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—Are you sure you’re alright, Mattie? It would do you good to go out<br />
with peop<strong>le</strong> once in a whi<strong>le</strong>. —No, Kathy, I can’t, not today, p<strong>le</strong>ase.<br />
(Her voice was dark and shaking, she was in one of her emotional states,<br />
thought Kathy with a frown.) —Has something wrong happened today?<br />
—No, nothing has happened. I’ve had a plain ordinary day. But I need<br />
your help. Right now. P<strong>le</strong>ase don’t ask me any more questions now.<br />
Maybe we can see each other tomorrow, then we’ll talk. But could you<br />
call me at home in about ten minutes, asking me to see you right away<br />
somewhere, pretending that you have a big prob<strong>le</strong>m. Make up something.<br />
Try to sound despaired, try to sob, if possib<strong>le</strong>! You see, they’ll be here<br />
to pick me up in a few minutes. I am ready to go, all dressed up. The<br />
phone rings, it’s my niece who has a prob<strong>le</strong>m; she needs my help; I am<br />
obliged to go to town to see you. O.K.? —O.K.” Then they had made<br />
an appointment for this morning at a different place from their usual<br />
rendezvous: a wildly classical Andronicus cafeteria on the first floor of<br />
Imperial Arcade, next to Centrepoint.<br />
A Saturday morning in the City, the population of office workers<br />
was substituted by a population of shoppers, or rather many of the<br />
same office workers were back as shoppers, but others were away, the<br />
family types in their suburbs, buying food at the supermarket, beer at<br />
the drive-through, potted compact shrubs at the garden centres, e<strong>le</strong>ctric<br />
drills and screen doors at the hardware centres, mowing their lawns, or<br />
on the North and South Beaches, at The Entrance or Jervis Bay, in the<br />
near Mountains, from Springwood to Lithgow, or roaming the Hunter<br />
Val<strong>le</strong>y for fine new wines with a nutty aftertaste. The tourists were more<br />
visib<strong>le</strong> on Saturdays, too. Americans, Japanese, a handful of Europeans,<br />
shopping for mothproof combed sheep and kangaroo skins, <strong>le</strong>athercraft,<br />
decorative boomerangs and trip<strong>le</strong>t opals. A buoyant day for duty-free<br />
shops, Chinese or otherwise, and French “croissanteries”. Darrell Lea<br />
was not as successful, it looked so old-fashioned in the midd<strong>le</strong> of this new<br />
anonymous high rise way of life concentrated over a few square mi<strong>le</strong>s.<br />
Kathy was there early. She had not s<strong>le</strong>pt well, wondering what<br />
her aunt was up to; she had not found her so upset for years. Would<br />
she even meet her as promised? She ordered a capuccino and a croissant<br />
and began reading The Life and Crimes of Harry Lavender, a thril<strong>le</strong>r by<br />
Mare<strong>le</strong> Day, a Sydney University graduate now in her forties, maybe a<br />
contemporary of Matilda in the French Department. The croissant tasted<br />
like taste<strong>le</strong>ss chewing gum; the cappuccino was boiling hot when it was<br />
served, lukewarm and c<strong>le</strong>ar as dishwashing water when she remembered to<br />
drink it. Although Ms. Day’s sty<strong>le</strong> of writing was a c<strong>le</strong>ar case of overkill,<br />
the book did not lack a certain persuasive power. After twenty pages,<br />
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