Emily Bay-Walker

On Cottesloe Beach, Emily Bay-Walker writes a love letter in the sand, a large heart and an arrow. It points to where, should her sailor come in, he might find her in the dunes, not in school as she ought to be, not at piano lessons or down by the tennis courts on Broome Street, but here stretched in the sand, head resting on a jumper, floral skirt and knees adrift, ready and waiting for Mr Right and his skiff.

And she will stare into his ocean rinsed eyes and the sails will catch the wind shifts like gulls wings and together they will fly away, over the sea to another world.

And no longer will she hear her father’s smashed plate, her mother’s sobbing cry, the screen door bang –

“She’s gone away that Emily Bay-Walker,” says Mrs Partridge-Pigeon, town gossip, pleated blouse, unbuttoned lip, “sixteen years old and I said she’d never come to any good, but she’s run off with a sailor from the docks; a salty looking fellow with a mermaid tattoo, and ill-matched socks.”

Author's Note: Talisman - A drawing of an arrow through a heart