Dear Diary,

Hello, do you remember me? My name is Nora Fawn.

You were given to me when I was a twenty-six-year-old mum of

four-year-old Joy and a brand new baby called Hope. You might not recognise me nowadays. I looked much prettier then. Ageing makes us all look like we’ve melted.

I was married in those days too. To Leonard. We lived in the burbs, in a solid brick house with a bindi-pocked lawn that was more stimulating to walk on than the suburb was to live in. I secretly wanted to be an artist.

I found an injured bird on that lawn once. I used to love finding injured birds. I liked talking to them and singing to them and protecting them until they healed. Well, usually the birds healed. But that bird I found on the lawn didn’t. Leonard threw it out with our dinner scraps when I fell asleep reading to our Joy. The next morning he told me he’d thrown the bird out after it died. But I knew that wasn’t true. I remembered I’d heard it calling when I

woke in the night. It must have been calling from inside the bin. I still feel bad that I ignored it, but in my defence, in my half-awake daze, I thought the chirping was Leonard trying to seduce me…

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