbs of Sydney. . .

‘A deeply moving fiction debut in which Dub examines the virtue of truth, the harm of lies, the pain of secrets, the desire for belonging and the difficulty of confronting ones past to ensure the future.’
Weekend Gold Coast Bulletin

‘A gritty sandblown kind of story that once begun gets into your consciousness with compelling insistence. Yes, it’s a page-turner and yes, it’s a thriller-cum-rite-of-passage tale. . . The strength of Dub’s ability to tell a story and hold an audience is clear in this first novel of hopefully many more. It is a book of many pathways to the heart and soul, of not only a country but families who deny the truth of who they are and what they strive to protect. . .’
Sunday Tasmanian

‘Here we have a Tasmanian writer with a first novel that grabs you from the very first page. Well written, it is a compelling story that takes the protagonist on a journey of self discovery. . . We will hear more from Rosie Dub; well done.’
Tasmanian Life

‘. . . a fascinating story of discovery, generations, Romany lore, Australia, and of Storm herself.’
Cairns Post

* * * * *
Adelaide Advertiser

‘An absorbing first novel.’
Women’s Day

I don’t plan before I write, instead I start with an image that haunts me and perhaps a theme or two – then see what happens. I write from start to finish, each day’s work pointing me to where I should go next. As I write a plot evolves and I get glimpses of scenes that might come later. It’s an exciting process, fraught with dangers and punctuated with miracles. As Stephen King says in his book, On Writing – stories ‘pretty much make themselves. The job of a writer is to give them a place to grow.’ Aside from a little tidying up, I don’t edit much along the way either, as so much of the material emerges from the unconscious and I can’t tell what use it will be until I have a complete draft. Then I rewrite, over and over, layering and developing, each time understanding more of what I have written.

For me the idea usually comes in the form of an image. This was the case with Gathering Storm. After spending ten years living in the UK, I had returned to Australia with my British husband, Tim and our two young children. We took the opportunity to spend a year or so travelling around Australia in a campervan and our third child was born during this journey. I never imagined this would become a research trip for Gathering Storm but one day in the middle of the desert I suddenly had an image of an abandoned toddler. The contrasts in the image were extreme, the harsh, unforgiving desert and a fragile, vulnerable child. I wrote a few words in my diary, then wrote NOVEL in capital letters and circled it. Four years later I returned to that idea and a story slowly formed around it.

In retrospect I see that the themes in Gathering Storm relate closely to the issues in my own life when I returned to Australia. The journey our family took around Australia was also my own journey into myself, exploring my relationship to the country in which I’d been born and accepting the growing certainty that like Storm, I too needed to turn around and face the past.

Storm is searching for her roots. What’s more important for a human character: the search itself, or the goal Storm is aiming for?

Many of us wish away the search for the goal, yet the two are so closely related that it is impossible to have one without the other. Without her search, Storm would not have been strong enough to look at the truth she was seeking, which eventually came in the form of a traumatic memory that had been buried in her unconscious self, its tentacles reaching into her conscious life and stopping her from living well.

For Storm the search took the form of a road trip into the desert, an unknown and dangerous place. This journey through the wilderness is symbolic of the mythical journey into the labyrinth, or the underworld, a place in which a monster must be faced. The journey parallels the quest of the hero in ancient mythology. It is a place where inner change happens. A place where fear is faced and old wounds healed.

You’re from Australia. People in Europe read very few Australian books. How would you describe ‘the’ Australian novel? In what ways is it different, in what ways is it the same, compared to a European or an American novel?

It isn’t easy to define ‘the’ Australian Novel. Traditionally ‘white’ Australians have looked to Europe for their cultural and historical roots and to America for their modern culture. Over time though, an Australian literature has developed, and in many ways it is not so different from novels arising from other western cultures.

Australia is a country that is predominantly peopled by migrants. There are a number of contradictions inherent in our relationship to the land. We are at once drawn to, and repelled by the Outback, awed by its beauty and frightened by its dangers. As ‘white’ Australians we carry the guilt of the conqueror, a guilt that often stops us from claiming a connection to the land. We have perceptions of what it is to be Australian, our legendary heroes are the men who carved their way into the landscape, making this arid land work for them. We have mythologised the Outback, yet 96% of us live in urban environments, for the most part clustered around the edges of this continent, turned away from the centre which carries such a mystique. We romanticise the wilderness, but most of us rarely, if ever, experience it. Yet, deep within us there’s a longing for wildness, for wilderness and for the sense of real connection with place. Perhaps it is here in the contradictions that an Australian literature can be identified.

The discomfort I feel about my own relationship to Australia led me to choose a British protagonist for Gathering Storm, as well as two contrasting settings – the mystique of Europe and the glare of Australia. Britain is cold, shrouded in mystery, rooted in history and there are secrets. In contrast Australia is heat, glaring light and the uncovering of secrets. In Australia, Storm experiences a sense of freedom, a liberation from the constraints of Britain, yet also a dizzying sense of danger.

You spent a lot of time writing, starting at a young age. Did this lead to your vision on the power of words (see also next questions)?
My adoptive parents were strict Baptists who created a regimented and sterile environment – without artworks, or music (aside from hymns), or dance (which was banned), or even books. . . I grew up in a house without books. Yet my love of writing arose from reading. As soon as I learned to read I was bewitched by language and by story. So yes, I suppose I did understand the power of words. They showed me how vast the imagination is, they transported me out of my restrictive suburban life and let me be anyone I wished to be. When I read I could inhabit other lives; when I wrote I could create worlds of my own. Yet I was also tentative with words, because even as a small child I discovered that they have both the power to heal and to hurt.

What was your reason to start writing as a kid?

Casting spells with words was the closest thing to magic I could find.

Apart from the technical aspects of writing, what other ‘lessons’ or skills did you learn while writing more and more stories?

Oh, so many things! To trust the process of writing, suspending my conscious self and letting the unconscious take over. To accept my need to write and to give it the priority it deserves. That the most important skill any writer can have is an understanding of human nature. That the outer passage of a story is the costume, while the inner passage is the essence. That each time I write a story I learn something about myself. But most comforting of all is the knowledge that no matter how many technical skills I master, there will always be the mystery behind inspiration.

On your website, you wrote an article in which you stated that words have tremendous power: they can hurt, change, move, please or frighten someone, perhaps even more than physical action. Did you write Gathering storm based on this theme?

I think that words often stay with you and when they are forgotten, the intention behind them still lingers. Flight, the novel I am now working on explores these ideas further, but this theme also appears less centrally in Gathering Storm. Storm is afraid of the consequences of words, afraid of their power and the potential they have to push people away – hence her inability to communicate with her partner, Max, or insist on answers while her Nan was alive. Of course words are often positive gifts to be cherished, but sometimes the opposite is true. As a child and a teenager I was often crushed by words; they forced my silence, made me guilty and afraid and formed an identity I was uncomfortable with. In the writing of Gathering Storm I was confronting my own caution with words and pushing against the safety barriers I had put in place.

Is the power of words perhaps stronger when expressed by close relatives? What does this say about the way Storm was misinformed about her mother for so long, and her reaction?

If we let them, anyone’s words can have power over us: a blessing from a stranger can light up our day; a word of encouragment can give us courage to try something new; the taunts of a bully can turn us into a frightened victim. Yet our parents have a special power over us that is too often misused. Children need unconditional love yet it isn’t always forthcoming. Storm was hurt by a careless remark her Nan made, and then spent her life believing that she was the cause of her mother’s death. When she found out the truth she was hurt again, yet also relieved. A burden of guilt had been lifted, but she was also realising that her history was a series of lie and omissions.That is a central theme in Gathering Storm, the power of lies and the damage they leave in their wake.

You quoted Christopher Vogler saying: ‘Stories have the power to give people metaphors by which they can better understand their lives.’ Apparently a writer can express a valuable lesson nobody else can.
What does this say about the writer?
Is (s)he perhaps more powerful?
Should a writer therefore have certain extraordinary qualities and knowledge?
Does a writer have more responsibilities because of this?

Stories are a natural part of us, deeply embedded in our psyche. Aside from their great entertainment value they help us make sense of the world, providing frameworks that enable us to find meaning in our lives, to create order from chaos, beauty from pain. Through stories we reach out to others and we discover ourselves. We all tell stories. They are everywhere: in books, the cinema, television and the internet; passed around campfires; and swapped over coffee. . . . A writer consciously sets out to create stories but writers are not extraordinary. The stories they write are a gift, to them and to their readers. It is the responsibility of the writer to be true to themselves and to their writing. Otherwise, I believe the only prerequisites for a writer are a love of language, a need to express themselves, self discipline and a fresh way of looking at the world. Everything else is technique and can be learned.

You wrote: ‘No matter how sophisticated our storytelling has become, how many flashes forward and backwards, how many diversions, there is still a basic structure that can be traced right back to humanity’s earliest stories – and by implication to blueprints of our common psychology.’
In what way has storytelling remained the same for such a long time?
Do you think we have the same stories, the same messages, that need to be told over and over again? (If so, is it because we don’t learn, or forget lessons?)
What does this say about human (psychological) nature?

The costumes of stories change all the time, but their fundamental shape stays the same. The oldest stories are the myths of indigenous cultures and it’s in the stories of their heroes that we can see the same structure we have today. It is in the inner passage of the story, the character arc, that we can see the fundamental similarities between stories. As mythologist, Joseph Campbell asserted in his first book, The Hero With a Thousand Faces, the slaying of a dragon is a metaphor for inner change, for facing those things within us that we are most afraid of. The plot then becomes a metaphor for character development. There is a tension there, because whilst the outer journey often follows a linear sense of time by moving into the future, the inner journey is often a movement into the past, discovering fragments that motivate a characters actions and allow the character to eventually heal a wound.

In relation to story, how quickly we learn and evolve as humans is linked closely to our ability to read and to listen deeply, rather than simply skimming the surface of stories for their entertainment value only. There are many other factors, such as our willingness to seek commonalities rather than differences, and our willingness to face our fears. Most of us are afraid of change. But stories remind us that life is cyclic, that change is inevitable. Whether or not we accept it, embedded in story lies the invitation – to adventure, to journey, to evolve as humans – it’s up to us.

An unforgettable journey will unlock a lifetime of lies. . .

English artist Storm Cizekova grew up believing that her mother died when she was born. But then Storm finds a photo of herself in the heart of the Australian desert – and in her mother’s arms.

Haunted by unanswered questions, Storm embarks on a journey of self-discovery that will challenge everything she holds dear: her family history, her art, even her relationship with her partner Max. Who is she really, and where does she belong?

Her search will take her from the snow-covered Malvern Hills in England, to the rich red heart of the Australian outback. Retracing her mother’s footsteps through the stark beauty of the outback landscape, Storm hopes to find the courage to confront some shocking truths from her past and the strength to face her future.

Hooked onto the metal bedstead is a sign. The words scrawled casually in black felt pen. Evelyn Macleod. If he is to believe these words, then this is his mother. Evelyn, he thinks, sounding the word out in his head. Even her name is strange. He has never called her that. Mum, or mother, probably even mummy, when he was small enough. But he’s big now, very big, and underneath the blanket his mother’s body is almost absent. Just a skeleton, He imagines coming out of that. Her screams as his head forces it’s way into the world. Merciless, the pain unremitting, breaking her apart. It had been like that when Lily arrived and he’d watched his wife become a stranger with the pain he couldn’t share.

And now there is his mother. He is at once fascinated and repelled by what little is left. A thin line of dribble stretches from the corner of her mouth down to her chin. He reaches over and wipes at it with a tissue. She doesn’t seem to notice, she’s focused inwards, eyes shut, concentrating on every breath. Without her teeth, her face is collapsed. No structure. Nothing to grip onto. When he was small people sometimes said they were alike, and once it had seemed to him that they were. There’d been no father to compare himself with and no siblings, only a few old photographs. “Look Mike”, his mother would say. “See that chin, you’re just like your grandfather.” And back then he was happy to be anchored in that way. But at some point he had changed. Suddenly become all arms and legs, dangerously uncoordinated, with a gruff voice and self conscious stoop. It was about then that his mother first accused him of looking like his father. As if it was his fault that his features were arranged one way and not another. “You’re the image of him”, she said, and turned away quickly, trying to hide her repulsion. But something had been breached. After that they were awkward with each other, too polite. Again and again he caught her staring and he didn’t understand the complexity of the things he read on her face. He remembers looking in the mirror, studying his face, searching for what it was she could see. But there was nothing, only pimples and fluff and the hurt in his eyes.

He doesn’t know how long he’s been sat here. Wonders if it’s been hours or days since the telephone woke him from a deep sleep and called him into this strange sterile nothing space they had been allocated. Why here, he thinks, wishing there were somewhere more appropriate to play out the drama of her death. Somewhere more personal. For his benefit or hers, he wonders, not knowing if she is even aware he is here. Perhaps he could creep out and get a cup of coffee, or ring someone, just to touch down, just to hear his wife’s voice, “Mike, is that you? Are you OK.” “No” he would say, “no I’m not. . . I don’t recognise my mother.” But he is held in his place by her struggling breath.

In this strangely surreal space his senses are all on alert. He listens to the distant clutter of hospital noises. Clinking metal and rubber shoes squelching softly against the plastic floor. Lino, he thinks. We had lino. Great big black and white squares he could hop about on. Not like this grey, green, beige, impossible to name nothingness that stretched from his feet out of the door and down the corridor. He sniffs, smells the disinfectant, but underneath is another smell, faint but pervasive. Piss and shit and vomit and rot. Most of all rot. Like the rot that eats away at the insides of his mother. Or the rot that sits under the headlines of the unread newspaper at his feet. Rot everywhere. He can’t bear it. He’s desperate. For air, movement, anything, to break the disgust he feels.

The cramps in his legs force him to stand and stretch. When he does, his chair makes a rude squeak, intruding on the bubble they have created. Her concentration is broken and she starts, losing the rhythm of her breathing. He wonders that something simple like this could so easily kill her and a small part of him feels tempted to extinguish the remnants of life that remain. Get it over, he thinks, but bats this thought away and paces the room, his long legs covering its width in two steps. Back and forth. Back and forth. He wants to run. Remembers the sea eagle he’d seen recently at the wildlife park he’d taken Lily to. A majestic bird. Trapped. Lily was too young to worry. “Bird”, she’d said and pointed. But he’d counted and worried and felt the waste. Two casual flicks of the wing and it reached the limits of its world. While outside, little sparrows hopped around his feet pecking greedily at his leftover lunch, unaware of the immensity of their freedom. He wants to run. Wants to stretch. His limbs feel constricted. Why, he wonders, is his grief so focused in his legs? Why can’t he cry?

She always knew how he was feeling and even now at the edges of death, she reaches out her hand towards him. Her compassion fills him with shame. So she does know I am here, he thinks and reluctantly takes her hand. He is appalled at how claw like it is, but controls himself, pushing away the revulsion. Wrapped loosely around her wrist is a white plastic bracelet. He looks closely and deciphers her name. The writing is neat and round like a child’s, confirming her identity. This and the sign above her head is all that distinguishes his mother from the anonymity of death. He wants to love her. He really does. And he wonders what love is as his grief surges from his legs into his heart.

He is hungry for contact with something. Anything but this, he thinks, looking at her bony fingers still tightly gripping his. When a nurse comes, bringing him coffee and biscuits, his gratitude almost overwhelms him. He unpeels her fingers and gently places her hand on the blanket. The sound of his teeth crunching at a biscuit fills the silence and he thinks that it’s too basic, that he can’t eat biscuits when his mother is dying. So he gives up, leaving them until more nurses arrive to do their check ups and his crunching is camouflaged by chatter. Their cheeriness, he thinks, is inappropriate in the face of death. He watches them fussing around his mother, plumping up her pillows, checking her drips, her temperature, the little machine she’s attached to. Maintenance work, he thinks, turning away red faced when they change something down there. She is limp and loose in their hands, but the grimace on her face must mean she is in pain. He wants to shout at them to be more respectful. This is my mother he wants to say, not some rag doll to toss about. Instead he asks if they can give her something more to help the pain. They shake their heads. More, they say, might kill her. He almost laughs at this. Kill her, he thinks. Kill her! His thoughts are shrill. They settle her back down on her pillows and leave. After their cheerful chatter the silence is heavy and exaggerated, filled only by her breathing which has become louder and even more infrequent, so that between each of her breaths he finds himself holding his own.

When the tension becomes unbearable he reaches for the window and tugs angrily at the venetians. Suddenly the room is bathed in brightness. He shuts his eyes against the light, opens them, then looks back at her and sees that she hasn’t even noticed. She is puffing, her eyes shut, her face red with the effort of drawing breath and he is eight again maybe nine and he is running. The sun is hot, but the air is still wet, fresh from a storm. As he soars over the puddles he sees that they contain the clouds and the sky and he thinks probably space and the thought of their depth and their breadth make him dizzy with delight, not vertigo. Now it would be vertigo he thinks as he remembers swinging with Lily and feeling the rush of air turn his stomach. But it was different then. He is eight, maybe nine, everything is new and his limbs work perfectly so that he runs without effort, almost flies. There are birds. Probably seagulls because behind his speed and the rush of air around him is the regular sound of waves. Their cries punctuate his own flight. The souls of dead sailors, his Nana had told him, and for awhile he had been afraid of them. But not anymore, he isn’t afraid of anything, not even his mum.

He runs on, jumping, leaping, splashing mud, filled with joy. But it’s not a game. His mother is behind him, chasing and angry and filled with the need to punish. He is half afraid, and looks back often. She’s struggling. Her face is red, her breath is coming in painful puffs. He’s faster than her and this shocks him. He keeps running, reveling in his speed, in the ease of movement. She can’t catch him. But when he glances back again he knows that her anger is building into fury. The joy goes from his flight and soon he slows down. Her fury builds. She thinks he’s taunting her now. But he’s not. He’s just undecided, torn between getting it over and holding onto the joy of the chase and the new knowledge of his own power. He climbs the gate into the neighbours yard, leaping easily from the top, across a puddle and onto the fresh damp grass. She follows him, climbing laboriously onto the gate, her breath forced and painful, her face dripping. Then she slips, falling heavily into the puddle and when she stands up again she’s covered with mud and water and sweat and cold hard fury. He sees all this and feels a surge of pity. It’s over now. He must allow her to win. He stops and waits and then stands stoically, arms by his sides, while she pummels at him with her fists. Beating, beating . . .beating. He can feel bruises coming, but on the other side of the pain there is no resentment. There’s something else though, something new, a huge responsibility which makes him heavy.

What had he done? Broken something? Answered back? Perhaps, but it didn’t matter. Even then it didn’t matter. The crime had been lost forever and so had his childhood. He wants to talk to his wife, wants to hear her ask, “Are you OK Mike?” And he would say, “No, I’m not. . . I don’t think I like my mother.” His face is wet with tears. But they are not for her. They are for him, for the boy he was, for the man he is, for all this unfinished business, for his useless love and for the crushing responsibility he feels for her. He is helpless against all these things. Big and useless. A giant simpleton, he thinks. He could reach out and crush her just like that. But he can’t fix her. He can’t draw her back from the brink. He wishes that he could offer up his body again. A gift for her to beat her fists against. Maybe she could pummel out the rotting that is inside her. But he can’t. And she can’t. They are both impotent against this thing that will not be turned back.

He pulls the blind, dimming the room once again and lowers himself back into the small vinyl hospital chair to wait with her. It won’t be long now, he thinks. Won’t be long.

            ‘How’d that be Maddy?’ I ask.

In the rearview mirror I see her smile, but she’s intent on something else and when I turn round she’s playing with the door locks, opening them.

            ‘Shut it’, I shout. Terrified someone will open her door and drag her away from me. That’s what happens here in the endless traffic jams, disaffected people opening doors, smashing windows, bashing drivers, stealing bags. . . maybe even children.

Forty five minutes. . . This is serious. It only takes twenty to walk. These road works have been going for months, and months. Bottle necks, blocked drains, cars everywhere, people stewing inside their little metal boxes. Fingers tapping steering wheels, feet playing with the pedals, changing radio stations, fuming, steam, rage . . .            The locks are still going up and down and I can’t help it anymore. I’m going to scream.            ‘For fucks sake, shut it.’In the silence that comes before her tears I’m already regretting and I’m thinking that being a mother is all about regrets and responsibilities and never being able to forget anything anymore, except yourself. It’s yourself that’s so hard to remember. So I’m regretting and trying to avoid the looks of the people in the car in front who’ve heard me scream and who no doubt wonder about me.