1. Miranda suddenly thought, I’m going to be sick. She stumbled to a toilet. Her lunch caught in her throat; she had chewed too quickly. She lay on the grass in front of the gallery, breathing shallowly.
Since she broke up with him, she had begun to pay meticulous attention to the sensations of her body. She’d become very aware of sore shoulders, stomach aches, cramps in her legs. She thought she should go to the doctor but worried that they would think she was hysterical. She started recording when she got headaches, gathering evidence to show during her consultation.
Monday 27th July:
Greg broke up with me. Nothing.
Wednesday 30th July:
Greg came to get his things. Nothing.
Saturday 2nd June:
Found Greg’s razor. Nothing. PM—twitching eyelid.
Sunday 3rd June:
Bleeding toe.
Monday 4th June:
Headache
Tuesday 5th June:
Headache – never went away
Saturday 9th June:
Vomitting
She felt this activity was self-indulgent, something her mother would describe as wallowing in her misery.
Her phone rang. It was Jooie.
Jooie said, ‘How are you?’
Miranda said, ‘Yeah, good.’
‘What are you doing?’
‘Just wandering around. Spying, basically.’
‘On who? Not Greg?’
‘No, not Greg.’
‘Good. You should come over to my place. Ben’s at the Regatta.’
‘Ok.’
2. John’s collection was slipping. One of the glass cases had broken already; the butterflies had fallen out and were crushed. John swept their bodies into the bin. Some of the dust from their wings clung to his fingers.
3. Miranda waded out into the ocean carrying her dad’s ashes. There were rules about these things – how far away from the shore you had to be, how deep. But the bag broke too early. The wind blew the ashes towards the shore.
4. The afternoon her dad brought their dog home from the vet in a black plastic bag, he cried. Her mum didn’t understand.
‘John, why are you upset? You didn’t even like that dog.’
The dog was a stupid animal, too timid to be affectionate. In later life, he’d developed mange.
‘I just hate it when animals die,’ he said.
5. Her dad also put the cat down. It was frothing at the mouth and thick, brown goop crusted its left eye. He did it himself with a .22. This was before the gun laws.
Miranda blamed her cousin, who used to pick the cat up by the neck.
6. Once her mum hit a dog in her car, but she drove away. Miranda was in the front passenger seat.
7. Sometimes, Miranda would recognise her father’s words in the things she said.
8. Miranda once read that the myth of vampires came about because, in the old days, people were sometimes buried while still alive. Doctors didn’t really understand comas or cardiac arrests. Some graves had bells tied to a string inside the coffin, so that people could ring it if they ever woke up:
She hadn’t read Poe, but she later heard on a documentary that Dracula was based on stories of a King in Romania who impaled his people on spikes and watched them die while eating lunch.
9. ‘You need to come out more,’ Jooie told her. ‘You’re moping.’
Moping/mōping/vi lying around with a melancholy attitude; to pine.
‘I’m pining for the fjords,’ Miranda said.
10. Miranda observed other people.
If she was with someone for a long enough time, she began to talk like them.
