by Erin Gough
I squeeze her hand. ‘She loves you. She’ll be okay. Say happy birthday from me.’
‘If you were coming with me, you could say it yourself.’
‘Don’t start with all that again.’
She grins. ‘I’m going to miss you, that’s all.’
‘Me, too.’
After a final kiss, and a prolonged few seconds where I refuse to let go of her hand, I watch her walk away from me and disappear through the gate.
I’m alone again. I breathe in the aroma of the coffee I bought. I pick up one of the cups and remove the lid. I take a sip.
It’s disgusting.
See? My life is not without its sucky bits.
Then again, I can buy another coffee when I’ve returned to civilisation. And Harriet will be home in a week.
I walk towards the exit, looking for a bin to dump the coffee in. Mum and Graham are picking me up to take me to Dad’s hotel. He’s in Sydney for the week on magazine business and has invited me to stay with him in the plush hotel room that a well-known philanthropist is paying for. After googling the philanthropist to double-check he didn’t make his fortune from coal mining, tuna trawling or sweat shops, I agreed.
Between you and me? I’m looking forward to it. I have a protest art idea I want to run by him. Something that will have an impact on the wider community. Harriet is helping me develop an engagement plan. We’re hoping to get a whole group of people to work on it. With any luck Nat will be one of them.
Will Everhart doing a group assignment – who would have thought? It’s a sign I’m feeling semi-positive about the world, which is some sort of personal record. And why not? School’s finally finished. I’m seeing Dad for the first time in five months. But mostly, I’ve got Harriet to thank.
And Amelia Westlake, bless her regulation Rosemead cotton socks.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This book is a work of the imagination. Every person, event and institution is fictitious – except for Amelia Westlake, who is real.
Amelia Westlake was the name of a hoax I created with two friends in our final year of high school, although with different pranks and outcomes to those described in these pages.
I therefore want to start by thanking my original co-conspirators, Stephanie Kyme and Katrina Sanders, for their wicked genius; Pip Hill and Cynthia Wallis for inspiring us; Ingrid Stewart and Eleanor Swanepoel for inspiring the essay-swap prank; and our entire high school graduating class for embracing Amelia and for keeping a nametag for her at reunions to this day.
Thank you to my early readers: Elizabeth Allen, Rachael Cann, Natalie Conyer, Yvonne Edgren, Cathy Hunt, Isabelle Li, Justine Mill, Mark Riboldi, Katrina Sanders, Ashleigh Synnott, Conrad Walters and Rani Young. Each of you has made this a better book.
Thank you to Elizabeth Allen and Fiona McFarlane for spreading Amelia’s mischievous influence, and to Christine Ratnasingham and Pia van de Zandt for helping me research some delicate plot points.
Thank you to Maumau artists’ residency in Istanbul, where I wrote the initial chapters, and to my fellow residents who inspired me through their artistic practices: Pau Cata, Naz Cuguoǧlu, Emily Robbins, Tazneem Mononoke Wentzel and Bahar Yurukoglu.
Thank you to Jess Cruickshank for her terrific cover design.
Thank you to Patrick Cannon, Penny White, Hilary Rogers, Luna Soo, Marisa Pintado and the rest of the Hardie Grant Egmont team who helped make this book a reality. I am very lucky to work with such a dedicated and talented group of people.
Thank you to the booksellers, the librarians, the festival organisers, the broader #LoveOzYA community, and especially the passionate readers who have embraced my stories. You make the entire process – even the hard bits – worthwhile.
Thank you finally to Emma Kersey, who made writing this book possible and who brings joy to every day.
Erin Gough is a Sydney-based writer whose first novel for young adults, The Flywheel, won the Ampersand Prize. The Flywheel was published in the US as Get it Together, Delilah! and in Germany, and was shortlisted for the CBCA’s Book of the Year for Older Readers and the Centre for Youth Literature’s Gold Inky. Erin’s award-winning short stories have appeared in a number of journals and anthologies, including Best Australian Stories, The Age, Overland, Southerly and Going Down Swinging. Amelia Westlake is her second novel.
Amelia Westlake
first published in 2018 by
Hardie Grant Egmont
Ground Floor, Building 1, 658 Church Street
Richmond, Victoria 3121, Australia
www.hardiegrantegmont.com
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publishers and copyright holders.
eISBN 9781743585528
Text copyright © 2018 Erin Gough
Cover design by Jess Cruickshank
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