The Other Side of the World by Stephanie Bishop

can’t recall the geography of her new house. When she thinks of the new bathroom she sees the bathroom of the cottage. When she imagines the living room she sees the living room of the cottage. These days she dreams of England more than she dreams of her dead father. A heart attack, seventeen years ago. There was a time when she spoke to him in her dreams. Long midnight conversations, so clear that she was sad to wake and realize they had not been true, real. Now he is reduced to myth. A man who lived and died a long time ago. She remembers his face, the side of his face, the stubble on the side of his face when he bent to kiss her cheek. She remembers his voice, how he said her name; how he looked when he was tired. Hisslow-booted footsteps on the wooden floor. But there is little else that comes to mind. The memory of him, so diminished. Now she waits for the memories of England to fade in the same way.
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    In the morning she opens the flyscreen door, stands on the ­veranda, and calls out. The feeling of the dream is still with her. She sees Henry moving amid the trees. She wants to be rid of the dream, she thinks, watching as Henry and the leaves shift in different directions. Green, white, white-green. Wind fluttering the leaves. The birds wake him at daybreak and so he goes out to the garden. She can see his bright shirt moving behind the branches, his arms deep in the foliage, checking for signs of disease, for leaf curl and black spot. Perhaps he didn’t hear her. She calls again, her voice carrying. Henry, He-nry. There is always the new hope of morning. Today she has made him eggs for breakfast. Eggs and fried bread. She wants, like him, to believe that her homesickness will pass. It is such a strange feeling. She does not feel sad so much as unearthed, unreal. Unexistent. But there is always more hope in the morning. The hope of change and betterment. Of something new. By evening she’ll have given up and will want to go back, will do anything to go back. For a moment, she thinks she catches the sound of a blackbird. The call is soft, scarcely ­audible through the din of cicadas. It is easier when Henry is here, she thinks. It is easier when he is near her. As if his continuing presence were proof of her own. A stronger gust of wind lifts her skirt and the bird stops. The air is cool, from elsewhere, the clouds higher up in the sky today. They must call this autumn, she thinks. The morning smells of damp eucalyptus and fresh-mown grass. “Coming,” Henry calls.

L ater that day she does as Henry suggests and takes the girls to the local playgroup by the river.
    â€œCome on, darling, go play with the other children,” Charlotte says to Lucie. The child shakes her head and stares, clinging to her mother’s leg. There is a piano at the far end of the hall, a fat woman sitting at it, belting out tunes: “Baa Baa Black Sheep,” “Ring a Ring o’ Roses,” “Incy Wincy Spider.” The children are meant to join in and sing along, but nobody pays the music any attention and it becomes just another booming, clanking noise in the general cacophony of boys making engine sounds or banging drums made from old biscuit tins and babies crying and small girls whining for their mothers, who now sit in three neat lines along the edge of the hall, sipping scalding tea from tiny china cups and shuffling uncomfortably on the small wooden school chairs. Some talk over the noise.
    â€œAnd which is yours?”
    â€œHow many did you say?”
    â€œLovely weather,” says the woman beside Charlotte. But for the most part the women do not look at each other. They watch their children, and every now and then cast a nervous glance at an adult face, smile quickly, then look away. They are all unused to the company of grown-ups. They spend their days talking to small children in the strange language that small children understand. Charlotte remembers how, after Lucie was