Truly Madly Guilty

What photo? She'd forgotten to include the photo. But then as Clementine shook the envelope a tiny square floated towards the ground and she caught it.

It was a black and white photo of herself and Erika and Sylvia on a rollercoaster at Luna Park, caught at the moment they plunged over its highest precipice. Clementine remembered how staggered she'd been when Erika's mother had pulled them out of school that day. (How did she do it? Some story she invented. Sylvia could get away with anything.) Clementine had been drunk with happiness. It was outrageous! It was living!

She remembered how Erika had been as excited as her, what fun they'd all had, until towards the end of the day when Erika's mood inexplicably changed. On the way home she got herself all worked up about a missing library book. 'I know exactly where it is,' Sylvia kept saying, and Erika said, 'You do not, you do not.' Clementine, in he

r innocence, wondered why it was such a big deal. The library book would turn up, surely. After all, Sylvia never threw anything out. Stop spoiling it, Erika, she'd thought resentfully.

Clementine could relish the anarchy of that day because she was going home to order and cleanliness, to spaghetti bolognese and school bags packed the night before.

She looked closely at the photo, studying Erika's face: the pure, almost sensual abandonment with which she'd thrown back her head, laughing, screaming, her eyes closed. There was a secret wildness to Erika. It came out so rarely. She kept it under wraps. Maybe Oliver got to see it. It was like that dry, subversive sense of humour that occasionally slipped out almost by mistake. As Clementine walked back inside studying the photo, she wondered what sort of person Erika could have been, would have been, should have been, if she'd been given the privilege of an ordinary home. You could jump so much higher when you had somewhere safe to fall.

'What's that? What are you looking at?' asked Holly as Clementine walked in the door.

Clementine held the photo up high, away from snatching tiny fingers.

'Nothing,' she said.

She looked again at the letter and saw that Erika had scrawled something in the bottom corner: PS. Just heard the news. Well done, Dummkopf. Knew you would.

'Is it something "precious"?' Holly used her fingers to give emphasis. 'Precious' was the word of the moment.

'Yes,' said Clementine. She looked at the tiny photo again. She'd have to keep it somewhere safe. It would be so easy to lose. 'It's something precious.'