Chunjuan holds out her hand and I take it. Her face is unmovable, her hand firm and strong.
We march off into the park, followed by Albert and Nelson. I look behind and realise that it’s just us; by some prior arrangement or discussion Stephen and Mum are waiting with the cars. We walk along a green corridor and into a piece of nothing bush, the most desolate place you’ve ever seen.
A police officer shows us a barely-there track, and we shuffle through waist-high grass until we’re in a clearing of sorts.
My legs don’t want to move, but I drag each foot forwards.
‘I’ll show you what to do, it’s not difficult,’ reassures Chunjuan as we reach the edge of a taped-off area.
My head spins, everything goes black for the longest blink of an eye, there are stars, and then the clouds and the swaying grass right themselves.
This is where Yin’s body was found.
I take a deep breath, look down at the clods of dirt and tell myself I have to do this. I try not to think too much about Yin lying on this cold, sodden ground. When I posed for Chloe I think I was trying to understand what it might have felt like.
Together Chunjuan, Albert, Nelson and I unpack the plastic bags.
Chunjuan lights a small fire in an old cooking oil tin with the top cut off. She shows me how to fold up sheets of red-and-gold paper and we start burning them.
Albert and Nelson, solemn as priests, lay out paper plates with a pile of mandarins and a packet of biscuits. I wonder how much they understand about what happened to Yin.
We light thick sticks of incense and then push the ends deep into the dirt where they stand up like miniature trees.
Chunjuan, Albert and Nelson kneel on the earth, press their hands together, bow their heads. I get down and copy them.
Smoke spirals, minuscule pieces of black ash fly about, sticking to my face. My knees are damp almost immediately, my fingertips are hot from burning the paper. Wind shushes through the grass, rippling across us.
A thin animal sound comes from Chunjuan, the barest trickle. She cries softly. She cries louder.
And then the wailing starts.
Chunjuan wails like an animal in pain, a baby keening in a cot, like someone facing a black, dark void.
Her face is a tortured mask. I’ve never seen anyone in so much pain, and still she wails.
Albert and Nelson shift next to me.
I look down and they’re holding hands. Their faces crumple, they stare at their mum and they look so confused and scared.
Chunjuan needs me. She wanted me here and she trusts me to know the right thing to do.
I help Albert and Nelson to their feet, brush them down and take their hands, one twin on each side, and we retreat to a safe distance and we wait and we wait and we wait. I gather them close around me, being the safe grownup for them, their arms circling my waist and my hands stroking their baby-fine hair.
Back in the car, I shake my head when Mum asks if I want to talk about it.
Stephen practically lifts Chunjuan into the passenger seat. Albert and Nelson seem to be doing better.
I’m chilled to the bone. Numb. I watch the boring grey nothingness of the suburbs race by and think about how Yin’s story ended in the most depressing place ever.
Mum gets us takeaway tacos and the sweet tang of cola rushes through my body.
When we’re getting close to home I finally reply to Chloe’s message.
I write more than I usually do. I say thank you for thinking of me and sorry it took me so long to reply and how shit and strange my day was. I ask her if she’s coming to the memorial service and tell her that I’m not sure if I will be able to get any words out. I say sorry for fighting with her the other day and say I wasn’t myself.
I write so much in this one text I don’t know who I am anymore and for sure she’s going to wonder too.
DAY 68
My hands shake with nerves, but I let the edge of the scalpel bite into the paper and then drag it downwards. Angling the blade this way and that, I carefully cut Natalia’s body out of Someone’s Watching. It’s painstaking work, trying to get close to every line and detail. A few times I flinch, thinking I’ve cut off her finger or a curl of hair, but my blade stays true.
I’ve taken over the entire lounge room floor.
I lift paper Natalia out of the scene, exhaling with relief, and lay her down on a fresh canvas prepped with white gesso. An old nail-polish brush is exactly the right size to carefully apply glue to her back and stick her down in her new home.
I turn over the original photo and paste white construction paper over the hole. I pick off half of my collaged frame, leaving the remnants to speak louder.
After that awful conversation in Ms Nouri’s office I thought I would give up art for good. But then Yin’s body was found and it was like the earth fell out from under everyone. Death is the worst kind of silence, and I don’t want to be silent.
I can’t explain it, but my gut tells me this is the right thing to do.
The result is two companion artworks with identical dimensions.
One an empty room with a white silhouette of a missing person at the centre. The other a large white expanse interrupted only by the black-and-white image of a floating girl.
As if she knows I was thinking about her, my phone vibrates, and it’s Natalia. She only messaged me back yesterday, after a week’s silence, so I wasn’t expecting a call this soon. I turn down my music before
