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to say ‘leave’ and ‘get
out of there girl!’ But what if you have no one else? And what if
you exist as an unshaped being, with only a vague sense of
yourself? What if?

     
    And so, the
years pass by. Lisa marries the new owner of the travel agency when
she is twenty five; an extravaganza of vanity and vulgarity.
     
    The wedding
takes place at the Sacred Heart Cathedral on Hunter Street. And,
then, everyone moves on to celebrate and eat mountains of seafood,
at the yacht club on the lake; with its views over the busy water
and boats. The day perfect.
     
    Lisa dazzles in
one of those strapless dresses: virginal white, with breasts thrust
into all eyes. It costs a bomb and clashes with an almost orange,
fake tan and peroxided up do (her hair darkened when she became a
teenager). But no matter, it’s a look that has become a meme. Daddy
pays.
     
    The bride,
Lisa, glories in her ‘fairy tale’ day. She delights in the
attention and grows and ripens, in the gaze others. Scores of
photos are taken; lounging on luxury cars, sitting on thrones,
walking slowly by million dollar views, and lovers looking into
each other’s eyes without seeing.
     
    The following
day Pope John Paul II apologises for 2000 years of wrong doing and
violence.
     
    Vince Borelli
was the groom’s name and he was almost forty at the time; with a
kind of dyed pompadour and very white teeth. He was handsome in a
slick and obvious way, but also loaded. Supposedly, his father had
made lots of money from a record back in the seventies called ‘Al
fine’ – meaning ‘to the end’. This record is still played at many
an Italian wedding: even now. And the manna is still falling from
heaven.
     
    The newly wed
Borelli’s buy a Victorian Italianate house of great significance
and beauty on The Hill and promptly set about gutting the interior;
installing black marble floors, stainless steel, vast quantities of
glass, and a giant spa bath. To do this, money has travelled under
various tables. And perhaps featured on birthday cakes.
     
    As the years
travel by, Lisa has two children: a boy and a girl named Johnny and
Angela. These children, who are mostly cared for by their Nonna,
become ordinary, work- a -day people with the usual beige morals.
They regard their mother with benign tolerance.
    Lisa, never
knew that her own maternal grandmother, Lilith, was a Russian Jew
who had fled Europe with her parents in 1922 during the last wave
of pogroms. As the wheel of time turned, this became just another
story, covered in the sands of life; like the two convicts in the
family tree.
     

    As you may have
guessed, Sue Brown and Scott Smith ‘tie the knot’ in a white
wedding at the local Presbyterian Church. The couple, who saved
their wages for years, buy a three bedroom house straight away and
move out to Wallsend.
     
    After a
suitable time, our merry couple produce three children named:
Peter, Dianna (after Princess Dianna) and Carolyn (after Princess
Caroline). Peter, named after his paternal grandfather, plays
soccer and gets excited only about cars. Dianna and Carolyn are
twins and compete for class stars, for the best handwriting, and
who can skip the most jumps on the skipping rope at lunchtime.
     
    Sue works part
time in the school office, serves on canteen duty and fulfils her
Saturday night obligations. Eyes to the wall. All goes along
swimmingly, until a minor tsunami arrives in the children’s high
school years.
     
    The university
never did get to claim Beatrice. She continued with her singing and
guitar playing and attained some success around the pubs and clubs
of Australia. But her relationship with David splinters when she
turned twenty. David wanted to get married, but Beatrice, suddenly
felt desperate to escape the cage of her past life and to know if
she existed as a person apart from David. And, so, she left the
limits of our land, to live in London for a year. She stayed for
five.

    Being further
away from the scenes of her misery,