I suppose he'll die soon. I'm expecting it, like you do for a dog that's seventeen. There's no way to know how I'll react. He'll have faced his own placid death and slipped without a sound inside himself. Mostly, I imagine I'll crouch there at the door, fall onto him, and cry hard into the stench of his fur. I'll wait for him to wake up, but he won't. I'll bury him. I'll carry him outside, feeling his warmth turn to cold as the horizon frays and falls down in my backyard. For now, though, he's okay. I can see him breathing. He just smells like he's dead.

The question is what color will everything be at that moment when I come for you? What will the sky be saying?

As she watched all of this, Liesel was certain that these were the poorest souls alive. That's what she wrote about them . . . Some looked appealingly at those who had come to observe their humiliation, this prelude to their deaths. Others pleaded for someone, anyone to step forward and catch them in their arms. No one did.

I'm not one of these 'the characters write themselves; the story just fell out of me' kind of writers. Wish it was like that.

Living in Sydney, I've taken the chance to start surfing again. One of my best memories of growing up is catching my first proper wave and surfing across it and my brother cheering at me from the shore.

If only she could be so oblivious again, to feel such love without knowing it, mistaking it for laughter.

Just be patient, she told herself, and with the mounting pages, the strength of her writing fist grew.