They must have got up her nose, those articles, because Snow accused me in that first letter of getting ‘key facts’ wrong and of being biased against her.
I wrote back, asking her to tell me where I’d gone wrong, and then Snow replied, and so on and so forth for more than a year.
Some people might be wondering what exactly Snow hoped to gain by writing to me, but I reckon it was pretty obvious: I’m a reporter, and she wanted to convince people that she’s innocent of everything she’s ever been accused of doing.
As to what I was doing making Snow my penfriend, well, I reckon that’s obvious too.
I was trying to coax some kind of confession from her, so I could put the minds of some good people to rest.
I see now that’s not going to happen. I got a letter from the State government a few months back, telling me I was officially banned from writing any more letters to Snow while she’s in prison, and since I haven’t heard from her I take it she’s also banned from writing to me.
I’m annoyed, mostly because I believe that Snow had something to do with the disappearance of her sister, Agnes Moore, and now I’ve lost my chance to trip her up on that point.
At least one of my contacts in the New South Wales police force agrees that Snow knows more than she’s saying. Cops, though, spend too many years watching tricky lawyers get dodgy people off the hook, and for them it’s all about getting enough evidence to prove it in a court of law.
Evidence that’s legally admissible tends not to be as important to reporters. For us, it’s all about what makes sense – and what makes sense, at least to me, is that Snow Delaney needs to stay behind bars.
Mr Jack Fawcett
c/o The Sunday Times
Sydney, NSW, 2000
Dear Mr Fawcett,
You don’t know me, although you seem to think you do.
My name is Snow Delaney. That’s right, I’m the real Snow Delaney – the one who is actually not like the person you write about in your newspaper.
I’ve been reading your articles and I want you to know that you’ve got key facts wrong.
Like most reporters I don’t suppose you care what the facts are, and you’re probably so biased against me it doesn’t even matter what I say, but if you’re ever interested in finding out the truth you should get in touch. I don’t expect to hear from you, though, because no journalist I’ve ever met has been interested in facts, only in sensationalism.
Yours sincerely,
Snow Delaney,
Silverwater Prison
Dear Ms Delaney,
Thank you for your letter. I’m sorry that you think I have made mistakes in my articles about you. Please write back to tell me where I’ve gone wrong so I can, if necessary, issue a correction.
Yours sincerely,
Jack Fawcett,
Journalist
The Sunday Times
Dear Mr Fawcett,
So, you decided to write back to me! I’m surprised because most of the journalists I’ve written to don’t bother to reply.
You asked me what mistakes you’ve made. Where do you want me to start? For example, you wrote in The Sunday Times that nobody knows how I got the name Snow.
I’m sorry, but that’s ridiculous – everyone knows how I got the name Snow.
You seem to think that I know stuff that I actually know nothing about. Like, you said I must have had something to do with my sister Agnes going missing, and that’s complete rubbish. Why should I know anything about what happened to Agnes? I wasn’t even there when she wandered off.
All in all, Jack, you’ve put yourself up like you’re some kind of expert on me, but actually you don’t know me and maybe you even owe me an apology.
Yours sincerely,
Snow Delaney
Silverwater Prison
Dear Ms Delaney,
Thank you for your letter.
You say that everybody knows how you got the name Snow but since I have no idea you’ll have to fill me in.
You are quite right, I do believe that you know more than you are saying about the disappearance of your sister. I’m sorry that you think that’s unfair, but you still haven’t told me precisely where I have gone wrong in my stories so I can start working on my correction.
While you are at it, why don’t you take some time to tell me how you are being treated in Silverwater because I’m also interested in your rehabilitation?
Yours sincerely,
Jack Fawcett
Journalist
The Sunday Times
Dear Jack,
God, you made me laugh just then. You’re interested in my rehabilitation?
Don’t tell me that you’re one of those people who think prison is supposed to rehabilitate people, because if you are you have less of an idea how things work than I thought.
Prison doesn’t rehabilitate. What prison does is teach people how to take drugs and how to be lesbians, and if you think I’m lying you should come here and see it for yourself.
Every single one of the women in here with me is zonked out of their head on Valium or methadone, and the ones who aren’t zonked out are cuddled up doing open-mouthed kissing with each other. The weird thing is most of them weren’t gay before they got here and I know that because they’ve got kids.
Anyway, don’t pretend you’re interested in me when all you’re really interested in is getting a scoop, not that you’re going to be able to get much of a scoop since you’re confused about everything.
You want to know what you got wrong. Well, for example I saw in your article how you drove to my old home town of Deer Park and you went around to all the old neighbours asking about me. You talked to old Mrs Andrewartha who used to live two doors up and she said, ‘Oh, we couldn’t believe it when we heard that Snow was in jail.’
She can’t believe it? I can tell you for free that I can’t believe it, Jack.
She said, ‘Oh, she was such a nice girl and she had that lovely name, Snow, and we always wondered where she got it.’
Do you know what I thought when I read that, Jack? I thought, ‘How can Mrs Andrewartha still be alive? She was already an old bag when I was a girl!’
No, I’m joking, what I actually thought was, ‘How can Mrs Andrewartha not know how I got the name Snow? Because it’s pretty obvious.
My first name is Sally.
My middle name is Narelle.
My surname before I changed it, which old Mrs Andrewartha knows since she lived next door to my mother for forty years, was Olarenshaw.
I don’t see how anyone needs to be told that when your name is Sally Narelle Olarenshaw, your initials are going to be S … N … O. SNO, Jack?
Snow.
So that’s one mistake you made, but that’s not the only one. You said, ‘Snow had a pretty good time of it when she was a kid, living in a nice house on Station Road with her mum and dad, and going to a good Catholic school,’ or something like that.
You said, ‘It wasn’t like her sister, who had to grow up in the orphanage,’ and boo-hoo.
I’ve got to tell you, Jack, when I read that I thought, ‘So that’s how he thinks things work, is it?’ I had a mum and dad so my life must have been perfect, and Agnes got left in an orphanage so she deserves all the sympathy?
That might be how things work in your world, Jack, but they aren’t how things work in mine, and if you can’t understand that maybe I just shouldn’t write to you any more.
Yours sincerely,
Snow
Caroline Overington is the author of two non-fiction books, Only in New York and Kickback, which won the Blake Dawson Prize for Business Literature. She has twice won a Walkley Award for Investigative Journalism, and has also won the Sir Keith Murdoch Award for Journalistic Excellence.
Sisters of Mercy is her fourth novel, following the critically acclaimed Ghost Child, I Came to Say Goodbye and Matilda is Missing.
She lives in Bondi with her husband and their young twins.
Also by Caroline Overington
Fiction
Ghost Child
I Came to Say Goodbye
Matilda is Missing
Sisters of Mercy
Non-fiction
Only in New York
Kickback
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Passage
Published by Random House Australia 2012
Copyright © Caroline Overington 2012
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First published in Australia in 2011, by the Australia Council for the Arts, in 10 Short Stories You Must Read in 2011
National Library of Australia
Cataloguing-in-Publication entry
Overington, Caroline.
Passage [electronic resource] / Caroline Overington.
9780857980564 (ebook)
Short stories, Australian.
A823.4
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Ebook by First Source
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