Oh Matilda: Who Bloody Killed Her? Chapter 7

What do we really know about doomed starlet Matilda Meadows? About as much as we know about her demise. Marlee Silva takes up the story.

 

This is ‘summer reading’ like nothing you’ve read before: a diverse field of writers collaborating on a novel that will captivate you through summer.

Each author had just three days to write their chapter, with complete freedom over story and style; it’s fast, fun and very funny.

Tune in over the summer to see how the story unfolds.

Today, Marlee Silva continues the story with Chapter Seven.

By Marlee Silva

Greer thought he might finally vomit.

He woke up considering it. The hangover from his impromptu party the night before was enough to feel a little woozy, but at only twenty-five he was still able to talk himself back from the edge.

In a pre-pandemic world, most of his Saturday and Sunday mornings began with a spinning head and an internal conflict: to upchuck, or not to upchuck, that is the question.

He won the first battle against his stomach acid that morning and was thankful the quarantine order would mean he could lounge around most of the day.

Already the joy and excitement that had originally come with this, his first proper writing job on an actual TV show, had significantly faded.

The mismatch of daggy and has been actors with egos and an equally overzealous director, who’d chewed his ear off on the flight over, name dropping at every chance only to bad mouth whoever they were, had left a sour taste in Greer’s mouth.

Everyone knew Champion was a tool, but Greer was itching to prove all the people who’d laughed at him over the years for having the audacity to aspire to write for a living, wrong.

He was too desperate for a real shot, especially at a time when shots at all were few and far between.

Writer Marlee Silva at home in Sydney. Picture: Nikki Short

Desperate too perhaps, he’d admit, for a chance to get out of his childhood home in the Illawarra, where he’d been crashing with his Mum since his income dried up with the lockdown.

He was grateful to not be homeless and to be without the constant fear of turning whites to pink every time he did his washing, but being back home after five years in Sydney, where he’d been living without so many damn questions –

Where are you going? How are you making money? Should you be ordering Uber Eats again? Did you see John’s engaged? When will you find a nice girl and just settle down?

– was suffocating to say the least.

The juxtaposition of this reclaimed freedom and the shattered illusion of the glamour of TV-making that came with landing on the island, made it a no-brainer when Matilda Meadows knocked on his door just as he was unpacking.

She was a lot shorter than he’d imagined, not that Greer was one to watch the soapies Matilda was in, but rather, he followed her on Instagram after reading a few headlines about her. She’d gotten in hot water when she spoke out about racism in the entertainment industry in amongst the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement in Australia.

Greer liked the intersection of her frankness and pride as an Aboriginal actress having hard conversations with her followers on social media, and admittedly, her occasional bikini selfie.

Warm brown skin and eyes almost the same colour, with freckles just the slightest bit lighter across the bridge of her nose, her platinum blonde hair, dyed for the role, was a stark and sharp contrast to her otherwise soft features

“What’s say we have some fun, aye?” She smirked, holding up a full-sized bottle of Absolut in one hand and an assortment of minibar spirits in the other.

The hours that followed got blurry pretty quickly.

Although Greer caught himself glancing a little too long at the plunging neckline of Matilda’s tight, black bodycon dress, especially as she bounced around the room to some obscure 70s rock band Greer had never heard of, it didn’t eventuate into any bumping of uglies.

They barely spoke really, Greer tried but Matilda seemed reluctant, it was clear she was there to forget about whatever was going on inside her head.

They had the standard ‘covid sucks’ yarn and did a little background on each other’s work, but otherwise just drank and soaked up the buzz. They tried learning some TikTok dances to no avail, but were rewarded with plenty of laughter and the simple feeling of joy in the arms of the normal they’d found.

A normal which was to be ripped from them when the anally retentive assistant director Zoe came bashing at their door just after 10pm.

Greer remembered her hysterical red-haired head, looking like it was going to explode as she shouted at them for jeopardising the whole production and blah blah blah …

At some point, assumingly fed up, Matilda simply moved past her, stumbling slightly, but undeterred and headed off down the path towards the water around the hotel, pulling out her phone and releasing an unmistakeable FaceTime dial tone, before disappearing into the night.

Greer was planning how he’d set the scene for his mates back home when he retold this story later on – would he suggest they’d had sex? Play up that she was begging him for it, but being a self-professed ‘consent king’ he was, he wouldn’t take advantage of her under the influence? Win win?

When an impatient, incessant knock on his door broke his thoughts.

He dragged his six foot something, bag of bones frame out of bed to find Zoe just where he’d last seen her. Only no longer was she red faced and furious, she was now grey, jittering and rambling in his doorway.

Through the incoherent mumbling Greer understood enough words to get that Matilda was dead.

And for the second time that day, vomit came to his mind.

Now he was standing in the rain, with his back to the second dead body to turn up on this godforsaken island, surrounded by a bunch of deluded characters who had made enough Poirot and Agatha Christie references to make him feel like he was back in year 11 Extension English at Woonona High and staring down at a sad pile of wet, dead birds.

Their beady eyes no longer darting, their outstretched wings limp and overlapping one and other, their beaks and necks twisted and turned unnaturally.

Greer had seen it before. But then, the air hadn’t smelt of rain, it was stained with ash. And the birds weren’t damp boobies, they were smouldering cockatoos. Christmas 2019 down south, when the country was on fire.

From then to now felt a lifetime, but the destruction, the unprecedence as they all kept calling it, the chaos – it remained.

And with that memory, finally Greer released the contents of his stomach.

Mostly green bile and chunks of salt and vinegar chips – his go to hangover snack – painted the fallen feathers in front of him.

For app readers, swipe to the Summer Novel section to find all chapters or click to read Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4 or Chapter 5

Marlee Silva is a 25 year old Aboriginal woman from the Gamilaroi and Dunghutti tribes of NSW. She describes herself as a storyteller and among a range of other roles, she is the host and producer of her own podcast ‘Always was, always will be our stories’ and recently published her first book ‘My Tidda, My Sister: stories of strength and resilience from Australia’s first women.’

Instagram: @marlee.silva