One Long Thread Read Online Free Page B

even look like anything I’ve seen before.’
    But that was precisely the point.
    By the time I had my first visit with Mum and Sally I had almost convinced myself that my fantasy was true. When I discovered the kinds of wedding dresses Mum made – and for what purpose – I wanted to catch the first plane back home to Melbourne. Every bride in the Aberdeen wore the same style; white A-line dress; neck-to-floor.
    Sally told me not to be so melodramatic. ‘Get a life and grow up, kid.’
    It seemed like a decade since we’d turned thirteen. Together in Melbourne with a complete family. Twins with dreams. A silk moth with two wings.
    The Sunday before I flew back home we went to an Aberdeen wedding. Mum said she didn’t understand everything about this new religion yet but she wanted to. She said she’d discovered what it meant to be happy, since coming there. That, for the first time in her life, she thought she might actually have found the place she belonged. I was happy for her.
    It helped that the Aberdeen pastor, Brother Daniel, said, ‘Girls, God has blessed us by sending us your mother. One door closes and a better one opens. We think of her as one of the family already.’
    I found him slightly creepy with his oversized smile and too perfect teeth. In fact, I found the whole thing was all a bit much and I was glad when the bride walked out of the church into the Darwin heat. No matter it was over 39 degrees and 80 per cent humidity, that bride wore long sleeves and her long hair flowing over her shoulders. Her dress was ruined with two wet patches under her armpits but I seemed to be the only one who noticed. Mum had tears in her eyes. Sally smiled, vacantly, like she was wearing a mask. In that moment I missed Dad so much it hurt.
    Mum’s house was a small fibro box. The tiny kitchen took up one corner of the main living area. There were two bedrooms and a small enclosed room downstairs which was Mum’s sewing room.
    On my visits I slept in the sewing room, looking up at dresses and pieces of dresses draped on hangers from the roof all around the room. The heat was like a parasite eating me alive and at nights I could hardly sleep. I’d lie on top of a thin cotton sheet in my underwear, arms and legs spread so that no part of my skin touched. I’d splay my toes and my fingers and wait for the oscillating fan to complete its rotation and blow cool air across my body.
    The walls were made of besser blocks slapped over with white paint, the concrete floor was white. God knows why. Two days into my first visit I wanted to tear the dresses from their hangers and throw coloured paint bombs around the room. Too much white can give a girl a headache.
    At first, when the separation was new, I flew to Darwin every school holidays. Dad always had to pay because Mum insisted she couldn’t afford it. Dad paid without complaint and I think it was his way of taking responsibility for the separation. But after those first few years my visits went from every holiday to once a year. Just six weeks over Christmas when Dad would fly to Phuket or Paris or Bali for a well-deserved holiday of his own.

7.
    I hold Dad, and his wall-to-wall collection of black and white musicals, responsible for my fascination with clothes. While we were companions, together, on the couch with bowls of popcorn and cold lemonade, he hummed happy and familiar tunes enjoying the grandeur and music, and I fell in love, slowly and deeply, with fashion. We spent many a Sunday afternoon or Friday night in the company of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, Judy Garland and Lauren Bacall.
    There is something about movies made before the Technicolor era that enhance the fashion. Without colour the fabrics become more alive through their subtleties, their movements and textures, the way they hug and cling and flute around the female form. They are made more sensual with their feathers and sequins, small pillbox hats