PART ONE

Dreams give substance to our instinct that there are worlds beyond our world.

Michael Page and Robert Ingpen,
The Encyclopaedia of Things that Never Were

Pimlico, London, United Kingdom, June 1997

Lady Stanhope’s lips were pinched tightly together when Rachel spooned a large tablespoon of parmesan cheese on top of her pasta. As she set the bowl back down on the table, the old lady winced. ‘Careful,’ she cautioned. ‘Those plates are fine bone china, and rather delicate.’

‘They are very pretty,’ Rachel said in return.

When she went to serve Lady Stanhope’s husband, Sir George, he told her only a small amount of parmesan was needed.

The mostly silent meal was broken by Lady Stanhope mentioning she had received a call from a woman named Eliza.

‘Oh, she’s from the employment agency,’ Rachel responded.

‘Ghastly accent,’ Lady Stanhope declared.

Immediately after the meal was finished Rachel cleared the table, placed the plates and cutlery on a trolley, then wheeled the items back to the kitchen.

Sir George followed moments later. As she stacked the dishwasher, he slipped a little chocolate wrapped in fluorescent green paper onto a side bench. ‘You might want one of these,’ he said in a voice low enough not to be audible from another room.

Rachel smiled. ‘Thanks,’ she said with more enthusiasm than was necessary.

Soon after she had moved in with the Stanhopes, Sir George had noticed her reading T.S. Eliot’s ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’. She had taken the paperback from his library and was curled up on a sofa in the drawing room when he walked in on her. She knew she should have asked if she could borrow it. Far from making her feel guilty for helping herself to his collection, Sir George told Rachel he was delighted she was a fan of Mr Eliot. The kind words prompted her to tell Sir George she identified with Mr Prufrock’s confusion and feelings of isolation. It wasn’t the sort of thing she normally told people. But Sir George appeared to understand her perfectly when he simply replied, ‘Me too.’

Rachel was about to ask the old man if he wanted a cup of tea, when he pointed out her feet were bare. ‘Tell me, were you encouraged as a child not to wear shoes inside?’

Her cheeks felt hot. It had never occurred to her that bare feet in the presence of others might be considered vulgar. ‘I don’t remember being encouraged not to,’ she stuttered. ‘It’s just that in the summer, it’s too hot to wear shoes in Australia. Of course we wear thongs when we go outside; otherwise the soles of your feet would get scorched by the concrete or shredded by the bindies …’ She realised her faux pas. ‘I meant to say “flip-flops”, not “thongs”.’

Sir George didn’t so much as raise an eyebrow. ‘Come with me.’

Rachel followed him up a set of stairs covered with pale green carpet. Struggling to keep his walking stick upright, he took hold of a wooden banister as he climbed. He wheezed as they reached the next floor. His lungs had been failing him for some time now, he apologised. ‘Even so, one must push on,’ he added between deep breaths.

On the third floor of the five-storey terrace, a grandfather clock stood tall as an old aristocrat. Sir George smiled as he shuffled towards it. ‘Now, Rachel, I will show you where the key is kept so you can do this by yourself next week,’ he told her, patting the side of the clock in the same manner one would a dear old friend.

The key was kept on top of a bookcase, inside a blue-and-white porcelain bowl adorned with ancient Chinese figurines. Sir George opened the case of the clock and fumbled with the key. ‘I want others to know how to wind this clock so that when I’m no longer here it will keep on ticking,’ he said with a chuckle. He looked into Rachel’s eyes to check if she was listening.

In keeping with his instructions, she held each of the weights of the clock still while he placed the key in one of three small holes on the face. As he turned the key in each hole, one of the weights rose. When all three reached the highest point in the cabinet, the task was complete.

Now that he no longer needed to focus on the clock, Sir George had another question for Rachel. ‘Why are you in London?’

She squirmed – she couldn’t very well tell the old man there wasn’t anything keeping her in Australia. That she didn’t have a boyfriend, that she felt somewhat alienated from her family, that her career prospects weren’t exactly looking up. She found herself stammering an ambiguous explanation. ‘I wanted to know that there was a larger life than mine in Australia.’

‘Why is that?’

She took a deep breath. ‘Just bored, I guess. I finished a Bachelor of Arts degree a couple of years ago and still don’t know what I want to do with my life. I keep starting postgraduate courses that I don’t finish. Every job I’ve ever had has only been casual. And everyone I meet seems to be just as confused as I am as to what to do with their lives, so that doesn’t help me with deciding what to do with mine.’

‘But why London?’

Rachel fixed her eyes on the row of books in front of her. Stories had always appealed to her, especially ones about British people travelling through time or to faraway places. It gave them a new lease of life – a chance to be someone else without having to commit to their new identity. The one she liked most involved a man with a bowler hat who became whatever costume he tried on, each time he went into the changeroom of a magic shop. A second door in the changeroom saw him access his adventures. ‘When it was time for him to return to being himself, the shopkeeper had an uncanny ability to appear out of nowhere, and guide him back to the safety of the changeroom,’ Rachel explained.

Sir George peered at her with the eyes of a microbiologist. She wondered if he thought her childish. Then he asked her a left-field question.

‘Are you telling me you too are trying on different personas, in the hope of finding one you like?’ he asked.

He had read her like a book. One she hadn’t read herself. She lowered her gaze to the bookcase in front of her, then steered the conversation in a direction that didn’t focus so much on herself.

‘There were other stories I liked with the same sort of theme,’ she responded.

‘Like The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe?’ Sir George asked.

Rachel lifted her head as she forgot her awkwardness.

‘Yes!’ she said in a loud voice.

‘My grandmother in New Zealand has a wardrobe just like the ones those children accessed. When we were kids my sister and I used to climb in there, half-expecting to find an entrance to Narnia.’

Sir George admitted his own grandchildren had gone through his and Lady Stanhope’s wardrobe, with the same intention.

‘It made her quite cross,’ he added.

‘Women don’t like children rummaging around like that.’

Rachel now looked at him sheepishly. She wondered if the old man was telling her she and Samantha had been reckless, when they too had gone through their grandmother’s wardrobe.

So now she was seeking similar distractions in her own life, the old man suggested, in the hope that things would sort themselves out. Why did she not just get married? Why did young women these days no longer consider that to be an option? Why was it so necessary for them to be so independent?

Rachel was afraid of oversharing. To change the subject she asked Sir George about the papyrus painting hanging on a wall one floor below. It was of a woman with thick dark hair cut into a blunt fringe and a shoulder-length bob. The woman was bowing before another woman who was even more exotic: she had huge wings growing from her back and an ostrich feather on her head. On the wall behind the two ladies were symbols of birds and snakes and bowls.

‘Someone handed that painting to me in Cairo during the war,’ Sir George replied. ‘We had just returned from a battle, and I was standing in a bar when it was thrust into my hand.’

A thrill rippled through Rachel’s body. She assumed he was talking about World War II. An image of him in a bar similar to Rick’s Café Américain from the movie Casablanca came to mind. Never mind that Casablanca was in Morocco and Cairo in Egypt – as far as Rachel was concerned they were equally intriguing locations and would have had the same look and feel during the war.

Her stillness and wide-eyed stare seemed to coax the old man into revealing he had fought in a battle between the Allies and the Germans at a place called El Alamein, in north-western Egypt. Had the Allies not won the battle, all of Egypt would have opened up to the Germans, he explained.

Rachel waited for him to continue. She had studied World War II in high school, and this was her first time meeting someone who had fought in it.

Even so, the old man merely looked away for a moment, then asked Rachel to pass him his walking stick. ‘I suspect I have given you enough of a history lesson for now, but thank you for listening.’

She wanted to say she was happy to hear more, but Sir George had already turned his back on her so he could steady his hand on the banister. She was aware his energy would go into getting down the stairs, rather than saying anything more about his experiences of the war. She would just have to bring the topic up again, at a more appropriate moment.

Rachel recalled someone once asking who she would choose to have dinner with, if she could be joined by anyone in the world, alive or deceased. It would be Sir George and her father, she knew now. They would go to one of London’s finest restaurants, and the conversation would be fascinating.

‘I love clocks, especially grandfather clocks,’ she told Sir George once they were at the bottom of the stairs.

‘I do too. That one is over two hundred years old and came from the birthplace of Lady Stanhope.’

Lady Stanhope was writing a letter in the drawing room when Rachel came across her later that evening. She hesitated before entering; she only wanted to say goodnight, but Lady Stanhope was so focused on putting pen to paper, Rachel was reluctant to disturb her. She considered knocking when the old lady stiffened and looked up. ‘Oh, I did not know you were standing there,’ she said.

Rachel’s heart slumped. While she was fond of Sir George, his wife was less easy to like. No matter how hard she tried to please the old lady, she always managed to do or say the wrong thing. ‘Don’t mind me. I just wanted to tell you we’ve wound the clock and now I’m turning in for the night.’

Lady Stanhope glared at her as though she had burped without apologising. ‘Your words tumble out so fast, it’s as though you speak a different language.’ As she spoke, the old lady lowered her eyes to the left and towards the floor, a gesture she often made when offering her unasked-for opinions.

It wasn’t the end of the conversation: she also wanted to remind Rachel how to fold the bedsheets before they were placed in the washing machine. She moved her delicate, frail frame towards the laundry so she could show her what she meant. She was immaculately dressed and remarkably pretty for someone of her age, but her movements were ungracious, owing to a slight limp and painfully small steps. The sheets should not become creased during the wash, she said, making the task of ironing easier.

Rachel wasn’t the type to bother ironing sheets – or ironing anything, for that matter. It was such a tedious task. But without complaining, she folded the sheets the way Lady Stanhope wanted them, then made her way to her bedroom, which was up in the attic of the terrace.

Beside her single bed was a wooden table with a reading lamp, and Rachel’s fold-up travel alarm clock. A Marie Claire magazine had also been placed on the table; Rachel wasn’t sure if Lady Stanhope had put it there for her before she moved in, or if a former home carer had left it behind. On the other side of the table was a bed identical to Rachel’s. Both were covered with faded crimson quilts made from velvet-like fabric that had seen better days. They reminded Rachel of a picnic rug she and her sister Samantha had dragged through long yellow grass when they were children, back in the days when their dad was still alive.

The picnics didn’t happen all year round: they were mostly during spring and summer. He’d take the girls and their mum on a longish drive and sometimes for a dip in a river, mostly at reserves within an hour of their home on Sydney’s upper North Shore. The girls would clear a grassed area of its sticks and stones, then lay out the rug and dive into its centre. They would tuck into pieces of cold chicken sprinkled with salt and wrapped in tinfoil. Mum would pack little cubes of cheese to go with the chicken, along with slices of salami and hard-boiled eggs that Rachel and Samantha ate whole after scratching away at the brittle shells, piece by piece.

Nothing much was said while they ate. Conversation wasn’t necessary, not when the bush produced such a good soundtrack: from the high-pitched shrill of cicadas, to the croaking of frogs, to the far-reaching call of a currawong. The best sound of all, Rachel believed, was the crunch beneath her feet as she and Samantha ran along well-trodden trails in search of rivers and creeks – the combination of gravel and twigs and dried bits of bark.

During the summer holidays Rachel and Samantha also loved befriending gold-and-green bugs known as Christmas beetles. As lights twinkled on a pine tree inside their home, Samantha referred to the beetles outside as roaming decorations. There was something bewitching about Christmas beetles; if you held one in the palm of your hand, it would meander with slight clunky movements as though it were under a spell.

One evening Rachel and Samantha caught half a dozen of the bugs and brought them into their bedroom. For a while the insects were still. After Mum turned the light off, their wings produced a sound not unlike a rattling fan as they whirled through the hot summer air, setting off ripples of laughter.

When Rachel’s dad gave her a scarab necklace as a souvenir from one of his many work trips to the Middle East, she liked the fact that it had the same shape as a Christmas beetle. She particularly liked the heaviness of the metal against her skin. It was a few centimetres long, and on the back was a mysterious inscription in hieroglyphics.

‘According to the Ancient Egyptians, the scarab is sacred,’ her dad once told her before tucking her into bed. She had just removed the necklace and placed it on a bedside table.

‘How could a beetle be sacred?’ Rachel wanted to know.

Her dad widened his eyes in the way he did when letting her in on a magical secret. ‘It’s a symbol of immortality and resurrection, representing the cycle of death and rebirth.’

‘Immortality and resurrection,’ Rachel repeated. ‘Such big words.’ What did they mean? Wasn’t resurrection something that happened at Easter?

The answer to that question would come later, her dad responded as he turned to switch off her overhead light, lightly kissed her forehead and said goodnight.

Sixteen years later she was on the other side of the world and still wearing the scarab around her neck each day. She had just taken it off and placed it on the bedside table with the Marie Claire. The day had been long, and the sight of the shiny beetle was comforting.

Her head nestled in the centre of her pillow, Rachel slipped into a dream: one with stairs rising to three stone archways. An elderly man with a black-and-white chequered keffiyeh wrapped around his head disappeared through a middle arch. Rachel hurried after him.

Before him lay a magnificent shrine topped with a glittering golden dome. At its base was a latticework of blue, green, yellow and white ceramic tiles. Inside, rays of sunlight streamed through clear and coloured glass arches. The man knelt down, bowed his head to the floor and stretched out his arms. Rachel felt she was intruding on his personal space.

Back outside, in the blinding light of day, she stood atop one of eight sets of stairs fronting the shrine’s eight sides. As she looked up at the luminous dome, the glare forced her to shield her eyes with her right hand.

She made the mistake of stepping back and lost her balance. The sensation of tumbling while dreaming normally jolted her awake, but she remained asleep. Her body succumbed to the fall as she tossed and turned. She no longer knew which way was up or which way down. Adding to her confusion, her vision was marred by a pinkish fog and the occasional flickering of light – the kind produced by fluorescent tubes attached to the low ceilings of circa 1970s buildings.

Through the haze, Rachel again saw the old man she had followed inside the shrine. A dark moustache tinged with grey separated his prominent nose from his twitching lips, and his near-black eyes appeared to hold all the world’s troubles.

What did he want from her?

‘This is a snake pit, not a country,’ he whispered. Then he vanished.

Rachel was unaware of the exact moment her feet touched the ground. As the pinkish fog cleared, she found herself meandering among stone walls engraved with birds and people as well as symbols she didn’t recognise. The dusty streets were shrouded in a yellow-grey smog. Piles of rubble were at her feet; it looked like work had come to a halt years earlier on second-level extensions of the houses all around her. Most intriguing were stairs leading down to a pale yellow door.

What, Rachel wondered, was on the other side? And did she dare open it?

The old man had another message for her. ‘This land is surrounded by endless layers of hatred,’ he murmured. ‘No one loves anyone.’

When she woke at 6.45 a.m., the dream lingered for the few seconds her conscious mind took to overwrite the subconscious.

After reaching for her toiletry bag, Rachel went downstairs one level to her bathroom. It was flooded with light, causing her to wonder if the time was later in the morning than she thought.

When she squinted through a rectangular piece of glass above a pale pink handbasin, a small freckle-sprinkled face peered back at her. Her fine straight hair was the colour of honey and fell just below her shoulders. The expression in her blue eyes belonged to someone much younger than her 23-year-old self, she reflected.

Did her hair need washing? With just a bathtub and no shower, she didn’t shampoo it every day. This morning it looked a little limp, though, prompting her to make more of an effort. Filling the pink tub with a few inches of warm water, she slipped off her short-sleeved pyjama top, removed the polka-dot bottoms and her underwear, then placed them all on a nearby stool. She slunk into the bathwater.

A large pink plastic jug stood at the foot of the bath. She placed it under the faucet, filled it with warm water, and poured the contents over her head. She repeated the procedure several more times before shampooing her hair and washing the suds away with fresh water.

Ritual over, the water gurgled loudly as it escaped down the drain, making her wince. Lady Stanhope and Sir George were still asleep – had she woken them?

She took a big white fluffy towel from the steel rail and wrapped it around her willowy frame. After drying herself, she quickly put the pyjamas back on and headed to her room for a dressing-gown. It would not do to walk around without one: that much she did know.

Rachel proceeded through the next morning ritual, tiptoeing down more stairs to the tiny room where the ironing-board and iron were kept. Her aversion to ironing resulted in her spending no longer than a couple of minutes a time on the task – even if that meant being less organised than someone who got through a basket of crinkled clothes all at once. She untwisted the iron’s coil and smoothed the creases from a bright orange ankle-length wraparound skirt. She matched its paisley pattern with a cream t-shirt and navy shoes. All she had left to do was put on make-up and head to the Tube. For breakfast she would grab a muffin along the way.

As always, all was in order on Alderney Street. Many London streets had an identical line-up of houses, and this one featured five-storey terraces. Baskets of flowers were hanging from antique street lamps. Unlike in many other London neighbourhoods, there was no visible graffiti.

On the train bound for Paddington, the faces around Rachel were stamped with the impassivity of the typical Tube passenger. Retreating into her thoughts, she recalled a conversation with Lady Stanhope that had taken place on a Friday night.

‘What are your plans for tomorrow?’ the old lady had asked.

Rachel rarely had plans after moving in with the Stanhopes. Her peers were no longer getting in touch with her; she wasn’t exactly hip and happening, not while she was living with a well-to-do couple in their twilight years. So, in answer to Lady Stanhope’s question, Rachel advised she didn’t have any plans for the following day. ‘Why do you ask?’

The old woman misinterpreted her question for insolence. ‘We always have a plan,’ she said, casting her eyes towards the carpet, then to the left.

‘I meant, is there something you would like me to do for you tomorrow?’

The response softened the old lady’s mood, for she smiled demurely. ‘I just like to know what is going on.’

On another occasion Lady Stanhope had felt it necessary to point out that Rachel’s accent was very different to her sister’s. She hadn’t met Samantha; she had just spoken to her on the phone. Samantha worked in a London newsroom, and although she had only been in the city for a little more than a year, she already sounded more British than she did Australian.

Rachel didn’t see her sister much. Whenever they did catch up, Rachel felt she had been allocated a one-hour slot ahead of Samantha dashing off to do something else – like hang out with British friends who knew the nightclub scene well enough to get her into places normally reserved for the likes of A-grade actors and models. One time Samantha had been on her way to Oxford to take part in some sort of dragon boat race. More recently someone had invited her to Wimbledon to watch Pat Cash and Mary Pierce play in a mixed doubles match on Centre Court.

Samantha had always been good at adapting to her environment; Rachel, on the other hand, was not so transformative. When she’d first moved in with the Stanhopes, she had naively believed she could play the role of a grandchild. It was Judy, a woman from a home-share agency, who had introduced her to the couple. Back then, Lady Stanhope had told Rachel she thought she would relate well to her family. But since then, the old lady had never made her feel like family.

Was it worth it? Rachel had been living with the Stanhopes for seven weeks. Aside from taking the time to work out what she wanted from life, wasn’t the aim of coming to this part of the world to have some fun?

Her job as a secretary with a Paddington construction company assured her of 250 pounds a week, hardly enough to live independently and save to go travelling. The arrangement with the Stanhopes meant she could live rent-free in exchange for cooking meals and doing other housework. She was saving about seventy-five pounds a week: what it would cost to live in a more typical shared household.

Rachel had never put a monetary value on her freedom before. Would she buy it back right now for seventy-five pounds a week, or would she hold out for just a bit longer, in case things improved?

Her train eased through Paddington station. She got off and strode through the main dome. It was a simple pleasure. She loved the feeling of hundreds of other commuters marching alongside her – ever reliable, endless streams of people with feet beating the pulse of London. And yet despite all the commotion, the city’s main railway stations were not noisy places; maybe the sound of stomping feet was absorbed by the crisp air and the sheer height of the domes. The dome at Sydney’s central railway station, where trains bound for regional areas left from long concrete platforms, just didn’t compare.

Rachel kept on marching, past the little stands selling Paddington Bear memorabilia, out onto the streets. When she reached Queen Street she headed to her workplace, a five-storey terrace. Deciding against the rickety-rackety old lift with its dodgy cage door, she made her way up three flights of stairs to a tiny, cluttered office she shared with two others.

‘Hi, Hilary,’ she said at the doorway.

The plump middle-aged woman with short mousey-blonde hair looked up at her. ‘You seem tired, hon. Are you all right?’

Rachel pushed the strap of her handbag from her shoulder and swung the bag onto her desk. ‘Actually, I slept really well.’ She found Hilary’s concern soothing. Slumping into a chair, she quietly told her about the previous night in Pimlico. ‘I don’t think things are working out between me and Lady Stanhope.’ Once the words were uttered, she felt a strange sense of relief.

‘Let me make us both a nice cup of tea,’ Hilary said, ‘and I’ll be right back.’ Rachel sat quietly as she heard the woman’s heavy footsteps stop short at a kitchenette down the corridor. ‘You’ve come all this way to have a bit of fun,’ she told Rachel on her return. ‘Instead, you’ve got a horrible snob walking all over you and making your life miserable.’

‘It’s not that bad.’

‘Believe me, I’ve seen a change in you, since you moved in with them people. Look at how skinny you are now.’

Two years earlier, Hilary had gone through a divorce. The experience had made her strong, she told everyone, and these days she was keen to mend the lives of others.

A tall dark man from the planning division interrupted. ‘Is it possible to have these notes typed by lunchtime?’

‘Yes, of course,’ Rachel answered, outstretching her hand. After the man had left, she said, ‘Thanks for caring, Hilary.’ She no longer wanted to discuss her personal life, but she did want the well-intentioned lady to know she appreciated her kindness.

An hour later there was a call for Rachel. It was Judy from the home-share agency. ‘I’m phoning to ask how you are,’ Judy gushed. ‘Now that you have been with Sir George and Lady Stanhope for more than a month, I would like to pay you all a visit this afternoon to discuss if I can make things any easier for you.’

Rachel reluctantly agreed. It seemed her home life was becoming more like work than the temp work she was doing, now that it included scheduled meetings.

‘What was that all about?’ Hilary demanded as Rachel put the phone down. When she explained, Hilary snapped, ‘You make sure they don’t walk all over you. It sounds like slave labour to me! Fancy doing all that cooking and cleaning up and not getting paid.’

‘I’m saving a small fortune in rent.’

‘I bet you are,’ Hilary said, rolling her eyes.

Returning to Alderney Street after work, Rachel found Judy in the living room with the Stanhopes. ‘Come in and join us,’ Judy called out. She was good at feigning cheerfulness. But Rachel was not in the mood for polite chitchat.

The living room was rich in pale pinks and greens, from the floral fabric of the sofa and armchairs to the pattern on a rug that partly covered the floorboards. On top of a petite teak table was a decanter of port and four little crystal glasses.

‘Would you like a glass, Rachel?’ Judy asked. She was terribly forward, considering it wasn’t her home. ‘Don’t mind me, I’m just playing host.’

Sir George smiled at Rachel. Lady Stanhope looked at her briefly, then turned her gaze to Judy.

‘So, how is Rachel fitting in?’ Judy enquired.

It was slightly patronising, Rachel thought, talking about her as though she wasn’t there. ‘I’m fine,’ she answered for herself.

Lady Stanhope didn’t agree. ‘She has a rather imaginative approach to cooking.’

Judy chimed in with the practicality of a diet maid assigned to the geriatric ward of a private hospital. ‘We have spoken before about her going to too much trouble, when all you require is soup, followed by pâté and plain biscuits and a small salad. Is that right?’

‘Yes, but Rachel continues to cook huge amounts of food,’ Lady Stanhope responded. ‘It’s wasteful. One evening she suggested we eat what was left over from the night before. That really isn’t good enough, as far as we are concerned.’

Rachel had her own thoughts on the matter, and finally expressed them. ‘I’m sorry, but I need to eat more than soup and biscuits for dinner.’

‘Perhaps you could prepare Lady Stanhope and Sir George one meal and for yourself, another,’ Judy suggested. ‘And eat separately from them.’

It was the ‘and eat separately from them’ that disturbed Rachel.

‘If she were a grandchild I could say to her, “Don’t eat that way”, but she’s not a child, so I can’t say that,’ Lady Stanhope complained wearily.

The words hit Rachel in the chest. She was tempted to ask how exactly her table manners were offensive. Did she hold her knife and fork incorrectly?

It had been nice at first, sitting at a table with others for an evening meal. That was what close-knit families did. But Lady Stanhope was not only making it clear Rachel was not part of the Stanhope family – it was obvious she didn’t want her around at all.

Sir George sat in silence. He didn’t dare disagree with his wife.

‘I think it would be too much work to cook a meal for Lady Stanhope and Sir George,’ said Rachel, ‘and then a separate meal for myself.’

Lady Stanhope said, ‘I think there is a communication problem. Rachel has rather a strong accent. She doesn’t speak like the Australians we know.’

In an earlier conversation, shortly after Rachel had arrived in Pimlico, Lady Stanhope had mentioned she and Sir George had visited various friends in Australia. These friends lived in Sydney’s affluent eastern suburbs, in places like Rose Bay, Double Bay and Vaucluse: not the sort of neighbourhoods Rachel ever had a reason to visit.

By now she was close to tears. She hadn’t realised just how much Lady Stanhope disliked her. She didn’t consider herself to have an overly Strine accent; in fact, most people told her it was a soft accent. But why, she asked herself, did she care? She was who she was. Lady Stanhope had no right trying to change that.

The old lady continued. ‘I’ve told her several times to stack the dinner plates on the right-hand side of the dishwasher and the bowls on the left, but she keeps putting dishes wherever she likes. She once told me that her mother didn’t like her cooking in her kitchen back home. Well, I don’t think I like anyone in my kitchen either.’

Suddenly, Judy announced she had an appointment at another household. It had been lovely catching up with everyone but would perhaps be best if she could have a think about the issues raised, then come back in a couple of days with a solution.

Lingering at the door, Judy gave Rachel a discreet gesture to let her know she wanted a quiet word. ‘Can you please give me a call tomorrow?’ she whispered once Rachel was outside. There was genuine concern in her eyes. Rachel nodded.

Once Judy was gone, Rachel went to the kitchen. She took out a tin of soup and emptied its contents into a saucepan. There were dishes that needed washing, so she took a small bottle of dishwashing liquid from a cupboard below the sink. At least she remembered the dishwashing liquid was to be returned to the cupboard and not to be left on the windowsill – that was in poor taste, Lady Stanhope had told her, because it advertised what liquid they used to passers-by. As if anyone would take the time to crouch down and peek into the window from street level, Rachel thought bitterly.

As steam rose from the sink, tears welled up in her eyes. She wanted to allow them to flow down her cheeks but sensed Lady Stanhope was right behind her.

‘I see you have opened the chicken soup for tonight. We actually had chicken for lunch, so not a good choice, but I suppose we can eat it.’ Her tone was gentle; perhaps she realised she had spoken too harshly before. In any case, Rachel was relieved they were still speaking to each other.

That night she locked her bedroom door. She didn’t believe she would be harmed during the night, but she didn’t feel comfortable either. There was one thing she was sure of: she had to leave.

She grimaced at the thought of returning to a backpacker’s hostel she knew of. It was either that or impose on Samantha. The thought of her sister hesitating before she agreed to let her stay didn’t exactly fill her with confidence. Rachel put the possibility aside.

It hadn’t always been like this. When they were very young they spent hours and hours together, particularly in their back garden, in a treehouse their father had built. Samantha would read every book they owned between them, over and over. And when she was done, she and Rachel took turns making up their own tales, usually about their neighbours, which they wrote down in a red diary. At other times they performed mock weddings involving their pet rabbit and the neighbour’s cat being wheeled up a path in a doll’s pram.

Rachel’s happiest memories were of running through the Nicholson Museum at the University of Sydney with Samantha during their school holidays. Their dad had been a professor of archaeology and ancient history at the university; his speciality was in late antique Egypt.

The Nicholson Museum had the biggest collection of antiquities in the southern hemisphere, Dr Mahoney let his daughters know. The first time they saw mummies, he remarked, ‘It’s always fabulous to meet an ancient Egyptian, even if it’s in bits and pieces.’ Rachel and Samantha stared hard at the bodies wrapped in bandages that had yellowed over time. They knew the mummies were precious; they were kept inside glass boxes no one could get to. At the same time they were so hideous, it was hard not to giggle at the sight of them.

On more glass shelves inside more glass boxes, there were statues of little people with sombre faces, and pretty clay pots and vases. On the walls were framed pictures of Egyptians who appeared to have descended from royalty. Many of them had something wrapped around their head and shoulders. Was it hair, or was it fabric? Surely their hair could not have been so thick and dark.

Outside the museum, the sisters charged across neatly cut grass inside the university’s main quadrangle. The quad design was based on those of Oxford and Cambridge in England, their dad advised. Rachel was in no doubt very smart people studied at the University of Sydney, people who went on to become heart surgeons, top lawyers and even the prime minister.

It never ceased to amuse Rachel and Samantha that despite the serious nature of academia, in the quad there were stone faces of repulsive creatures with their tongues hanging out. The girls ran over and stuck out their own tongues. Their dad said the creatures were there to ward off evil spirits, a comment that set off more laughter.

When he passed away, the relationship between the sisters changed. Samantha grew into her teens, further widening their four-year age gap. She discovered boys; in particular, an eighteen-year-old who rode a motorbike. Poking fun at ugly stone faces and telling stories about lands at the top of Enid Blyton’s Magic Faraway Tree were no longer on her radar, not when she had distractions like a boyfriend and girls from school encouraging her to hang out with them in malls. When Rachel tried to tag along, Samantha told her to rack off. And if she’d dared tell their mother that Samantha was seeing a boy who was a few years older than herself, her sister would most certainly have killed her.

After finishing high school Samantha moved out and went to Bathurst, where she studied journalism. She came back regularly during the holidays but was rarely around at home. One of the big department stores offered her casual shifts. At night she went out with friends and didn’t return until well after midnight. Rachel took to reading books by herself.

Tonight, she was flicking through the Marie Claire on the table beside her. At least it was a distraction. She had to smile at advice on how to make the first move on a man you fancied, along with how to ask for a pay rise and what to wear to work if you wanted to be taken seriously. None of that was useful right now – what she needed was advice on how to live alongside the landed gentry when you were just a common working holiday-maker from Australia.

She tossed the magazine back on the table and succumbed to sleep.

That night Rachel again dreamed of a faraway place. This time she was observing a black donkey crossing a dry, dusty plain. Ahead of the animal there was a woman wearing an ankle-length skirt printed with black and white squares. Her face and hair were wrapped in a scarf, and she was carrying a long stick. She wasn’t alone: a herd of goats was trotting beside her.

Like a mirage, the scene vanished, and Rachel found herself staring into the dark brown eyes of an elderly man with olive skin. ‘For fifty years now, decent farming people have been unfairly driven from their land,’ he said. His voice was low, and his eyes were looking straight ahead.

Rachel woke with a jolt. Looking over at the alarm clock by her bed, she saw it was 6 a.m. As her thumping heart settled, the scraps of narrative from the dream faded with the first wash of early morning light.

She longed to be rid of her sadness – its intensity, the stranglehold it had over her, the way it haunted her like a guilty secret. Rachel had been all of nine when her dad was diagnosed with a brain tumour. Several weeks later, he was dead.

It was 1984, and her life would never be the same. Dad would never again walk through the front door of their family home around 6 p.m. with a briefcase in one hand, a big smile on his face, and an over-the-top way of saying hello – as if that word alone was just as exciting as stumbling across a rare archaeological artefact beneath the ruins of a temple.

Rachel had dreamed about her dad. In one dream, he told her he’d been transported to another time and place but could look in on her. His presence felt so real that in her heart she truly believed she could still be with him. When she woke to discover it was only a dream, the fear and agony she’d experienced when she first learned of his death resurfaced with a new intensity.

Part of Rachel also died in 1984. The carefree, happy-go-lucky girl disappeared, and she became someone different. But she didn’t know who. Sometimes she stared into a mirror to test whether someone other than herself was in the reflection. She would blink hard, then look away. It was too frightening a thought to contemplate. For a long time she felt like she was stuck in a dream and everything going on around her wasn’t really happening.

At school she and Samantha did well enough to earn scholarships, reducing the burden on their mum of forking out thousands and thousands in fees. Rachel was proud of the achievement – until she overheard a girl’s mother describe her to someone else as a ‘scholarship student’. The remark was made in a hushed, almost scandalised tone, causing Rachel to assume it wasn’t meant as a compliment. She felt a little ashamed, as if she wouldn’t be at the school without the scholarship.

Most of her teachers were kind. Concerned by her lack of participation in class in the months after her father’s death, one teacher set up a project in the hope of helping her come unstuck from her grief. It involved each student in the class writing to a pen-pal at a Zimbabwean school in the capital, Harare. To her teacher’s delight, Rachel fully immersed herself in the project.

Her still-in-mourning mum was more than pleased. She was so moved by Rachel’s interest in writing to a girl her own age on the other side of the world, she decided to take her daughters to Zimbabwe that Christmas. Rachel was aware the trip cost a small fortune – and that her teacher had helped make it happen through contacting the local church and requesting a fundraising activity.

The memory of the holiday still remained clear in Rachel’s mind: the lions and elephants in Hwange National Park, the Victoria Falls, the ride in a bomb of a taxi through the slums of Harare. She also recalled watching children take lessons under a tree and young girls walk long distances to collect water from boreholes. It was a joyous moment when Rachel first laid eyes on her pen-pal – the girl sprinted down a dusty road towards her, singing songs of welcome. Despite living in a tin shack, she seemed very happy. She told Rachel she ate just one meal a day: porridge made from ground maize. Because her mother was very sick and her father had died, the girl lived with her grandmother, aunty and uncle. At least she had the opportunity to go to school, because she otherwise would never have met a girl from Australia, she said cheerily.

What was the Zimbabwean girl doing now?

Rachel sat up, rubbed her eyes and arched her back.

Lady Stanhope was nowhere to be seen when Rachel heaved her backpack down five sets of stairs and placed it just outside the front door.

Back inside, it didn’t take her long to find Sir George. He was reading the morning newspaper in the drawing room.

‘I’ve called a taxi,’ she told him.

He stood up and shuffled towards her. ‘Do you have somewhere to stay?’ Taking her left hand, he held it tight. The gesture made her feel strangely protected.

Since showing her how to wind a grandfather clock, Sir George had spoken a few times about Egypt and World War II. He’d even told Rachel a story behind the papyrus painting she had asked him about. The woman with the ostrich feather on her head was Maat, an Egyptian goddess who kept everything in the universe in balance. The ancient Egyptians developed a strong sense of morality and justice – not just to help make the world a better place, but also to enable them to achieve a good standing in the afterlife.

‘It was refreshingly unusual for a young girl like herself to be so interested in ancient Egypt and war, ‘Sir George had told Rachel.

She in turn had said she would have to think long and hard about what she could do to restore harmony and balance in the world. ‘It will increase my chances of my heart weighing the same as Maat’s feather of truth when I pass through the Hall of Judgement on my way to the afterlife,’ she half joked.

In answer to his question of whether she had somewhere to stay, Rachel assured Sir George the hostel she had been at previously was perfectly fine. She added that she would soon be off travelling, so it would only be a temporary solution. But that didn’t feel at all real – the possibility of travelling to places as exotic as the old man and her father had visited. Stepping into the pages of a picture book published a hundred years earlier seemed just as likely.

Realising she was running out of time, she silenced the inner critic that all too often got in the way to ask Sir George a question she wouldn’t have dared ask in front of Lady Stanhope. ‘What was it about the war you remember most?’

He swallowed hard as he searched for the right words. ‘It was a good clean fight. I don’t believe any real hatred was involved.’

But it was war, Rachel thought, not a sports game. Could more than fifty years have softened the old man’s memory of the hellish conditions he’d endured? Or did he simply not care to talk about it anymore?

Apparently sensing she wanted him to continue, he managed a wry smile. ‘You could say it was the desert that set the pace,’ he conceded. ‘There were no trenches. No frontline. And practically no roads. If the weather was bad – and it often was – there were windstorms that blew for several days. When that was the case, well, the war was halted.’

Rachel maintained the silence of a genuine listener.

But Sir George was clearly keen to wrap the conversation up. ‘So that was pretty much it, then. Three years of patrolling around in those conditions, until the Germans and the Italians were eventually dug into the ground.’

The old man loosened his grip on her hand. It was time for her to move on.

In some ways she felt she had always known him. He could well have been her next-door neighbour while she was growing up in Sydney. And yet the only thing she could think of to say was that it had been nice to meet him.

The sad awkwardness of it all was broken by a gentle beep outside, indicating her taxi had arrived.

Sir George looked her squarely in the eyes. ‘I hope you get what you want.’

Rachel smiled politely. She had no idea what she wanted. ‘Thank you for everything.’ It was easier than saying goodbye.

As she turned the doorknob and let herself out onto the street, the corners of her eyes prickled with tears. They were tears of both regret and relief.

Bayswater, London, United Kingdom, July 1997

There is a time, between night and day, when landscapes sleep. Only the earliest riser sees that hour; or the all-night traveller, letting up the blind of his railway-carriage window, will look out on a rushing landscape of stillness. This grey, still hour before morning, was the time in which Tom walked into his garden.

Philippa Pearce, Tom’s Midnight Garden

The moment Rachel’s taxi pulled up, she smiled at the all too familiar sight of the Porchester Hotel. She hadn’t expected to be back so soon, but it was less stressful than going somewhere new. Not only was the Porchester clean, friendly and modern, but it also served breakfast and – for those who didn’t mind sharing a room with three others – cost just seventy pounds a week. Most visitors were from either Australia or New Zealand; a handful were South African.

As Rachel passed the main lounge, she recognised some of the guests from earlier, including an Australian man who had been staying at the hotel on and off for about a year. He was at least thirty, Rachel figured, older than most and a little eccentric for it, but pleasant enough so long as you were able to excuse yourself from him shortly after he struck up a conversation. What he did in London, Rachel didn’t know. He didn’t seem to have a job, and he had all the time in the world for a chat – from discussing the merits of the Mabo case, to the former Prime Minister Paul Keating deregulating the country’s banking system and floating the dollar. The man was articulate and maybe just a tad arrogant. Rachel suspected he needed a girlfriend, but she wasn’t interested in finding out if that was his priority.

There was also the Frenchman Rachel had once seen a movie with. They later ate ice cream under a tree in a park, chatting for about an hour. He told her he would stay at the hotel until he found an ideal job in the finance industry; he must have still been looking.

After being given a key to a fourth-floor room, Rachel heaved her backpack upstairs before plonking it on one of four single beds. It was wonderful to no longer be responsible for the needs of an elderly couple, but what to do with herself from here?

Downstairs she found a messy-haired man, about her age, wearing a crumpled t-shirt and torn jeans. He was slouched on a sofa and staring blankly at the TV in a common room behind the reception desk, barely acknowledging her when she walked in. Perhaps he had been living at the hotel for some time, in which case she appreciated he might have been tired of the small talk that came with meeting strangers who were there one moment and gone soon after.

He was watching an interview between a male British TV host and an Australian woman, Kathy Lette. Rachel recognised her as the co-author of a book called Puberty Blues, which Samantha had once kept inside a canvas satchel she took to school. Rachel removed it one day, eager to get her hands on any book she could, especially something her older sister valued. She aimed to read it before Samantha noticed it was missing. It was about a group of young surfies who were having sex and smoking cigarettes, among other things a ten-year-old shouldn’t have been reading about. She knew her mother would be furious if she found her with the book, yet she couldn’t put it down. She shuddered now as she recalled her mother’s fury when she did find her reading it. Samantha wasn’t impressed either – how dare Rachel go through her things without asking, she’d yelled at her.

The TV host interviewing Kathy Lette wanted her thoughts on republicanism. ‘Do you really believe Australia should turn its back on 209 years of a beautiful friendship?’

‘Absolutely,’ she replied with a big toothy grin.

The woman was super confident, Rachel could see; she had no trouble expressing herself.

‘Look, I have always loved Prince Charles,’ Lette explained somewhat patronisingly. ‘Ever since he said he wanted to be a tampon. It’s such a metaphor for his life. Always in the wrong place at the wrong time. And Camilla’s great.’

The studio audience cut her off with an outbreak of laughter. The interviewer grimaced.

Lette waited for the laughter to die down, then launched into a dialogue about Australia having outgrown the need for a British monarch as its head of state. The time was right for its own king or queen to be appointed, she maintained.

The interviewer’s eyes gleamed with excitement. ‘But who, then, would you have as your head of state?’

‘We could have Kylie or Dame Edna Everage,’ Lette suggested. ‘Wouldn’t that be fantastic?’

The interviewer’s bemused smile seemed to prompt her to spout on about the British mostly believing Australia was the Ireland of South-East Asia.

Not true, he replied: Australia was England’s last hope down south. ‘Now that Hong Kong has been returned to the Chinese, why would England want to lose Australia as well?’

Lette was having none of it. ‘Admit it. The British still see Australia as a recessive gene. You will never truly treat us as a fully grown up, independent country, until we break free from the monarchy.’

The interviewer pretended to be appalled. ‘How could you say such a thing?’

‘You know I’m right,’ she snapped back. ‘The moment you hear our accent, you look down your nose at us. Come to think of it, you should become a Republic too.’

The man tilted his head to one side with a cocked eyebrow, then appeared to get a direction from his floor producer to wrap up the conversation. He looked down the barrel of the camera, waited a moment, then pulled the sort of face Red Symons from Hey Hey It’s Saturday would before banging on a metal gong. ‘Let’s give a round of applause for Kathy Lette,’ he announced with a cheeky grin.

The studio audience clapped. An introduction was made for a new guest.

The messy-haired man sitting next to Rachel slumped further into his chair. Was he sleeping with his eyes open? It wasn’t possible to know.

She went in search of a good bookshop. Someone at work had recommended Hatchards in Piccadilly, apparently the oldest bookshop in the UK.

Going to Piccadilly always felt like a first meeting with someone Rachel secretly knew something about. She had landed on the location dozens of times while playing Monopoly; in real life she felt a strange affinity with the place – either because she’d owned it outright on the board game or, more likely, paid Samantha substantial rent for landing on it.

Hatchards had an amazing selection. Like Doctor Who’s TARDIS, it was much bigger than it appeared from the street. It was five-storeys high and stocked with row upon row of books on every topic imaginable.

Overwhelmed by the dozens of categories, Rachel went in search of a staff member who could point her towards the travel section. A guy with floppy hair who looked like Hugh Grant caught her eye, but when he asked if she had any particular destination in mind, she was momentarily stumped. ‘Somewhere as old as time,’ she found herself replying.

The young man’s eyes popped, and a smirk almost appeared at the corners of his mouth. He straightened his shoulders and gave Rachel his undivided attention. ‘That does leave us with quite a few options,’ he quipped. ‘Babylon take your fancy? Maybe Peru or Ecuador – or how about Tehran, Athens or Cairo?’ His speech was crisp and light; it was as though he was performing in a pantomime and Rachel was his audience.

At the mention of Cairo she felt warm prickles throughout her body.

‘Ahh, I detect some interest in the Middle East,’ Hugh Grant’s look-alike remarked. ‘Come with me.’ He barely drew breath as they marched up two sets of stairs in the centre of the store. ‘You Australians, you put us to shame.’ He chuckled. ‘Our idea of travelling to somewhere exotic means crossing the Channel to France. We’d never think of going anywhere else. But you Australians – you’re always prepared to go that little bit further.’

Rachel smiled. She normally felt self-conscious around complete strangers. This guy was fun.

The travel section took up an entire back wall, but the floppy-haired man had no problem locating the Middle East shelf. The Rough Guides were an excellent choice for a young person like herself, he advised her; they ‘told it as it was’, were up-to-date and catered for people on a tight budget. Of course the Lonely Planet guides were good too, but they tended to cater for people with not much time and loads of money. The man’s wrist delivered a dismissive flick as he spoke about the wealthy, prompting Rachel to giggle.

‘Oh look here, what’s this?’ He pulled a paperback from the shelf and held it before Rachel: a volunteer’s guide to working on a kibbutz. On the front cover was a cartoon of a man carrying a stick across his shoulder; at the end of the stick was a neatly tied bundle of his belongings. A logo of a six-sided star was printed on the small sack.

‘What’s a kibbutz?’ Rachel wanted to know.

‘It’s a sort of commune where people live and work alongside one another while achieving a common goal,’ he responded with twinkling eyes. ‘Hippies go there all the time. Apparently it’s a bit of fun.’

The concept appealed to Rachel. She asked for a copy of the book and a Rough Guide that covered both Egypt and Israel.

The store was buzzing with people browsing the aisles when Rachel followed the helpful man back downstairs to pay. ‘Have a wonderful trip,’ he said as she handed him two ten-pound notes and received the books in a brown paper bag.

She was now in such a good mood that she wanted to continue shopping. Before leaving Australia, she had been given a Sony Discman as a farewell present but had grown tired of listening to the same CDs she’d brought over with her. A Virgin Megastore was within walking distance of the bookshop.

Inside, she stopped at a spot where copies of Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat were stacked. The Australian actor Jason Donovan had played the lead role in the West End production. Rachel would have loved to see the former Neighbours star on stage, but the production had long since wound up.

She reached for one of the CDs, then went in search of the letter B in the pop music section. She knew exactly what she wanted: a copy of the Bangles’ Different Light album. It was more than ten years old, but a store this big was likely to have it. And it did.

After Rachel took the items to a cashier, she made her way back to the Tube station. Between Piccadilly Circus and Bayswater, she tested her memory of the colours of Joseph’s coat. She’d taken part in the production at school when she was eleven, and reciting the colours had been an enjoyable challenge. There had been red and yellow and green and brown, she whispered to herself as she used her fingers to count down four more colours she could recall. These were the only colours her row of the choir had needed to remember. Another row sang eight more colours, while a third sang the next lot. They rehearsed so often that at one stage she could recall all twenty-four colours. Today she could only recall those eight.

Twelve years had passed since her girls’ school on Sydney’s upper North Shore had joined forces with a nearby boys’ school to put on the production. Her favourite song in the musical had been ‘Any Dream Will Do’. The boy chosen to be Joseph sang every word like he truly meant it, and Rachel threw her heart into singing the ahh, ah, ahs that accompanied the song. Yet to this day she felt a sting of resentment whenever she recalled the production.

To Rachel, the best thing about Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, was that it was set in an exotic land, centuries and centuries ago, around the time the Bible began. In the land known as Canaan, a farmer called Jacob spent his days in fields with his twelve sons and a flock of sheep. By the 1980s Canaan had long been divided up into areas including Israel, the West Bank and Gaza, but in biblical times it had been a homeland to many and a promised land to others.

Jacob loved all of his sons, but a tendency to favour Joseph provoked jealousy among the others. Their resentment boiled over when their father gave him a coat of many colours, metaphorically putting him in a class above the rest. Up until that point, the brothers had merely tolerated Joseph. Now he had really gotten under their skin.

Adding insult to injury, were the things Joseph said to them about his dreams. One had involved him seeing eleven stars, the sun, moon and sky bowing down before his own star. It had made him wonder if he was born for higher things, like a post in someone’s government, he told his brothers.

Fearing the dreams prophesied he would one day rise above them all, they came up with a plan to get rid of Joseph. First they tore his wonderful coat off him. Then they flung him in a pit with the intention of leaving him there to die.

But when some Ishmaelites came riding by, the brothers devised a new plan. Silver coins were handed over in exchange for Joseph, who was taken to Egypt and bought by the captain of the Pharoah’s guard, a man known as Potiphar.

At this stage of the musical, Rachel’s concern was the tie-dyed sarong wrapped around her torso and upper legs coming lose and exposing her prepubescent breasts. Everyone in the chorus wore a different-coloured sarong; Rachel’s was printed with blue and white elephants. She kept her arms velcroed to her sides and stood very still. Of course the boys singing on the other side of the stage had no such concerns; each simply wore white shorts and a block-colour t-shirt.

The spotlight moved from the chorus to two girls ushered to the front of the stage, and a song introducing Potiphar began. One of the girls was Rachel’s best friend Kimberley. They had known each other since kindergarten, and sat next to each other in class and at lunch in the playground. One night a week they were in the same jazz ballet class.

Rachel was slightly wounded, then, that Kimberley wasn’t standing next to her in the choir. Kimberley had been chosen to dance on top of a large cube while wearing a very different costume to those worn by the choir. Her Chinese–Filipino heritage had drawn the attention of a talent spotter assisting with the musical: ‘The girl is a Cleopatra look-alike!’

Kimberley had big brown eyes, a mane of glossy dark brown hair, a slightly turned-up nose and lovely plump cheeks. She was six months older than Rachel and already blossoming into a young woman. Unlike Rachel, she wasn’t too skinny and pale for a red bikini top and matching silky harem pants. The girl who danced on the cube at the other end of the stage wore green versions of the clothes.

Those two stole the show when it wasn’t supposed to be about them, a couple of the choir girls whispered.

As a song introducing Potiphar’s backstory got underway, the dancers went from gently swaying their hips to launching into a jiggle resembling a flamboyant belly dance at a Turkish restaurant. It was enough to make a grown man blush, one of the fathers in the audience apparently remarked later.

Rachel wasn’t sure whether to be proud of her friend or secretly outraged she was receiving so much attention. She tried to focus on the parts of the chorus she needed to memorise. But on one occasion she quietly hoped Kimberley would fall from her cube in the middle of a dance – that would teach her for being such a show-off. Then Rachel derided herself for having such a mean thought.

The situation wasn’t anywhere near as unfair as what poor Joseph had to endure. At first his experience as a slave wasn’t too bad, because his master Potiphar owned a large percentage of the Nile and enjoyed a luxurious lifestyle. While Joseph was an unimportant slave, he quite liked Potiphar, and this motivated him to work harder than needed. Potiphar soon made him the leader of his household. But then Joseph’s good looks and charming ways caught the attention of Potiphar’s unfaithful wife. Despite Joseph resisting her efforts to seduce him, Potiphar was absolutely furious when he found the pair in what to him appeared to be a compromising position. Joseph was locked up and, once again, on his own.

From Grade Two until Year Nine, Rachel and Kimberley remained in the same jazz ballet class. When Rachel’s dad passed away, Kimberley’s mother, Mrs Nelligan, always drove them to and from the class. It was the least she could do, given Mrs Mahoney was running a business and raising two girls on her own, Kimberley had told Rachel; Mrs Nelligan was also aware the four-year age gap between Rachel and Samantha resulted in Rachel feeling left behind.

The woman’s generosity extended to sometimes taking her daughter and Rachel out for dinner after their class. They mostly went to the local Pizza Hut or Sizzler. Three or four times, Rachel stayed overnight with the Nelligans on a Friday or Saturday. Their home had an apartment downstairs that was perfect for sleepovers because it had rumpus-room furniture.

The house was the fanciest Rachel had ever seen in person, with thick white carpet that was luxuriously soft. In the main bathroom, there was a spa tub and glass brick walls. In the dining room, there was a huge glass table with eight high-backed black chairs. The enormous kitchen had a walk-in pantry.

The downstairs apartment included a pool table and record-player. Together with Kimberley’s cousin Sophie, the girls spent hours playing records and poring over the fashion pages of Mrs Nelligan’s glossy magazines.

Kimberley had a fabulous record collection. The three girls were huge fans of Wham!, Dragon and Duran Duran, and they played the records so loudly that Mr Nelligan would sometimes come in and gently tell them to ‘keep it down’.

For Kimberley’s thirteenth birthday, Mrs Nelligan booked a table at the Bennelong restaurant in the Opera House. Kimberley hadn’t wanted a party, her mother confided to Rachel; this year she just wanted a quiet celebration.

Her sixteen-year-old sister Amanda chose to bring her new boyfriend along. They had been dating for three months, Amanda whispered into Rachel’s ear, and it was time to include him in family celebrations. She smelled of cigarettes and perfume. Rachel’s mum wore French perfume that smelled like jasmine and rose petals. The exquisite glass jar always sat on her dressing table, and sometimes Rachel and Samantha savoured the fragrance while she was out of sight. They knew it was expensive. Their dad had brought it back from trips to the Middle East; he could afford it because it was duty-free at the airport, he’d explained to his daughters.

In the restaurant tiny candles flickered on tables covered with white linen cloths. Rachel thought it looked like Christmas without a tree. The carpet was plush and crimson, and lamps like streetlights on the periphery of the room were fitted with huge glistening baubles. A floor-to-ceiling glass wall revealed people lingering on the steps of the Opera House. Dressed to the nines in high heels and drop-waist cocktail dresses with frills and bows, the women were guided by men in dark suits.

Amanda ordered a bottle of champagne along with five tall glasses. Mrs Nelligan poured a small amount into Rachel’s and Kimberley’s glasses. Rachel had never felt so special, even more so when Mrs Nelligan announced Mr Nelligan had no idea where they were. ‘He thinks I’ve taken you to the Pizza Hut,’ she said. ‘But Kimberley’s birthday calls for a far more special place than that.’

On Kimberley’s fourteenth, Mrs Nelligan took her and Rachel to see Disney on Ice. She also bought Kimberley the Bangles’ Different Light record. The girls played it over and over again. The song ‘Walk Like an Egyptian’ prompted Kimberley to thrust her hips from side to side as she had on stage. She strongly encouraged Rachel to cup her hand in the shape of a beak and jerk her elbow. When there wasn’t an audience, she wasn’t particularly self-conscious.

If only those times in Kimberley’s family home could have lasted forever. Rachel had taken them for granted. Kimberley had been like a sister and Mrs Nelligan like a cool aunt. Then the Nelligans had moved away, and Rachel never again felt so closely entwined with the rhythm of another family.

A week after Rachel moved into the Porchester Hotel, there was a letter for her at reception. The handwriting on the envelope was meticulously neat, the first-class English stamp without a postmark. She tore off a corner of the sealed section, used her index finger to lift the sticky stuff and read the letter.

21 July 1997

Dear Rachel,

I was sorry not to see you to say goodbye before you left. I wanted to thank you for some nice meals you prepared for us, enabling me to use my pen, much to be preferred to cooking! Anyway, I want to write down some of our experiences before it is too late.

The telephone was marvellously quiet until today, when Eliza from your employment agency called for you. As you didn’t give us your number in London, we agreed she would wait until you phoned her.

My husband and I hope you are content. I’m sure with a demanding job you will be happier coming and going as it suits you, without having to consider an elderly couple with set ideas and exact places for things. As long as Sir George keeps well, we can cope. Perhaps we are not made to have a ‘home sharer’.

All the best with your job. When you are up for it, you might like to have afternoon tea with us again one day. Do ring first.

Yours sincerely,

Lillian Stanhope

Rachel folded the letter and put it back in its envelope. So the phone had been ‘marvellously quiet’ until Eliza had called. Rachel was still managing to annoy Lady Stanhope, even though she was no longer living with her. Eliza had called because the woman she had been filling in for at work had returned from sick leave, and Rachel needed another temp job. It was unfortunate she had forgotten to tell Eliza her most up-to-date phone number. All the same, Lady Stanhope apparently wanted her to visit, when she was ‘up for it’. How odd. Would she go back? Maybe, she decided. But not just yet.

Going upstairs and finding herself alone in her room, she reached for her guide to Egypt and Israel, placed the Bangles CD in her Discman and plugged in some headphones. Like the man at Hatchards had said, the guide was full of advice for travellers just like her, from what vaccinations to get before setting off, to clothing best avoided by Western women in the Middle East, to lists of hotel rooms that cost less than three English pounds a night.

With a fluorescent texta, Rachel began highlighting everything that caught her attention in the Cairo section. There were markets that sold the sort of trinkets her father had brought back from the Middle East. The Egyptian Museum’s treasures included a roomful of mummies, a 3000-year-old monkey and a statue of Pharoah Pepi I of the Fourth Dynasty. Apparently that was the world’s oldest metal statute.

The Bangles were singing about foreigners on hookah pipes when Rachel looked up from the guidebook to see a girl about her age looking back at her. She ripped the headphones from her ears and mumbled an apology. ‘Did you say something?’ she asked the girl, who was small in stature and slim, with Asian features and a neat, shiny bob.

‘No need to apologise.’ Her accent was unmistakably Australian. ‘I was just looking at your book. So you’re off to Egypt?’

Rachel blinked hard to snap herself out of the trance-like state the book and the Bangles had put her in. She didn’t have any firm plans, she told the girl. At the same time, standing dwarfed by giant stone columns etched with mysterious figures and objects was something she very much wanted to do.

‘I’m Nikki, by the way,’ the girl announced with an outstretched hand.

Rachel shook Nikki’s hand and introduced herself.

‘My landlady just passed away, so I can’t stay at her place anymore,’ Nikki explained matter-of-factly.

News of people passing away saddened Rachel regardless of whether she had met them or not. ‘That’s a shame.’

Nikki shrugged. She said that as far as she was concerned, it was a sign the universe was propelling her in a new direction. She was nearing the end of a locum position at a local hospital, where she worked as a paediatric radiologist, and she was considering fitting in some travel before she took up another position.

‘Well, my landlady shooed me away,’ Rachel told her new friend.

‘No kidding? What did you do?’ Nikki’s grin indicated she was joking.

Rachel wasn’t in the mood for discussing Lady Stanhope’s disdain for her Australian accent. She wanted Nikki to know that she generally loved old people. There hadn’t been a problem with the old lady’s husband – he was lovely, as were a lot of people around his vintage. They were transporters of time, memory and experiences, Rachel explained, things that travelling alone didn’t necessarily grant you access to.

Nikki nodded sympathetically. ‘So tell me more about this Sir George.’

Rachel wasn’t sure what else to say about him. He was born the year the Titanic sank, she mentioned. He could recall watching, at the cinema, silent movies starring actors like Charlie Chaplin; he could also recall the first film he saw that wasn’t silent. More impressive was his role as a gunner in the Middle East during World War II. ‘I felt like I was right there with him, when he described the battlefield and the soldiers’ downtime in Cairo,’ Rachel told Nikki. But there was much more to old people than their stories, she acknowledged. ‘It’s like looking through the brass keyhole of a hundred-year-old door. They have first-hand experience of dead secrets and time long past.’

Nikki grinned again. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever met someone who finds them so intriguing.’

The comment didn’t make Rachel feel judged or weird, as she often did when she told people how she really felt. The nice thing about Nikki was that she appeared to be very accepting of people who were a bit different.

One night while Rachel and Nikki were eating a takeaway curry in their room at the Porchester, a TV news item showed Princess Diana in an aqua swimsuit. Somewhere in the Mediterranean Sea, she was lazily swinging her long legs as she sat on a diving board attached to a private yacht. She was with the son of the man who owned Harrods. Nikki was saying how incredible it was that Diana was so comfortable being seen in public like that; she was a woman who had hit her stride, despite the Royal Family discarding her. Nikki’s voice trailed off.

Rachel was only half listening. A few weeks earlier, Lady Stanhope had scoffed at Diana for being filmed on the same yacht with the same man and her two young sons in Saint-Tropez. Deliberately embarrassing the Royal Family by flaunting herself to the paparazzi in a skimpy swimming costume was deplorable, Lady Stanhope said. She was also of the view that Diana had started the unattractive trend of women not recolouring their hair once their natural colour began to grow out. Rachel said nothing. A few months earlier a hairdresser had added highlights to her own dark blonde hair; she knew the colour was growing out but couldn’t afford to get it redone. Was Lady Stanhope trying to tell her it too looked terrible?

She glanced away from the television to see Nikki frowning at her. ‘I’m sorry, did you say something?’

Nikki wanted to know if she was interested in watching a movie on another channel. Shot in central Australia, it was called Walkabout.

Rachel pushed memories of Lady Stanhope’s sharp tongue aside. Nikki was much more fun – she reminded Rachel of the times she and Samantha had watched American soaps in their dressing-gowns. They particularly liked tuning in to Dynasty. Their mum told them it was rubbish but sometimes watched it with them; Joan Collins was very pretty and so over-the-top elegant, she told her daughters.

Walkabout, first released in 1971, told the story of an Aboriginal boy who rescued an English girl and her little brother when they got lost in the bush. There were repeated close-ups of subtropical plants, kangaroos, wombats, goannas, frill-necked lizards and every other cliché a travel agent selling Australia could wish for in a glossy brochure. It was the first time Nikki and Rachel had seen their country depicted through someone else’s eyes while living in the UK.

Halfway through the movie, a German girl called Gretel joined them. She smiled at the images of outback Australia. ‘It’s so beautiful. I would like to go there.’

Walkabout then showed the fully developed adolescent girl swimming naked in water rippling with reflections of eucalyptus trunks and leaves. Her brother and the Aboriginal boy jumped in and joined her – like the girl, they were without a stitch of clothing.

Nikki cringed. ‘People don’t really do that in Australia!’ she told Gretel.

Rachel wondered if the film was difficult to watch because she’d been away from Australia for too long. Surely she wasn’t relating better to British television than films about her own country …?

Nikki dismissed Walkabout as pretentious nonsense and moaned, ‘If people want to romanticise a country, they should refrain from making women appear so docile!’

The next night The X-Files was on. Nikki said Dana Scully was a much more appropriate role model for women in the 1990s than a scantily clad girl lost in the outback. ‘An FBI agent and a medical doctor – what’s not to like?’

Rachel didn’t particularly want to hear about a beautiful young woman’s magnificent achievements, regardless of the fact they were only in a TV show. They reminded her of how little she had achieved herself. While she was only twenty-three, that didn’t leave her much time to travel the world, embark on a more meaningful career than temping, accumulate some assets, develop a more sassy personality and find true love – all before turning thirty.

Nikki asked if she was all right.

Rachel looked over at the guide to Egypt and Israel sitting on a table near her bed. ‘I can’t come all this way only to do temp work and get told off by a rich old lady. I should book a plane ticket to Cairo and learn to walk like an Egyptian.’

‘Unreal!’ said Nikki. She asked Rachel if she could take a quick squiz at the guide, then rifled through it. ‘It says here you can frolic with dolphins, explore a spectacular coral reef, then sleep in a Bedouin tent on the famous white beaches of Nuweiba, all for under two pounds.’

Rachel knew the Bedouins were nomadic Arabs. Sir George had come across them during the war while patrolling the Western Desert in one of several light armoured vehicles. There were next to no roads, yet the Bedouins had a habit of unexpectedly appearing out of the empty desert as soon as a car stopped, he’d said.

‘You should come too,’ Rachel told Nikki. She didn’t believe her friend would accept the invitation.

But Nikki was only too happy to suggest visiting a travel agent on the weekend.

Three weeks later, Rachel and Nikki had quit their jobs and were in possession of one-way tickets to Cairo.

The public phone at the Porchester was frequently in use, so Rachel skipped the queue and went to a booth on Bayswater Road to call her mum. After topping up her phone card with five pounds, she dialled Australia’s code, then Sydney’s, then the number she had known by heart for as long as she could remember. Her mother’s familiar voice answered within four rings.

It wasn’t always so easy to get hold of Mrs Mahoney. She was a physiotherapist who doubled as a fitness instructor. At first her three-times-a-week classes had been a strategy to keep fit; the half a dozen or so people they attracted motivated her to keep them going. When their popularity grew, her husband arranged for a modest-sized changing room and spa to be added to the family home. This resulted in every housewife in the district wanting to come along for a class, or so it seemed.

Rachel’s mum was soon regularly instructing up to ten classes a week. When her husband passed away, she held on to the family home by continuing the classes in and around her physio practice – which, Rachel reflected, didn’t leave her with much time or energy to properly attend to her daughters. Most of the girls at school had mothers who didn’t need to earn a living; when they weren’t helping out with tuckshop duty, they were baking cakes for fetes, ferrying kids to sport and music lessons, or upgrading their homes with modern furniture and appliances. Fancy kitchen equipment wasn’t on her mum’s wish list, as far as Rachel knew. More often than not, the sisters fixed themselves toasties while their mum powered through a 6 p.m. aerobics class.

‘Hi, Mum, it’s me,’ Rachel blurted into the phone.

Mrs Mahoney responded with excitement and relief. ‘Oh, I was hoping it would be you. I was just wondering how you were getting along. Are you all right?’

Rachel never burdened her mother with her problems. She certainly didn’t want to let her know Lady Stanhope had chased her away – that would only cause unnecessary worry. Rachel didn’t want to talk about Samantha either, because she was only a side addition to her sister’s life. Phoning Australia was expensive, so it was important to come straight to the point. ‘I’m going to Egypt, Mum.’

The lack of response caused Rachel to wonder if her mother had heard her.

‘It’s all right. I’m not going on my own – a girl from Australia is coming too. We’ll be gone for about six weeks, depending on how it goes.’

Mrs Mahoney found her voice. ‘That sounds lovely, Rachel. Your father would be proud of you. You know he planned on taking you there one day.’

Rachel hadn’t been aware of that plan. ‘I’ll think of him while I’m there.’

‘Sometimes I think he’s still here, in this house,’ Mrs Mahoney said, her voice trembling slightly.

Rachel refrained from telling her about a joke she’d shared with him. She was supposed to be in bed by seven-thirty, but sometimes she pushed it out to eight or even nine, if it wasn’t a school night, by asking if she could stay up until the next commercial break. Then she would insist she needed to know what happened at the end of whatever program they were watching. ‘Could I stay up just a little bit later, please?’

‘We all want to know what happens in the end,’ Dr Mahoney would respond with a wry smile.

Even at the age of eight, Rachel understood he was referring to the afterlife.

If it existed, he would find a way to tell her about it. Wouldn’t he?

Rachel’s mum was now telling her the girl down the road, who was the same age as her, had just gotten married. People three doors down were extending their back verandah, and someone else had bought a new car.

Rachel quietly wondered how other people got on with their lives without a fuss, when she couldn’t decide on a career, let alone a marriage partner.

‘How are the aerobics classes going?’ she asked her mum.

Mrs Mahoney gave a hearty chuckle. ‘I reckon I can keep them up for another twenty years.’

Rachel smiled. ‘You’re almost fifty, Mum. You might want to focus on yoga for seniors in the next ten to fifteen years.’ Then she stopped herself. She couldn’t bear to think of her mum ageing. It wasn’t uncommon for people to experience health-related problems in their sixties and seventies; some even died from them, all the time. And life without her mum was an unbearable thought.

Rachel felt her stomach contracting. She was also tired and short of breath, like she was coming down with a cold. Such feelings were normally triggered by someone announcing they were disappearing from her life, even if she didn’t know them particularly well. She sometimes dealt with the discomfort by crawling into bed and waiting for the lethargy to subside. But doing so would only feed a tendency to allow her irrational thoughts to get the better of her, a psychiatrist had said. In her rational mind, Rachel knew her mum was relatively young – and that there was no evidence she was about to die. Yet something deep inside of Rachel ached, something almost primal she couldn’t placate.

When the call cut out she hurried back to the Porchester, even though there was no need to rush. It was a Sunday, and she didn’t have any plans, but the fuzzy blurs of people all around her made her want to be in her room. She hated the way everyone rushed about in close proximity to one another on the main street in Bayswater, never quite connecting with her. Or even worse – the way some of them looked at her for half a second and then darted in another direction, like they had accidentally walked in on her while she was getting undressed.

Once she was back inside the hotel, her breathing returned to normal.