Choosing Your Detective

Romantic Friday Writers provide an interesting writing prompt every month. I try to join in when I can because it's fantastic practice and allows you to get feedback on your stories. This month I was extra-excited because the prompt is:

I love crime novels, especially mysteries. On the Romantic Friday Writers' site, I posted an article about the need for a strong motive in mystery stories. Another essential element is a great detective. Who will solve your crime? Will it be the:

• world-weary detective who's seen it all before;
• young enthusiastic copper, who makes too many mistakes;
• suspended police officer working outside the law;
• criminal only slightly more moral than the perpetrator;
• old lady playing amateur detective; or
• a child or other innocent, now exposed to the harsh truth of life and death?

I've been consuming a lot of kids' mysteries lately and here are some of my favourite child detectives:

Miranda from When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead. Beautiful story about friendship. Read a review from 11yr old Milly at Paper Dolls.

Phyllis from Phyllis Wong and the Forgotten Secrets of Mr Okyto. Reviewed at Paper Dolls.

The Masked Avenger in The Amber Amulet by Craig Silvey.

Here is my flash fiction for the prompt Driven to Murder (if you're motivated, feel free to critique for improvement):

Grisly Business

'Think it’s too late Sergeant?' Officer Sarah Camden hurried to catch up as Sergeant John Hart trudged across the gravel parking lot.

He looked up from his extended sigh. 'Too late for what?'

'For the woman sir. I mean, if someone grabbed her between here and the tavern then it was an opportunity attack—not likely they’re keeping her somewhere.'

'Yes, I’d say it’s too late for Donna Locke.'

'Think we’ll turn up something on the CTV cameras?'

'Nah.' John clicked the button on his keyring and the Commodore’s lights flashed once. With his hand on the door he added, 'What we’ll find Camden is that Donna Locke did indeed walk home alone at 2:15am this morning after her friend’s hen’s night and that her walk was relatively uneventful.' He got into the car and shut the door.

Sarah rushed around to her door and scrambled in.

'You don’t think she’s really missing?'

'Oh she’s missing to some, her friends, colleagues, and her children. She’s missing to them.'

'Think she’s pulling a Fairly Arrow Sir?' Referring to the hack pop singer who’d faked her own abduction in the nineties, hoping to gain celebrity status on her 'miraculous' return.

John grunted as he fastened his seatbelt and adjusted the rear-vision mirror. 'That’d be the best outcome. But no, she didn’t strike me as the type.'

Sarah pondered this for a few moments and slapped her knee. 'A lover! Donna Locke met up with a lover and chances are she doesn’t know there’s a search on for her.'

'Hmm, maybe.' John checked over his shoulder and the car rolled out of the lot.

'What? That’s logical.'

'Yeah, except she made no calls. How would this fellow know where to meet her?'

'She jumped in a cab?'

'I’ve got Johnson on that now, don’t reckon it’ll turn anything up. Hope I’m wrong.'

'So if she didn’t get grabbed or take off, why didn’t she make it home?'

John indicated and merged into the traffic. 'That’s just it Camden, experience has developed my gut feeling, and my highly-trained intestines are telling me she did make it home.'

'Then why… the husband?'

'Usually is.'

'You think he killed his wife, dumped the body, then reported her missing?'

John sighed again. Thirty years with Robyn, they’d had a lot of rough ones. Even now there was no knowing if things could be repaired. Still, the act of murdering your spouse? It was just so… final.

'But Sergeant, why’re we putting out a media release to find Donna Locke?'

'Two reasons, I’m hoping to pick up an eye-witness who places Donna entering her apartment around 2:30am, and, because I don’t want Damien Locke to suspect we’re onto him. There’s evidence in that apartment and as long as Locke thinks he’s in the clear, the better the chance he’ll slip up.'

A horn blasted, and a silver Audi zipped around them. Sarah glanced at the speedometer, as usual the Sergeant was driving ten kilometres under the speed limit.

'Sir?'

'Hmm?'

'You think he did it because of the affair?'

John raised an eyebrow at the girl.

'I mean… if there was an affair.'

He shrugged. 'Jealousy or money are the most common motives, although money usually wins out.'

Sarah opened her mouth to speak again a few times, but the deep furrows across his forehead and the weariness in his eyes stopped her. 

They pulled into the station car park.

'Grisly business Sir.'

'It always is.'

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Life in a Teacup

The whistle reminded Dottie what she was supposed to be doing.

“Oh the kettle,” Dottie smoothed her floral apron and grabbed an old, but clean checked tea-towel to pick up the kettle handle.

“Here we go then,” Dottie poured boiling water over the tea in the good teapot with the roses on it. Dottie put the kettle back on the stove and it started to whistle again.
“Oh, I forgot to turn the stove top off again,” Dottie said as she turned off the gas flame.

Okay, what was she up to?

“Milk and sugar,” Dottie reminded herself. Today she also had a special ingredient for the teapot.

Dottie put the tea on the table, laid out with her best linen cloth and a vase of sweet peas from the garden, then added a plate of biscuits. They were store bought biscuits, the ones Dottie made earlier had burned because she forgot to set the timer to remind her to take them out.

“Sit down Dottie, stop fussing,” Elsie said, “I’m not the bloody Queen.”

“Oh, I must have mistaken you,” Dottie laughed as she sat down, “because you act so high and might.”

Dottie poured the tea, and as she did she remembered the secret ingredient she had included, then asked Elsie, “Milk?”

Elsie smiled and said, “You’ve been making me a cup of tea every week for over fifty years Dotti, yes milk and sugar”.

“I remembered the sugar, I already added it.”

“No you didn’t, silly, you’ve just poured the tea and added milk,” Dottie looked affectionately at her forgetful friend. The soft creased features of Dottie’s pale face did not conceal the pretty twenty year old woman that became Elsie’s best friend, despite all odds.

Dottie reached over and gently placed her hand on Elsie’s, “How are you feeling now hun? Did the doctor find a better medication for you?”

That was Dottie, couldn’t remember what she had done yesterday, or even five minutes ago, but always remembered when Elsie had a doctor’s appointment and how the latest lot of medications were affecting her. There was no one else. No children, no family and although decades ago she knew everyone in the street, so many people seem to come and go now, she only had Dottie.

“The last lot made my stomach hurt so much, so I guess these ones aren’t as bad, they do make me terribly dizzy though,” Elsie said.

“Those doctors today don’t know what they’re talking about, they should be able to give you something for the pain without making you feel sicker.”

“Well at least I won’t be taking them for much longer,” Elsie said.

“Why’s that?” Dottie asked, “Oh… you’re terrible Elsie, you shouldn’t joke about that.” But secretly Dottie knew Elsie’s pain would be over soon, sooner than even Elsie’s doctor could predict.

They ate their biscuits and talked about the people who used to live in town, they talked about the new people taking over the town.

Dottie worried; there was something she should tell Elsie, but what?

“Have you heard from Maree?” Elsie asked.

“I spoke to Maree, um, when was that? Well, Jack called at Christmas, gosh he must be twenty by now,” Dottie said.

“Mmm,” Elsie agreed, although she already knew that Dottie’s grandson was thirty-five and now had a child of his own. Elsie had monitored Dottie’s family since day one. She remembered not only when little Maree was born, almost here in the house because Morris had been away and Dottie hadn’t wanted to ask for help. Dottie had later admitted she thought Elsie didn’t like her. There weren’t many other houses around back then. Elsie had driven Dottie to the hospital just in time for Maree’s entrance.

When Morris had come back Maree was already two months old. Elsie had also been eagerly awaiting his return, but just like the first time he returned from being away, she was left disappointed.

Elsie had been an unusually beauty as a young woman and she fancied she would become an actress. Travel, she would definitely travel. When Morris proposed, she hated hurting him, she did love him, but she wanted more than Binalong had to offer. Elsie took off and headed for the city.

The laugh of it all was that she only lasted a couple of months and headed straight home. Too late. Morris had married a girl from Gunning and now they lived in the house next to Elsie and her father. Elsie despised Morris’ wife Dottie, she found her sickly sweet. But now here she was, fifty years later, loving Dottie more than any friend had loved another.

“Do you want me to drive you into to town tomorrow?”

“You shouldn’t drive at your age Elsie,” Dottie said, “Why town?”

“Your appointment,” Elsie reminded her.

“Oh.”

“I’ll pick you up in the morning?”

“For what?” Dottie asked.

“Your appointment!” Elsie insisted.

“What appointment?” Dottie asked.

“Oh Dottie, you’re a silly old thing, tomorrow is the first of the month, you always go to the doctors. Remember?” Elsie asked.

“Oh I’m not going anymore,” Dottie stated.

Elsie looked suspiciously at Dottie, her dementia wasn’t improving.

“Why don’t…” Elsie started.

“Oh I remember what I had to tell you!”

“What?”

“I just want to get something first,” Dottie said as she heaved herself out of the chair and stretched her legs before trying to set off on those wobbly knees. After a couple of minutes Dottie came back with a photo album that Elsie instantly recognised.

“I want to look at our pictures,” Dottie insisted as she carefully lowered her creaking bones back into her chair.

“Okay Dottie, lets look at the memories.”

They pulled their chairs together, the way they did when they were young women and they wanted to share a secret giggle. Dottie had a secret to share now, but not yet.

Many of the first pictures showed sepia image of a wild haired beauty and a pretty but timid woman, both with their arms flung happily around each other. Many other photos showed Dottie and baby Maree, some showed Elsie holding Maree, just as tenderly, just as lovingly as her mother did. The pictures of Morris. Morris standing between the two women holding Maree in his arms, he used to joke about being outnumbered by women. Morris, with his cheeky grin and strong arms. Dottie’s Morris in the pictures. But he had been Elsie’s.

When Elsie returned to find Morris married she had been determined to win him back. After all, he’d loved her first and he’d loved her best, she knew he did. Elsie went out of her way to make Dottie feel unwelcome and to make Morris want to get back into her arms. And she’d won. Temporarily.

The last time Morris left her sheets he promised he would send Dottie back to her parents and be Elsie’s again forever. Timing was not on their side. At dinner that night Dottie told Morris that she believed she might be pregnant. Morris didn’t know what to do. It was one thing to discard a wife, there would be enough backlash about that, but a child? He promised Elsie he would find a way to sort it out, he would go away for a while, there were jobs going up north cutting cane, and when he got back he would send Dottie away. Baby or no baby.

But while Morris was away in a sunnier state, Dottie would beg Elsie to keep her company, often inviting Elsie and her father over for dinner. Then Elsie’s father died. She felt so abandoned, so alone. Elsie’s misery went so deep she lay in bed and cried and cried. Dottie had been there, making cups of tea, wiping her eyes and even laying down beside her, holding her when she needed to be held.

When Elsie was feeling better she decided to pay Dottie a visit, to thank her for her kindness. If you’re going to steal someone’s husband it doesn’t mean you can’t be polite. It was not until after Dottie had made Elsie a cup of tea that Elsie noticed something was wrong. Dottie was in obvious pain. Finally she admitted her waters had broken, but she didn’t want to cause a fuss. That was Dottie. Elsie had run for her father’s truck and driven Dottie into the town hospital. She stayed and held Dottie’s hand even though the matron had wanted her to leave.

And there was Maree, little beautiful Maree. How could something so perfect come from such a horrific bloody ordeal? Elsie wasn’t the only one to fall in love with Maree, of course once Morris saw his little girl’s face he would never leave again.
Now Maree, her husband and children all lived in America and Morris had left them all one more time, he’d been gone twenty years and although Dottie often forgot her own birthday, she always remembered his and Elsie would give her a lift to the cemetery to visit him.

They closed the album. Both women had tears they were trying to deny on their cheeks.

“We were something weren’t we Dottie?”

“We sure were Elsie, no better friends existed,” Dottie replied.

“I know I won’t be around a lot longer Dottie and I’ll be sorry to leave you,” Elsie confessed, “but I have to admit I’m selfish. I’m glad I’m going before you Dottie, because I just couldn’t go through this whole dying thing without you.” There was no point pretending now, they were tears.

“I know Elsie. That’s what has worried me the most,” Dottie said, “everything’s leaving me Elsie, I forget where I am, what I’m doing. Sometime’s I forget Morris is gone, and then I remember and it hurts, it really hurts.”

“Oh Dottie…”

“I need to tell you this Elsie. I’m scared. Scared there will be nothing left of me, no one for me to forget or remember. I thought about this Elsie, I know I won’t be there for you when you need it if I wait. I … I won’t know you, when you need me most.” Dottie was now sharing her tears.

“Dottie, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean…”

“No it’s okay, I want to be there for you, and I want you there for me. That’s why I did it Elsie, I sorted it so that we can be together,” now Dottie was smiling through the tears.

“Dottie what do you mean? What did you do?”

“Poison.”

“Poison?” Elsie asked, now a little alarmed.

“It won’t be long now Elsie, I put it in our tea. We can go together and neither of us will be alone.” Dottie reached out and held Elsie’s hand.

“Dottie? What have you done?” Elsie pulled her hand away, “We’ve got to get to the hospital, how could you? You’ve finally gone crazy!” Elsie got up and headed for the door, she needed to get to her car.

Dottie stayed in her seat, head bowed, “I love you Elsie,” she said quietly as she heard the front door open and close.

Moments later Elsie was back and sat down silently next to Dottie. Maybe she was right. What was the point? They had lived almost their whole lives together, how could either of them go and leave the other. This was right. Elsie reached out and held Dottie’s hand, “I love you too, you silly old bag.”

They giggled.

They sat.

They waited.

Quite some time later, Elsie spoke up, “Dottie?”

“Yes?”

“You forgot to put the poison in didn’t you?”

“Yes.”

Elsie smiled at Dottie, “Well, do you want another cuppa darl?”

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The Truth about Lies...

“I don’t lie,” I simply state.
My husband raises an eyebrow.
“I don’t.”
“Somebody scratched the car.”
“It wasn’t me, if it was I would just tell you.”
He mumbles something and heads for the couch to watch sport.

I feel guilty about the car. I know I didn’t scratch it, but I still feel embarrassed.
It’s the same unjustified shame I feel when I’m at the supermarket and I hear that static accusing voice, “Security, isle four”. Is that my isle? Do they think I’m going to steal the tin tomatoes I’ve been deliberating over? I know there is no reason to think they mean me, I know its just paranoia. But still I quickly put the tin in my trolley and get out of that isle.

Once, when I was twelve, and so desperate to belong to that elusive cluster of cool girls, I was dared by one of them to shoplift. The girl, Brooke or Carrie or some other fashionable name of the eighties, picked up an item and blatantly put it in her bag. It was a ridiculous thing: A packet of giant balloons.

I did the deed with less flair than the Brooke or Carrie or other, but as we walked out I performed a feet that took more courage and skill than lifting. I slipped the packet back without Brooke/Carrie noticing.

If I’d taken the balloons I would have experienced that rush of fear that teens crave, the heart pounding moments as you head for the safety of the exit. The difference for me is that I would have kept that fear when I got home (and for a long time after). What if my mother found them in my bag, or under my bed? What if the store manager grabbed me next time I was in the shop? Or the next time? Or the next? The balloons would have chanted threats to me forever.
I knew this. I saw it all the moment my fingers grazed the plastic wrapper. It’s not that I didn’t have the ‘guts’ to walk out the door with them, I just didn’t have enough courage to live with the anxiety of waiting to be caught.

That’s why I need to convince my husband I’m not lying. I would rather be branded a bad driver for life, than be thought to be a liar. I consider a false confession, but then that would be an admission of lying earlier. I have only one choice. I tell him why I don’t lie.

My confession is probably the most embarrassing self-inflicted ordeal of my past. No, I didn’t sleep with his brother, I wasn’t once a man and I’m not hooked on hard drugs. This I did when I was nine.

Longing for anything to interrupt a particularly boring day in class, I was pleased when a note distracted me from teacher’s blah blah blah. My best friend asking about approaching holidays. We shuffled scribble back and forth until I guess she got tired with that activity and decided to return to blah blah land. Needing something big to write to get things going again (like Dr Seuss’ Grinch, I had a wonderful, awful idea!), I told a lie. I wrote that I was moving from Sydney to Brisbane to live with my Dad.

What a lark I thought as I pushed it over.
A lark until she cried.
Not just tears - big loud hiccuppy sobs. The teacher rushed to her, comforted and eventually found the note. All kids were looking at my friend, except me. I stared straight-ahead waiting for the apocalypse to begin.

The teacher called me up and asked if it was true, and this is the worse moment. The moment I mentally recall and try to press the Microsoft ‘undo’ button. I said yes. From there it was an avalanche, starting with a tiny drop of snow and with increasing speed building up to something that was going to wipe out my existence.

Teacher was unhelpfully caring and organized a going away party for me that week. We had to bring snacks. I told mum it was for a new girl. It was the least fun party I had ever been too. And it wasn’t just my class that knew. Suddenly I emerged from invisibility to celebrity status. Every kid wanted to know what kind of things were in Queensland, would I write to them, could I take my dog?

Days passed and I thought the incident might just fade away. Perhaps my buddy would forgive me once she realized I wasn’t going anywhere. Teacher might stop looking at me with pity (I was actually starting to miss her usual stern gaze). Just bide my time.

Of course it could never be that easy, and my mother was summoned to the school to fill out the necessary paper work for my transfer. As a single working mum she was not too pleased at having to take time off for my charade.

That’s when the awful moment of being found out comes. And it doesn’t happen the way you think it will, you don’t jump out and yell ‘tricked ya!’ and everybody laughs. No one laughed. I can’t even say how they looked at me because I’m pretty sure I would have been staring pleadingly at my shoes for help.

I’d love to say that was it, my one harsh lesson that turned me around for good. Truth is there would have been a few more incidents along the pathway to here, but I always got caught. Not always straightaway (which is much kinder), sometimes I would live skittishly waiting for it. But it always came. Slowly I discovered an amazing power. Confession.

Tell all straight away and it’s like the Band-Aid ripping off quickly. Sharp short pain. But hide the truth and eventually it finds you and the humiliation can last forever, plus whatever you’ve hidden under your Band-Aid has festered for lack of air.

I’m not sure that my story convinced him or you for that matter. As believable this tale might be of my quest for honesty, if I have a packet of giant balloons lurking in my top drawer, then you’d have reason to doubt me.

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Pruning the Family Tree

When discussions about my children’s family tree are raised I plan to tell them, “There is no history, our family began with your father and I.” Mentally I have lopped off the sprawling, infested branches that revealed the sins of my heritage.

Concealment of these living ghosts stems from envy of other’s interesting and respectful legacies, such as my husband’s acceptable genealogy. My mother-in-law is proudly aware of the name and details of each member’s father’s mother’s father.
In my daughter’s baby albums, many blank spaces appear accusingly above my own parent’s names. Sure, the girls have their grandmother’s name and their great grandmother’s name, because the women stay. It is the men in the family that abscond, leaving us to guiltily explain the gaps. There’s a void right above my mother’s name, next to her mother, and as if to prove there was once some bond between my divorced parents, my father has the same blank space above his name.

My husband and I share an intimate joke that whenever anyone of appropriate age appears in the public eye, we’ll suggest the possibility of that being my grandfather, or ‘Pop’ as I like to call this enigma.

What of the relatives I do know?

Should I entertain my daughters with tales of the Aunt that actually did run away with the circus at sixteen? She went on to have five children to an equal amount of fathers, all of whom ended up in foster care and the youngest pregnant at eleven. There’s the enchanting story of another Aunt, mother of six, heroine addict and now released from prison for the second time. I could explain the encouragement my Nana provides for any girl that continues our family legacy of teenage pregnancy and single parenting. I’m pretty sure Nana thought I was gay or worse – infertile. When I hadn’t produced any children by my mid-twenties, she let me know that it still wasn’t too late (I was single at the time, but apparently there are ways to convince men to have sex with you even without a relationship), good advice Nana, thanks.

I’ve considered conjuring up relatives and backgrounds anyone could be proud of, the kind that have invented or imported some much loved Australian icon. But, by gathering stories from those I’ve envied, I have come to realize I’m not alone. Even my Husband has the brother-in-law who, as an addict, devised a foolproof scheme to break into a pharmacy after hours, undetected, via the ceiling. Great plan, except for the fact that once inside he couldn’t leave by the locked doors or reach the ceiling and was arrested when found in the morning.

Every family has that Aunt with questionable morals or the cousin who froths at the mouth. I can let my skeletons come out and talk freely of their antics. There is always going to be a relative that makes every family cringe and whisper about them, and if you think there isn’t one in yours, maybe it’s you.

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Wednesday Spagetti

Monday night: Chops, peas, corn and mash potato. Tuesday night: Fish fingers, peas, corn and mash potato. Saturday night: Tomato soup and toast. Sunday night: Roast lamb, peas, corn and baked potato. Throughout . childhood, these meals never strayed from their allocated evenings.

Wednesdays, my mother prepared her most international, exotic meal: Spaghetti Bolagnaise, or her provided name of ‘Wog Spag Boll’, at least, a censored version. Mince, tin tomatoes and onion (no suspicious herbs). I would sit at our brown Formica table and chairs next to the kitchen entrance and anticipate this meal with dread. As I squirmed on the carpet padding of the seat I would pre-empt the offending onion taste trying to conceal the bland mince background. The only way I could soldier through the meal was to battle the villainous flavor with my own allied cheese and tomato sauce (which luckily always stood proudly in the middle of our dining table – after all what meal couldn’t be enhanced by ‘marty sauce’?). My defence tactics never held up and the nasty presence of my mother’s pride and joy would sneak back and linger in my throat for hours.

Only years of complaining had my mother reluctantly consider the doctor’s preposterous notion of my possessing an onion allergy. Her creative solution to this situation was to dice the onion much smaller and scoff, “How can you taste it when it’s cut so small? Don’t be stupid!”.
It was an exciting treat when we ventured out on our regular take-away nights. Rugged up in flannel pyjamas, robe and slippers (even now my mother believes no child can leave the house without a vest and jumper, apparently even on humid nights children catch chills) to head for exotic but familiar venues to pick up our meal.

Nowadays when ordering takeaway I simply phone ahead, my mother could never do that, because the chances were that the incoherent numskull on the over end would stuff up our order (we never varied our choices and God forbid something alien turned up in our order). So instead we would be in a Chinese restaurant waiting room with a pretty partition failing to conceal the Oriental glamour of the dining area, dim with flickering of red and gold. Other times it was the pizza parlour where you got to wait amongst the other diners, looking at posters of travel adverts or photos of bread and listening to ‘The Village People’ on the jukebox. Of course the fish and chip shop, run by the Greeks, was less glamorous with its lino floor, long continuos counter protecting baskets of battered goods crackling away in oil. A few tables would adorn the remaining wall for those teenagers who just didn’t have anywhere better to take their meal, waiting for their parcels of chips soaked in vinegar at the pinball machine or the coin hungry table of Space Invaders.

When ordering foreign food, the rule was to talk LOUD and pause … between … each … word. My mother was sophisticated enough to include a slight imitation of the proprietors accent, to make it easier for them to understand. I’m sure Mr. Lee, who had to take orders for his restaurant for ten years from inconsiderate patrons not showing the same ‘accent copying’ courtesy, appreciated my mother’s thoughtful efforts.
We played it safe when ordering foreign foods. We never took risks by straying from our regular providers. Who knows what the other Chinese restaurants were trying to pass off as pork. Many rumours openly bandied about revealed that most Chinese chefs would prefer to spend their nights scouring the streets for children’s beloved Snowballs, Socks’ and Scruffys, risking closure, deportation and even prison rather than simply purchasing their meat from a wholesaler. Still my mother cautiously trusted familiar outlets where she grew to know the staff who always showed polite interest.

As much as my mother delighted in friendly chitchat with these resident foreigners, she scowled at the ones that dared to invade her street, her workplace, her daughter’s school and her supermarket car park.

Of course in those days we only knew three nationalities of immigrants. The Chinese included anyone with Asian features, who came to steal jobs and cause car accidents. The Wogs were from one country that included Italians, Greeks and Maltese. Likeable, amusing people that provided us with endless food services, pizza, corner stores, fish and chips and fruit and veg. These were the immigrants that my mother least minded. Even if their outspoken mannerisms were questionable, they were more tolerable than many of our original residents. Nearby to us was a scenic beach suburb that was mostly occupied by Aboriginal families, which she always said was, “Such a shame.”.

The third most intriguing race to reach the shores of our awareness was Indians. We knew nothing of them (they were suspiciously quiet people) and certainly wouldn’t be trying these weird ‘curries’.

It is not surprising that my mother never travelled, never desired to leave her comfort zone. She would constantly tell me, “We live in the best country in the world, why would you want to go anywhere else?” (hint: under no circumstances volunteer an answer). I’m pretty sure by ‘country’ she meant Sydney and surrounding suburbs because until I was eleven, we never ventured outside this circle.

I can’t imagine my mother touring a country where residents are rude enough to speak any language other than English. She had enough trouble tolerating foreigners here that speak their home language freely in public. I think they infringe on her given right to eavesdrop. Often she would raise the point, “How do I know they’re not talking about me?” I remember the distasteful look I received when suggesting she listen for the name "Joyce".

Although my mother proudly displayed her own version of tolerance to immigrants that were a constant irritation to her, I was still surprised when as a teen I learned my Nanna had once remarried. My birth certificate revealed that my mother’s maiden name was not ‘Wright’ as I had always thought, but instead ‘Valentini'.

Charmaine Clancy

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