Epilogue
It is now six months since I have finished writing. I thought I had finished this writing and fully told Sophie’s story.
But today I discover how stories have a strange ability to keep going, passing through yet more generations and crossing other families’ lives, other people who have also shared in the history of this house.
I am working at my desk when I hear a knock on the door. I open the front door. Standing outside are four ladies, three in a line and one behind. I instantly know by their looks and an imperceptible kindred thing they are all related and connected to this house. The oldest is perhaps in her eighties, with a sprightly good mannered bearing of generations past. The next lady looks in her sixties. She has the most striking and captivating face, not quite beautiful, but such presence and magnetic eyes which draw you in; the third lady, mature but still young, with an aura of hard learned wisdom to her. Behind her is the youngest, I think her daughter, with a waif like face of spiky hair in a twenty something body.
I say, “Hello, How can I help you?”
The middle lady speaks on behalf of the others, saying, “You don’t know us but we lived here before you, my mother and I when I was a child in the 1950s and 60s. It was also my daughter’s home for a while and my mother continued here until she sold the house in the late 1980s. I had the front room where Sophie lived and she was my childhood friend. She was my daughter’s friend too, even when we then lived on the opposite side of Australia. Later she was also my daughter and granddaughter’s friend when they needed help too.
We came to the ceremony for Sophie and Matty, on that day at Ballast Point, but we did not want to intrude; it was a day for their own families.
But it made us think about our time living here and how important Sophie had been in all our lives. For the last six months we have written our story, in which Sophie has a central role. Today we wondered if you would tell to us the rest of the story that you found out about her life.
With that I invite them in for tea and tell them this story. In return they pass me the hand written manuscript of their story. When they depart I sit down and read it, barely leaving my seat over a day and night.
As I put it down I feel I have found a fitting closure to Sophie’ story, the girl in the picture with only eight years of life, but a child whose presence passed across many generations and may yet continue.
With my reading done I place it alongside the words I have written.
For those who want to read this story go to the book “Child Unknown” which is also available to read at this site.
The Old Balmain House Page 29