Hold On to Me by Victoria Purman Page B

to her: what kind of life had she had that a banana seemed precious?
    School had been the only place Stella could escape. But it became a jail of sorts too. At ten, she was already aware that she was different, that other people didn’t live like she did. She got a bit obsessed with the prettiest girl in her class, and not because she was pretty, but because she had the best clothes and a seemingly endless array of shoes. Stella only had two pairs: Dunlop volleys bought from the local discount department store and a cheap pair of hard plastic thongs. That was it. No pretty party shoes or sandals for summer. She wore T-shirts that got shorter the taller she grew. They weren’t even hand-me-downs because there was no one to inherit them from. It was school and home in her raggedy clothes and that was it.
    The words of that prettiest girl still haunted her. ‘You wear those shoes every day. Don’t you have any other ones?’
    That had been her life.
    When her father was sent to jail, a spotlight was finally shone on the chaos at home. When her mother, consumed with addiction and grief and chaos and her own demons, tried to kill herself with an overdose of paracetamol (it was cheap and readily available), Stella was removed from her care.
    Stella didn’t even see her mother in hospital. She was picked up from school by a social worker and delivered into the temporary care of a foster family. They were kind. Old and slightly religious, but Stella didn’t mind that. She had a bed with fresh sheets and their house was clean and tidy and she re-imagined the experience for herself as a little holiday. And although this was temporary—her father was in jail and her mother was god knew where—she quickly felt herself relax. She never went back to that school and never saw the prettiest girl in her class ever again.
    Social services cast a wide net and it only took two weeks for them to find her mother’s aunt, Karen. She’d been living in a caravan in Queensland, and as soon as she heard about Stella, she hitched it to her car and drove all the way down to Adelaide, swooping in, picking her up, and creating a new life for both of them in Middle Point.
    Auntie Karen was wonderful and alternative but knew the importance of rules to a child who’d had none, and with that kind of care Stella thrived. She pretended her parents were dead and started again. She went to the local primary school and had a perfect attendance record. Karen bought her new clothes, new to Stella anyway, and she thought she’d died and gone to heaven when her auntie took her to the shoe shop—the shoe shop!—to buy a new pair of runners. Stella couldn’t get over how white the laces were, or how springy the sneakers felt to walk in: like stepping on clouds.
    Just one simple pair of shoes. One simple pair of shoes that looked like every other kid’s shoes.
    Auntie Karen loved her; Stella never doubted it. From the first time they met, when the older woman with the long grey plait halfway down her back held her and whispered, ‘You’re going to live with me now, sweetheart,’ Stella knew she would be safe. Karen smelt like cigarettes. She was soft and a little cuddly and wore kaftans and very sensible sandals. She’d embraced the 1970s and had never really let go. She’d never married, didn’t have any children and hated animals. Living with Karen, even though it was in the caravan park, was like exhaling after ten years of holding her breath. Finally, Stella had a place to call home.
    Years later, she was told that her mother hadn’t ever wanted to take her back, even when she had recovered from her suicide attempt. The last information Stella had from her social workers was that her mother had gone to Darwin and had married someone else. Stella’s father was killed over a drug debt a few years after getting out of jail. When Stella found out, she couldn’t make