AustLit

'To think too long about someone’s suicide feels like trespass. To imagine the moment’s tableau with any kind of colour (caps returned to their bottles, tightened) or to dwell on the arrangements made ($30,000 a year left for the Jack Russell) feels like taking a torchlight to the final darkness, the last silence of the mind. Kate killed herself when I was thirteen. Now, thirteen years later, I find I am beginning to question the details. I can’t help but unpick her resolve. Was a life without her guru too unbearable? Did he advise her to do it? I almost have to coax these questions out of hiding. Asking them feels defiant, rebellious – they ring like insults. My natural state is an old loyalty. Respect as reflex.'  (Introduction)

'Naked from the waist down, with one foot on the lip of the bathtub and the other on the cold tile floor, I looked up at the ceiling and let Mum push the tampon further inside me. I had tried to do it myself, but there was a wall. "My body must be different to yours," I said. She laughed, unable to meet my seriousness. I could hear Dad on the other side of the door: his footsteps and the sound of taps turning on, the whispered scream of running water. Mum lowered her voice, indulging a charade of conspiracy. "Trust me, Rose." We both looked away as she pushed one more time. When the pain left my body I felt a mixture of relief and shame. She had been right. I felt safe knowing how unmysterious I was to her.' (Publication abstract)