Exclusive extract: Lola in the Mirror by Trent Dalton

Who is the mysterious girl in this exclusive extract from the new novel by the Boy Swallows Universe author? Lola in the Mirror is released on October 4.

Lola in the Mirror by Trent Dalton will be released on October 4. Picture: Steve Pohlner

Who am I? In a world of eight billion people, I’m the 17-year-old girl with no name lying on a mattress beside her sleeping mum in a van ­beside the Brisbane River. I’m the girl with two legs, two arms, short brown hair, a rose-­coloured birthmark shaped like a picnic basket on her arse, and a sketchbook in her hands. I’m the girl with a sore neck because her pillow is a washing machine delicates bag filled with increasingly indelicate socks and undies. I’m the girl with a circle of morning sunlight shining on her belly. A single ray of sunshine made for me, admitted by a rust hole in the roof of the van. I’m the girl putting her thumb and forefinger to the circle that’s fixed like a spotlight on her night shirt. How wide is the circle of light this morning? Wide as a can of Mortein.

I’m the girl sketching an image of a beautiful woman in a red dress waiting for a train at night in Berlin. The woman’s looking up at a full moon. I place the sketch beneath the circle of light and that real-life light lands precisely on the moon in my drawing and the moon over Berlin lights up like a bedside lamp.

Light, the artist remembered, wasn’t really drawn on the page. Light came from shade on the page. The light of our lives, she told herself, is formed by the darkness we place around it.

I scribble a title beneath the sketch: Woman in Red Dress under Yellow Moon in Berlin. And I think of names to call myself. Potential names for the artist to scribble beneath her sketches.

“Selena?” I whisper. Selena means “moon”. “Vera?” I whisper. Vera means “true”. “Wendy?” I whisper.

Wendy means “friend”.

Names are dangerous for girls on the lam. Names could get you busted on the run. If Mum ever blabbed my real name to me, and I then blabbed my real name to someone, and then someone blabbed to the wrong someone else, then my mysterious ol’ mum could go to jail for what she did to my dad. I try to tell myself I don’t need a name. Plenty of things in this world don’t get names. Most rocks don’t get names and most rocks have been here longer than all of us. Dogs and cats have names, but South Brisbane fruit bats don’t. A possum named Merlin comes to our yard at night for a feed on the scraps from my yard neighbour Roslyn’s fruit salads, but most creatures round this river couldn’t get a passport to save themselves. Cyclones get names but storms don’t. Nor do snails or green ants or earthworms or rainbows. The moon is just called “the moon”. It’s not called Andromeda or something cool and galactic like that. It’s just known as “the moon” because people didn’t know back in the day that there were other moons in our solar system. Far as they knew, there was only one of those coin-shaped silver things floating in the night.

Illustration: Paul Heppell

Only one of me here, too. That’s why people just call me “the girl in the van” or “the runaway girl” or “the daughter of the mother who ran away” or “the kid with no name in the van” or “the girl with no home” or “that homeless girl from West End with dirt on her face”. None of those things say anything about who I really am or who I really wanna be. For a start, I ain’t homeless, I’m just houseless. Those two things are about as different as resting your head on a silk pillowcase and resting your head on a brick. And if you really wanna call me anything, then I’d love it if you called me “the artist”.

The artist with no name in the van by the river in West End with the dirt on her face and the hope in her heart and the ache in her neck. Or is that the ache in her heart and the hope in her neck? I’m not the only one down here by the river struggling to prove who she is. I know floaters right across the city who can’t get into houses, can’t get on the JobSeeker list, can’t get out of the deep black hole in the night because they got no identification. Got no licence. Got no passport. Got no mum to say, “Hey, that’s my son.” Got no son to say, “Hey, that’s my mum.” Some got no order in the marble bag of their mind; some have just forgotten how to scream across a Centrelink desk, “I exist, goddammit, just gimme a second!” I know floaters who lost their names when they lost their hope.

Know one old bloke who just calls himself Tea Leaf. First name, Tea. Last name, Leaf. He can’t remember the name his mother gave him. He drank that name away. Pissed his whole identity off the rocks lining the Brisbane River. Been two decades since he’s even needed it. Not a single identifying factor on his person outside of a tattoo hand-scrawled on the inside of his left forearm: Marilyn. You ever tried to get some identification without some identification? It’s like trying to go to sleep with your eyes open.

In truth, I’ve got a dozen names and none. “Sweetie” and “love” and “hon” and “you” are what Mum calls me. My neighbour Roslyn calls me “kid”. I have a friend named Esther Inthehole, she of the Kangaroo Point Intheholes. I’ve never seen Esther’s face because she’s a recluse who lives in a hole under the St Peter the Apostle Church in Canoe Street. Esther Inthehole calls me “Liv Bytheriver” because I live in an ­orange van with no wheels beside the Brisbane River. My best friend, Charlie Mould, aka Prince Charles, calls me “Princess Diana”, aka “Di Bytheriver”, and I always remind Charlie that I’d rather live by the river than die by the river. The Nigerian priest at the St Peter the Apostle Church, Father Joseph Kikelomo, calls me “Sputnik” because he says I’m always ­shooting for stars that are too high in my sky. My friend Evelyn Bragg – she’s the manager at The Well drop-in centre on Moon Street, the same street where you can find me and mum in our van – always calls me “Patsy” because I sang one night at a fundraising karaoke event in the drop-in centre rec room and she said I sounded sad but pretty, just like Patsy Cline. Mum’s boss, Flora Box, calls me “Brooke” ­because I used to let my hair grow out long so that it hung like curtains over my shoulders and that reminded Flo of some actress she loved who starred in some old movie about two kids who got stuck on a tropical island and ate ­coconuts and bumped uglies all day. Mum’s most loyal day-job customer, an old man named George Stringer, calls me “Laura” ­because Mum told him my name is Laura ­Branigan, which is the name of the singer of Mum’s all-time favourite name song, Gloria.

Mum loves a good name song: Jolene, Layla, Angie, Cecilia, Beth, Rhiannon. I did a sketch once for Mum that featured all the subjects of her favourite name songs gathered for a ­reunion in the function room of the Story Bridge Hotel. Runaround Sue and Barbara Ann sipping punch in the corner with Jack and Diane. Billie Jean makin’ out with Bobbie McGee. Poor Eleanor Rigby on clean-up duties.

Yeah, I try to tell myself that I don’t need a real name. But I reckon I do. I think it’s important to know who you really are and who you ­really want to be.

Illustration: Paul Heppell

The outside of The Well drop-in centre looks likethe headquarters of an East German Stasi ­interrogation unit: two levels of artless grey cement with windows and blinds. But the inside is rainbow-coloured, the walls having been ­decorated with murals by the centre’s art class members. I helped paint the giant loggerhead turtle swimming across the long south wall of the rec room on level one.

Too many single mums in this shelter today. Too many single mums who stopped dancing the Tyrannosaurus Waltz. They and most of the centre regulars are gathered in a talking ­circle in the rec room beneath the television that hangs from the ceiling. Evelyn Bragg has summoned them for an urgent update on the scary f..ker who’s been clubbing homies to death across the city. Charlie and Roslyn stand at the edge of the circle. Roslyn’s holding the same A4 sheet of paper the others are holding.

I tap her shoulder. “What’s that?” I ask.

She turns to me and whispers, “Police got a witness comfit on our friendly neighbourhood psycho killer. He had a chop at Popeye Lawson last night. Ol’ Pop was sleepin’ beneath the ­Mahatma Gandhi statue on Wickham Terrace. Woke to a cricket bat cracking his jaw in four places. Woulda been six ’n’ out for Pop if two drunk fellers hadn’t staggered by the scene.”

She hands me the sheet. A black and white comfit of a man with a chin shaped like a spade, doorstop for a nose. He wears a hooded sports jumper, with the hood pulled down over his eyes and forehead.

“Rest assured I am in constant contact with police beats in the valley, the city and Roma Street,” Evelyn says.

Evelyn Bragg is short and thin with red hair and green spectacles. She wears colourful cardigans and green Dunlop KT-26 running shoes with colourful socks. She’s fierce and terrifying when she needs to be, but kind, always. Never tolerates drunkenness and thuggery.

Lola in the Mirror by Trent Dalton

She’s got a big Samoan police officer on speed-dial in case of any trouble. His name’s Tristan and he’s from the West End Police Beat and I once saw him snap the blade off a steak knife held by a wild floater on a gak implosion. “I could not be more serious when I urge you to consider where you sleep tonight,” Evelyn says. “It’s not the first time we’ve seen a damaged and dangerous individual bring violence upon our homeless and at-risk communities.

“Unfortunately for all of us, because of this extremely hostile individual, where you sleep rough this summer has now become a matter of life and death. Please do not sleep alone or in exposed places. No dark spots in parks. No ­isolated urban spaces. Please catch a nod in the day beds here when you can. If you’re gonna sleep out at night, then do it in couples or groups and in the malls near police beats, or find yourself a spot with multiple CCTV surveillance angles. Do not sleep or pass out by the mangroves on the river.”

I elbow Charlie in the ribs. “That means you, knobhead,” I whisper.

“Don’t sleep or pass out in construction sites,” Evelyn continues. “And, for f..k’s sake, do not sleep or pass out in the Botanic Gardens.” She looks down to a folder in her hands, flips over to a new page of notes.

“Now, moving right along from cold-blooded murder to the Games of the 35th Olympiad!” Some in the crowd laugh and clap, others boo and hiss theatrically. “This place is the only home most of you have got,” she says. “If you want to see this place survive, you need to sign the petition. These f..kers won’t take The Well without a fight.” Last month, Evelyn was informed of the Queensland Government’s plans to transform Moon Street – and almost half of the buildings, unit complexes and ­orange Toyota HiAce vans that stand upon it – into an athlete’s village for members of Italy’s Olympic Games team ­during the 2032 ­Olympic Games, which, quite remarkably, will be hosted by our very own brown snake river city of Brisbane.

“Please remind your government that you believe basic human shelter is more important than sport,” Evelyn shouts. “I love a good Olympics as much as the next ginger-haired dyke, but let’s not forget our social responsibilities. Let’s not forget hunger. Let’s not forget desperation–”

“Let’s not forget Dulcie’s pavlova,” shouts an old centre regular, Jock Sinclair, who many ­believe survived a recent bout of cancer only because of his unwavering faith in canteen cook Dulcie Prior’s rhubarb and pistachio ­pavlova.

“Good point, Jock,” Evelyn says. “If you sign the petition for nothing else, please sign it for Dulcie’s pavlova.”

Evelyn’s the unofficial mayor of Moon Street. Heart bigger than a pineapple, prickly personality like pineapple skin. Evelyn loved Erica Finlay like a sister and Erica loved Evelyn even more than Evelyn loved her. Evelyn means “wished-for child”. As the manager of The Well for the past ten years, Evelyn’s been strangled and spat on and stabbed in the ­stomach with a fork, but mostly she’s been hugged by the thousands of drop-ins who come to access the centre’s services six days a week. Hot-shower services. Food services. ­Counselling services. Drug and alcohol ­rehabilitation services. Employment services.

Some two hundred free lunch and dinner meals a day, served by volunteers, all wrangled by Evelyn, in the centre kitchen. There are about six thousand homeless people in the city of Brisbane on any given day and about three thousand of those people have hugged Evelyn at some stage in their life. Some regulars are addicts who can’t kick. Some are lonely and some are lost. Many have paying jobs, but just not the kind that cover the payments on increasingly hard-to-find rental properties across Queensland. Beautiful one day, perfectly f..ked by inflation and a housing shortage the next.

llustration: Paul Heppell

I turn left off Montague Road into Canoe Street. No floaters to be seen. No pedestrians at all. A whole world of people in their houses, staying out of the hard rain. The St Peter the Apostle Church is closed for spiritual business. I open the small red iron entry gate, run down the path to the left of the church, and scamper down a strip of grass to the secluded backyard. Catch my breath for thirty seconds then kneel and speak into the hole my friend, Esther, calls home.

“Are you there, Esther?” I enquire.

A voice snaps from within, “Who’s that?”

I realise I’ve woken her from a nap. Esther values naps like she values Cherry Ripe ­chocolate bars.

“It’s me, Esther,” I say, between deep breaths. “It’s Liv Bytheriver.”

“Liv?” Esther replies. “Why you out in the rain?”

“I’m in trouble, Esther. I got nowhere else to go.”

“What’s goin’ on, Liv?” Esther asks.

“I need a place to hide, Esther,” I reply. “I need a hole. I need to come in there with you.”

“Not a chance, kid,” Esther says. “Nobody comes in here.”

“Please, Esther,” I say. “Just for a few days.”

“Why? What have you done, Liv?”

“Let me crawl in there with you and I’ll tell you all about it,” I say. “Please. Just this once. There’s people after me, Esther. Dangerous people.” Tears falling from my eyes now. “I’m scared, Esther. I’m really f..kin’ scared.”

A long moment of silence. Can’t see a thing in the hole. “Don’t swear like that,” Esther says. “I’ll have no swearin’ in my home. Rule number one: Esther’s hole, Esther’s rules. You got that?”

“I got it,” I say. “Esther’s hole, Esther’s rules.”

“Good,” Esther says. “Now get in ’ere and get yourself dry. Didn’t I tell you there was a flood comin’?”

This is an edited extract of Lola in the Mirror by Trent Dalton (4th Estate AU, $32.99), out on ­October 4