About a Girl (15 page)

Epilogue

I
WRITE ABOUT
my life, not because I think it is important, but because there are images I can't forget. I remembered what Flynn said about how she wrote a song – how she started with an image that kept returning to her, and saw where it led. And so I began with the night when I went to the gig and felt the music she made – and my heart opened up. And now I have something that resembles some sort of story, although perhaps it is only about a girl.

I will confess now that before I decided to leave Lismore I had gone looking for Flynn.

But she had already gone. Hannah opened the door and said peremptorily, ‘She doesn't live here anymore.'

I thought quickly, and said that I'd like to go to her room; there was something I'd left behind.

Hannah watched me from the doorway of Flynn's room for a moment, then turned on her heel and left.

And I stood there wondering what it was I'd hoped to find – an answer to my misery, perhaps, a scrap of my broken heart, or some other indefinable thing that might help it all make sense. The room had the forlorn look of the hastily abandoned. A few confetti-like scraps of paper and balls of fluff lay sadly on the carpet. There was a wilted flower in a vase on the windowsill.

So this was it. I guessed that she'd gone to live with her parents again, but I wouldn't search for her there. Leaning my hands on the sill, I stared out over the roof.

And there was the teapot, Lavinia, in all her maiden-aunt glory. Impulsively, I clambered out of the window and scooped the teapot up, tipping out the contents before hiding it away in my shoulder bag.

And I left, climbing back through the window quickly, across the floor of the room that was no longer Flynn's, and out through the flat.

‘Close the door after you,' called Hannah sardonically, from the kitchen.

Leaving it flagrantly open, I skipped down the purple stairs and away.

About the Author

J
OANNE HORNIMAN
is the author of numerous novels, including the award-winning
Mahalia
and
Secret Scribbled Notebooks.
She is the mother of two grown-up sons, and lives outside Lismore with her partner Tony, various chooks and ducks, and a grey cat named Tom.