ONE

Balmain, May 1915

The letter leaned on a vase full of wilted flowers perched on the mantle of the open fire. Grace Miller had not given it a second look after she placed it there; she didn’t need to. Its image glared behind her eyes—as big as a silent movie screen. Its presence commanded an overbearing sense of anguish towards what may lie within the well-travelled envelope.

One of the many postmarks read Cairo in blurred ink, the writer’s hand unmistakable. Her eldest son, like so many sons, had bounded off to war, full of patriotism and energies that could not be swayed. She had kissed her young Archie on the cheek, while she clung desperately to her husband’s forearm—himself a veteran of the campaign in Sudan. Her son had then turned and boarded the ship for a land too foreign and distant to comprehend. Archie had been encased in a wave of masculine pride and had remained oblivious to his mother’s torment.

As Grace reminisced and scrubbed pots in her kitchen, she felt a tidal wave of dread wash into Beattie Street Balmain.

* * *

Clarence Miller walked briskly along Darling Street on his way home from his job as a cadet journalist at theBalmain Observer. He felt good, and whistled the bouncy tune, ‘Good Morning, Mr Zip Zip Zip’. He liked his job. It wasn’t common in working class Sydney for a young man of eighteen to have a position like his, full of promise and potential advancement. The work excited him and appealed to his curious nature