Free One Long Thread by Belinda Jeffrey

dress I worked on that night was a sketch first. I could feel the shape emerging. It wasn’t like anything I’d done before, in fact, I’d describe it more in the line of costume. Pieces of stiff fabric, large leaf shapes overlapping each other in a skirt hemmed to form a diagonal line across the flat of the body. Whether inherent in the fabric itself, or added on with textures and beads after, the skirt was alive with intricate detail. I imagined Sally in footless black tights. Designer black ballet shoes tied with ribbon bows across the bridge of her foot. A formal look, expensive fabric contrasted with casual tights. Though I could not settle on how the bodice of the garment would look and rubbed out a dozen attempts that didn’t feel right. When I could no longer focus on the page properly and had rubbed the paper too thin, I switched the torch off and went to sleep, tucking my sketchbook underneath my pillow. No sooner was I dreaming when I heard Becky’s laugh, felt her arm across my body and opened my eyes to see her childishly excited eyes, her blonde hair hanging around her face.
    â€˜Pancakes,’ she said, jumping from my sleeping bag and disappearing out of the door towards the kitchen, her tissue-box-sized piggy slippers scuffing on the carpet.

11.
    Becky’s mum dropped me home and I arrived to find Dad immersed in a full-scale clean-out. He had the garage door open and boxes divided into various piles inside the house and outside on the pavement. He waved as I came in through the door, asking me to grab his cup of tea from the bench.
    I threw my duffle bag on the kitchen bench and took his tea outside. I found him, excited as a kitten, busying through one large old box beside a brown leather suitcase the likes of which you’d find in a collector’s bric-a-brac store.
    â€˜I need you to go through some of these with me,’ he said taking the tea.
    I sat down on the lid of a plastic box and watched him. He ran a hand though his hair and continued rummaging through his current box. I’d rarely stopped to look at Dad before. But I suppose he was handsome. I tried looking at him like Amona might look at him. As if we’d never met before, hadn’t known each other for as long as we could each remember. He was an easy man to be around, comfortable in himself. Sandy blond hair, lines creasing their way through his face around his mouth and eyes. A man more handsome in his older years than his younger years. I’d seen a few pictures of him as a young man, and he was lanky and lean, I’d say. Nothing especially appealing about him. I kicked my foot back and forth, banging the container like a drum.
    â€˜Should have done this a long time ago,’ he said, straightening up from his task to sip his tea. ‘Some things we’ve never gone through since your mum . . .’ he left the rest of the sentence unfinished. ‘I think those boxes have your baby toys and things from primary school,’ he pointed to the far corner of the garage. ‘But I think these might have been your mum’s.’
    I tried to remember what might have been stashed in each of the boxes and felt a glimmer of excitement about discovering things I’d long forgotten about. I leapt off the container to go have a look.
    Piggy and Scamper – stuffed toys I’d won at the show – were there and some of my books from primary school. Report cards and awards. Class certificates and a few ribbons from relay races and the cross-country in grade four which were actually Sally’s, though there was no name on them. I couldn’t remember how they might have got mixed up with my things, though I didn’t rule out the possibility that I’d taken them. Sally won so many things. I remember hating her for that. Another blue ribbon, another green. They didn’t hand out ribbons for creative sketching and general fabric knowledge in primary school. At the bottom