Free Escape by Anna Fienberg

Trick in his act – you know,
where he picked up needles with his eyelids. Not strictly an escape act,
but you see what I mean.'
    Clara gives a muffled scream. She tries to hide it by picking up the
pasta saucepan and bashing it down into the sink.
    'That's clean, I've already washed it,' I tell her.
    'Oh. Okay, Mum, well, I'd better go.'
    She's already walking away down the hall but my feet are following
her. She's saying 'fuck fuck fuck' under her breath. But I can't let it go
like that. The stars are beginning to spark behind my eyes and the
carpet is tilting. It's as if one of us is dying – me, of bone cancer – and
I have only this moment to offer my last motherly words of advice. As
I follow her into her room, standing at the doorway, I suddenly have
a terrifying sense of unreality, as if we are figures in a fairytale and we
are at a fork in the road. I am the old woman dying of thirst on her
path, and Clara is the girl on her quest.
    'Clara, do you remember the story of Harry and the German
straitjacket?'
    Clara doesn't answer. She is picking up T-shirts from the floor.
    'Well, it was the hardest escape he ever had to do. An hour and
twenty-nine minutes it took him to get out, it was agony—'
    'Oh, fuck Harry! That's all you ever want to talk about. What
about me ? What about the fact that I've saved enough to go to
Italy and made the decision to do something for myself – didn't
I prepare for that? Didn't I organise all the things necessary for
that? I fucking am doing something, it's just that it's something
you don't approve of, something you don't hold up as worthwhile!
Because what I'm doing has nothing to do with your pathetic
fucking Harry.' She kicks the white wardrobe with the dirty sole of
her trainer. It leaves a big grey smudge with a crosshatch pattern.
'All my life you ask me how to get out of a torture crib, a mailbag,
a Czechoslovakian Insane Muff – you never want to know what
I'm really doing.'
    'Oh, but I do , how can you say that? No, it's just, I want to remind
you that whatever you do, you'll only achieve results with practice.
That's how someone like Harry got to where he did. First in his field.'
I pause for breath, holding onto the wall for support. 'And you know,
don't you, what the point of all his training was – he learnt to steal slack
during the tying process. That was his secret. Remember it always. Just
in case you get low on money and need to...But that's where the skill
lies. You have to steal slack.'
    Clara slowly turns around to face me. Her eyes are only inches
away from mine. They are wide, staring, but completely focused. 'And
that's exactly what I am going to do, Mummy . I'm gunna steal about
20,000 kilometres of precious slack to get away from YOU !'

Part II
The Adoration

Chapter 3
    Guido was sitting in the Cafe Vesuvio when I first saw him. He was
drinking from a small white cup that reminded me of the doll's tea set
I'd had as a child. At home, we took our coffee with lashings of milk in
bottomless mugs that Mum bought at Woolworths. Later I would learn
that Guido only ever drank espresso coffee, black, sweet and strong,
and that he could drink it any time, even late at night before bed, and
never suffer from insomnia. It was another magical thing about him.
    There was music coming from the cafe, an Italian song, 'Nessun
Dorma'. I'd first heard it when my mother brought home an album
called Famous Italian Songs . I was only ten but I remember it because
if ever my mother bought herself a present, it was usually something
useful like a new frying pan or a tablecloth. I saw how she hugged the
record to herself like a secret. She'd put it on and sway to it while she
dusted or washed up.
    A waiter with a red napkin slung over his shoulder began to sing
along to the music. His voice washed out of the cafe, onto the pavement,
drenching me. I shivered, thinking of the afternoon I'd come home
early from school and heard 'Nessun Dorma' turned up frighteningly
loud. The sound