Free Thyla by Kate Gordon Page B

‘tampons’ and ‘pads’ in her top drawer. Before we’d gone back to class, she’d pressed another one in my hand and instructed me to, ‘Put it in your pocket. Change it in a couple of hours, okay? It’s important. You’ll get sick if you don’t. And later we’ll get you some more.’
    Now, she gestured to the boxes and parcels and said, ‘Feel free to just help yourself any time. I’ve always got a whole heap, just in case.’
    ‘Thank you,’ I replied, hoping she understood that I meant ‘thank you’ for more than just the items that filled her drawer.
    Rhiannah had been a real friend to me, Connolly. She took me to the girls’ toilets, and she sat outside while I negotiated my way with my very first tampon. It was difficult, and it hurt at first, and I found myself yelping – from the pain and from embarrassment.
    But Rhiannah never got embarrassed. Rhiannah knew just what to say, and she stayed with me until I got it right.
    ‘It gets easier,’ she said. ‘In a couple of days, you won’t even have to think about it.’
    She never once made me feel strange or abnormal for never having done it before, or even for not knowing about it. It was as if she understood that the reasons were complex, and that I would tell her when I was ready.
    And I knew I would tell her. I knew she was the right person to tell my secrets to.
    Rhiannah was a real friend.
    It was very nice being in our room with her, too. We did our homework together. I helped her with English, and she filled in the blanks that were in my mind in mathematics, science and history. If I didn’t know something – something that might be obvious to someone who had not lost their memory – she patiently explained it to me.
    When we had finished our tasks, we sat on Rhiannah’s bed talking.
    Well, Rhiannah talked. And I listened. And it was nice.
    She told me about how her family were descended from the indigenous people of Tasmania, and how her mother and father were both environmental activists. She told me that she had grown up on the north-west coast of Tasmania, in a place called Wynyard, but now her family lived in a small house in a country town called Ranelagh, just south of Hobart. They grew vegetables to earn money, and they sold them at the weekend markets.
    ‘I miss them heaps when I’m at school,’ she said. ‘But, you know, it’s important that I’m here.’ She didn’t tell me why.
    She did tell me that she had a brother who went to Valley Grammar. She said he could be a ‘pain in the arse’, but she was glad he was in Hobart with her.
    When she mentioned his name, ‘Perrin’, I felt my cheeks burn. I remembered the dark-haired boy at the school gates. Deep in my pelvis, something pulsed. Angrily, I willed it away and tried to concentrate on Rhiannah’s story.
    As I listened, and Rhiannah’s life opened up to me like a flower, I thought again of your daughter.
    Rhiannah told me how she loved to bushwalk, because it was something her family used to do a lot back when she lived in Wynyard, in a very special forest called the Tarkine. She said going on bushwalks down here was different – it was a different kind of bush – but it still made her feel close to home. When she was in the bush it was the only time she felt truly herself.
    It seemed like the right time to ask. ‘Rhiannah?’ I began, when she paused to take a sip from her water glass.
    ‘I was wondering … Connolly, the policewoman who found me after my accident. She had a daughter …’
    ‘Cat,’ said Rhiannah, nodding.
    ‘You knew her?’ I asked.
    Rhiannah sighed and rubbed at her temples. ‘I was wondering when this would come up. I kind of fobbed you off yesterday, when you asked about my other roommate. I’m sorry. I just didn’t know what to say and I didn’t really know if I could, well, trust you.’
    ‘Was Cat your roommate?’ I asked, already knowing the answer.
    Rhiannah nodded, and her dark eyes began to glimmer with tears. She