November 2016
It is an older crowd, but an appreciative one. They’ve gone to a lot of trouble for their special guest.
It’s pouring rain when I arrive but there are plenty of gentlemen with umbrellas to carry my heavy book box inside. They’ve set up a sale table for my crime novels, which are inspired by Ursula and the missing, with a burgundy tablecloth that matches the brick walls and dark timber of the café where the Rotary club has their monthly dinners.
I had turned myself inside out to get here on time. I swapped out my working from home clothes to something that felt like it passed muster for a formal event including my favourite cardigan, and ran out the door, leaving my husband with the dinner and bath time chaos.
Bread roll and first course over, it is time for me to speak. With a beaming smile and the standard ‘I’m totally okay’ façade I manage to put on at all these speaker events, I share the story of my desperate search for Ursula. It is 2016, and it will be another year before she is found. I recall memories of our childhood, and appeal for everyone in the room to share her story because I was absolutely certain that someone, somewhere knew where she was.
When I’m done, an elderly gentleman with stooped shoulders and shaking hands takes a few moments to get out of his chair. He stands close and reaches his soft, crinkled hand out to shake mine, before bringing the other hand over it and clasping mine tight.
He shakily holds the microphone. It is then, at close quarters with his lined and kind face, I notice his eyes are glassy and filled with tears that sit in swollen droplets across the full length of his bottom lid.
He addresses me before he addresses the crowd.
‘First of all I’d like to say that you are very brave, and that your cousin Ursula is very lucky. I am not brave like you.’
A tear spills over and rolls down the lines which age has creased into a million hidden stories. His accent makes it hard to pick up every word but once I become accustomed he draws me into his tale.
‘When I was a young boy in Germany I used to ride my bike everywhere in my village. Delivering messages every day, lots of messages…’
The room falls silent as he recounts his wartime story, as a young Jewish boy who lost his entire family during the Second World War. He often wonders if he could find them, but war memorial events like ANZAC Day render him incapable of leaving his house.
I don’t remember all his exact words but I do remember how they made me feel – that I am not alone in this grief for Ursula that seems to go on forever. Is she alive? Is she dead? Did they survive the prison camp the Nazi Germans took them to? Was she living happily ever after in a foreign country far far away? Were they living happily ever after in France or Italy, having escaped and miraculously surviving the war?
His eyes are leaking faucets now as he repeats, ‘You are so brave. I am not brave like you. You must love her very much.’
It is the first time in the past three years since I set out on this mission impossible to discover what happened to Ursula when she disappeared in 1987 that someone has called me brave. It is also the first time someone has so eloquently acknowledged the power of familial love.
Feeling somewhat shattered by the whole experience I stumble out the door into the crisp, cold night which is now washed clean and smelling like eucalyptus leaves and freshly mown grass. The room had cleared out like an RSL Club after lunch service, so it was just me to lug my half empty box of books to the car and face the dark drive home, on alert for kangaroos and wombats.
My mind races in all directions. This elderly gentleman has given me strength and resolve to keep moving forward through the awkwardness and discomfort of sharing Ursula’s story and accepting the ending might not be what I hoped.
As I am about to turn out the light and go to sleep I flick through the photos of the night. Something doesn’t look right. There is is. My cardigan is missing a button. Despite my goal to appear neat, organised, in control – this wife, mother of three, business owner and public advocate for Ursula and the missing is showing signs of disrepair.
I obsess over this missing button as I try and drop off to sleep, even though I know far more important thoughts need my attention.
Tears drip onto my pillow while I imagine the hundreds, thousands, millions of people in the world too terrified and traumatised to search for their missing loved ones. What can I do to help them? Tears flow more freely. I’m not exactly winning or taking giant steps forward in my own Pollyanna mission for Ursula. There is nothing I can do for anyone else. Absolutely not one thing.
I was wrong though. I couldn’t see it then but I saw it later. Not giving up hope for Ursula spread hope for others. What we learnt in our search, they could do in theirs. A lot of changes for the better happened because of this renewed search for Ursula.
This lightbulb would turn on down the track. But tonight I fall into a fitful sleep and dream of buttons missing from cardigans, never to be found again.
Melissa x
My debut crime novel, Write About Me, sparked a new investigation into the disappearance of my cousin Ursula Dianne Barwick. Five years and five novels later, she was FOUND.
