Unhidden

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Version Note

Unhidden is the final edition of the Celeste's Girl story.

Introduction

I write character-driven fiction about gender, power, belonging, and the women who build the rooms other people survive in. I’m not formally published in the traditional sense, and I’ve had AI as a drafting partner, but I’ve been working seriously on a long fiction project about gender, belonging, and women’s authority and agency.

Purpose

I wrote Celeste's Girl because I'm tired of two lies: that womanhood is a costume, and that trans-women are a threat rather than an ally. I know, intimately, what male privilege feels like from the inside — and what it means to step away from it. No one abandons that invisible armour for "skirts and perfume." They do it for survival, for coherence, for the simple, radical relief of finally being able to recognise themselves in the mirror and in their own life.

This book isn't interested in spectacle. It's interested in infrastructure: in the women who quietly build worlds where other women can breathe. Wardrobe is a deliberate answer to the patriarchy's workshops and back rooms. It's a place where competence is normal, where care is policy, and where a trans girl isn't a punchline or a fetish object or a theory — she's a colleague, a daughter, a wife, one of the women.

I wanted to show what happens when a former "beneficiary" of patriarchy walks into a women-led space and says, without quite understanding it:

"I belong with you."

What does it cost her? What does it cost them? What does everyone gain that none of them could have had alone?

Celeste's Girl is my love letter to women's work, to chosen family, and to the fierce, unglamorous kind of solidarity that stands in front of loading bays and board tables and says: "No. Not here. Not to her." It's also a quiet insistence that trans women are not an enemy camp, but some of the keenest, most motivated allies women will ever have in dismantling the structures that harm us all.

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1 Are You Lost?

[ Celeste ]

I normally don't go down that corridor at all.

The library wing had its own hush — pale tiles, the faint perfume of hand soap drifting from the bathrooms, and that institutional quiet that makes you lower your voice without thinking. I had cut through to avoid the main hall after the bell, because the hallway was a river of elbows and backpacks and I don’t like fighting a throng. Also, I’d learned early that if you walk as though you’re heading somewhere specific, people don’t try to talk to you. It’s simple choreography.

I nudged the door with my shoulder and stepped into the girls’ toilets — and only then saw someone at the sinks.

For a beat, my mind stalled because it didn’t resolve.

A boy.

He stood still, frozen.

He wasn’t predatory still. A quick read: he presented no threat, no intent — there was no edge to him. It was simply: wrong door, wrong place. That part settled easily.

The rest of him didn’t.

His stare was not the usual quick look you get from boys who think girls are scenery, but more like that of a deer discovering headlights.

He stood under the mirror lights with a paper towel clutched in his hand, staring at me. Short, slight, narrow-shouldered, with long brownish hair that fell into his eyes. Everything about him seemed to be designed to be dismissed as uninteresting.

I could have shouted 'Get out', as if with shouting I'd have the upper hand.

But shouting makes you the story. It invites witnesses who gossip. I didn’t want a story. Not for me, nor even for him. So I did what I always do when faced with the unexpected: I defined what happened next.

“Hello,” I said, calm as if I’d found a first-year hiding from a duty teacher. “Are you lost?”

His slender throat bobbed. The silence was so complete I could hear the air-conditioning tick behind the vent. Then he managed, hoarse and thin, “I —I’m sorry.”

An apology. Interesting.

I softened my voice slightly. “You know you’re in the ladies’, right?”

I watched the fact land late. His eyes flicked around the room, taking in the sinks, the cubicle doors, the absence of anything familiar. He pressed his eyelids together.

“Oh—" He groaned. “Oh, no. I thought this was— I mean, I—"

Words spilled out in fragments, urgent and unhelpful.

I was right: he was the wrong-door, off-with-the-pixies sort of lad, the kind who would apologise to a chair he bumped into.

He stared at me, holding the paper towel like evidence.

I stepped a bit closer.

He shrank back into the sinks.

“Right then,” I said, my hands held like an orchestra conductor's during a soft passage. “Just. Stop. Breathe.”

He blinked at me and breathed out, slowly.

“Now,” I continued calmly, “you’re going to walk out that door like nothing's wrong.”

His mouth opened again. I lifted a finger.

“Just follow my lead.”

His eyes slowly rose to meet mine and, as slowly, his hands lowered. He gave a tiny nod.

He wasn’t resisting guidance — he adjusted to it.

“What’s your name?”

He hesitated.

“Chuck,” he said, then corrected himself with a quick frown. “Charles. Charles Rossignol.”

“Rossignol.” I liked it: it had a nice ring. “French for: 'Nightingale'.”

The look in his eyes was shifting to something like awe — it was time to move forward. I tilted my head toward the door.

“Right. We’re leaving.”

I stepped out of the door first, positioning myself where anyone would see me before they saw him.

“If someone gives you a weird look,” I said quietly, “just look at me. Got it?”

He nodded: quick, obedient. As he crossed the threshold he stopped, eyes flicking back to me.

“Charlie,” I said lightly.

“My name’s—"

“I know.” My lips formed the smallest grin. “Charlie suits you, though. Tell me if you hate it.”

He looked at me for a moment longer. Then he was gone, swallowed by the tide of students. I stood in the doorway a moment longer, staring at the door.

And thinking about his eyes, the way he looked at me. It wasn't really awe, nor was it attraction, or like anything boys wear when they see something appealing. His look was different.

I closed the door and filed him away.

For now.

---

2 Group Task

[ Celeste ]

The chalk scratched "Group Task" on the board and the social dance began. Pairs of eyes found each other and heads tipped in acknowledgement. I felt a small smile form as I turned slowly, scanning a classroom all doing the same thing, like a flock of birds turning as one body — instinct, cowardice, and the lazy relief of belonging.

A well-rehearsed ritual.

Except one.

I nearly missed him. He sat at the very back, almost invisible, eyes on no one, except very briefly scanning the room: quick, skittish, dropping whenever they came close to meeting anyone else’s. Not asking, checking. He seemed to realise no one was going to choose him and his mouth tightened — resignation born of experience.

I stilled.

I knew this boy.

A quick flash — paper towels in an upturned fist. A sink. Those startled doe eyes tipping up to meet mine.

Oh.

The wrong place, wrong door lad.

I’d stood in the ladies’ and looked straight at him, and my brain hadn’t filed him as anyone from class because in class I never registered him as a person, just a space people avoided.

The efficiency of it was almost diabolical: I could observe the room arranging itself and never notice that there was someone being left outside that arrangement.

But I had seen him now.

Properly.

Mr. Greeves tapped the chalk like it had personally offended him.

“Alright. You’ve all had your practice test. Some of you have expressed your feelings about it. Today, you’re going to make sense of it.”

A few kids chuckled — not because it was funny, but because it was socially expedient.

“Pairs,” he said, underlining the word twice. “Pick a question from the set. Solve it. Then produce a one-page explanation that someone else can follow." He turned back to the class. " "If you can’t explain it, you don’t understand it.”

Chairs scraped on the floor, the sound of the low panic of social arrangements.

I didn’t move. I didn’t need to. People came to me.

I gave them my polite face and none of my answer.

My attention drifted to the back left, where Charlie sat.

He wasn’t particularly strange or unsightly. Yes, he was thin. And short — shorter than any of the boys, which seemed to bother them more than it bothered him. His uniform shirt sat awkwardly on his frame — too big at the shoulders, too loose at the waist, as if whoever gave it him hoped he would grow into it.

I’d never noticed him in class. The held-back boy, the one who re-did Year 11 because algebra had eaten him alive the first time.

Mr. Greeves stepped from behind his desk.

“If you’re still unpaired in thirty seconds, I’ll pair you.”

I watched Charlie: his eyes had stopped moving. His shoulders were drawn in, and his expression was empty.

This had happened before.

In this class.

With this teacher.

And these classmates.

In front of me.

“Time,” Mr. Greeves said. “Right. Charles and—"

“Me,” I cut in.

The room’s attention snapped to me like elastic.

You could see it in their faces — the sudden confusion. I resisted the impulse to smile.

Mr. Greeves blinked. “Celeste?”

I looked at him steadily. “I’m with Charlie.”

One boy let out a single startled laugh, then glanced around to see whether anyone else had found it funny. A few girls exchanged looks and one of them whispered, not quietly enough, “Why would you do that?”

I turned my head slightly but didn’t look at her.

“Because I like getting full marks,” I said, pleasantly. “And I like working with people who don’t waste time showing off.”

Silence.

A delicious, tidy silence.

Mr. Greeves shrugged, satisfied.

“Alright then. Celeste and Charles. Good.”

I walked my chair over to Charlie's desk.

He blinked, and then, his face went wide-eyed and open-mouthed.

Recognition.

“You don’t have to do this—" he began timidly.

“I know.”

I placed my notebook on the desk between us and looked at the question set.

“Pick one.”

“I—" He looked down. The page might as well have been written in smoke.

Finally, he collected himself, his eyes moving over the page the way someone looks for the familiar.

I watched him unconsciously shift his notebook — carefully, aligning the corners of the paper with the desk edge. I glanced at the handwriting: neat, consistent, slanted slightly right, well-mannered. The diagrams on the page were so neat, they looked printed.

“You’re pretty good at geometry, aren't you?”

His head came up with a twitch. “Sorry?”

“Geometry. You're good at it. Your diagrams are very precise.”

His eyes searched mine, genuinely confused.

“I’m —okay, I guess,” he said finally.

“No, you’re better than okay.” I tapped the question set. “Go ahead — pick one with a diagram. A shape. Something that lives in space, not in a string of symbols.”

He hesitated, then pointed with his pencil.

“This one. The triangle, with the angle bisector.”

“Right then.” I pointed. “You do the diagram. Make it clean. Label it properly. I’ll turn your diagram into an equation and write the explanation. And then, you can check my explanation works with the geometry. Deal?”

He stared at me. “You —trust me to check your explanation?”

“I trust your eyes,” I replied.

His ears went faintly pink as he bent over the page. His pencil moved and the triangle appeared — clean lines, honest angles.

While he worked, I listened to the classroom. The buzz of other pairs. The smugness of boys who’d paired up for safety, girls who’d paired up for comfort. My lips tensed as I heard the sibilants of my name — quick and unmistakably mine.

Charlie drew his angle bisector and then paused, frowning.

“Problem?”

He pointed.

“If you call that angle x, then this one has to be x too, because of the bisector. But the problem statement says this angle is thirty degrees, which means x is fifteen. Which means your ratio is fixed.”

He spoke softly, his eyes flicking to me nervously. I looked where he pointed.

He was right. The whole thing collapsed into a simple proportion.

“Exactly.”

He glanced up at me again, his hazel eyes more searching now.

“Why are you doing this?” he asked. His question wasn't about geometry.

What did I want?

“I hate waste,” I said.

“Waste? What do you mean?”

“Waste of ability,” I clarified. “Waste of talent.” I kept my voice calm. “You’re just misallocated.”

I leaned closer, just enough to make my next words private.

“I'm not trying to be kind,” I said. “I don’t do charity. I do investment.”

He continued to stare at me for a moment, his face serious.

We quickly finished the solution. I wrote the explanation in clear steps. He checked every transition like a quiet auditor. When we handed it in, Mr. Greeves nodded at me, then, more slowly, at him.

The bell went. People flowed past us. Charlie shrank to let them by. I slid my notebook into my bag and stood.

“Charlie.”

He looked up.

“I’ve taken work in Wardrobe at the Historical Faire,” I said. “Interested?”

The Faire employed half the local students, the way Macca’s or Hungry Jack’s did in other towns; the only difference was that here the uniforms came with petticoats, stays, linen shifts, and a history lesson.

He frowned slightly. “Wardrobe? Why me?”

“Because you already know how to get work done without applause,” I said, “and Wardrobe needs people who can keep their heads. People who can do detail. People who can be invisible on purpose.”

He stared at me for a moment, then gave a noncommittal nod.

“See you there.”

I could feel him watching me walk away.

---

3 Wardrobe 🧵

[ Celeste ]

Wardrobe had its own weather.

Outside weather — sun or rain — could change, but Wardrobe's was a constant climate of steam and cloth-dust and warmed metal. The air tasted faintly of detergent and starch and something older that lived in wool no matter how many times you cleaned it: sheep, lanolin, history.

Wardrobe was a maze of rails and racks, garment bags whispering against each other whenever someone brushed past. Stacked crates carried Mara’s handwriting — blunt lettering of someone who preferred labels to archaeologists. A long trestle table ran down the centre, with a half-dressed mannequin and a skirt turned inside-out, hemline pinned for repair.

At the table stood Mara, staring with a slight frown at a bodice in her hands. She turned the bodice over and tapped the seam.

“What’s this?” she said quietly. Mara never raised her voice — she didn’t need to.

“Who did this?”

I left the rail and moved closer, careful not to trip over the steamer hose that snaked across the floor. Mara’s gaze flicked to me, her mouth tightening as she pinched the fabric and tugged. The seam puckered like a forced smile.

“Whoever did this sewed with fear.”

The stitches were tight, too tight. Someone had been trying to prove something with needle and thread.

“They were probably worried it wouldn’t hold.”

“It won’t hold because they were worried," Mara snorted. "That’s the irony.”

She flipped the bodice again and thrust it at me.

“Unpick it. Do it properly, not fast. Properly.”

I took the bodice, feeling the weight of it — the underlining, the interlining, the bones that gave it a spine. The kind of garment that made you understand, viscerally, why women in paintings stood the way they did. I carried it to the end of the table, sat, and began to unpick the seam with a seam ripper.

I liked Wardrobe because it wasn’t school.

School rewarded performance. You threw hands up, shouted answers, and wore confidence like an ill-fitting costume. Wardrobe rewarded something quieter: attention, patience, care. You could be brilliant here without the marketing.

I worked for a few minutes, the thread finally giving way with soft little snaps.

Mara’s voice cut across the room.

“Did you bring the inventory sheet?”

“It’s on the clipboard by the haberdashery shelf.”

“Did you sign out the spools you took yesterday?”

“Yes.”

Mara’s mouth twitched. She moved around the room, checking rails, touching fabric, straightening labels.

“You’re late for your break.”

“I’m not hungry.”

Mara turned to me.

“That’s not the point.”

“What is the point, then?”

“It's this,” she said, “a future isn’t built on fumes. You burn out and then you’re useful to no one, including yourself.”

I let out a small breath and set the bodice down.

“Fine. Ten minutes.”

“Good girl.”

I stretched my shoulders and headed toward the tiny kitchenette. It barely deserved the name: a bench, a sink, a kettle, and a jar of instant coffee that tasted like burnt regret.

I’d just filled the kettle when the door to Wardrobe banged open.

A man in a hi-vis vest and work boots stepped into the doorway as if he’d decided the room was his and he was taking possession. He wore a cap that had seen better days, and a face that looked permanently sunburnt. His mouth wore that slightly annoyed grimace outdoors men reserve for indoor occupations.

“Far-out,” he said, eyes flicking over the room. “It’s like walking into a bloody op-shop in here.”

Mara turned slowly.

“Graham.”

He grinned at her with that easy confidence of someone cheerfully taking up space even if not entirely welcome.

“Mara.” His gaze slid past her and caught me. “Oh. It’s you. Fancy seeing you outside school.”

I raised my eyebrows. “It’s almost like I work here.”

“Yeah, whatever.” He turned to Mara, who had gone back to examining rails. “Need you to sign off on the replacement for the steamer." He tipped his chin at the rusty relic near the loading dock entryway. "That one’s cactus.”

“Form?”

“Right here.” Graham slapped a crumpled paper on the table and attempted to smooth it. And failed. “Now, I've got a separate problem, not related to your op-shop here.”

Mara slid a cloak along the rail. “If it’s your problem, why are you telling me?”

“Because,” Graham said, exhaling through his nose, “I thought you might have some ideas on how to deal with this.” He stuffed his hands in his pockets. ”It seems someone up top decided I needed help, so they sent me this kid.”

Mara turned towards him, her face one of limited patience.

My attention suddenly focused, unbidden.

Graham leaned his hip against a rack of cloaks as if it was a wall. The cloaks swayed, offended.

“So, this kid,” he continued, with a quick scowl at the rack, “he's just too small, too weak, and too bloody— I don’t know. He’s just not built for maintenance.”

Mara’s voice was flat.

“If he’s a kid, he shouldn’t be in maintenance.”

“Well— he’s not actually a kid.” Graham rubbed an unshaven jaw. “He’s eighteen, but he looks about thirteen. Seriously, he’s got arms like pipe cleaners!" His scowl deepened. "Look, I put him on basic stuff, like carrying, fetching, holding ladders, and he’s just— hopeless. He tries, I’ll give him that. But he’s going to get hurt.”

I felt my grip tighten slightly on the kettle handle.

“You tell him to grab the toolbox, he grabs it like it’s going to bite him. You tell him to hold a ladder and he holds it like he’s apologising to it.“ He puffed up his chest. “He’s just wrong for the job.”

Mara glanced at the paper on the table.

“What’s his name?”

Graham hesitated for half a second.

“Chuck,” he said. “Um— Rossignol.”

The kettle clicked as it finished boiling. The sound was absurdly loud.

Mara’s eyes flicked to me. She had a way of reading people that made her frightening.

“You know him.”

“I do.”

Graham looked puzzled. “You do?”

“Yes. I do,” I repeated, stonily calm. “From school.”

Mara turned back to him.

“You’re going to sack him, aren't you?”

“I have to.” He sounded defensive. “I told him that this morning.”

The room seemed to lean in.

I spoke before I could stop myself. “And he asked to stay on, didn’t he?”

Graham’s eyes flicked to me, surprised.

“Well, yeah. He did. How did you know?” He turned back to Mara. “When I told him this morning to start looking for something else he looked like he was about to cry. He kept saying he needed the work, that he’d do anything.”

I set the kettle down slowly.

“So, he didn’t refuse my suggestion.”

Mara's gaze held mine. “Your suggestion?”

I weighed my words.

“I told him the other day,” I said finally, “that I might have something for him. Work. Because he didn’t show today I assumed he had decided not to.”

“You were offering him this?” Graham looked incredulous.

“Didn’t you say he wasn’t cut out for your kind of work?”

“So, you’ll let him have a go in here?” Graham scoffed. "With the dresses?”

Mara’s gaze cut to him like a blade. “Say ‘dresses’ again like that and I’ll put you in one.”

Graham held up his hands in mock surrender. “Right-o. Just saying—”

“You’re saying the same thing men always say when they don’t understand labour they can’t muscle around,” Mara replied. She turned to me. “What about him tells you he would work out well here?”

“His hands,” I said. “His eyes. His patience.” I counted them off with my fingers. “He draws like someone who thinks in structure. In geometry. His handwriting is neat. He listens. He doesn’t perform.”

Graham snorted. “Doesn’t sound like a qualification to me.”

“It is in Wardrobe,” Mara said. She reached for the bodice I’d been unpicking and held it up by the straps.

“You see this? This is engineering disguised as femininity. It’s physics: measurements and force and stress.“ She waved her hand dismissively. “We don’t need biceps: they get in our way. We need brains.”

Graham shrugged. “Fine. You want him, take him. But I’m not babysitting him until you decide.”

“You're not meant to babysit. You're meant to supervise. There’s a difference.”

She turned to me.

“If we take him, he does things by Wardrobe's rules,“ Mara cut in. “He shows up on time. He listens. He follows instruction. He's not a larrikin. He keeps his hands clean and his mouth cleaner. He gets one trial shift.” Mara tapped once on the table. “One. That’s all I need. One day.”

Graham seemed uncomfortable. “So what, you want me to send him over?”

“No,” Mara said. “I want him to choose to come.”

She reached for a small pad and scribbled something, then tore off the page and held it out to Graham.

“Time. Location,” Mara said. “When you give him this, tell him: if he wants a trial, he turns up. If he doesn’t, his choice. You sack him and no one feels guilty.”

Graham stared at the paper like it had teeth.

“You’re ruthless.”

“I’m fair,” Mara corrected. “Ruthless is sacking someone because they’re not built like a Neanderthal.”

Graham’s ears reddened. “Oi!”

Mara tilted her head. “Am I wrong?”

“Well, no.”

Mara’s mouth twitched. “Right, then. Now, try to be useful somewhere else. I’ve got work.”

Graham grunted and left, the door banging loudly behind him.

Mara picked up the bodice again, examined the seam I’d been unpicking.

“Better.”

I exhaled.

“He begged. I can’t imagine him doing that,” I said. “He wouldn’t beg unless—”

“Unless he was desperate,” Mara finished, matter-of-fact. “That’s what poverty does. It makes dignity negotiable.”

I glanced at the door, then at Mara. Her gaze held mine for a second longer.

“Ten minutes,” she said, returning to her work. “Then come back and finish that seam. He turns up tomorrow, you’re on rails and pins. I don't take strays, and neither do you. You do not hover or mother.”

“I wouldn’t,” I said, offended on principle.

“Of course not.”

I rolled my eyes and moved toward the door.

As I stepped into the corridor outside Wardrobe, the noise of the faire changed — less muffled, more alive. Somewhere in the distance, tourists laughed. A bell rang. Someone yelled about a lost hat. The smell of hot chips drifted in from the food court, as if mocking the Faire's carefully crafted historical illusions.

I walked fast.

Ten minutes.

The maintenance compound sat behind the main buildings, past a cluster of props and a row of portable toilets that contributed nothing to the “authentic eighteenth century experience”. The path was half gravel, half mud. A pallet of timber sat near a fence, and a stack of metal poles leaned precariously against a wall.

Graham was there, climbing an aluminium ladder, muttering to himself.

And below him, gripping the base of the ladder —

Charlie.

His hands were white-knuckled on the rails, his shoulders, tight. His gaze was fixed upward, not watching Graham’s feet so much as waiting for the moment the world asked him for credentials. He looked, in that moment, exactly as he had in the girls’ toilets: lost and a bit frightened.

Moments later Graham climbed down, still muttering.

“There. Fixed.”

Charlie loosened his grip slightly, but didn’t step away. Graham pulled the folded scrap of paper from his pocket and gave it to him. He gestured vaguely toward the main buildings.

“That's from Wardrobe. You're being offered a trial shift. You want it, show up." He turned away. “In any case, you’re done here.”

Charlie stared at the paper, then at Graham’s receding back. “But—"

“Talk to them,” Graham said, opening the door to the shed. “It’s a bunch of women. They seem to think you might work out.”

Charlie’s eyes dropped to the page again. His fingers tightened around it.

I waited until Graham had disappeared, then stepped forward.

Charlie went still in that deer-headlights way again.

“Celeste,” he murmured finally.

“Charlie,” I replied, evenly. “You’re alive.”

His throat bobbed. “I— yeah.”

I nodded at the paper in his hand.

“That’s the offer I mentioned in maths. Mara’s offering you a trial shift.”

He looked down at it. “I didn’t— I didn’t mean to ignore your offer.”

I kept my tone neutral. “I just assumed you’d decided not to take it.”

His shoulders drew in. “I had this job already. My folks—”

“I see.”

He swallowed.

“Maintenance… it’s— I’m not good at it.”

“So I’ve heard,” I replied. He stared at me, eyes flicking quickly over my face.

They searched for mockery.

And found none.

“I know your kind of work isn't this,” I said, leaning slightly closer. “You just haven't been offered the right lane.”

He stared at the paper.

“I won’t sugar-coat it,” I continued firmly. "Mara’s rules are strict and she’s not interested in your story. She wants to know that you will show up and do as you’re told.”

His eyes moved slowly from the paper to me.

“By the way,” I added, “it is okay to say no. If you try it and don’t want it, you simply don’t take it. You won’t be punished for refusing.”

I held his gaze for a beat, then stepped back.

“Seven-thirty,” I said. “If you’re there, you’re there. If you’re not, I’ll assume you made your decision.”

I turned to go.

“Celeste.”

I stopped.

“I— I can do detail,” he said. “I can learn fast if someone shows me.”

I turned slowly, and looked at him properly.

“I know that,” I said. “Otherwise, I’d be wasting my time.”

And then, I walked away, back toward Wardrobe, back into steam and cloth-dust and the woman who didn’t take strays.

---

4 First Day 🧵

[ Celeste ]

Charlie arrived ten minutes early. He stood outside Wardrobe as if the door had a sign: "For Authorised Personnel Only". There was no phone in his hand. He stood quietly waiting, folded scrap of paper in one hand, fingers worrying the edge until it softened. Every now and then he glanced at the door — as if to check whether the world had changed its mind.

Inside, Wardrobe moved the way it always did: rails clacking softly as garments were shifted, the new steamer hissing like it meant business, the constant quiet conversation between fabric and hands.

Mara had spotted him through the small window in the door. Nevertheless, she slowly, deliberately finished what she was doing first: pinning a waistband to a mannequin, smoothing the fabric as if it needed reassurance. Finally, she wiped her hands on a cloth and nodded toward me.

“Open it.”

You don’t chase him. You don’t sell Wardrobe.

I opened the door and stood aside. Charlie stepped in and his eyes snapped to mine.

“You’re early.” It came out neutral, the way you’d say it’s Tuesday.

“I— I didn’t want to be late.”

Mara looked at him the way she examined a bodice seam — assessing for integrity.

“Rossignol.”

Charlie's shoulders rose slightly. “Yes.”

Mara’s eyes dropped to his hands. “Clean?”

He looked down as if he’d forgotten he had hands. He impulsively held them out, palms up, fingers splayed. They were clean. Nails trimmed short.

Mara turned away. “Shut the door.”

He shut it quietly.

Mara walked to the centre table and picked up a garment bag.

“Presently, our main occupation is maintaining costumes for the Faire actresses and actors," she told him. "Do you have any experience with needle and thread?“

“I have some.“

She unzipped the bag with a brisk motion and removed a dress — a simple working dress in sturdy fabric, with a seam splitting near the side closure. The tear was held together with hurried, barbaric stitches. Mara placed it onto the table.

“This came in yesterday. A tourist sat down too hard. Someone panicked and tried to fix it.” She tapped the seam with her finger. “Have a look at that.”

Charlie leaned in and seemed to study it for a moment.

“The tension’s wrong,” he said, quietly. “It’s pulling.”

Mara’s face switched to one of scrutiny. “Oh? Explain.”

“The seam has been stitched too tight,” he said, eyes focused on the garment. “Also, the stitch doesn’t match the grain. The fabric is fighting the stitch.”

Mara's brows rose imperceptibly. “So, what do you do to fix that?”

“Unpick it. Start over.”

Mara's eyes moved to me.

“Do it,” she told him.

“May I have a seam ripper?”

Mara’s mouth tightened.

“It’s called a lame.”

Charlie reddened. “Sorry. A—"

“Don’t apologise,” Mara said. “Just learn.”

Mara pointed at the far end of the table.

“You can sit just there. Tools are in the tin. Thread is in the drawer. If you use something, put it back when you're done. If you break something, you tell me straight-away. If you don’t know, ask. Remember the answer.”

“Yes.”

Mara's expression softened slightly.

"You may call me Mara."

"Yes, Mara."

He took himself to the far end of the table and began rummaging through the tin. Mara turned to me.

“Celeste.”

I looked up.

“You’re on rails and pins. Not on him.”

“Understood.”

Charlie’s gaze flicked to me — quick, skittish. I turned away and went to the rails, where a cluster of damaged garments waited like quiet accusations. Every now and then I would cast a furtive glance at the other end of the table. Charlie sat on a stool, the dress draped over his knees, almost motionless.

Mara moved around the room as he worked, doing her usual circuit: checking labels, touching fabric, straightening hangers. But her attention wasn’t on the label or fabric or hangers or even the dress draped over Charlie's knees.

It was on him.

Charlie worked slowly, unpicking the seam steadily, patiently, lifting each tight stitch and easing it out as if he was undoing a critical mistake.

Finally, Mara stopped all pretence. She looked over his shoulder, examining his work.

“Why are you going so slowly?”

There was no accusation in her voice, yet Charlie’s shoulders visibly tightened. He looked up briefly, then back down at the seam.

“Because if I unpick too quickly, I might tear the fabric.”

Mara’s voice was flat.

“And if you tear the fabric?”

“The I’d have to patch it.” His features changed, as if he was thinking of the worst thing possible: “And a patch would show.”

Mara’s eyes narrowed slightly.

“So, you don’t want it to show.”

“No, I don't.”

Mara walked away.

He gave me a nervous glance, and then, went back to the slow unpicking of the seam.

After he’d unpicked the seam completely, he didn’t immediately reach for thread. He smoothed the fabric with his palm, slow and light. Then he looked up.

“Mara?”

Mara’s head turned. “Yes, Rossignol.”

He held up the dress slightly.

“The original seam allowance is a bit narrow. If I stitch it the way it is, the seam will hold, but it will be under stress. If I reinforce it from the inside with a strip of fabric — like a facing — then that strip will take the load.”

His finger indicated delicately in the air above the fabric, respectful, as if the dress deserved dignity.

“Where would you put the strip?”

Charlie pointed to the inside layer.

“Just here, Mara. Along the closure line. It won’t show.”

Mara stared at the seam, and then, at him for a beat longer than necessary. Then:

“Do it, Rossignol.”

Charlie reached for the drawer, selected a strip of fabric, measured it slowly, then measured it again. His cuts were thoughtful. A little while later, Mara brought over a small tin and set it down near Charlie’s elbow.

“Needles,” she said. “Choose the right one.”

Charlie glanced at the tin, then at the fabric, then back. He picked a needle that matched the weight of the material and threaded it.

On the first try.

Mara noticed.

Of course she did.

“You sew at home, don't you?”

Charlie’s mouth tightened. “Sometimes.”

“Who taught you?”

“My mum.” He put a knot in the far end of the thread. “She does alterations for neighbours, for a bit of pin money.”

Mara's eyes flicked to mine. She gave me the slightest nod.

“Right, then,” she murmured. “So you do know what you're doing.”

Charlie didn’t answer. If he'd had an answer, Mara didn’t give him the chance. She tapped the table.

“When you’re finished, you’ll bring it to me. And if it’s not right, I will know. And so will you.”

“Yes, Mara.”

One of the other girls — Leah — arrived with a pile of folded aprons. She stared at Charlie, speechless for a moment.

“Mara,” she said cautiously, eyes darting to him and away again. “Is— is he—"

Mara didn’t look up. “He’s working.”

Leah’s mouth opened, then shut. She glanced at me, searching for cues. I gave her raised eyebrows.

Mara looked up then, and her gaze pinned Leah the way a pin fixes fabric.

“Do you have a problem with a person doing their work?”

Leah flushed. “No.”

“Good.” Mara’s voice was mild, which made it more dangerous. “Then focus on yours.”

Leah scurried away like a mouse escaping a cat.

Charlie’s shoulders had gone tight, but he kept stitching, eyes on the line.

A while later, Mara moved to the far side of the room and pulled a curtain partway across a doorway. Behind it was the fitting area — a small section partitioned off from the main space, controlled. She spoke without raising her voice.

“Rossignol.”

Charlie stopped. “Yes, Mara?”

“Put aside what you're doing,” Mara said, “and bring me the dress.”

Charlie set the needle down where it belonged, precisely, smoothing the thread, and then carried the dress over with both hands as if it could bruise. Mara took it, examined the seam with her fingertips, turned it inside-out, then right side out again. She tugged lightly near the closure.

The seam held. It lay flat. It looked as if it had never been damaged.

Mara did not smile. But she nodded, a single dip.

“Acceptable.”

And then she looked at him.

Not the dress. Him.

“Tell me, Rossignol, what happens if you make a mistake in here?”

Charlie's neck went red. “I— I fix it.”

“And if you can’t fix it?”

“I tell you,” he said quickly. “Straight-away.”

“And what would happen if you didn’t tell me?”

Charlie looked at the floor. “Then I’d be— out.”

Mara placed her slender fingers on the seam.

“Yes,” she said quietly. “You’d be out. Out, because you were not being safe. Only by being truthful are you, and the rest of us, safe.”

Charlie looked up at Mara then, who held his gaze.

“You understand me.”

It was a statement, not a question.

“Yes, Mara.”

Mara straightened. “Celeste.”

I knew what was coming.

“Show him the inventory shelf,” Mara said. “You point. He listens. Then you go back to rails. He doesn't follow you.”

I nodded. “Come on,” I said to Charlie.

He followed me at a respectful distance. I stopped at the shelves and pointed out the labelled boxes: hooks, pins, tapes, ribbons, boning, eyelets. Charlie said nothing, quietly tracking everything.

When I finished, I stepped back.

“That’s it.”

He nodded. “Okay. Thanks for that.” And then, almost despite himself, he asked, very softly: “Does Mara— hate me?”

I glanced down at his face. He was data-gathering. Nothing else.

“Mara doesn’t hate people,” I said, my tone neutral. “She hates time-wasting.”

His shoulders loosened slightly.

“Right. Thanks.”

Mara called across the room again. “Rossignol.”

Charlie turned as if by reflex. “Yes, Mara.”

“Pins,” Mara said. “Sort by size. If you mix them, you get to do them over.”

Charlie took the tin and began to sort, methodical and silent. I went back to the rails. After another half hour, Mara’s voice cut through the steady hiss of steam.

“Rossignol.”

Charlie's head went up.

“Come back tomorrow at seven-thirty.”

Charlie's eyes went wide.

“Really?”

Mara lifted an eyebrow. “If you want.”

Charlie glanced down at his hands, then up again.

“I do. I want to.”

Mara’s gaze didn’t soften, but something in her posture eased — like a seam that had stopped fighting.

“Good. Don’t be late.”

He looked around, then, at the rails, the steam, the dresses on the mannequins.

His shoulders seemed to drop, the tiniest bit.

He was coming back tomorrow.

---

5 Second Day 🪡

[Celeste]

Mara didn’t test people the way teachers do.

Teachers would announce a test, watch you sweat, and then moralise the result. Mara tested you the way you tested a seam: under her fingers, quietly, looking for strain.

Charlie was back for a second morning. Same early arrival. Same clean hands. Same careful stillness.

Mara pointed at a tin on the table.

“Pins,” she said. “Sort them. Then you’re on the mending pile.”

Charlie poured the pins out onto a cloth. With a kind of tidy focus that made the task look dignified, he began arranging them by length.

Wardrobe had its own rhythm — calm on the surface, precise underneath. Charlie had already started matching it — he had joined a system without trying to dominate it.

Mara’s next test came ten minutes later, when she “accidentally” left a pair of vintage shears too close to the edge of the table.

Charlie noticed the shears. His eyes flicked to them, then to Mara. He didn’t touch them but nudged the cloth closer, stabilised the table edge with his palm, and slid them back with two fingers — careful, respectful — like he was returning a bird to its perch.

Mara didn’t look up.

At first I didn't think she'd noticed at all. But presently, I saw the smallest change in her mouth. She knew.

Of course she knew.

Mara sent him to the mending pile: a basket of small catastrophes — popped seams, torn cuffs, fraying apron ties. The difficult ones, the ones where haste would show. Charlie studied each item the way he’d studied the torn dress yesterday: calm, quiet. He chose thread that colour-matched with an uncanny instinct. He stitched with even tension, no puckering or desperate pulling.

Charlie’s attention to Mara was constant and respectful.

Charlie’s attention to me was — different.

It was as if his eyes kept finding me on their own and each time they did, he would look away, as if noticing me was an invasion of privacy.

Was it a crush?

From the rail, I watched his hands gently — almost tenderly — coax thread and fabric to be friends.

“You’re stitching like you’ve done this for years,” I said.

Charlie’s hands paused for half a second, needle hovering. Then he kept going.

“My mum,” he said quietly. “She made sewing fun. It was her game — she gave me harder and harder things to sew. The goal was for the repair to be invisible. If you make it invisible, it looks neat.”

“That’s true,” I replied. “And if you make it neat here, Mara doesn’t kill you.”

His mouth twitched into a fragile smile, which quickly vanished. His eyes flicked from my face to his work like the paws of a cat picking its way across a hot path.

“Thanks,” he said after a moment.

“For what?”

“For yesterday.” He looked down at his hands. “For— for getting me in.”

I shook my head.

No.

I don’t want gratitude.

“You got you in,” I said. “You turned up. You worked.”

His shoulders loosened slightly. He threaded another needle, hands steady.

“I just—"

He stopped, so I did my usual: I decided what he was trying to say.

“You mean you don’t want to make me uncomfortable.”

His hazel eyes widened, startled. Then his face fell again with a nod as quick as shame.

“Yes,” he whispered.

“Fine. Let's keep it that way.”

The steamer chose just then to emit a hiss. We both turned to look at it.

“It’s just—" I heard him stammer. "You’re— you’re a lot.”

I frowned.

“A lot?”

“I mean, you’re—" He paused to put in a final stitch and snipped the thread short. Finally: "You make things make sense.”

I let his words sit between us.

“Right then,” I said, picking up a bodice with a frayed edge tear. "Let's see if you can make this tear disappear.”

He studied it and his face smoothed. Almost smiled.

“Okay.”

I turned to go back to the rail.

“I feel I should tell you— and Mara,“ I heard his voice behind me, the words spilling out, rushed. ”Maintenance was just a summer job. It seems like people are teaching me things— trusting me with things. It wouldn’t be fair if I didn't tell you.”

I paused, hand resting on a garment bag.

“Tell me what?”

His eyes were fixed on the seam.

“I’m meant to be starting an apprenticeship next year. Welding. At the shipyard.” He swallowed. “Dad’s lined it up.”

That landed like a duck expecting water but finding ice.

I looked at his hands.

His fingers around the needle.

His arms.

His long hair tied back with an elastic.

Welder.

Make it make sense.

“Did he line up maintenance for you as well?” I asked.

He shrugged, small. “Yeah."

I left the rail. Mara gave me a look but I ignored it.

"Is welding something that interests you?"

Charlie frowned slightly.

"Dad says it's a good trade."

"That's not what I asked."

He opened his mouth.

Closed it again and rubbed his forehead.

Silence stretched. The steamer hissed somewhere behind us.

“I just—" he began, then stopped. His voice dropped. “It's solid work.”

There it was.

Survival.

I placed my finger lightly on the fabric near his seam.

“Is this solid work?”

He shook his head with a faint puff. “This is— dresses.”

Across the room, Mara’s voice cut through the hiss of the steamer.

“Rossignol!”

Charlie’s head snapped up. “Yes Mara?”

Mara held up a sleeve with a tear near the cuff. “This one. Show everyone how you do it.”

Charlie went very still.

“Yes, Mara.”

He rose and took the sleeve from her.

---

6 Lauren ✨

[ Celeste ]

I was at the rail tagging garment bags when Lauren Rossignol arrived.

She didn't come to Wardrobe like a mother arriving at a principal's office. Instead, she stepped into the room respectfully, like someone realising she'd entered a place where skilled hands were at work. A canvas tote on her shoulder and her car keys in her hand, her gaze swept the room, at the rails, the mannequin, the prototype jacket pinned in place.

Her hair was pulled back too tightly for vanity.

Her lipstick was absent.

Her expression was not.

Mara was at the cutting table, pencil behind her ear, studying the pattern paper spread before her.

She looked up.

"Can I help you."

Lauren paused. Her gaze had settled on the mending corner that wasn't a corner anymore, where a figure sat with their back to her, absorbed in a garment. She turned to Mara.

"I'm Charles' mother," she said finally.

Mara didn't move, but something in her eyes adjusted, like a lens clicking into focus.

"I see," Mara said.

Lauren frowned slightly.

"I expected him to be working in maintenance," she said. "He told me over dinner last night he was working here."

"He is."

Lauren bit her lip. Mara studied her calmly.

"And you are wondering why."

Lauren nodded. Mara pointed at the chair next to her table.

"Would you like to sit down?"

Lauren sat, carefully. She placed her keys on her knee instead of the table, as if not to take up more space than necessary. Her tote stayed on her shoulder.

"My name is Mara." The words came out quiet, measured. "What would you like to know?"

Lauren looked around the room again, searching — then hastily returned, as if remembering her manners.

"Sorry, I'm Lauren." She stopped, pressing her fist against her lips for a beat. "I want to understand why he's not in maintenance anymore."

Mara's mouth went into a thin line.

"Maintenance wasn't working."

Lauren's head went back slightly.

"I'm not sure I follow."

"Maintenance expected Charlie to solve problems by force," Mara explained. "That's not how he works."

"What do you mean?"

Mara folded her hands.

"He slows down when faced with a problem," she replied, "and then, he handles things carefully."

Lauren stared at the table.

"And I suppose that approach doesn't work in maintenance."

Mara tapped the table once. "Correct. And in Wardrobe, it's required."

Lauren looked at the pattern paper on Mara's table.

"May I ask what is this for?"

Mara gestured towards the open window. Morning at the Historical Faire was in full swing: the voices of actors in the marketplace proclaiming the virtues of their onions and turnips could be heard in the distance.

"New production. The Faire wants a shopkeeper line."

Lauren's eyebrows rose.

"You make them here yourselves?"

"Been doing so for years," Mara said. "Almost since the Faire opened. The owners weren't happy with what we were getting from overseas."

Lauren's head tipped with appreciation. She glanced at the sewing machines on the next table.

"We make costumes and maintain them," Mara continued. "And alter them, if need be. Store seasonal items after we've prepared them for next season."

The steamer hissed as the shouting of the vendors seemed to grow louder.

"So, this isn't just repair. It's— a trade."

"Several trades," said Mara. "People think all we do is stitch torn seams." She stood. "We're a workshop. Cloth just happens to be our material."

Lauren looked thoughtful for a moment, then seemed to remember something. Reaching into her tote bag, she produced a folded piece of cloth, which she handed to Mara.

"Charlie showed me this last night," she said. "The lace had separated from the cap. He'd sewn it back."

Mara's lips twitched slightly. She slowly unfolded it.

They stared at it for a moment without speaking. Then, Mara's eyes rose to Lauren's.

"He says you taught him."

Lauren's gaze dropped back to the cap.

"I did." She shrugged slightly. "It was— arts and crafts."

Mara's brows rose a fraction.

"Arts and crafts?"

Lauren's face softened slightly.

"You know, something to keep kids busy during the holidays."

Mara's look was piercing.

"No."

The word wasn't said so much as expelled. Lauren's eyes widened.

"This isn't arts and crafts, Lauren." She turned the cap inside out, examining the stitching. "This is a foundation. This is how I would have done the job."

She pointed at the edge of the lace.

"Most people just see lace that has come off." She tugged slightly at the seam. "A sewer looks for where it had let go." She put the cap on the table.

"You didn't just teach sewing, but seeing."

Lauren's hand reached out and gently touched the lace. Her head bobbed in a barely perceptible nod. She glanced at Mara, then turned to the window.

"So, what do I do?"

Mara's look didn't change.

"You don't do anything different."

"But Roger—" Lauren stopped.

Mara's look sharpened.

"Roger will have his opinion."

Lauren looked at her.

"He knows ships." Mara sat down. "You know Charlie. And his opinion doesn't change what you know."

Lauren grimaced.

"Roger is Charles' father."

Mara put her arms on the table and leaned forward, looking straight at Lauren.

"No one is suggesting you ignore Roger's opinion." She held Lauren's gaze.

"Then what are you saying?"

"I'm saying to not ignore yourself."

Lauren looked away.

I continued to quietly put tags on finished costumes. The metal hook of the hangers against the rails made a faint scraping sound as the costumes swayed.

And then, for a while, the only sounds were those of the Faire through the window and the faint hiss of the steamer.

I watched Lauren take in a breath and look around.

And then, she blinked.

She'd recognised the figure in the mending corner.

Mara wordlessly watched her get up and walk over to Charlie.

He raised his eyes to meet hers, his head and his body completely still.

Her eyes moved from his face to his hands.

"What are you working on?"

He held up the seam.

And Lauren nodded.

---

7 Morning Tea ✨

[ Celeste ]

Lauren came back a week later looking tired, because mothers always do.

But she didn’t bring keys to crush in her palm.

She brought coffee.

A small paper bag, warm through the bottom, smelling of espresso and pastry, and a tote that sat on her shoulder like she’d learned how to carry weight without injury.

Mara looked up from the worktable.

“We don’t eat over fabric,” she said, as if citing doctrine.

Lauren nodded like she’d expected nothing else.

“I didn’t bring it for the fabric,” she said. Her tone had a dryness to it. “I brought it for women who forget food because they’re too busy.”

Mara’s eyes narrowed.

“I don’t forget,” Mara said. “I postpone.”

Lauren’s mouth twitched. “Yes. That.”

She took the food into the kitchenette. Then she returned, and quietly stood and watched the room.

The atelier had changed in a week, and Charlie was part of that change. That morning, he was holding a bodice steady at the fitting curtains while Lucy worked the line on the mannequin.

No glancing around, but just— held.

Lauren’s expression shifted, her lips pressing together. She stepped closer to the worktable and reached into her tote — practically, the way women smuggle care in under logistics. She drew out a small notebook and opened it. Fabric swatches. Neat rows. Labelled with the kind of care that says: I don’t waste my time, and I won’t waste yours either.

“I have a linen supplier in Sydney,” she said, her voice businesslike. “Fabric that doesn’t go transparent under light. Not cheap, but consistent.”

Mara paused, then put down her pencil and held out her hand.

“Let me see.”

Lauren passed the notebook across the table. Mara tested the swatches gently but with clear intent. She rubbed the weave between her thumb and forefinger, then stretched the fabric slowly across the grain and let it fall back into her palm.

“This holds,” Mara said. “It won’t collapse when it’s damp.”

Lauren nodded. “That’s why I like it.”

“What do you use it for?”

Lauren didn’t answer immediately. Out of the corner of her eye she was watching Charlie’s hands: his steadiness, the way he treated cloth like it deserved respect.

“For things that need to survive,” she said at last.

Mara’s eyes softened the smallest bit.

“Mmm,” Mara said. “Yes.”

Lauren exhaled slowly. She turned to the fitting curtain. Lucy had stepped away from the mannequin, and was eyeing the sleeve with narrowed eyes.

"Watch carefully," she said to Charlie. "See what happens."

She lifted the mannequin's arms. I saw Charlie's head tilt slightly as the fabric tightened.

“Mara,” Charlie said, soft, cautious. “This seam pulls when you raise the arm.”

“Good catch.” Mara didn't sound surprised. “Physics always wins, even over lovely sewing.”

He quietly held the bodice steady while Lucy re-pinned the line.

"I might have my coffee before it goes cold," Lauren said. "Join me?"

Mara motioned for me to follow them into the tearoom. Lauren found a clean plate and deposited a 'pull-apart' that was still warm, then handed me a coffee. Mara sat at her usual spot sipping her beverage thoughtfully.

Lauren had a sip, then turned to her.

“You know, when Charles left the house—,” she said, carefully.

Mara didn’t look up.

“Charlie.”

Lauren blinked: a small recalibration.

“When Charlie left the house this morning, he seemed— I don't know,” she paused. “Keen. That's it. Keen.”

The word 'keen' sat in the air like something unexpected.

Mara wordlessly pulled at the pastry. Her eyes caught mine.

Lauren was staring at her cup.

“I remember when I first got into nursing,” she murmured. "My dad was so proud. And my mum: furious." Her head tipped slightly. "I suppose she didn't see it as a career."

Mara set her cup down.

“But you got the degree anyway?”

Lauren's fleeting smile was humourless. She continued to stare at her cup.

"It was hospital-based training, not Uni," she said. "My parents wanted to see me married. But my dad wanted me to be happy, more than anything."

She wrapped her hands around the cup, her lips tight.

"Sounds like you ended up making both of your parents happy," Mara said carefully, unusually gently, for her.

Lauren's lips twitched politely.

"Yes, I suppose." She looked up as Mara stood.

"I'd like you to meet Celeste," Mara said.

Lauren's smile was just a shade less than cordial.

"Oh! So— you're Celeste. Charl— Charlie mentioned you last night."

She held out her hand.

I took it. Carefully.

"Nice to meet you." My smile matched hers.

"He said you shared a maths class."

I nodded.

"Charlie's very good at geometry," I said. "I heard he's good at physics, too."

Lauren looked mildly surprised but didn't say anything.

Lucy appeared at the door.

"The mannequin is letting us down," she said. "It's not flexible enough."

Mara moved to the tearoom door.

"Thank you for morning tea," she said to Lauren.

She left with Lucy. There was an awkward silence.

"I should get back to work," I said finally. "Thank you for bringing morning tea."

"Celeste."

I stopped.

Lauren was sitting on the edge of her seat, peering out of the tearoom at the fitting curtain. She wrung her hands.

"I wish I knew what to do," she said.

I gave what I hoped was a sympathetic smile and left.

One of these days, I'll be a mum. Hope I never have to face this sort of thing.

I already knew that was unrealistic.

---

8 Signal, not Noise ✨

[ Celeste ]

Lauren came back a fortnight later, on a warm Tuesday morning. Tuesdays were the days Mara pretended she had time.

She didn’t, of course. Mara never did. But Tuesdays were when she scheduled those "need-to-get-done" tasks. The cutting table was clear, the mannequin was dressed in half a bodice, and the new jacket prototype sat like a dare.

Lauren stepped in with nothing but a flat folder under her arm and a tote on her shoulder. She looked neat, composed, and slightly sharpened around the edges. Mara glanced up.

“What now,” she said drily. If she thought Lauren was an inconvenience, she hid it well.

Lauren didn’t waste time warming the air.

“His father—"

She stopped. Mara’s mouth tightened.

“I told him Charlie had made other plans,” Lauren said. “Roger didn't take it well.”

Mara’s eyes flicked to the folder.

“What’s that?”

Lauren placed the folder on the corner of the worktable, away from fabric, and removed the contents — an envelope and a printed sheet — with the same neatness Charlie arranged paper on school desks.

The envelope was plain and official-looking. Lauren didn’t open it, but left it on the table like something scraped off a shoe.

She slid the printed sheet forward.

On it was a photograph of a Faire actress Sarah wearing the new jacket prototype. Sarah’s arms were raised in a dramatic pose, the kind that usually tore seams under the arm and split closures at the waist. The jacket had clearly held: clean line, no gaping, no strain.

Below the image Lauren had typed a legend:

• Previous issue: underarm seam tearing after repeated movement
• Change: reinforced gusset + eased sleeve head + seam tape at stress line
• Result: 3 full shifts; no tear; improved comfort; faster dressing
• Notes: closure placement adjusted for quick change; no snagging

Nothing was left to trust. Everything was there to verify.

Mara studied the photo for a moment before motioning me over.

“Signal,” Lauren said, glancing at Mara's face. Then she indicated the envelope with her thumb.

“And that,” she added, “is noise.”

Mara’s mouth twitched as her eyebrows rose slightly — almost amused, almost approving.

“You took the picture?”

"I had a free afternoon last week," Lauren said with a shrug, "so I did a tour of the Faire. I noticed your prototype."

Across the room, Charlie was at the side bench, pinning a lining into a bodice piece. He hadn’t looked up when Lauren entered. But he did look now. Not to the photo at first. To the envelope.

At the sight of the official paper, his hands slowed. A pin hovered between his fingers.

Lauren noticed without turning.

Mothers always did.

“Keep your hands,” she said quietly.

Charlie blinked. “But—”

“No but,” his mum replied. No cruelty in it, just blunt care. “You’re not in trouble.”

He swallowed and slowly went back to pinning.

Mara picked up the sheet and examined it.

“This,” Mara said, tapping the list, “is useful.”

Lauren allowed herself a thin, purposeful smile. Mara’s gaze slid to the envelope.

“And that.”

Lauren’s brows twitched.

“Roger wants to know what trade he'll finish with,” she said. “He wants ‘proof’.”

Mara’s eyes narrowed.

“What does Charlie want?”

"I'm not entirely certain," Lauren replied.

Mara eyed her.

"Do you think you should talk it over with him?"

"We did talk a bit, last night," she replied.

"And?"

Lauren let out her breath in a puff with a frown.

"Well, his father was there."

Mara nodded, then tipped her head.

"The tearoom's free."

Lauren picked up her tote.

"Charlie." Her voice was gentle.

The two went into the tearoom. I could feel Mara's eyes on me.

She didn't need to say anything.

Their decision.

Mara joined Lucy at the fitting curtain while I opened windows to let out some of the steam. The air outside was almost as warm, but drier, seasoned with diesel fumes mixed with hot chips soaking in re-used cooking oil and the occasional reminder that port-a-potties were just around the corner.

When they emerged just before lunch, Charlie looked solemn; and Lauren looked relieved but also filled with intent. She went straight to the worktable and opened the envelope.

Mara approached slowly. Her expression was implacable, but her eyes searched Lauren's face.

"And?"

"He's determined to make a go of it."

Mara's eyebrows barely twitched.

"And so am I," Lauren added.

Mara gave a single nod, staring at the envelope.

"This is for me."

"It is." Lauren pulled out a folded document. “Charlie and I have talked it over,” she continued, still calm, “he wants to stay here to learn the trade. I'm happy that there is a future in it. For him. This is real.”

She handed Mara the document.

Mara unfolded the paper carefully.

“You are asking for commitment.”

Lauren met her gaze.

“I am.”

She paused.

“I need to be able to show that this is real," she said, her voice showing a hint of vulnerability, as if reluctant to make her need into Mara's burden. "That Charlie’s training for a trade. With standards.”

Mara’s gaze held hers.

“A contract.”

Lauren didn’t flinch.

“Yes.”

She took in a deep breath. “A contract will turn noise into signal," she added. "Work placement language. Attendance logs." Her mouth tightened. "Roger wants a form, I’ll give him a form. You handle standards. I handle noise.”

Mara removed the chalk pencil from the top of her ear.

She looked across the room at Charlie, who had resumed pinning, slower than before but steady.

Then, her eyes returned to Lauren.

“You’re asking for a structure.”

“Exactly.”

Mara exhaled through her nose.

“Fine,” Mara said. “Here’s the structure. Charlie shows up every day, full-time. He keeps hours. He logs tasks. He does training modules I set. He gets evaluated like all my staff. If he fails, he fails. No protection from anyone.”

Lauren’s voice didn’t soften.

This was the contract.

“Agreed.”

Charlie looked up then — finally, his gaze flicking from his mum to Mara, and then, finally, to me.

“Charlie,” Mara said.

Charlie stood quickly.

“Yes Mara?”

Mara held up the printed sheet.

“Your mother has a costume testing plan, with receipts,” Mara said. “She's also asking me for a contract so that you can learn the trade. We will do this properly.”

Charlie stared at the testing plan.

"I need to know your decision."

He looked up.

"I want to learn the trade, Mara."

“Right then,” she said, her tone clipped, and began to study the document.

“I’m not asking for anything," Lauren said, "but for you to stay— visible.”

Charlie blinked at the word 'visible'.

“Visible,” Mara agreed, “means you write down what you do. You show up on time. You finish tasks. Visibly.”

Charlie’s throat dipped.

“I can do that.”

“Good,” Mara said, and turned briskly back to the mannequin. “You can start now.”

She gestured at the prototype jacket.

“We solved the tear,” Mara said. “Now I want the pull solved without it fighting.”

She ran her thin fingers over the seam.

“It needs to survive heat and tourists and people stupidly grabbing sleeves,” Mara continued. “But do it without adding bulk that ruins the silhouette.”

She eyed him closely.

“Tell me where it fails.”

Charlie stepped closer to the mannequin. He lifted the sleeve gently and pressed the seam line with his fingertips. His eyes focused. He only hesitated for a moment.

“It’s not the seam, Mara,” he said quietly. “It’s the angle. The gusset’s correct, but the sleeve head is fighting it. You need two millimetres more ease, here." He pointed without touching. "The tape needs to stop before the pivot point, not run through it.”

Mara’s face changed.

“That,” Mara said, “is an answer.”

Of course it was.

Lauren watched him. I felt something click into place.

Mara didn't look up.

"I'll have a signed copy of a work contract ready for you in a couple of days."

Lauren picked up her tote, nodded once at me — not warmth, exactly, but acknowledgement — and moved to the door. As she left, she paused and looked back at Mara.

“Thank you,” she said.

Mara didn’t look up from the sleeve.

“Now, it's up to Charlie,” she said.

“Yes, it is.”

The door clicked shut.

---

9 Not My First Choice 👗

[ Celeste ]

“Look at this.”

Mara slid a thin archival print-out across the cutting table. The image was a plate from an old catalogue: eighteenth century, late enough that it carried a Georgian neatness, early enough that it still remembered softness. A woman’s garment, fitted through the back, generous through the skirt, closures designed for working hands.

It had been designed by necessity and for function. It had intelligence in it.

My pulse quickened.

“This isn’t a costume,” I said. “It’s equipment.”

Mara’s lips were a thin line of approval.

“It’s clever,” she said. “See the reinforcement here? And here.”

I leaned in. The sketch suggested a hidden strength at stress points: underarm, waist, the place where movement always found the weak seam.

“I can draft this.”

Mara handed me a pencil.

“Then do it.”

That was Mara. The moment you said it, you owned it.

We wordlessly split the labour.

I took the research: proportions, plausible fabric weight, seam placement, what could be original and what had to be translated for a modern body in a modern job.

Mara took the pattern: chalk, ruler, critical decisions.

Charlie kept to the repair pile, but his darting glances in our direction betrayed his interest.

We moved fast. Paper became pattern. Pattern became cloth. Cloth became the first prototype under Mara’s hands.

The room filled with that particular concentration that only happens when a thing becomes real: pins tapping into the pincushion, the soft rasp of shears, the hiss of the iron. By mid-afternoon the garment hung from the mannequin, half-finished but already legible.

Even unfinished, it had a line. It didn’t scream 'pretty', but rather whispered 'capable'.

Mara stepped back, eyes narrowed.

“It’s got spine.”

“And purpose,” I replied.

Charlie looked at the garment from the other side of the room. He quietly rose and, biting his lower lip, approached the mannequin. After studying it for a moment, he reached in and adjusted a seam allowance that had curled under itself.

Mara noticed. Mara always noticed.

“Already adjusting things, Charlie?”

He paused with his fingers on the fabric.

“Just— keeping it clean.”

I noticed then his hair had been brushed back more carefully than usual, and his t-shirt had been pressed.

We didn’t take any more time to admire our prototype. We did what we always did with any garment we'd improved: we tested with a chemise and a real day's work.

And Lucy was our default tester. She was one of our most reliable staff, one who would often go back and do Faire actress work when we needed someone to test a costume. She did actual work: lifting baskets, crouching for children, running for late arrivals.

She was the kind of wearer who put costumes through their paces.

She came back near closing time that evening, cheeks flushed, hair escaping pins.

“Got lots of compliments. It looks brilliant,” she announced, breezily. “But—"

She turned slightly and tugged at the underarm.

“Here,” she said. “When I lift my arms. It’s not tearing, but it’s like it’s fighting me.”

Mara’s eyes flicked to the seam line.

“And this,” Lucy added, touching the waist closure, “I don't know that I'd want to wear it another day, to be honest. Look, it held, but it got tugged a lot. People grab. You know.”

Yes. We knew.

Mara took the garment from Lucy the focused way a mechanic takes a part off an engine and laid it flat on the table. She pressed her palm along the seam.

“This is not failure.” Mara wasn’t talking to Lucy but to me. “Still, I don't want Lucy wearing it again until we get some core issues sorted.”

"What are you suggesting?”

"Just telling us where a garment pulls is not enough to go on." She ran her fingers along the seam. "The tester should understand what a garment is telling us about the physics.”

Mara turned the dress over.

"The 'where' isn't the question. This dress isn't keeping any secrets from me. It's plain as daylight."

"Well, we could try to run a seam this way or that, a few times, like making stays."

She shook her head, and turned towards the mending pile.

I felt my spine stiffen.

“Charlie.”

The way Mara said 'Charlie' then landed differently than 'Rossignol' ever did — like an unexpected promotion.

Charlie looked up. Mara held up the garment with two fingers.

“You,” Mara said, her voice flat, “are going to test this dress, Charlie.”

Lucy blinked. “He is?”

Mara nodded. “Yes. He is.”

The logic was undeniable.

We couldn’t test properly — and obtain the data we needed — from someone who only knew how to wear.

The tester should be able to read a behaviour and know where the fix lived.

And Charlie would.

I carefully watched his face. The smallest frown slowly appeared as his eyes dropped to his torso — doing maths.

A calculation:

Will this even sit right?

Mara silently waited. Charlie’s eyes went to the dress again. His frown melted into slight confusion. Lucy casually sidled up beside him.

“Well,” she murmured, eyes bright, “a tester, no less. And of a dress.”

Charlie glanced at her and gave one shoulder a nearly imperceptible shrug.

His mouth went crooked.

“It wouldn’t have been my first choice.”

Mara didn’t react at all.

“Noted,” she said. “And irrelevant.”

Charlie looked at the dress again.

“So you don't need me to tell you where it pulls.”

“I already know where it pulls.”

His eyes lifted to hers.

“You want: why.”

“Exactly.”

We moved to the fitting area. Mara drew the curtain and held the garment up.

“Arms up.”

Charlie complied as if his body were a coat stand. Mara worked quickly, checking lines, checking pull, checking where the fabric resisted movement.

I stood just outside the curtain, notebook in hand.

“Turn. Now lift your arms. Higher. Good. Twist. Again.”

I could only just hear Charlie’s movements: quiet, obedient — professional. And then, Mara’s voice: irritated yet satisfied.

“There,” she said. “Feel that?”

Charlie’s voice came through the curtain.

“Yes,” he said. “It’s not the seam. It’s the direction of strain. When I raise my arms, the tension line runs across the tape and stops the fabric doing its job.”

Mara's exhale was almost harsh.

“Say it again.”

Charlie repeated it, clearer. I scribbled furiously.

“The closure,” he continued, “holds. But if someone grabs here—"

There was a faint sound.

“—it transfers force to the waistband. The reinforcement needs to stop before the pivot point, or it becomes a lever. It will eventually tear next to the reinforcement.”

Silence.

I wrote as fast as I could, my mind already mapping the fix. Stop the tape at the pivot. Shift the ease. Strengthen without bulk. Preserve the silhouette.

Mara drew the curtain back.

Charlie stepped out, still in the dress, looking slightly flushed, his eyes on the floor, one finger on the spot indicating strain. Mara grabbed chalk and marked a line on the garment.

I watched his face: controlled, determined.

“And this is why,” Mara said to me, curt, “we don’t test with people who only wear.”

Her eyes flicked to him.

“We test with Charlie,” she finished, "from here on out."

Charlie’s ears went slightly pink. I kept my voice flat.

“And we log everything,” I said, already flipping to a clean page in my notebook. “Every deviation from the original design. Every reinforcement. Every reason.”

Mara nodded. “Exactly. Make it defensible.” She turned to Charlie.

“You can take it off now,” she said. “And then, write me a report.”

Charlie blinked. “A report.”

“Yes,” Mara said. “Details. Where it pulled. What caused it. What you propose. In plain language. No poetry.”

“Yes Mara.”

He moved towards the fitting curtain again, and this time the shadow of misgiving didn’t follow him. The brightness of the task . Work had swallowed any awkwardness, the way it always did for him.

He disappeared behind the curtain.

Mara looked at my notebook.

“Title it,” she said.

I wrote at the top of the page, in neat block letters:

DESIGN REALISATION — PROTOTYPE 1 — STRESS TEST LOG

Then underneath, because it mattered, because it named what we were building:

Tester: Charlie Rossignol
Purpose: durability & mobility without silhouette compromise
Notes: equipment, not theatre

Mara’s gaze flicked over my shoulder, and her mouth twitched again.

“Now we can do this properly.”

The second prototype was a jacket. Different cut, different sleeve head, but the same intention: make it survive the day without turning it into armour. Mara hung it on the mannequin and stood back, chin lifted.

“Right,” she said. “We’re not sending Lucy out to be the crash test.”

Lucy, already half-grinning as if she knew she would normally have been volunteered, blithely stepped away from the jacket.

“Bless,” she said, and looked at me. “Thank you.”

Mara ignored her gratitude the way she ignored weather.

“Charlie.”

Charlie looked up from the bench where he’d been hand-stitching a reinforcement tape onto a waistband. He put his needle down carefully, as if precision was a form of respect, and stood. Mara held up the jacket with two fingers.

“Same drill.”

“Right. Where’s the log sheet?”

That was the moment I realised the unease hadn’t vanished: it had been translated into structure, into process. He wordlessly took the sheet from her and moved toward the fitting curtain.

Mara snapped the curtain closed with a decisive tug.

With the third prototype, Mara made no announcement, but simply held it up: a skirt, new cut, new waistband, a clever closure arrangement we’d borrowed from an extant garment plate.

She looked around the room.

“Charlie.”

Charlie set his work down and stood.

“Yes Mara.” Then, he quietly added, “Could— we make sure the curtain rail is fixed. It catches.”

Mara’s eyes flicked to the curtain hardware as if it had personally offended her.

“Yes,” she said. “We'll get it fixed.”

By the fourth garment, no one had named it — but everyone was using it.

Later, weeks into this new rhythm, I caught the moment it became truly normal. A new jacket had been pinned, a clever cut I’d been excited about. It looked perfect on the mannequin. The silhouette was right. The closures sat where they should. It was one of those garments that made you want to clap.

Lucy reached for it, stopped, and glanced at Mara.

Mara didn’t even look up from her pattern paper.

“Not yet.”

Charlie, at the bench, lifted his head.

“I can do it now, if you want me to.”

“Good,” Mara said. “Ten minutes. Break it on purpose.”

Charlie stood, took the log sheet off the clipboard, and walked to the fitting area.

---

12 The Ledger 📒

[Celeste]

Currently being edited

---

13 Working Stays ✨

[ Celeste ]

Absorbed into Ledger

---

14 Working Stays 2 ✨

[ Celeste ]

Absorbed into Ledger

---

56 Flying North, as Charli 🛫

[ Charli ]

I had never realised how loud everything was up here in the clouds.

Not outside, obviously. Outside the clouds looked soft and cuddly and a bit ornamental, like someone had gone mad with a piping bag across the sky.

But from my window seat they were a bright, searing white that stung my eyes. In here, the engine hummed and shuddered the floor under my feet, and the little plastic oval of the window vibrated against my forehead every time I leaned on it — which I did, approximately every thirty seconds, as if the view might have changed in that time.

We were actually doing it. And I was actually doing this. Queensland. Maleny. The new 'Les-Mis' Faire. A whole new Wardrobe, waiting for us like an unwritten pattern.

It would have been easier if we’d simply been scooped up by a kind hand at Wardrobe and placed in our seats on the plane without all the rest of leaving — if I hadn’t had to walk down a ramp, away from Celeste.

My chest still hurt from the way she’d held me at the gate.

That was the freshest thing in my mind, the rawest. It was a new pain so I had nothing to compare it to. I stared out at snowy white clouds dropping away below us, but all I could see were her eyes, even as I tried to think of absolutely anything else.

Celeste had done her very best impression of calm, sensible, supportive grown-up right up until the woman at the check-in desk had printed my boarding pass and put the little tag on my carry-on. She’d stood behind me in line, hands on my shoulders, her body a solid, warm presence that I kept leaning back into as if I could fuse with her and somehow avoid the whole pain of leaving.

“You can still say no,” she’d said quietly, one last time, as if we were at the edge of a diving platform instead of in front of a conveyor belt. “Right up until they close the doors. There is no noble suffering prize for doing something that feels wrong in your bones.”

“It doesn’t feel wrong,” I’d said, throat tight. “It feels… enormous. Which is different.”

She’d given a little broken laugh at that, and then the tears had started in her eyes, sudden and sharp, as if a cold wind had blown into them from the south.

“Enormous is allowed,” she’d said. “Enormous I can work with. Enormous we can text about.”

We’d had to move then — the line behind us had not, regrettably, been suspended by fate while we had our moment. Mum had hugged me hard enough to squeak my ribs and murmured, “Bring her back to me intact,” into Sarah’s ear with that dry, fierce look she’d developed lately.

Mara had kissed my forehead and said, very softly, “Do not forget, my little nightingale, you know a lot more than you think you do,” which had made my eyes go even more traitorously wet.

And then it had been just Celeste and me, right up against the barrier where only one of us was allowed to pass.

She’d cupped my face in both hands, thumbs pressing gently into the hollows beneath my cheekbones as if she was memorising the shape of me.

“I am so proud of you,” she’d said, low enough that the milling airport sounds didn’t steal it. “Not for going to Queensland. For choosing. For saying yes with your whole self when it would have been so much easier to stay and let other people be brave on your behalf.”

I’d wanted to say, I don’t feel brave, I feel like a jelly in leggings, but the words had jammed behind the lump in my throat. So I’d just nodded and tried to look like the sort of person who could board a plane and deal with whatever waited on the other end without dissolving.

“Go and be magnificent,” she’d said, and then, because she could never leave well enough alone, “and come home.”

We’d both cried by then, uselessly, unattractively, clinging in the middle of Departures while the rest of the world pretended not to look. Sarah had politely become fascinated by a vending machine. Mum had stared very hard at a poster advertising travel insurance.

And then security had loomed, horribly official, and I’d had to actually walk away.

It hurt to think about, sitting there with a paper cup of airline water sweating on the tray table. My eyes stung again, thinking about it.

I made myself look out at the clouds.

The brightness outside was almost aggressive. The wing rose and fell with those tiny, corrective shivers that reminded me, unhelpfully, of how much metal and fuel and physics were involved in keeping us climbing into the harsh sunlight.

I pushed my mind past the gate, past the hugging, past the careful packing of the night before where we’d argued lightly about how many pairs of socks I really needed, to a moment my chosen existence had first felt properly unsafe.

The loading bay.

It had been three months ago and also it had been yesterday. My body couldn’t quite decide.

The memory was so vivid I could still feel the concrete under my thin-soled shoes, gritty and warm, and the weight of the bolt of cloth in my arms, and then the heat of that unwelcome hand, a hand that had no right to be there, sliding across my back as if I were an extension of the crate — something.

Not someone, not a person who deserved to be asked.

Some —thing.

The instant terror, every nerve on high alert. The way my throat had locked around all the words I knew I should say, but I was too frozen with fright. The unfamiliar, stupefying shame — not just at how I’d let this man touch me, or at the way his fingers had pressed, but at my own body for turning me into statue and stupid, instead of fierce and clever like Celeste, or calm and deadly like Sarah.

Sarah had been calm and deadly. Of course she had. She’d appeared as if my body had screeched an alarm, gently removed the bolt from my arms, placed herself between me and the rep, and told him, in that flat tone that made confident grins turn into weak apologies, that no-one touches staff, no-one brushes past staff, staff are not bracing surfaces, and if he wanted to accrue the privilege of proximity he could start by treating the women in the room as if they had spines and names.

He’d apologised, of course. There was always some sort of apology once they were caught — an apology his face lied about, a face that said he was far more offended by being told off than he had ever been invested in the initial touch.

And I’d smiled like an idiot and tried to laugh it off with my mouth, while my eyes did their very best goldfish impression.

And then I’d gone home and curled up on the couch and felt small and stupid and furious with myself, because surely, by now, after everything, I should have known better than to freeze.

Which was why Queensland had loomed after that like a phrase in a language I didn’t speak yet. New site, new men, new hands, new versions of that moment. I’d imagined myself stiff and wordless in loading bays I’d never seen, in corridors and costume sheds and gravel carparks, Sarah somewhere further down the line, too far away to interpose, Celeste hundreds of kilometres south.

It had taken weeks before the courier with the clipboard arrived and I heard myself say, very calmly, “Could I get you to please step back a bit?” before adrenaline could get in the way.He’d stepped back.

The world hadn’t cracked.

No one had died of embarrassment.

And I had stood there, heart pounding, and thought, oh.

Oh, so it can be this, too.

Now, on the plane, with the engine humming and the clouds solid as sea foam, I thought of that courier like a rehearsal. A tiny dress rehearsal in a small loading bay, for all the bigger stages that might be waiting.

I turned my head slightly and glanced up at Sarah.

She was in the aisle seat, of course. She’d insisted on it in that brisk way she had when she wanted to take responsibility for the part of the environment nearest the exit.

“I get twitchy if I can’t be near the aisle,” she’d said when we chose our seats. “You get the window, you like looking at clouds. Everyone wins.”

She was reading now — or pretending to. The in-flight magazine was open on her lap, but I could tell from the way her eyes weren’t moving that she was somewhere else entirely, probably rearranging Queensland in her mind until it behaved to her standards.

I watched the line of her jaw, the relaxed set of her shoulders, the way her hand rested on the armrest, fingers loose and capable. A strange little ribbon of warmth uncurled in my chest.

Gratitude.

I wasn’t going up there alone.

If some Queensland man decided that my back looked like a handrail again, there would be a woman within arm’s reach whose eyebrows could peel skin. I had seen Sarah deal with builders, with managers, with men who thought “just a bit of fun” was a spell that coated improper behaviour with a veneer of normalcy and made consequences evaporate. She never raised her voice. She didn’t have to. She simply laid out reality and left it on the table like a pair of scissors — obvious, sharp, impossible to ignore.

It made all the difference.

It also, perversely, made me more determined that she wouldn’t have to leap to my rescue every time. I wanted, this time, not just to survive, but to participate. Not disappear, but actually show up as a woman like Sarah.

Be — a woman.

The thought made my stomach swoop in a way that had nothing to do with the plane’s small adjustments.

My mind, unhelpfully, drifted further back, to the pill bottle.

My solution for a more successful hiding, in plain sight.

Celeste had found it by accident. The things you wanted to hide properly were always the ones betrayed by a lazy moment. And, back then when I got the pills, I had instinctively sensed that Celeste wouldn’t have approved.

I’d left my bag half unzipped on the bed, hurriedly, one evening when I’d needed a shower more than dinner and I’d been debating with myself about whether or not to take that night’s dose.

She’d gone looking for a hair tie and had found a plastic cylinder. I’d come in brushing still-damp hair and seen her standing there, the bottle on the table, her eyes turned towards me, eyes horrified, not comprehending.

“Where did you get this?”

I hadn’t even tried to come up with an excuse — the thinking that had led to the tablets was so painfully ridiculous at that point. All I could see was the threat. Losing Wardrobe, losing friends, losing her.

And then, her look. Not anger. Not exactly. Something sharper and softer at the same time. It was fear, threaded with something I would never have expected — protectiveness.

Of me.

We’d had The Conversation after that. About how petrified I had been of what my body was going to do to my life, of a puberty I’d hoped I had magically avoided coming late like a delayed train with no announced platform. About how the horror of the changes — the thickening of leg hair, the changes in my voice — had made me feel like I was being sealed in concrete. About reading too much on the internet in forums that promised solutions, and how the bottle had felt like a spell I could cast on myself to stay nearer the version of me that made sense in my own head.

She’d been angry, yes. Furious, even. But not with me.

With systems.

With a world that would rather avert its gaze than have a teenager sit quietly in a room and say “I think I might not be who you thought I was” and be believed the first time.

That conversation — those hours on the bed with the bottle between us like evidence — had been the first time I’d fully understood that Celeste didn’t just like me as a person; she saw me as a responsibility she had willingly taken on.

Not to control. To shelter.

To argue with, sometimes, fiercely, for my own sake.

And even more surprising, that she might even love me.

Thinking back on that night, it was, in a strange way, the same energy that had led her to say yes to Fiona, yes to Queensland, yes to the terrifying thought of sending me away.

From her.

From us.

If she had been anyone else, she might have kept me back. Wrapped me in cotton wool. Swallowed the QLD contract rather than risk me in a new environment.

Instead, she had stood there with her hands on my shoulders and said I trust you. I trust Sarah. I trust myself to hear and react if you say stop.

Trust had always been a more frightening word to me than love.

Love was dizzy and delicious and intoxicating. Trust was weight. Anchor. The knowledge that someone had placed a part of their future happiness in your hands and expected you not to run off with it.

Now, on the plane, with Sarah’s solid presence beside me and Celeste’s last messages sitting patiently on my phone in Airplane Mode, I felt that weight and did not hate it.

My thoughts slid further back, past the pills, past the loading bay, to something deeper. That first sense of being somewhere between X and Y, chromosome letters that had felt like labels for a mistake. Feeling the warmth and closeness of people who thought like me, who I could be myself with, who wanted me like this, and who quietly identified me to myself. How all of that had made me actively refuse the “Y” version of my future and cling to “X,” desperately, ignorantly, not realising what womanhood carried in its handbag — the Pandora’s box of joys and hazards and expectations.

It had started the first time I’d stood in the middle of Wardrobe and realised, quite suddenly, that I was not… extra. Or foreign. Not in the wrong place.

I’d been at the big table, smoothing a length of linen that did not want to lie flat, tongue poking out between my teeth in that extremely dignified way I’d developed when concentrating. Around me, women moved as if to some internal choreography — Mara with her shears, Sarah with her chalk, Mum with a mug of tea she was pretending wasn’t a grounding mechanism.

Someone had called, “Charli, can you pass me the tape?” and I had done so automatically, and then a moment later someone else — I think it was Lucy — had said, “Where’s Charli, we need her hands for this fit,” and there was no edge in it, no sarcasm.

Just expectation.

Not tolerance.

Inclusion.

I’d looked up and around and felt, for the first time in my life, that particular, dizzying thought: I am one of you.

Not a mascot or a guest. Not the strange, half-boy, half-question-mark creature lingering at the edges of other people’s lives.

One of the women.

As I stared out at the flapping wing, it suddenly came back to me, the reason that boy in year ten had asked, “Are you scared of girls?” I hadn’t known what to answer then, so I’d hotly denied it. Now, watching the flight attendant walk slowly uphill to the front of the cabin, I realised what he thought was fear was never that.

It had simply been… personhood.

Girls weren’t objects to ogle; they were people, like me.

In Wardrobe, when Lucy had called me “she,” it had made my knees go a little funny, and I’d had to pretend to stretch so I could disguise the way my legs wanted to give out. I’d felt like the light shining inside me was so bright, people were going to be blinded by it.

And later that night, Celeste had asked why I’d gone so quiet, and I’d blurted out, “I think I belong,” but I don’t think she’d known why I said that, at the time. And I’d been afraid to tell her what it felt like.

Lucy identifying me to me was… belonging.

Belonging.

High school had been the opposite of that.

High school had been corridors that smelt of sweat and disinfectant, uniforms that never felt like they were for me, mirrors that showed a skinny, short, uncertain boy-shape I hardly ever looked at and only recognised from the inside out in odd flashes.

It felt, now, like a terrible first draft I had written under duress. This — Wardrobe, Celeste, Sarah, the flat, the arguments about sock quantities, the soft, solid weight of Mum’s pride when she’d hugged me tightly at the airport — felt like the real version, the one I might actually want to read again.

The captain’s voice crackled over the intercom, cheerfully announcing that we were beginning our descent into Brisbane, that the weather on the ground was warm and slightly humid, that we might experience “a few bumps” on the way down.

My stomach was already doing bumps.

I glanced at Sarah again. She had closed the magazine at last and was looking straight ahead, with that particular focus on her face she got when she was running through lists in her head.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

She turned her head and gave me a long, assessing look, the kind she usually reserved for unstable hemming tape.

“Yeah, I’m good… thanks,” she said, which from her meant something entirely different than it did from most people. “Mildly irritated that I can’t get up and pace, but I’ll live.”

“And… about everything else?” I ventured.

Her mouth curved.

“Nervous,” she admitted. “Excited. Already planning the cupboard layout in my head. Deeply determined that no one will hang one of Mara’s coats on a bent nail. Standard levels of pre-mission agitation.”

It was so gloriously Sarah that I couldn’t help but smile.

“You?” she added, and there it was, the small, gentle return of the question. She never left me hanging on a limb alone if she could help it.

“Terrified,” I said honestly. “And also glad that I said yes. And… so glad that you’re here.”

The passing flight attendant wordlessly pointed at my waist. I quickly fastened my seat belt.“Oh, and that Celeste didn’t put her foot down and keep me at home,” I added, “like a particularly anxious pot plant.”

“She couldn’t have, even if she’d wanted to,” Sarah said. “We’d have mutinied on your behalf.”

The idea of Mara and Sarah staging a small domestic coup to liberate me from Celeste’s hypothetical over-protection was so lovely I wanted to frame it.

“And anyway,” Sarah went on, softer, “you are not a pot plant. You’re… I don’t know. A very determined climbing rose. You’re going to put roots wherever we land, whether Queensland likes it or not.”

That did it. My eyes went hot and stupid again.

“You realise you just called me a rose on a plane full of strangers,” I muttered.

“Good,” she said. “They should take notes.”

The seatbelt sign pinged on. The plane dipped, gently, like a curtsey. The clouds shifted from bright knife-edged white to softer, shaggier shapes as we slid down through them.

I pressed my hand against the cool plastic of the window, palm flat, and imagined, very clearly, the line from my fingers back through the fuselage, back along an invisible airborne trace to Torquay, to the little flat with the too-small bed where, at that precise moment, Celeste was probably pacing with her phone in her hand, pretending to read an article and not absorbing a single word.

I could almost hear her voice already, when I would turn my phone back on after landing and the messages would come in all at once.

Are you down? Do you still exist? Is Queensland terrible? Tell me everything in excruciating detail.

The thought steadied me in a way no seatbelt ever could.

I glanced at Sarah. She met my eyes, and in that look there was a whole speech:We’re doing this! We will be tired and hot and occasionally frustrated, and then we will come home and tell Celeste every awful, hilarious, glorious detail until she feels like she was there too.

The plane banked. Out of the window, far below, I could see the faint line of the coast and the dark, folded green of the hinterland rising up behind it like the hem of a skirt.

Somewhere in all that green there would be a half-built site, a new Wardrobe, a bunch of nervous, eager women who had no idea yet that the clothes they were unpacking came with ghosts and love and history sewn into every seam.

I took a breath that felt like stepping into cold water.

I was going to meet them as myself.

Not as a boy in the wrong uniform, not as a question mark hiding in plain sight, not as the girl who froze and then hated herself for it.

As Charli. Wardrobe’s girl.

Celeste’s girl.

My own girl.

I reached across the narrow gap and curled my fingers around Sarah’s where they rested on the armrest.

“Ready?” she asked.

“No,” I said, heart hammering. “Yes. Both.”

“Perfect,” she said. Gave my hand a squeeze. And grinned. “There she is!”

As the plane dipped further and the world rose up to meet us, I pressed my forehead one more time against the humming window and let myself believe, properly, that I was exactly where I was meant to be: flying north with a woman I trusted at my side, another one waiting for me in a small, messy flat far below the clouds, and the next chapter of my life laid out somewhere between the coast and the hills, ready to be stitched. ✨

✈️ 🕊️ 🌫️ 🌿 🌷 🪜 ☕ 🧠 💻 ꧁ 🪷 🌷 🌸 🌺 🦩 ꧂ 🧺 🔐 💼 💻 💎 🩱 🥻✂ 🩸 💧 —— … …

😄 🧵 💛 👭 💞 🖤 🍓 🌶 🚪 🔑 🛋 🫧 🌩 🌧 🧵 🪡 👗 👚 👜 👠 🩰 💄 💋 🎻 📒 🚺——

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Freya (Celeste) https://elevenlabs.io/app/voice-library?voiceId=u8ADrbquiJqufR9XMtb8 [alt] Ashley https://elevenlabs.io/app/voice-library?voiceId=fTtv3eikoepIosk8dTZ5 fTtv3eikoepIosk8dTZ5

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Daisy (Charlotte) https://elevenlabs.io/app/voice-library?voiceId=MJqcNjMbvfGUxatGjPcI

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Cass (Lauren?) https://elevenlabs.io/app/voice-library?voiceId=WbwwsO6cCyUItWWlHOKN [alt] Molly Piper https://elevenlabs.io/app/voice-library?voiceId=xQoJctkjLbN6MAa5Ibhk xQoJctkjLbN6MAa5Ibhk

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Blondie (Sarah) - Relaxed and Casual https://elevenlabs.io/app/voice-library?voiceId=4BWwbsA70lmV7RMG0Acs [alt] Lily pFZP5JQG7iQjIQuC4Bku [alt] Blondie-Intense https://elevenlabs.io/app/voice-library?voiceId=si0svtk05vPEuvwAW93c

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Amelia (Brittany) https://elevenlabs.io/app/voice-library?voiceId=ZF6FPAbjXT4488VcRRnw [alt] Katie https://elevenlabs.io/app/voice-library?voiceId=zxPaDs5RuZh7fQDkY6mP

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Also consider

Alice https://elevenlabs.io/app/voice-library?voiceId=ZEt85AU1ui8Rr8FxNslW

Kirsty https://elevenlabs.io/app/voice-library?voiceId=VYkr1IQzbDVb2GJoYAIl