The Happiness Glass by Carol Lefevre

Author:Carol Lefevre
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Spinifex Press
Published: 2018-12-07T16:00:00+00:00

Changes of Address

She began to miss Tom the instant she lost sight of him waving from the observation deck. From Heathrow to Hong Kong the image of his raised arm waving a folded newspaper replayed in her head as she listed the arguments that had propelled her onto the plane. After two decades of yearning, she had given in to the long weariness of homesickness. These were the sacred words: jacaranda, oleander, eucalyptus. Lily recited them miserably, but was not comforted.

Flying over Australia in the early hours of the morning, the beauty of the land was gradually revealed by the rising sun. Lily rested her eyes upon luminous ridges of red sand; shadows of trees stretched slender fingers, softening contours that would be harsh by midday. Home. She followed the swirling lines and loops of dried-up riverbeds, finding not a straight line anywhere until the man-made scratches of a road appeared. The dots of trees gave the flat surface, with its snaking lines, the look of an Aboriginal painting, as if they had always known this terrain from thirty-five thousand feet. To fly for hours over the solid emptiness of Australia, she thought, was a source of comfort that was probably inexplicable to Europeans.

Gina slept beside her, her dark head drooping. She had shredded the past, Lily thought, and shuddered at the pain of the final days, of Tom’s face as she crumpled paper to pack china into crates. Shaking, leaking doubt from every pore, she had climbed onto the plane, only buoyed up by Gina’s enthusiasm. Gina still had not grasped the full flavour of their going; at thirteen her thoughts were of surfing, and swimming, and sideways looks at boys.

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