Gone: No Address - chapter 1a

GONE: NO ADDRESS

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At last I've done it - I've left. I'm taking a bus to Sydney, in heavy disguise. This will be something to laugh about later, but I'm feeling awfully uncomfortable right now, in a stupid blonde wig and pink tracksuit I bought in Queanbeyan this morning. The scenery's a blur, because I'm not wearing my glasses.
So far, my escape has been completely successful. That will surprise everyone who knows me - when they discover I'm gone. I made the final decision last night, tossing and turning in bed. My marriage, my job and my friends have all faded away. Everything in Canberra has come to an end for me.
I felt a little sad for Simon this morning; I was going to kiss him goodbye (not telling him it was for ever) but around dawn I finally went to sleep. I woke again at 6.30, to the sound of his car driving out. Probably off to a meeting with Alison. Who could blame him? She's young and beautiful, she has a high-powered job, she's organized to her fingertips, and she can converse with him in officialese and computerese simultaneously. She even understands cricket. How could I ever compete?
And then there's Zach. Or Zork, as he calls himself now. My lovely little boy became a teenage slob, who spends his life playing computer games with junk food all around him, wearing a back-to-front baseball cap and baggy shorts, and losing the power of speech. When I said goodbye to him this morning, he grunted like a pig. It could be weeks before he notices I'm gone.
I don't know what went wrong with Zach. I took so much care with his upbringing: he was the only baby I could ever have, so he had to turn out perfect. His birth was a terrible experience. We both nearly died, the doctors said, and they tied my tubes afterwards. I agreed: I never wanted to go through that again. So you can understand why I tried so hard with him.
Until he started high school, all was well. He was a delight: inquisitive, smart, and loving. But then he grew to the size of a barrel, lost interest in everything except TV, and spoke only in sentences of one word or less. Simon suggested buying him a computer, so we did; and instantly he became addicted to it.
And as for school, I'm glad to see the end of it. I hadn't really wanted to get the head of department job, but with Simon egging me on, I applied for it. With only three of us in the art department, and Downer High School being the lowest of the low, I thought I had a chance. Simon's being high-up could have worked for me, too. But no, it went to an arrogant upstart with only two years' teaching experience, and no talent at all. After six years at the school, trying to keep kids from throwing paint over each other, I was hoping for something better - but instead I was put onto a three-day week. The worst thing is that the upstart has my name. I've never liked it much, but it was deadening last week, when I was in the staff toilet, and overheard two teachers discussing me. They were talking about Adele, so I pricked up my ears. "Oh, you mean the other Adele," said Hazel, stretching the word "other" till it made me sound like something from outer space. They both laughed. Despite the bitchiness of the staff at Downer, I looked on Hazel as a friend: and the tone of that laugh devastated me.
When the news broke that Downer was to close in December, and we'd all lose our jobs, the laugh was on Adele number 2.
A couple of weeks ago, Sue was in Canberra for a conference. I've known her since our student days in Wagga. I was an education student really wanting to do art, and she was an art student really wanting to do commerce. Now she's a graphic designer in a production agency in Sydney. She's never married, but she's much more experienced than I am. She still hasn't found the right man, she says, though she's lived with ten of them. But neither have I, and after two failed marriages I'm going to give up.
Sue can't stand Simon, the ponderous way he talks, and the weight of Government on his brow.
"Why do you stay with him?" she asked, when we were having coffee together at the airport, just before she went home. I was telling her about the fiasco at school, and the way Zach was going, and Simon's new database coordination project, which required long talks with Alison Zener, his counterpart in the tax department. These "talks" went far into the night. Very complex issues, he said. Then he started inviting her round to our place, and I had to serve them coffee and cakes. He was on at me to clean the house too, but I laughed at him. It was when I caught him trying to use the vacuum cleaner that I realized he was serious about her.
Of course, that didn't interrupt our institutionalized Saturday night Act. This is what happens: we go to bed, he climbs on top of me, pumps like mad for exactly five minutes, then falls off and goes to sleep. Unless there's a cricket match on - in which case he dons his earphones at the first opportunity.
Apart from Saturday nights, he never comes near me. If I touch him in bed, he shrinks away. I can drive him into a corner with one fingertip.
"Why do I stay with him?" I echoed. "Nowhere else to go, I suppose."
"Come and live with me, while you find your feet," said Sue. "Any time. As long as you like. Sydney's great. I know you're a bit scared of it, being a small-town girl, but I had no trouble adapting."

So that's what I'm doing now. And Nora in the next seat is rabbiting on about her grandchildren. She only boarded the bus at Goulburn, but I already know her entire life history. I'm a good listener, they say, because I'm invisible. People don't usually see me. But nosy Nora started trying to ask me lots of questions. Another time, I might have talked, but today I don't want anybody to know what I'm up to.
"Is that your natural colour hair, dear?" Nora asked me, within five minutes of getting on the bus. I know it's a cheap wig - I bought it for this trip, and I'll never wear it again - but I didn't realize it was that obvious.
I leaned over to her and whispered in her ear. "No, it's a wig. I've lost all my hair, you know. I've got cancer, and I'm going to Sydney for treatment."
"I'm so sorry, dear," she mumbled. "That's dreadful. What sort of cancer?"
I shook my head, trying not to laugh. "I don't like to talk about it," I said, in a feeble croak.
That shut her up. Then I tossed in a question about her family, and she hasn't stopped since. She seems to think I'll be dead next week, so it doesn't matter what she tells me. Now she's relating how she met her late husband. She was "intact," she says.

I was far from intact when I met Simon. It was two weeks after Bryn walked out on me with Vanessa. The three of us had been teaching at a high school at Wagga, and I didn't have a clue that anything was amiss. Bryn and Vanessa, both mad about sport, often kept each other company at football matches. I couldn't go, because I needed to look after Zach. He was three years old and delightful.
It was halfway through the summer holidays, and we had to live for two months on our holiday pay. I'd spent all mine in the first month, and for the second month we were going to live on Bryn's. But he cleared out on New Year's Eve. He was too chicken to confront me. Zach and I came home from the supermarket to find a note, saying he'd realized that Vanessa was the true love of his life, and they were off. They fled to the Gold Coast, taking our car and his bank account. Zach and I wept for days. We were penniless, but we had lots of food in the fridge. (Bryn used to eat like a horse.)
I applied to the Education Department for an advance in pay, but the people I knew were all on holiday, and the bureaucrats at Head Office said they'd need a term or two to think about it.
We were renting an old farmhouse just out of Wagga. (Bryn needed a lot of space for his old cars.) One day early in January, our landlord dropped in, casually inquiring when the rent would be paid. I thought Bryn had paid it for the whole holidays, in advance, but apparently it was several weeks overdue. I told the landlord that Bryn had left, but he didn't seem to feel at all sorry for me. In fact, he made some nasty comments about all the motors and gearboxes that Bryn had left scattered around the front paddock.
So the next day I visited the Office of Social Support. They were no help. I shouldn't have spent all my holiday pay, they said. I couldn't get any money unless I was on the dole, and I couldn't go on the dole because I had a job.
"But my husband has abandoned me," I wailed. "Surely there's something..."
"What about your parents?" said the spotty-faced clerk.
"They're two states away, at Murray Bridge. I don't want to bother them with this. They're old." They'd also lecture me at great length.
"You could try seeing the manager," said the spotty-faced clerk, to get rid of me.
The manager's secretary was a stone-faced sadist, but I got an appointment out of her for late the next afternoon.
This time I brought Zach along, wore my shabbiest dress, and turned up in plenty of time for my appointment. I suspected I was wasting my time. Maybe one of the charities might help, I was thinking: the Smith Family, or Saint Vincent's, or something.
Half an hour after the appointment was due, I was still waiting, and Zach was starting to get bored. I could hear angry voices from the manager's office: a woman shouting, and a low male voice trying to soothe her. At one stage the woman screamed. The stone-faced secretary stopped typing, and looked around in alarm.
"It sounds like a fight in there," I joked. "Perhaps you should go in and separate them."
She glared at me.
Five minutes later the door opened, and a large Aboriginal woman burst out, shouting obscenities behind her. As she left, she shot me a pitying look, as if to say "You're wasting your time."
"You may go in," I was informed.
I went in, feeling scared. But the manager was actually friendly, and much younger and more handsome than I'd expected. I liked the way he took Zach seriously, shaking hands with him, and giving him a pen and a form to fill in.
"Sit down, Mrs Thomas," he said, in his slow soothing voice. "Please describe the nature of your problem."
I told him, trying not to be too emotional about it. He was a good listener, saying "Mmmm" and "Aaah" in all the right places, and tossing in the odd benevolent smile. When I'd finished my garbled explanation I was feeling quite hopeful.
"I'm afraid the OSS can't do anything for you," he said - but nicely. "However, there are other contingencies which we have not yet explored. For example, you could approach your bank manager for a loan."
I hadn't thought of that, but I didn't much like my chances. I'm not the sort of person anybody loans money to. I studied this man, Mr Alexander, who wasn't much older than I was, but wore an ultra- conservative dark suit, and spoke like a much older man. I smiled at him meekly.
"There is another possibility," he said, stroking his moustache as he looked at me. Something in his tone made me hopeful.
"Yes?" I said.
"Take your clothes off."
"What?"
"Undress, please."
"Why?"
"So I can look at you, of course."
What the hell? I thought. If this is the way to bribe a government official, I'll give it a go. Besides, he wouldn't dare try anything with that battle-axe in the next office, and Zach scribbling away beside me.
It was a hot day, and I was only wearing an old sun-dress. I unzipped it, and let it fall to the floor. I stood before him in my tired underwear, feeling a bit stupid.
"Keep going," he said.
I didn't mind him so much, but I was terrified of that secretary. I glanced behind me at the door, in case she was looking through the keyhole.
Mr Alexander jumped out of his chair, passed so close I could hear his suit rustle, and locked the door by pressing a button on the knob.
"Come on," he said. "I need to see what I'm getting."
"You're not getting anything," I said, trying to sound as if I were in control of the situation. But I took off my pants and bra, and stood before him naked, hands clasped coyly in front of me. King Cophetua and the beggar maid, I thought.
"Very nice figure," said the manager, stroking his moustache again. "Put your hands on your head, and turn around, please. Tell me, does one need a degree to be an art teacher?"
"A B.Ed. is what it takes to be a secondary teacher these days. I majored in art history. Is that what you're getting at?"
"That'll suffice," said the manager, mystifying me further.
I opened my mouth wide.
"Is this something to yawn about?" he asked.
"I expect you want to examine my teeth." I was thinking of the Ingres painting of an Arab inspecting a prospective slave-girl.
Mr Alexander didn't get it. Instead he asked me to bend over and touch my toes. As I was doing this, Zach looked up from his paperwork, and noticed I had no clothes on. "Bath time!" he exclaimed in delight, and began to pull down his pants.
"Not now, Zach," I said, going over to dissuade him.
"Very well behaved child," said the manager approvingly.
"What's going on?" called the secretary, rattling the doorhandle from the other side. Seeing her face peering through the frosted glass, I panicked, and started dressing rapidly, having trouble with my bra. My fingers were shaking like mad.
"Don't disturb me, Mrs Snapling," Mr Alexander called. He came around and did up my bra for me, giving my backbone a little stroke. For the first time in a month, I felt a shiver of pleasure.
"You'll do," he said. "You'll be fine." He gave me a polite pat on the bottom as he zipped up my dress.
"For what?"
"I need a woman. My cleaner has resigned, and my girlfriend took a promotion interstate. I'm a hopeless cook, too. You know," he mused, "decent women are so hard to come by in Wagga."
"You want me to be your cleaner?" I said. "Your cook?"
"All of that - and more. Do you understand?"
I understood perfectly well. They call it a wife.
He clasped his hands before him, looking smug.
"You're crazy," I said, amused. "I don't even know your name."
"Simon. Now, will you come home with me?"
"Hold on a minute," I said. "I want to check your muscles first. How about taking all your clothes off?"
He laughed uproariously. "God, you're a scream - " (he glanced at his notes, to remind himself of my name) " - Adele. I think we'll get along just fine."

The amazing thing was that it lasted eleven years. He was disappointed when he found I couldn't have any more children, but he's always been good with Zach. He engaged Wagga's top lawyers for the divorce, and Bryn was screwed mercilessly. A year later, Simon was promoted and we moved to Canberra. For respectability's sake, he even married me. But all the time, he's been trying to shape me into something I don't really want to be.

Olga's death hit me really hard. She was my best friend at the school: a maths teacher, who'd been through hell as a girl, in Czechoslovakia. She had a delicious sense of humour, and didn't believe in anything. After what she'd experienced, who would? But last winter, she told me she had stomach cancer. I couldn't believe it; she looked fine. Two months later, she was dead. I've never howled so much; not even when Bryn left me. My last memory of Olga is a face in a hospital bed, a body covered in tubes, and a slowly fading smile.
I didn't even have Amaryllis to face it with. She was my other close friend, a hospital doctor and determinedly single. I didn't think she took anything seriously, but last Easter she decided Canberra was effete and unreal. On the spur of the moment she applied for a job in the Aboriginal health service, somewhere in the Gibson Desert. Naturally, she got it: nobody else applied.
A week after she'd left, she rang me at two in the morning (after queueing for hours for the only phone) to say she'd made a terrible mistake, but felt bound by her three-year contract. "Time doesn't have much meaning here," she added. I haven't heard from her since.
A few weeks after Olga died, I took out my inks, for the first time in ages. I like to draw miniatures on paper, as if it were stained glass. People have compared my style to Burne-Jones, or Ivan Bilibin. Before the memory vanished, I wanted to picture her, to remind myself what she meant to me. But I couldn't do it: my hand wouldn't move. Once I could draw anything, but after years of teaching, I felt that my skill had been eaten away.

I figure that my lifespan is half over. The first half has not been a success, so for the second half I'll change in every possible way.
It's lucky that I found the money; it makes everything so much easier. A month or two ago, when I began to worry about Simon's involvement with Alison, I poked around in his study one night while he was at a meeting. The bottom drawer of his desk was locked, which I'd never known before. Most interesting. But the idiot had forgotten to lock the drawer above it, so all I had to do was pull out the upper drawer to get at the bottom one. And guess what I found? A parcel, about the size of a brick. It was unlabelled, so I opened it carefully, pulling the sticky tape off ever so slowly. It was money: lots and lots of hundred-dollar notes, all bundled together with rubber bands.
Money-laundering, I thought. Why hadn't Simon mentioned this to me? I knew he was saving a lot of his pay (and I was spending all mine, as usual), but it wasn't like him not to earn as much interest as he could. I guessed it must be a bribe, paid to him by somebody whose computer file he'd wiped. This seemed very unlike the old Simon, but morally he's gone way downhill.
I checked again last week, after we had a terrible argument. The packet was still there.
"So why do you keep hanging around then?" he yelled, at the height of it all. "Why don't you just piss off?"
News for you, Simon: I'm not hanging around any more, and I've brought that money with me. I suppose I'm entitled to half of everything, but I'll settle for this.
I need it. I don't want him to find me, but these days he's database manager for the OSS. Everything about everybody is registered on computers, and he has access to all the information about people claiming benefits. And Alison can find out about everybody who earns income, or pays tax, or gets interest from a bank. Other mates of his run the medical computers, the police computers, and so on.
That's why I have to lie low. I can't do anything that involves a computer record, in my own name at least. For example, I can't use my bank account, own a car, earn money (except under the table), go to hospital, claim a benefit, and so on. Thanks so much for that cash, Simon: I couldn't manage without it.

Sue was right: I am a little afraid of Sydney. I've been there often enough, but it's so huge and anonymous. Everybody's in such a hurry, and I'm even more invisible there than I am at home. Correction: Canberra is not home - not any more. But invisibility is my advantage. For once, the fact that nobody notices me can work for me, instead of against me.
I have to go to Sydney. I'd rather live in a small town, but the people in them are incredibly nosy, and I'd attract too much attention. My parents would hear of it before long, and of course they think the sun shines out of Simon's arse. They're retired now, at Mildura, but they know everybody in every small town, because we lived in so many of them while my father was working for the Murray River Commission. When I was at high school, we moved twice a year. He got to measure the summer and winter flows, and I got to miss out on a lot of friends. I spent most of my teenage years in my kayak, drawing my future as a world-famous artist.
My plan is to find some very ordinary part of Sydney, where Simon wouldn't think of looking for me. I'll rent a place there, and I'll live luxuriously alone for a year or so. I'll get back to my long-neglected art, and I'll change my life.
This is what I'm going to do.
I'll have my hair cut very short. Perhaps I'll even have it dyed. I'll throw away my glasses and get contact lenses. And I'll dress in a totally different way. With the plans I'm making, Simon wouldn't recognize me if he passed me in the street. For example, I've lived in jeans the last few years, because that's sensible at school, and Canberra's often cold. No more jeans for me: I'll wear flowing gauzy dresses, or Turkish-style pants. Everything I do will be different from what I've ever done before.

At a restaurant the other night, I realized my time was up. Simon was eating out with two people he owed favours to, and he actually invited me along. The people turned out to be Alison and James, who's the database manager for the Justice Department. After we finished the first bottle of wine, Simon started getting very familiar with Alison. They were giggling to each other, putting spoons in each other's mouths, and probably holding hands under the table. I had the feeling that Simon was trying to palm me off onto James. But James is a very cold fish.
I gazed around at the other people in the restaurant. Animated conversations were going on. Lovers were putting their heads together and whispering excitedly. Two men winding forks around their fists might have been discussing astronomy. And at a big table somebody was having a birthday, and everybody else was singing.
At every other table in this restaurant, I thought, the people are having a better time than we are. And that's always the way.
While I looked around, the three bureaucrats with me were complaining about the restrictions Parliament had placed on their data-gathering. Their ultimate goal is one huge database, holding every possible scrap of information about everybody in Australia.
"You think you own everybody in the country," I accused.
James corrected me. "No, Adele, we don't want to own people physically, they're too messy. All we want is to own the data about them. Without their data, they're nothing. Just hollow shells."
"Let's not beat around the bush," said Alison, in her rather nasty way. "This is Australia. The government does own the people. It always has: ever since the first convicts arrived."
"It doesn't own me," I protested.
James laughed. "You try telling it that," he said.
"It's like a farm," Simon said. "The farmer knows he owns the sheep, but the sheep don't know it." (Simon never lets people forget he comes from a farming background; it's his way of pretending to be in touch.)
"Except when they get their ears notched," said James.
"I suppose you're in favour of doing that to people," I blazed.
"Too crude," Alison said. "What we're actually looking at is implanting microchips in everybody. There'd be a lot of benefits."
"For example, it would sort out the illegral immigrants," Simon added. He hates illegal immigrants - he has some sort of personal grudge against them. But I'm all in favour of them. In fact I admire them, sailing here in tiny boats, risking everything for a vision of a better life. I said so, horrifying the three others.
From there, the conversation went downhill fast. In the end, everybody was arguing with everybody else. Alison and James walked out in separate huffs. Simon was furious with me, and accused me of breaking up the evening. He wouldn't speak to me yesterday, until he needed to find his tennis clothes.
Alison plays tennis too.
It was then I completed my plan to tiptoe out of his life.

This morning after I said goodbye to Zach, I packed his sausage-shaped bag, collected the money from Simon's bottom drawer, and called a taxi, to come to an address around the corner. To avoid being traced, I left the taxi at a big department store at Civic. There I bought this hideous blonde wig (in case I met any of the few people I still know), took off my glasses, and caught a bus to Queanbeyan, where I don't know a soul.
On the way, I panicked a bit, wondering if anyone would recognize my clothes. So at Queanbeyan I went to a bargain-basement clothing store and bought this track suit - the cheapest I could find, and the most different from what I'd normally wear.
Then I scrawled out a postcard to Simon. The message was the shortest I could think of (I hate recriminations) but it was enough: "Goodbye." I didn't even sign it. He knows my writing.
I'm going to change my name, too, as soon as I think of a good one. When I was buying the bus ticket from Queanbeyan to Sydney, the man asked my name. I was horrified. The only reason I'd gone to all this trouble to take an out-of-town bus, and not a plane or train, was that I thought buses were anonymous. "Jones," I told him. Smith seemed too obvious.
"Is that Mrs or Ms?"
"Miss," I snapped. I've left my wedding ring behind, along with all my other symbols of ownership.

The bus is now passing through the southern suburbs of Sydney, and Nora Braidwood is asleep, exhausted after the marathon recital of her family history. She's snoring a little, and her ancient head is wobbling over onto my shoulder. If I stand up, she'll fall over. I don't want dependents, do you hear? I can't even look after myself, so how can I take care of anybody else? I'll live completely alone, without even a pet.

When the bus arrived in Central Sydney, late in the evening rush hour, I was relieved to find no posse of police waiting for me, to say "Excuse me madam, but what is that brick in your bag?" I found a public phone, and rang Sue. She wasn't there.
Of course, I thought, as I stammered out a message to her answering machine: she often has to work late. And, living alone, she often eats out. I'll find a restaurant myself, and ring her later.
The only problem was all the money I was carrying. I was terrified of somebody trying to snatch the sausage bag, so I tried sort of poking it under the front of my tracksuit. Of course it wouldn't stay there, and I felt like a pregnant kangaroo. I compromised by winding the strap around my wrist two or three times - but then I worried that my grip would be so conspicuous it would encourage robbers.
I found a brightly lit Indonesian restaurant near Central Station, and ate there. I'll only stay with Sue a week or so, I think. She's very generous, but I can't impose on her too long, and I want my own place. Besides, Simon might track down her address, though I'm fairly confident he doesn't know her surname.
I rang her again, from a phone in the restaurant. Still the answering machine. I was waiting for the beep, considering whether to leave a second message and take a hotel room for the night, when there was a click, a voice, and another click.
"Are you there?" I said. I don't know why, because it was now obvious she wasn't. I rang back, and that time it was engaged.
Aha! I thought. She's home. I caught a taxi to nearby Edgecliff, where she lives in a small block of flats. I looked up at where I thought her windows were (I've only been there once before) but no lights were on. I found the entrance to her group of flats, climbed two flights of stairs to a lobby with three front doors, and knocked on her door. It was a lovely warm night in Sydney - so different from Canberra, which is usually bitterly cold after sunset in October.
After a while, footsteps came. The door behind me opened, a cross old man peeped around it, grunted, and closed it again.
I put my ear to Sue's door and listened. There seemed to be voices: TV, perhaps. I knocked again.
"Com-ing," called Sue's voice from a distance. She sounded cross. I began to worry whether I'd come at the right time.
The door opened, and Sue stood in front of me, wearing only a tiny - I suppose you'd call it a loincloth.
"Sue!" I gushed.
She looked at me blankly. Finally I remembered my wig, and pulled it off with a sweeping gesture.
"Dell!" she exclaimed. "How are things?"
I wanted to hug her, but it didn't seem right, with her being practically naked. I don't want to be seen as a dyke.
"A lot better, I hope," I said. "I've taken your advice and left Simon. Did you get my message, on the answer-phone?"
"Haven't checked it. I'm sort of busy, as maybe you can guess from - " (she gestured at her lack of clothes). "You've come at a bit of an awkward time. I have company..."
Inside, a man coughed.
"Sorry," I stammered. "It's OK, I'll go back."
"No, Dell, don't. Never do that!" She thought I meant to Canberra; I'd meant to the city. "Please stay, but just sort of lie low for tonight, OK? Please?"
The male voice grunted.
"Come on in," said Sue. "Aaron, this is Adele. She's my best friend from way back in Wagga, and she's just left her shit of a husband."
Aaron was dark and hairy, and he wore only electric blue underpants with white tadpole designs on them. He was wearing them back to front, too.
We eyed each other warily, while Sue bustled around. I noticed that her breasts are sagging, and her bottom is flabby: no longer the buoyant figure I used to envy years ago, when we shared a room in the student hostel at Riverina College.
"We'll have a long talk tomorrow, Dell," she said. "But tonight I've got some unfinished business to attend to, as you can probably guess. I'll put you in the spare room. The bed's made up, but you'll have to clear the prints off it. The TV in there sort of works, but you have to hold on to the aerial to get channel 2."
She shut me in. The little room was stifling, so I tried to open the window. But there were bars outside, like a prison cell, and it only opened a tiny crack.
This is great, I thought. My first night of freedom, and here I am alone, practically locked into this hotbox of a room. I could hear giggles coming from the living room of the open-plan flat. Why couldn't they go into her bedroom? I was thirsty after my salty meal, and I needed to go to the toilet. But surely they'd go to bed before long. I'd wait.
First, I counted my money. Or I tried to. Some of the notes were sticking together. After counting it three times and getting three slightly different results, I gave up. As far as I can tell, I have about $22,000. That could last me a year, if I'm careful.
After counting the money I was even hotter. I took off the hideous pink tracksuit, and tried watching TV. Nothing interested me, and the reception was terrible, so instead I reviewed myself in the mirror.
My underwear was so sensible it was ridiculous. If Sue came in she'd laugh herself silly, I thought. So I took it off. The mirror suggested that my breasts are firmer than Sue's - that was kind of it. By standing on the bed and twisting around, I could see my bottom in the mirror. That seemed OK, too. But then, Sue's figure was always fuller than mine. If you know Burne-Jones' painting of Pan and Psyche, I looked rather like Psyche, from behind.
From the front, I saw a worried face, no longer young, but not old; not beautiful, but not ugly. In other words, totally average: but with rather sad eyes, a thin nose, and dark-brown wavy hair, in a sensible neck-length style. I pulled my hair back, trying to work out what it would look like with a bob. Better, I thought, specially when I get rid of these granny-like round glasses.
Feeling pleased with my new image, I slid into bed, exhausted, and fell asleep straight away.
A few hours later, I woke up feeling terrible. I desperately needed to use the toilet, I had a raging thirst, and my stomach was telling me it was going to be sick - very, very soon. I stumbled out of bed, opened the door a crack, and was relieved to find the living-room light off. I staggered to the bathroom, and vomited up gallons of green- and- orange Indonesian food. I sat on the cold edge of the bath, doubled over, waiting to feel better or worse. It turned out to be worse: I vomited some more, trying all the time to be quiet so as not to wake Sue and Aaron. If they were still awake: I couldn't hear a sound.
After this I felt better, but I desperately needed a drink. I cleaned up the toilet, padded out to the kitchen, and looked for a glass. Being undressed, I didn't want to turn the light on, but I didn't need to - the street light was bright. After gulping down two glasses of water, I crept back to bed.

At some unearthly hour, Sue stuck her head around the door and woke me up. She was already dressed for work, in her power-woman costume.
"Get up, Dell," she said. "I've got to go soon."
I looked blankly at her. "Just because you have to go..." my look said.
"There's a deadlock, and Aaron took the spare key. You don't want to be locked in all day, do you?"
I sure didn't. Last night's captivity was bad enough. I stumbled out of bed.
"God, you're skinny, Dell," she commented.
"It's all the worry. I've stopped eating."
"Your pubes are looking untidy too. Why don't you get them waxed?"
She sounded just like Simon. I wanted to tell her how I'm going to change everything about myself - but for some things, like my body, the only change will be that now I'll be proud of it.
"But Aaron was impressed," she added. "You really should have worn something when you came out in the middle of the night. What an exhibitionist!"
"What do you mean? You were both in bed, weren't you?"
"No fear. I'm not letting him into my bed yet - we've hardly met. He might snore. He's a terrible farter, too." She giggled. "We were lying very snugly on the sofa when you came out and started carrying on."
I couldn't believe it. "But how come I didn't see you?"
"You had your eyes shut, I think." She patted me on the shoulder. "Don't worry Dell, you've got an admirer there. Physically, at least. 'Tight little ass' was the term used. When I get tired of Aaron, I'll pass him on to you."
Did I detect a touch of waspishness?
"The only thing I like about him is his boxer shorts," I said. "With the tadpoles swimming away from the crotch."
"You noticed, did you? They're sperm, actually. That's my design: did I tell you I'm doing batik designs now? Would you like a pair? I still have some samples, but that's the only pair with that design."
"I don't have a man to wear them. And I'm not planning on finding one."
"You'll change your tune, Dell. I know you, you're so dependent." She was rummaging in a drawer, looking for her samples. "They must all be at work. Have Aaron's - he left them behind the sofa."
She left the room, and came back holding one corner of them between two fingers, as if they were polluted.
"Thanks," I said, stepping into one leg. "I love this design."
"But he's worn them," she said, alarmed. "He's farted in them!"
"I'm not proud," I said, as I pulled them up. "And at least I'm not wearing them back to front."
So I left with Sue at 8 a.m, wearing my tracksuit again, but abandoning the wig. We took the train to the city. As we stood in the aisle, clinging to the straps while the train rocked around, she told me (and a dozen nearby commuters) what was wrong with me. She means well, but I ignored it. You get used to that with Sue.
"See you about nine tonight," she said, waiting on the platform for another train, which would take her to her office at North Sydney. "I have to finish the roughs for a new campaign, and the clients always insist on last-minute changes. Here's my train."
As she dashed to it, she turned and called out to me. "No, better make that ten, to be safe."

I settled down in a cafe near the station, waiting for the shops to open so I could buy new clothes. It wasn't very satisfactory staying with Sue, so I decided to bring forward my plan for finding my own place.
I bought a Herald, to hide my face from passers-by who might know Simon, and turned to the "To Let" columns. Most of the suburbs meant nothing to me. The only parts of Sydney I know well are the inner city, the airport, and the zoo. I didn't fancy those busy areas: I wanted to lie low, in a totally ordinary suburb where Simon will never think of looking.
To put off the decision, I read the news section of the paper. The front page was headed: "CRIME TO GO MISSING?" The police commissioner was complaining that too many people were going missing, and adopting false names, and this was causing a lot of work for the police. So they were now proposing to make it a crime to be a "fugitive," and an even worse crime to adopt an unregistered name. Five years in prison was about right, in the commissioner's opinion. Bastard! I thought, and turned the page.
A completely different article attracted my attention.
"A group of urban sociologists at Macquarie University has reworked Census data to find Sydney's most typical suburb," it began. I read on with interest. The most typical suburb was Hurstville. I'd never even heard of it. "Hurstville is a microcosm of Sydney," the article continued. "Within 5% of the mean on all 35 variables."
Whatever that meant. A small voice told me to head for Hurstville. I turned back to the To Let pages. I wanted a small house - Sue's flat is more like a prison than a home. I pictured a run-down but charming Victorian cottage, with a vegetable garden out the back, shaded by some big old trees. The only entry for Hurstville was an agency ad: "Many houses and flats to let."
I rang the number in the ad. A woman called Annette answered, speaking every sentence as if it were a question. "We've got three places that might do you?" she said. "Come on out, and have a look? What was your name again?"
"It doesn't matter," I said, realizing that I didn't have a name. Not a registered one, anyway.
Now that Sue had shown me how to use the underground railway, I caught a train to Hurstville, lugging the sausage bag with all my possessions.
When I came out of the station and looked for the land agent's office, I noticed a print shop. I'm a sucker for those, even though there's only the tiniest chance I'll see an interesting print. Holding my bag firmly between my feet, I flicked through the bins of prints. It was still early, and I was the only customer. They actually had a Burne-Jones print. Maybe Hurstville isn't so average after all, I thought.
"Can I help you, madam?" the chubby young man asked. "Are you looking for something in particular?"
"Yes, I'm looking for a name," I told him, thinking aloud.
"Name?" he repeated, puzzled. "You mean a big-name artist?"
"And I've got it!" I said, pulling out the Burne-Jones print: The Beguiling of Merlin. "That's me," I said, pointing at the sorceress.
The man looked at me, then at the print, then back at me.
"Yeah," he said. "Definitely a similarity there - except you don't have snakes in your hair."
He smiled at me. He had nice eyes.
"I only wear those at the weekend," I explained. "I'll buy it. Just what I need for my new home."
"Would you like it framed?"
"I can't wait."
"We can do it in an hour," he begged. "Hundred bucks, all up, in a plain wooden frame."
He'd judged me well: most of the frames in the shop were ugly aluminium, or so elaborate that they upstaged the prints.
"Done," I said, remembering to be different from what I was before. I was being decisive.
"What name?"
"Nimue," I told him. Decisively.
She was Merlin's apprentice. He fell in love with her, but she was bored by him. When he pestered her, she used one of his own spells against him to lock him forever inside a hawthorn tree (or an oak tree, or a tower, or a castle of air - whichever version you prefer to believe). In the painting, she was beginning this spell-weaving.
"Unusual name," he commented. "You're not Italian, are you?" He probably was.
"No, French," I lied. "From Brittany. It's N-I-M-U-E."
"Is that Mrs or..." He glanced at my ringless fingers.
"Just Nimue," I said enigmatically. "I'm sure I'll be your only customer of that name today."
Feeling pleased with my decisiveness, I continued down the street to the land agent, silently pronouncing my new name.
My father was Italian, but you'd never guess, to look at him. When he arrived in Australia in 1950, he encountered a lot of anti-Italian prejudice. It annoyed him intensely to be lumped with the southern Italians he despises, so he dropped the "i" from the end of his name, made out he was Swiss, and married a true-blue Aussie woman. I and my brother were forbidden to ever learn Italian. And we know almost nothing of my father's family. He doesn't like to talk about them: most of them were killed in the war. I complained to him about this once. I said I felt I was missing out on something. "Forget the past," he said. "The future's all that counts."
Walking into Hurstville Real Estate, I finally agreed with him.
Annette was one of those surprising people whose voice doesn't match their body. She'd sounded like a timid mousy type on the phone - a bit like me. But she was enormous and square-built, more like a furniture van than a woman. She was on the phone when I came in. She looked right through me, not noticing I was there: even in the pink tracksuit. After I'd stood there for five minutes, and she'd spoken to a man who came in after me, I shuffled around and coughed, and she finally noticed me.
She was far too busy to show me the houses, she said, as she picked up the phone again, but she gave me three addresses and invited me to visit them, and if I liked one, to come back and let her know. She handed me a photocopied map of Hurstville, and left me to it.
Hurstville looks shabby in a special Sydney kind of way. Long dusty streets, lined with pale dried-out trees. Prim little houses from the 1920s, all liver-coloured brick, small windows, and cosy porches: the sort of houses that girls always drew in my art classes till I told them to actually look at a house. "That's not a drawing," I'd tell them. "That's a symbol."
Of course, all that's in the past now. I wonder if I'll miss those kids. Probably not: I always got the worst-behaved classes. "You handle them so well," the department head used to tell me. What he meant was that I given up complaining about them. A lot of the no-hopers were really quite good at art. I praised them to the skies, exaggerated their talents, and they'd all but eat from my hand. It was easy, if dishonest.
The first and cheapest of the three houses was next door to a factory, in a grimy urban streetscape without a tree in sight. Forget that, I thought.
The second house was impossibly neat: the lawn was cleaner than most people's floors. Forget that too: I can't stand tidiness. I prefer a touch of mystery.
The third house was in a long street that seemed to stretch to the horizon. It was hot already, and I wasn't used to so much walking, specially in these shoes. I wore them yesterday because they were my only high-heeled ones. My idea was to fool people like the man who sold me the bus ticket. If the police asked him "What did this so-called Mrs Jones look like?" he'd answer "Average height."
The trouble is, I never wear these shoes; they pinch my feet. As I trudged past number 49 Boongarre Street I realized I was about to get a blister - and I was heading for number 87. The houses were small, but they sported pretentious brass nameplates. I walked past Victorioso, Sebastopol, Wahgunyah, Nameste, Alfiona, and Dunromin. Hardly a soul was around: the odd car or truck went past, but nobody was on foot, or in their front garden. Most of the traffic was overhead: planes zoomed over me, so low on their approach to the airport that I felt I could reach up and touch them.
As I approached number 87 I began to feel hopeful. This end of the street was greener and more unkempt. 87 itself was slowly being strangled by ivy, which had engulfed the bottom half of the house, and was making a tentative bid for the entire front porch. Only a tiny corner of the brass nameplate was visible, displaying its final letter: E. The front lawn was heavily overgrown: it looked as if it had been empty for a long time. I opened the peeling wooden gate: it squeaked madly.
"Shush," I told it, feeling confident. "Don't wake the ghosts." Having a name made all the difference. I was Nimue; I'd outwitted the famous Merlin.
I couldn't see inside the front windows, as the house was too high above the road, so I pushed my way through bushes and went around the back. A big walnut tree, just starting to grow its leaves, filled most of the back yard - which was surrounded on three sides by high wooden fences and a shabby old garage. Privacy and shade, I thought.
Pressing my face to a dusty window, I saw some laundry tubs and a lot of tiled floor. In a more distant room a phone started ringing. This excited me greatly: it would be a nuisance to have no phone, and I obviously couldn't get one in my old name. I might be able to keep this one on.
Ignoring my protesting feet, I rushed back to the land agents in case somebody had beaten me to it.
Annette again failed to notice me for five or ten minutes, during which time two other people came in and paid their rent.
"But you haven't even been inside it?" she said, when I told her I wanted that house. "This is very unusual? You have references, I hope?"
"No," I said. She seemed quite pleasant, so I levelled with her. "I've left my husband," I said. "We've owned a house for years, so I don't have references."
"I know what it's like, dear, but the landlord is insisting on references? You never know when people will skip out, not paying the rent? Even the most respectable people? I'm not talking about you, dear, but for example if your husband decided to take you back?"
I had a thought. "What if I pay the rent well in advance? Say six months, even a year? Then the landlord won't have to worry."
She looked at me, a little suspicious.
"I have cash," I admitted. "A substantial settlement."
"That could be possible? I'll ask the manager?"
Annette disappeared into the back somewhere, and I silently tried out my new name. At last she came back, all smiles.
"We can't contact the owners, because they've gone away, but Mr Buttery says as long as you keep the rent paid at least three months in advance, we'll waive the references? I'm sure you'll be fine, dear?"
I hope I will, I thought.
The rent was $200 a week, so I peeled off a year's worth, halving the size of my money-brick. The rest should last me a year, if I'm careful.
"This is very unorthodox?" Annette boggled, as I put down the hundred and fourth $100 note.
"I'm an unorthodox person," I admitted.
She handed me back four notes. "We can't accept more than ten thousand in cash? Or we have to tell the government - and we don't like that."
Then she studied the form I'd been filling in.
"That's an unusual name?" she commented. "Is it French? How do you say it?"
"Nim-OO-ay."
"You haven't put the surname?" she accused.
"I don't have a sir name," I informed her. "I'm up to here with patriarchy."
"What about your maiden name?"
"I'm no longer a maiden, alas," I clowned. "Besides, that would be my father's name."
"Bloody feminists," she muttered to herself, writing something on the form. She noticed me trying to read it, upside down.
"Jones?" she said. "That's what we always put, for women like you: Smith is too obvious?"
Women like me? I thought. How dare she: I'm unique.
"You could leave it blank," I suggested.
"No, the OSS won't accept that?"
"What?" I croaked. "What have they got to do with it?"
"Always pestering us for details of people who've signed leases. Bloody government, being nosy?"
"I don't intend applying for any benefits," I said, scared. "Surely they won't be interested in me."
"We have to fax them copies of all the leases we do?"
"But why? Can't you sort of...lose this one?"
She shook her head sternly, and handed me the key.
"They call it the 'information society,'" she called, as I left. "Haven't you heard?"

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