Acacia Rise was one of the more desirable addresses in the city. Although a new area, the elevated prices and the covenants insisting on a high standard of architecture had successfully kept the riff-raff out.The houses and gardens proclaimed the rich and important people who lived within.

The subdivision rose somewhat steeply from the harbour, the city lacking easy land for building, but the view was outstanding and in itself justified the money asked. The upper levels had distant views of the down-town business area and took in the entire harbour the waters of which at that moment reflected a hot sun and carried the weekend rash of colourful sails. On the nearside of the harbour, at the foot of the Rise, an extensive new marina belied local claims that times were hard. Beyond the harbour and beyond a vast stretch of broken country mountains loomed, today vague and almost imaginary in the summer haze.

Acacia Rise had one slight drawback. Its access. The area was approached from the harbour reclamation and motorway through a narrow cleft spanned by a railway bridge. This bridge was supported at its centre by a brick pier that divided and restricted the carriage-way. The railway right- of-way had been carried on a shelf along the foreshore for more that a century. That was long before the harbour reclamation, long before Acacia Rise. The bridge builders had simply done what was easiest at the time and who could blame them?

Residents of the Rise demanded the piers removal, the Rise was steep.They asked, “What if someone’s brakes were to fail?” And they were right to do so. A run-away would almost certainly be funneled down onto that pier. However, there was an equally vocal and influential group fighting against the bridge’s rebuilding. It was part of local history. The sole remnant of the original railway construction. They had fastened brass plaques on both front and back faces of the pier.

For Emily as she sat in her father’s car outside a house at the top of the Rise, the day was anything but bright. Her parents had gone into the house, whose she did not know,and had not seen fit to tell her the reason for their visit. More than likely, her father would be conniving with one of his political cronies. Emily’s father, George, had political asperations.

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Her parents had insisted that she come with them. She had proved that she was not worthy of their trust. Both of her young sisters were visiting an aunt and Emily could not be safely left at home alone.Who could know what mischief she might get up to: what wild accusations she might make if left alone with a telephone handy?

Their fears were unnecessary. She had learned early that anything likely to cast a slur on the family must be carefully concealed from those outside. It was ingrained. It had never actually been spelled out. It was implicit. The careful way that her mother, in denial, hid bruises. The make-up cover-up, the long sleeves, high necklines, had all provided graphic instruction. Like the two sisters who came after her, Emily had fallen readily into the role assigned to her. They were the perfect family, conspicuously successful, conspicuously happy. A perfect wife and mother with perfect children and all under the loving and wise guidance of a perfect father. It was a given truth that eclipsed reality and if it required that history was constantly rewritten then so be it. Appearances were not just important, appearances were everything.

There were large age gaps between the girls. There had been a series of miscarriages both between them and since. Emily’s mother had difficulty in carrying a baby to full term but, since Emily’s father wanted a son, she had had to keep trying.

Some time previously, Emily had found her father to be softening from his normal autocratic style and to be paying her more than the usual attention. He had said nice things about her and bought her gifts. She had been pleased with the improvement in their relationship, to naïve to recognise it as courtship. She had even played up to him a bit as daughters often do. It had never occurred to her that a father might have designs on his fourteen year old daughter and she had been bewildered and hurt by the sudden coldness in her mother’s manner.

One of her father’s business friends had lent them a remote mountain chalet for the holidays which was rather surprising. Cheap holidays did not belong in their collective persona. Yet, when her father had suggested that the two of them should go there several days ahead of the others to get

THE SOLUTION Page 3 things ready, Emily had had no inkling of what was in store. In fact, she had been pleased with the opportunity to have her father to herself for once. Even when he had stopped at a bottle store on the way and bought generous supplies of spirits and liqueurs, she still had not caught on.

Her father had been quite playful as they unpacked and cleaned the place and that evening they had sat together on the couch and watched the portable television that they had taken with them. Her father had started drinking soon after their arrival and became insistant that she try some of the liqueurs. Normally, she and her two younger sisters were allowed no more than a taste but that night it was different. She had felt that the samples he poured for her were rather large, told him that she might get drunk. But he had told her not to worry she was growing up, and anyway, it was the holidays, she could let her hair down a bit.

Emily had soon found herself giggly and her perceptions somewhat hazy but not so hazy as not to recognise the impropriety of her father’s hand resting high on her thigh and to be embarrassed by it. From infancy she had had drummed into her what was and what was suitable behaviour from others, men in particular. Most men it seemed were predators. But how does one correct ones own father?She had thought it best to assume that he was unaware of what he was doing and had tried to slowly move his hand away. That was all it took to trigger his angerand all pretence was gone. “So you’re going to play hard to get now are ya? Ya little bitch.”

Emily had in no way acquiesed to the attack that followed. She was helpless. He was so much stronger. Her protests counted for nothing. And afterwards, he was still angry but now at her distraught sobs entirely unable to understand her humiliation: that she felt betrayed. He had had no understanding of her pain. From his point of view she had spoiled it for both of them. On the following two evenings, she had drunk herself stupid without prompting.

On the third morning, her mother arrived with her sisters in the second car. How was she going to tell her mother what had happened? How did one make such an accusation against one’s own father? She need not have worried.

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The first moment that they were alone. “You…dirty…little…slut! And don’t think I don’t know what’s been going on. There was jealousy in her mother’s rage. Emily had been bewildered. If her mother had known what was going forward, how could she have let it happen?And how could her mother believe, even for a moment, that she, Emily, had seduced her father? “And you’d better not say anything to anyone. Think of your father’s position. Think of our position. Think about the rest of us for once. If the Welfare got wind of what you’ve been up to they’d split us up. Put you girls in a home. That’s for sure.”

Since that time, her father had performed some mental gymnastics to convince himself that he had been taken advantage of. He was now as cold to her as was her mother.

But there could be worse to come. Emily was almost sure that she was pregnant. She had missed her period and they had become regular some time before. She had noticed that there were test kits at supermarket check-outs but on supermarket visits her mother was a close shadow as elsewhere. There was the school nurse when school restarted, always assuming that she would be allowed to go back to school. Other girls had gone to the nurse with that very problem, some had been aborted, but Emily’s conditioning would not allow to talk even to this sympathetic ear. And anyway, although privacy was assured, things always seemed to leak out.

Even if she was found not to be pregnant, there would be ructions at home: anger that others had been made privy to her loss of viginity and a paranoid suspicion that she had implicated her father. But then, who would believe that anyway? Her father was a model of public probity, a philanthropist, patron of several charities.

With her sort of luck she would definitely be pregnant and before long she must begin to show. Bad as things were at the moment, she dreaded this development. She could see now her parent’s hand wringing and hear their recriminations. ‘After all that they’d done for her, she had to go and bring this shame on the family. How could she do this to them?’ It would be her fault entirely. She

THE SOLUTION Page 5 was the one who had conceived. Her father would probably choose to believe himself just one among many. But one thing was certain. She would never be forgiven. Never! Ever! The law would not allow her to be cast from the family home but she would become essentially a non-person.

But then it occurred to her. The baby might well be a boy, the son that her father wanted. That would change things a lot.While that possibility existed, she might find the family’s religious convictions firmly against abortion. That would be the end of ‘one among many.’ It would then be definitely his. They would come up with some ploy to pass the child off as her mothers.

And then a further thought. ‘A son by the back door. Could that have been her father’s intention all along? A strong young brood mare who was his personal property?’ She knew how obsessively he wanted a son, how disappointed he was with her mother, how much he blamed her. ‘But no! Even he wouldn’t stoop that low. Or would he? Then again, what if it turned out to be a girl? That would be really letting him down.’ It was all so confusing.

Which ever way she looked at it, the future stretched bleak and uninviting. The hurt of being vilified and pushed aside: of being the one imperfection in an otherwise perfect family. It was all so unfair. It was devastating to realise that her parents, those supposed paragons, were just amoral puppets dancing to please an uncaring audience.

And on top of this was the mountain of guilt. Against all reason, she felt guilty. Family pretentions would always be all-important, never to be marred by love and compassion, impervious to truth, to be protected at all costs.

Well, if those were their values they could keep them. She was not going to give them a son but neither would she bring shame on the family. She was going to fly that prison.

She reached forward between the seats and released the handbrake.

Acaia Rise could have cause for pier removal.

The perfect family could have its martyr