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But these days there was something else to worry about: her father. No list or poem or mug of milk alleviated this new sensation – a gnawing at the base of her throat, as though a question or a cry was struggling to emerge – which had begun that spring day, when she realised her dad had no idea who Jean Thornton was, or that he’d asked about her just the day before.

It had come to have the feel of doom, her memory of that day, that phone call. Yes,
doom:
such a melodramatic word, but that was the sense of crushing inevitability she had. Then came the meeting with her siblings, then the results of the assessment, like the inexorable tramp of boots: she looked back on those events and thought,
Before that, I was still innocent.
Now there seemed to be some reference to her father’s… problem, everywhere she glanced. And each new piece of information made her feel like she’d taken a wrong
turn along the path somewhere and entered a perilous tunnel, with no end in sight.

My father has dementia.
She’d said these words to people: colleagues at work, friends. Twice she found herself saying them to complete strangers: a woman she got talking to as they waited to be served in a department store one day, and two others on the tram, women a bit older than herself, talking together about their respective mothers’ health problems. She said the words almost shyly, wondering if she sounded desperate for sympathy. But the kind, attentive faces that were turned towards her, open and still, not jumping in with advice or a solution – they soothed her. Allowed her to feel, for a little while at least, that this dilemma and her helplessness in the face of it were… normal.

My father is losing his memory.
Losing your memory. Once it had just been a phrase; now the enormity of it gaped before her and threatened to swallow her up. Because your memory contained everything, from the names of your grandchildren to how to cook a meal. If her father started to lose those things, who would he be? Who would she be to him?

What will happen? What should I do? How will I know when to do whatever it is I should do?

One Friday afternoon she was in precisely this agitated state, dying to get away from the office but with a tricky report to finish and the minister having a meltdown about some looming scandal, when she was interrupted yet again by an unscheduled phone call. Personal, the switchboard had said, and as always she had that little rush of adrenalin, the fear that some harm had befallen a member of her family. Her brother, her daughter, or… her father.
No, no, don’t think that. Don’t be silly.

‘Deborah McDonald,’ she said briskly.

‘Hello, Debbie!’ said an unfamiliar voice, a middle-aged woman’s voice. ‘Guess who this is?’

Immediately Deborah’s hackles rose. How she detested that sort
of childish idiocy! She wanted to snap
I haven’t got time to play fucking guessing games
and slam the phone down, but in her position she couldn’t afford to offend anyone, not even a complete moron.

‘I’m afraid I don’t know,’ she said pleasantly. ‘Would you mind telling me?’

‘I was at Monash Uni with you,’ the woman said. There was something there, something ingratiating and unpleasant, that was perhaps familiar after all. Deborah waited.

‘Alison Ramsbottom!’ the woman finally burst out. ‘Remember?’ Oh yes, now Deborah remembered; most certainly she did. ‘I’m doing my PhD now,’ the woman sang. ‘I’m writing a thesis!’

‘Oh really?’ said Deborah coolly. ‘How interesting.’

‘And guess what? I’m doing it on feminist consciousness raising groups in the 1970s! So naturally I knew I just had to interview you.’

‘Indeed. Absolutely. Alison, if you could send something in writing to me at the office here, I’ll attend to it immediately.’
By putting it through the shredder.

‘Oh yes, yes I will. I’ll get the survey off to you first thing and then I’ll call you and we can make a date for an interview, how would that be?’

‘Fine.’ While she was speaking, Deborah was writing a note for the switchboard and reception, to add the name Alison Ramsbottom to the Loonie List of time-wasters and grudge-bearers whose calls were
not
to be put through. ‘And right now I’m afraid I must return to some urgent work. Pressing deadlines, you know.’

‘I always knew you’d go far, Deb. I always knew you’d end up in —’

‘Thanks for your call, Alison. Bye now.’

Deborah hung up. She finished the report in record time, seething with the energy of rage, and tore out of the office before anything or anyone else got in her way. On the tram going home she didn’t see her fellow commuters, tired and cheerful at the end of the working
week. All she could see was the bare modernist campus of Monash University in 1973, lashed by a sudden winter storm, and herself in blue jeans and a denim jacket racing across it, long hair flying like a wet flag behind her.

July 1973

Deborah’s mood matched the weather as she tore across the campus, snatching what shelter she could from one glass and concrete building to the next. The cold at least cooled her flaming cheeks, the rain pelting on her face wiped roughly at her angry tears.

‘How
dare
she?’ she said out loud as she ran.
Bloody Alison Ramsbottom, with a face just like her name!
‘It’s none of her damn business!’

Finally she made it to the lecture theatre and tore in, slamming herself into a seat up the back. A few people turned to look at her but most were concentrating on the slides being projected onto the screen in front of them, madly scribbling notes as the lecturer raved on about something or other. Federation, possibly. Certainly Deborah couldn’t focus, or concentrate on anything other than her own roaring thoughts.

At least she didn’t say it in front of everyone. At least she waited till afterwards.
She could still feel the touch of Alison’s hand on her arm as all the women left their consciousness-raising group.

‘Debbie, hang on a minnie,’ she’d said, friendly as anything.
The snake! Fat snake!
‘Something I need to tell you.’

Deborah had stopped, reluctantly because the impassioned argument they’d been having – whether lesbians were treated equally by straight women in CR groups, whether they even
could
be or was there, in fact, inherent sexism even within the sisterhood? – had gone on so long and she was already running late for her next lecture.

‘My little sister Nicole plays netball with your sister Meredith,’ said Alison, her eyes eager and alight.

‘Really?’ said Deborah.
Jesus, so what!

‘My mum took them to the match at Ivanhoe last Saturday, and Meredith stayed over at our place.’

Suddenly Deborah had an uncomfortable feeling that she knew what was coming. ‘That’s nice, Alison. Look, sorry, I’m late for my lecture, I’ve gotta run…’

Alison’s hand on her arm again, restraining her. ‘Meredith says that your mother just disappeared,’ she said, leaning in close. ‘She walked out on Christmas Eve a few years ago. Meredith remembers it.’

Five years ago actually. Five and a half
. ‘She was just a little kid. That’s what they told her. She doesn’t remember properly.’

‘You think so, Debbie? What if I ask her next time she comes over? What if I tell her what you told all of us: that your mother’s
dead.
Died of cancer when your little sister was just a baby.’ Her smile, her glistening eyes, were gleeful. Deborah pulled free and took a step back.

‘I’ve gotta go,’ she said, but Alison stepped up too close to her again.

‘You’d better tell everyone the truth at the next CR meeting,’ she hissed. ‘Or else I will.
Miz
High and Mighty Deborah McDonald!’

But by the end of that next meeting the following week, Deborah had turned it into a victory. Her strategy was to tell the truth, or a version of it at least: her mother had abandoned Deborah and her siblings, and this had so shocked and shamed the family that it was less painful to think of her as dead. It was all so terrible and confusing! Deborah also made a tactical decision to cry, something she hardly ever did, and that turned out to be a very smart move. Interesting, how the circle of women drew in closer to her, protectively. The consoling noises, the hands proferring tissues and hankies. The murmurs of, ‘Let it out, it’s good to cry’, and, ‘You don’t have to hold anything back here. Not with us’.

‘I’ve got Alison to thank for this breakthrough,’ Deborah said in a wobbly voice, tears damp on her cheeks. ‘She’s been so supportive.’
Through the curtain of her long straight black hair she could see,
oh yes
, that Alison’s boofy face was a study: jealousy and uncertain pride mingled. A hand patted Alison’s shoulder in sisterly approval but then she was ignored again, as usual, for she was dumpy and uninteresting, while Deborah was clever and tall and striking. A born leader, a star in the making – not that any of them thought in those sorts of outdated hierarchical terms any more, of course.

Don’t think I’ve forgiven you, Ramsbottom
, Deborah thought savagely. No one would ever know how wonderful it had been for her to say ‘My mother’s dead’; how exhilarating. To say it again and again, all this year, ever since she’d started uni. Not for the sympathy it garnered, but for the sheer vengeful pleasure of wiping her mother out. Every time she’d said it Deborah felt that she had triumphed over her mother at last, paid her back for her selfish, thoughtless, cheap desertion. And now this lumpy idiot had taken that triumph away from her.

She straightened in her chair, smoothed her hair back with both hands, and looked around the group.

‘Thank you,’ she said with a sincere but still tremulous smile. The circle of women leaned back too, starting to relax after all the emotion. ‘You’re like my family, my
real
family, all of you.’

‘The patriarchial family is incapable of supporting a woman’s choices,’ said Linda, who was doing the same course as Deborah, Politics/Law, but a couple of years ahead of her. She pulled out a packet of Drum and began rolling a cigarette. ‘The patriarchy forbids women from even recognising their own capacity to
make
choices.’

‘But isn’t that what happened to Debbie’s mother?’ demanded Louise, who had begun the meeting by announcing that it was time the university put some resources into setting up a new student newspaper, by women for women, and urged them to join her in this struggle. ‘She was being suffocated by the structure of the patriarchical family and she had to escape. To rescue her own life.’

A murmur of thoughtful agreement ran around the circle.
What?
thought Deborah, startled.

‘Like a prisoner’s desperate bid for freedom,’ said another young woman. ‘She was a heroine, really, Debbie’s mother.’

Louise scowled at her. ‘That’s a sexist term,’ she said sternly.

‘Oh. Sorry,’ the girl murmured, blushing.

‘Female hero?’ suggested someone.

‘Why not just “hero”? Why can only men be heroes?’

‘Shero!’ cried Linda.

‘This is exactly why we need our own newspaper,’ said Deborah quickly. She had heard quite enough about how her mother was not… what Deborah knew her to be,
to blame
. ‘To confront sexism in the very language we speak! To eliminate it!’

‘Yes! Exactly!’ said Linda. ‘The personal
is
political, and Deb’s story demonstrates that. Here in this group, we have this private space where women’s stories can be told in an environment that’s not controlled by men. Now we need to move that into a public forum! We need to take
action
!’

Remember this
, Deborah told herself as the group moved on to further discussion.
Remember that in every situation there’s the potential for strategic advantage.
She intended to make sure, too, that she’d get lots of opportunities to use this insight.
Times are a-changing, especially for us women. The Old Boys’ network that’s been running this country for so long is on the way out and this new Labor government is on the move.
Free tertiary education was getting people who wouldn’t have had a chance before into universities, and there was the pill – hooray for the pill! – so now women had the same sexual freedom as men. It amazed Deborah that less than a year ago she wouldn’t have been eligible to vote till she was twenty-one, yet eighteen year olds – the boys, anyway – were being called up and sent to fight in Viet Nam. All changed, overnight! Having turned eighteen, she would be able to vote tomorrow, if there was an election, and her male friends no longer had to dread their birthdays and the lottery of war.

And now the Prime Minister had appointed a special adviser on women’s issues. Oh yeah, the press called her Supergirl and published
sneering articles and idiotic cartoons, and she’d heard Louise deride the woman who’d got the job as a tokenistic career professional who shaved her armpits, but Deborah was fired with possibility. The Whitlam government still didn’t have a single woman member of parliament among their elected representatives, not one! Soon they’d be desperate for women candidates to field, both at state and federal level – and why not her, Deborah McDonald? Not at the next election, okay, but in another few years… She was young, intelligent, committed, ambitious. Good-looking. Women in the houses of parliament. Women as government ministers. A woman as deputy prime minister. And before too long,
a woman prime minister
. Why not? It had to happen, and happen soon, and she’d be ready.

Later that night, after a day full of lectures and tutorials and avid conversations in the caf, Deborah was invited to go to the pub with a bunch of older students, mostly guys. She was pleased. She didn’t really know any of them, but she wanted to: these were some of the movers and shakers on campus.

She had the right jargon and the correct political line, but it was her looks that gave her entree with the guys, she knew that. Her long legs and high bottom looked great in tight jeans and boots. She strode when she walked and knew how to flick back her long silky hair in a way that was sexy but not too girlie, not too cute. She liked her beer and she could hold her own at the bar or in an argument, or both at the same time.