Dateline Drumfeld – Wednesday
Pauline has set up a Facebook page for the Hawthorne Crescent Book Group. I thought it best to contact Christine who saw fit, after all, to ignore my reservations and introduce Pauline in the first place. “For goodness sake, Hamilton,” she snapped, irritated by the fact that I‘d interrupted a meeting by inferring a ‘family problem’ “It’s just a bit of fun!”
Dateline Drumfeld – Wednesday
Spent the morning reading some of Anne-Marie’s poems. They seem very accomplished – sensitive without being cloyingly so and illuminated by flashes of insight. In ‘Mission Statement’, for example, a cat sits on the window ledge, staring back at the narrator with an expression of ‘insolence and regret’. This, I assume, is a metaphor for friendships lost and opportunities squandered. Later, in the same poem, she follows ‘a shadowed path, leaving parts of myself in its puddles.’ Is this, I wonder, the path that led to Steven?
Dateline Drumfeld – Tuesday
Tonight’s book group was at Christine’s. A pointless and rancorous exchange about Celine’s ‘Death on Credit’ – my suggested novel – which nobody else had bothered to finish. Pauline, in fact, confessed – apparently without embarrassment – that she hadn’t even started, an admission I thought should have invalidated her presence at the meeting. The evening might have been wasted were it not for Izzie’s revelation that she went to school with Anne-Marie Osler. “We weren’t particular friends, but she was nice,” she said. “Jessica keeps up with her – she writes poetry…”