The Monster of Her Age by Danielle Binks

Author:Danielle Binks
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hachette Australia
Published: 2021-07-28T00:00:00+00:00

TWENTY

If grief feels like emotional jetlag, then waiting as someone slowly dies and fades away is like being in a perpetual airport terminal – waiting and waiting for someone else’s flight to depart, a limbo that pressurises time until it has no meaning. I’ve only been home in Hobart for two weeks, but it’s starting to feel like another lifetime entirely.

The added strain of not talking to my mum after I got home that night and into the next day made everything feel even more undone and unusual.

The uncles and Poe can feel it but are wise to stay out of our way and not offer commentary. Even Dad – who has been filled in from both our sides – gently walked around the topic when on the phone to me, which probably means he’s brainstorming how to tackle it from another direction.

And then late in the afternoon when I’m all the way at the back of the house in the conservatory reading The Big Issue, I hear music.

I sit up from where I’m lying on the leather couch and look out to the garden – where I think the music is coming from – but the yellow wattle trees stare back unknowing, and I stand up to follow the tune.

I wander back into the house and the noise gets a little louder as I walk down the hallway and through the kitchen, where Poe is sitting at the counter drinking tea and studiously avoiding looking at me.

‘You can hear that, right?’ I ask, but he comically shrugs in nonchalance and I walk on towards the front door, where I realise it’s definitely coming from above my head and in the vicinity of the library one floor up.

I also realise the song that’s playing is Thelma Plum’s bluesy beat ‘Homecoming Queen’, and just as I turn around to start climbing the staircase and follow the sound, I stop dead in my tracks to look up and see Yael standing at the top, waiting for me.

My cousin’s smile is as wide as her arms which are spread so I can appreciate the full effect of the long burgundy velvet robe with lace-trim edges and winged sleeves that she’s sporting. She looks like a Mae West throwback but dressed in black tracksuit pants, pink slippers and an Ivy Park black jumper underneath.

I start slowly climbing the staircase, and Yael drops her arms to clasp her hands in front of her chest and in an almost painfully accurate Lottie impersonation, she bellows at me, ‘My darling, you could give Jean Seberg a run for her money!’

I self-consciously run a hand through my shaggy short hair, until I come to stand one step down from Yael who cups my face in her cool hands.

‘Is this a good surprise, or a bad surprise?’ she asks.

‘That depends …’ I begin. ‘What are you doing here?’

Yael lifts her hands from my face, and one of them delves into a deep pocket of the velvet robe. It smells a little musty and has no doubt been found buried in the back of an ancestor’s closet somewhere.

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