The size of the yachts

She looked out over that water now, so glossy and harmless and lovely and she remembered the Westerly that came up after that morning of rowing. A westerly wind, they had said, would only blow them home. But, they hadn't thought about the waves it might generate, or the way the water could hide them in its valleys so that the bigger boats wouldn't see them. They hadn't planned that. And Sam, waving down a fisherman who towed them to Deepwater cove leaving them there with a 'Will you be alright to get on now?' where the wind was all up on the shore. Elise couldn't remember being afraid. Was that just because she had a foolish faith that Sam would never let her down? Or had she not let herself think through what she would do if they capsized under the big fast yachts that whirred in the wind and made their own waves as they passed.

Across the Water

The next morning the house was quiet. Specks of sunlight threw themselves out from under the tall spotted gums and up from the water. The wind sprinkled salt on Sasha's newly washed windows. Elise took a cup of tea onto the veranda and perched herself in the corner where a patch of sunlight aproned across the dry splintery boards. She had a pen and the new journal, but she paused there, looking down on the water and the boats. There were children down on the beach laughing and shouting. There was a dog chasing a ball out into the small waves. A shoal of small boats scattered themselves across the view their white sails in sharp relief against all the blue and muted mauve of the hump of national park across the water. What was she thinking? Was it about a day, years ago now - she and the boy she was with (Sam, who held on to her as if she was the only thing he'd ever found, that floated) took a dinghy out across that water. They hadn't set out for the opposite shore - but that was where they turned the boat, bow into the wavelets. Dodging the taller yachts Sam rowed them all the way to the rocky shore on the other side. That day, looking back across the water you could see the many houses and mansions and panels of glass built up on the other side of the inlet. Their small cottage was buried under the trees, invisible from that distance. On that side, when they landed and pulled their boat up onto a tiny strip of sand that usually would have been underwater, there was nothing but trees and vines, rocks and seaweed. They picnicked on a boulder up above the beach, looking out over the water. Elise couldn't remember what they talked about. In fact, she barely remembered anything they ever said to one another. Though there was some distant echo - was it her? - saying that the relationship was so solid she felt she could do anything, branching out of there, reaching for the sky... And that day, the day of the dinghy and Sam rowing all the way across the water, (innocent, she remembered now, of the blustery afternoon that would follow) it was a remarkable tide, so low that mudflats were laid out for them to explore. So low that walking out beyond the tidal zone, rubbish from another era was collectable for the first time in years. Beer bottle of thick unleavened glass, the cursive script on them so worn out by the waves that it was illegible. Elise remembered pulling them out of their comfortable beds in the mud. Later, she used them as candle-holders. But there was something about that day, Sam, she remembered now, had just shorn off his sparkling blonde hair. She remembered him, standing with a quilt around his shoulders, holding a bottle of aunty Veri's beefeater gin.

The washed sky

Elise's small job in the tiny publishing house - shuffling papers and replying to letters of enquiry in a low-ceilinged back room of a terrace off Missenden Rd - no longer held appeal. Ideals aside, if life was going to be that short (aunty Veri had only been 52) then she wasn't sure how long she wanted to spend in a hunched position over the uncomfortable desk. Summer was about to begin - the jacaranda's took liberty with the colour of the grass, lorikeets dangled shrieking in the branches, the scent of the jasmine that was tangling itself with the front gate began to get too strong and waft around turning putrid on the warm days. The funeral had been perfect in the rain – they had sat on Veri's perfect cream silk covered french chairs and drunk tea with lemon, just as she always had. The rooms felt too tall. The house, though full of people seemed almost to know the loss it contained. Vince got drunk, spoke too loudly. The cousins formed a knot of young people and walked down to the harbour. Outside the sky had washed itself clean, and the sea was slick and silver, almost oily. Elise found herself watching her feet as she walked home in the afternoons, thinking about her brother, her cousins, her lousy job. She would occasionally wipe her eye and unless you looked closely (Eddy did) you wouldn't see the moisture there. Perhaps they were tears of self pity. It was difficult to define. Maybe she missed the aunt she rarely saw. Maybe in knowing Veri was about, racing along George St. in the red Lotus, doing the cryptic crossword in her kitchen with her half-moon spectacles falling down her nose, or walking her labradors along the harbour foreshore, allowed Elise to define her own place as short-skirted arty type girl of the inner west. Instead of stooping to pick them up Elise crushed the frangipani flowers with her Doc Martin boot.