Month: November 2025

Posted in Life, Writing

The woman from yesterday

Posted on by Sharon

She wasn’t even in the door before her grandmother said, “Well? How was your day? And where,” she added, narrowing her eyes, “is my scarf?”

The scarf. The soft cashmere scarf she was only ever allowed to wear on special occasions, or occasionally when her grandmother is feeling indulgent. She put her bag down and braced herself.

“I think,” she said, “I might have misplaced it.”

Grandma sat back as though she’d confessed to robbing a bank. “Lucy Grace. Not my cashmere scarf.”

“I know, I know,” Lucy said, sitting at the table. “I’m sure it’ll turn up somewhere.”

Grandma poured tea in that serious way she has, as though a warm cup might steady the world.

“Right,” she said. “Talk me through your day. Start from the beginning. Memory needs a path to follow.”

Lucy took a breath and tried to rewind. “Okay… well, I went into the city mid-morning. Took photos. Tried to keep my mind busy.”

It was day four of the colour-hunting challenge. Grandma chose the colour at breakfast each morning; Lucy went out and chased it. It was the right kind of distraction this week; something bright and ordered to hold her attention given other uncertainties.

Grandma sipped her tea. “Was yellow a good choice?”

“It was,” Lucy said. “I thought it would be impossible in the city, but it kept showing up. Made the day feel brighter than it really was.”

She opened the photos on her phone.

A woman in a pale gold jumper eating a slice of sponge at Caffé E Torta. Yellow-labelled champagne bottles hiding her feet. The bright yellow arrows leading into the parking station off Flinders Lane. The warm yellow light spilling from the doorway of Caterina’s – the sort of glow you can feel on your face even though you’re standing outside.

“Looks more mustard than yellow,” Grandma said, squinting. “What did you do for lunch?”

“I went to that Greek place on the corner of Russell and Lonsdale.” Lucy saw the look on her grandmother’s face. “Yes, I was very careful not to drop souvlaki on the scarf.”

“Well, I’m relieved to hear that. Did you take the scarf with you when you left?”

“Yes,” Lucy said. “I definitely did. A woman at the lights admired it. Said it looked like something a poet would wear. I told her it belonged to my grandmother. She said you had excellent taste.”

Grandma sniffed. “Quite right.”

“After lunch I kept wandering. Yellow kept popping up everywhere. Eventually it got too cold, so I stopped in at a café to warm up and finish my book.”

“And that’s when you took the scarf off?”

“Yes, I hung it over the back of the chair, and I even said, out loud, ‘Don’t forget this.’”

Grandma’s eyebrows rose. “And yet?”

“Well, I didn’t really forget it. I got distracted.”

“Go on.”

“I finished the book and just sat there,” Lucy paused, “crying. It’s such a sad book – a bit too close to home at the moment. When I looked up, there was a woman outside, taking a photo of me. Through the window.”

Grandma blinked. “Of you? When you were crying?”

“Yes.”

“Why on earth?”

“I don’t know,” Lucy said. “She gave me a funny look, then came into the café and sat at the next table.”

Grandma sat back. “What?”

Lucy explained how the woman bought Portuguese tarts, and how she made her laugh about crying over a book, which she’d thought was humiliating but turned out not to be.

“She was nice?” Grandma asked carefully.

“She was… interesting,” Lucy said. “Kind. Odd in a good way. And she made me look beautiful in the photo.”

Grandma’s voice softened. “You always look beautiful, darling. You just don’t always feel it.”

“I’ll go back in the morning. Ask if they’ve seen the scarf.”

***

Lucy pushes open the café door, hoping to see the scarf on the counter. The bell does its half-hearted little ting, and stepping in, Lucy sees the woman from yesterday.

Hair escaping from its band again, the same well-worn cardigan hanging like a tired curtain, and sensible shoes that look as though they’ve walked a thousand careful miles. She seems older than Lucy remembered – solid, practical, the kind of woman who might keep spare buttons in a jar – but there’s something else too: a glint in her eyes, as if she’s just thought of a secret joke, and a faint smudge of ink on her thumb, like someone who still writes things by hand.

Two Portuguese tarts in front of her.

And Grandma’s scarf, folded neatly on the table, waiting for her.

Posted in Life, Writing

The walk home

Posted on by Sharon

Eleanor walks slowly, the scarf folded over her arm, no longer clenched in her fist like something rescued. It still carries the faint warmth of the café, the echo of laughter that surprised her, and the shimmer of tears she hadn’t expected. The street is bright in that late-afternoon way that makes colours strangely theatrical. Even the footpath seems to glow, as though it’s been polished in her brief absence. She can’t see the woman but decides to take the long way home just in case.

At the edge of the small park, she pauses. Children run in chaotic lines around the climbing frame, their shrieks bright and unselfconscious. A mother crouches in the mulch, hands gentle on a toddler’s shoulders. The scene is completely ordinary and yet Eleanor feels herself tense, just slightly, as if bracing for a sound she can already hear forming.

At the lights a young father stands rocking a baby against his chest. The rhythm is familiar – unconscious, instinctive, the universal movement of comfort. The baby’s head lays against the man’s shoulder; a small fist curled around the strap of his backpack.

She looks away quickly. It’s fine. It’s nothing. Just noise.

She tucks the scarf into her bag and keeps walking.

It occurs to her – absurdly, unhelpfully – that she should not have taken that photo in the café. Photography complicates things. It makes her pay attention, and paying attention is rarely simple. It means she notices the way people look when they think no one is looking. The way sorrow sits on a person like a second, ill-fitting coat. The way joy is usually much quieter than anyone realises.

About to cross the road she hesitates, though she’s not sure why. There’s nothing unusual about the street: a row of almost identical houses, each one with a neat white fence and garden beds full of roses and lavender. A woman unloads groceries from the back of her car, her dog watching from the porch with solemn concentration. A magpie hops along the power line, considering its prospects. The squealing laughter of young children hangs in the air.

Still, Eleanor stands there longer than she needs to, as though she’s forgotten where she’s going.

It happens sometimes, this pause, this gap between thought and movement, as if her mind needs a moment to catch up.

When it does, she crosses the road and turns left. Past the old stone wall where vines have started their slow, inevitable conquest. Past the primary school with its mural of cheerful stick figures holding hands. Past the house with the yellow door she has always admired. She takes it all in without thinking about it. Light touching the roses, the windows, the silver of the mailbox slots. Everything catches her eye for a moment, then slips back into ordinary.

At her own gate, she stops again. She can see through the front window: the soft shadow of the dining table, the curl of the fern she has somehow kept alive, the familiar slant of afternoon sun across the coloured rugs.

The house has that particular stillness of late day, the sense that everything has paused in anticipation of evening. She fills the kettle, not because she wants tea, but because the sound of it boiling feels like proof that everything’s under control.

She wanders to the window, laying the scarf on the table beside her. The sky is shifting, the light thinning, blue deepening at the edges. She can see her own face faintly superimposed over the street outside. It’s always a jolt, that moment where she looks almost like someone else. Slightly older, slightly softer, the glass revealing more of her than she wants to know.

The kettle clicks off.

She makes tea, then lowers herself into the chair. The scarf lies on the table, folded loosely, looking almost like a small sleeping thing.

‘That’s ridiculous,’ she mutters, pushing the thought away and turning to the window.

She doesn’t want to think about the café woman anymore. Or toddlers at the park. Or the father’s rocking motion – a motion that has lived in her body for decades.

She picks up her camera. To test the light. To reassure herself she can still see clearly.

She frames the shot and presses the shutter button.

The image appears on the screen: the scarf, the chair, the soft dimming light behind it. Ordinary things. And yet, something about the frame unsettles her. She can’t put her finger on it, just a sense that the picture feels heavier than it should. Like it’s holding more than fabric and light.

She lowers the camera.

Her breathing has gone shallow again. She forces it deeper. Steadier.

It’s nothing, she tells herself. You’re tired. You’re being foolish. It’s only a scarf. Only a photograph. Only a woman you barely know. Only a moment you read too much into.

She sips her tea in the growing quiet, aware of something she can’t quite name sitting just out of reach.

She lifts the scarf, folds it once, folds it again, her hands moving with the same slow care she once used to settle a restless infant. She places it carefully in the drawer of the sideboard. For safekeeping, she tells herself. For later. For something.

She closes the drawer and stands there, her hand still resting lightly on the wood, her reflection fading in the darkening glass.

She can’t explain it. She doesn’t try.

But something in her has shifted.

Posted in Life, Writing

Forgiving Light

Posted on by Sharon

Eleanor lifts her camera just as the woman raises her head. Her face is streaked with tears, the light catching them, so it seems they shimmer rather than fall.

She quickly takes in a half-finished coffee, scarf draped over the back of the chair, and a book open on the table. Something in the woman’s stillness suggests she hasn’t turned the page in a while.

Her finger hovers over the shutter button. The woman meets her eyes; a fragile thread of connection stretches between them.

Eleanor’s mind, unhelpfully, begins to invent possible stories about the woman. Grieving, she thinks. Recently divorced. Terminally ill. Bereaved daughter. Job loss. A pigeon-related incident. Endless possibilities spinning through her mind like a carousel.

She could walk away, let the woman have her sadness in peace, but something in the woman’s faint smile sees Eleanor push the door open and step inside.

The bell gives its half-hearted ting. ‘Just the usual, thanks Matt,’ she calls. ‘Oh, and one of your Portuguese tarts.’ She turns toward the woman. ‘Would you like one as well? They’re dangerously good.’

The woman shakes her head, then mid-shake says, ‘Yes, why not.’

Eleanor smiles. ‘Excellent decision.’

‘Is it all right if I sit here?’ she asks, pointing to the table next to where the woman is sitting. ‘I promise not to talk unless it seems vital.’

‘That sounds perfect,’ the woman says, wiping her face. Eleanor, pretending not to notice, stirs her coffee as though it requires medical precision.

They sit in silence. Eleanor wrestles with the tart’s flaky pastry and warm, wobbly custard, while across from her the woman breaks hers cleanly, long fingers steady and assured. Eleanor’s own fingers feel clumsy – her sister once called them ‘sausage rolls,’ and she has to admit the description isn’t entirely unfair.

She guesses the woman is in her late thirties, graceful in that effortless way some younger women are. “Well put-together,” Eleanor’s mother would say, “considered”.

‘When I first saw you,’ Eleanor breaks the silence, ‘my imagination went into overdrive. I kept inventing reasons for the tears. Little scenarios, death, divorce, job.’

The woman glances at her, curious. ‘None of the above,’ she smiles, licking crumbs from her fingers.

‘You’re a photographer?’ she asks, nodding at the camera on the table.

‘Sometimes. Depends who you ask. My grandson says I’m a breakfast-face photographer.’

The woman laughs. ‘Breakfast-face?’

‘Yes. He thinks he’s my muse. I take photos of him eating breakfast.’ Eleanor chuckles, shaking her head. ‘Don’t ask.’

‘Can I see?’

Eleanor flicks through the images on the camera until she finds yesterday’s – Garry mid-spoon, mouth wide, eyes half closed. The light falling on him like a benediction.

‘He’s wonderful,’ the woman says. ‘And clearly plotting something.’

‘Always,’ Eleanor says. ‘It keeps the mornings interesting.’

The woman traces a fingertip along her cup. ‘You took my photo earlier,’ she says, not accusingly, just a fact laid gently on the table.

Eleanor blushes. ‘I did. I’m sorry – it was the light. It does that to me sometimes.’

‘Can I see?’

Eleanor turns the screen toward her. The woman’s face is luminous against the dark interior, the tears faintly catching the light.

The woman studies it for a long moment. ‘You’ve made me look… beautiful. Not sad at all, even with those tears.’

‘You are beautiful,’ Eleanor says simply, then wonders if that’s too much. ‘It’s mostly the light,’ she adds, flustered. ‘It’s very forgiving this time of day. Like a kindly aunt.’

That earns another laugh.

‘I wasn’t sad, you know,’ the woman says finally. She closes the book, letting Eleanor see the cover. A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness. ‘It just caught me off-guard. That ending.’

‘So,’ Eleanor says lightly, ‘you were crying over fiction, not a break-up?’ She leans back slightly, watching the shift in the woman’s expression.

‘Mortifying, isn’t it?’

‘Not at all,’ Eleanor says. ‘I once wept in a tram over a poem about a cabbage. People gave me space, though, which was nice.’

The woman laughs, a bright, sudden sound that makes Eleanor laugh too. Matt glances over, shakes his head with a faint smile, and goes back to his orders.

When the laughter subsides, they sit smiling at each other, the moment oddly companionable.

‘Thank you,’ the woman says at last.

‘For what?’

‘For seeing me. Even if you got the story wrong.’

‘Oh, I usually do,’ Eleanor says. ‘But I enjoy the practice.’

The woman slips the book inside her bag and stands. ‘You should call that photo Forgiving Light.’

‘I just might,’ Eleanor says.

When the door closes behind her, Eleanor’s eyes settle on the table where the woman was sitting.

She lifts her camera and frames the scene – the empty cup, the wrapper, a few stray bits of pastry scattered across the plate. Caught in a narrow shaft of fading golden light, the woman’s scarf draped over the chair.

She presses the shutter, then scoops up the scarf and rushes out after the woman.

Posted in Life, Photography, Writing

Shaping what’s seen

Posted on by Sharon

“It is Chanel No. 5, you’re right,” Miriam says, her voice calm. “I just didn’t expect to read something about myself. I wasn’t aware I was being watched so closely.”

She smiles, guarded but curious.

Eleanor shifts in her seat. “You read it?”

“It popped up in my Substack feed,” Miriam replies. “I wasn’t expecting to see myself there.”

Eleanor hesitates, unsure whether to apologise or defend herself. “It wasn’t really about you,” she says finally. “I just used small things I remembered from my last visit.”

Miriam nods. “It made me think about the way you see people.” She leans back into the leather chair. “Do you feel, as a photographer, that you’re always watching? That you see things others overlook?”

Eleanor smiles. She likes people who ask good questions. “When my husband was alive, we used to go on photography trips into the city or to gardens. He’d come home with hundreds of photos of things I hadn’t noticed. I’d look at them and think, was I even there? It was like I was blind.”

She glances out the window. Light glints off the building across the street, a curtain flutters and a figure moves behind it. “I need a starting point – for both photography and writing. But I don’t think I get starting points from watching.”

“What do you mean by starting points?” Miriam asks.

“Once we drew colours from a hat before heading into the city – his was blue, mine was red. That gave me something to look for. And that was great. I actually came home with some images I liked.” She smiles at the memory.

“So you don’t think you’re always watching?”

“No, I don’t think I’m observant at all.” Eleanor pauses. “Someone once called me a bowerbird. They said I collect things – stories, words, ideas – and I use them to create something. Like the story you read. I guess it came from things I’ve collected.”

“When I read what you wrote,” Miriam says, “I felt you’d taken pieces of me – my wonky left eye, my unmatched suit, my perfume. Seeing them was … confronting.”

Eleanor resists defending herself. That’s not why she’s here.

Miriam lets the silence stretch. “When you take a portrait, or write a story,” she says finally, “do you think about how the people you’ve collected from might feel? About how collecting can reveal more than you intend?”

Eleanor meets her gaze. Calm, but piercing.

“I watch, I listen, I interpret too,” Miriam continues. “But the difference is, you collect, and then you show your work to the world.”

Eleanor smiles wryly. “I wish I could show the world, but my audience is very small.” Her smile falters. “Sorry, that was inappropriate.”

A bus pulls into the stop one floor below, its mechanical sigh heavy in the air. Eleanor rubs the back of her neck, the muscles tight from holding herself still too long. The bus moves on, leaving the room too quiet.

“Are you saying I’m unethical?” she asks.

“I’m saying you’re powerful,” Miriam replies. “And that power carries responsibility. You decide how someone’s captured … and you also decide how they’re presented to the world.”

Eleanor looks down at her hands. “I always thought of it as seeing, not shaping what’s seen.” A bird lands on the railing and shakes itself, feathers settling. She sits back, something in her easing. “I never thought of it as power.”

“When you think about your portraits – your Faces of Melbourne, for instance – do you see that power there?”

A face springs from Eleanor’s memory: an older woman near the State Library, bent under the weight of her shopping bags. She had helped her to the tram stop, and as they walked, the woman shared stories of her early life in Melbourne. She stopped to show Eleanor grainy black and white photos of her son who had taken his own life many years before. The grief was still raw, as if time had barely touched it.

“When I asked if I could photograph her,” Eleanor says, “she nodded straight away. I chose a spot where just her face was lit. It’s such a beautiful portrait. She gave me something real and I wanted to honour that.”

Miriam studies her for a moment. “You were moved by her story,” she says. “You wanted to see her, and to let others see her too. That’s empathy – but it’s also exposure. Maybe that’s the tension you live with as an artist.”

Eleanor squirms. The word artist sits uncomfortably.

They sit in the stillness, neither reaching for resolution. A soft chime breaks the silence. Their hour has ended.

Outside, the late afternoon light is soft and luminous, the kind photographers dream about. Eleanor walks home, stepping around puddles and cracks, her thoughts running faster than her feet ever could.

As she passes the café on the corner of her street, she notices a woman in the window, alone. A half-finished coffee, a book open on the table, shoulders slumped. Something in her stillness suggests she hasn’t turned the page in a while.

Eleanor lifts her camera just as the woman lifts her head. Her face is streaked with tears. Eleanor is again captivated by the way light touches faces and the stories faces tell.

Her finger hovers over the shutter button. The woman smiles, a fragile thread of connection.

Eleanor lowers the camera, pushes the door open and steps inside.