CMYK

An inspiring and redeeming reflection

on motherhood, marriage, friendship and
the things that hold us together.
FRAN CUSWORTH, author of The Near Miss

Recently divorced and trying to make sense of her new life,

Anne takes her daughter Aida on an overnight bushwalk
in the moody wilderness of Wilsons Promontory. In a split
second, Aida disappears and a frantic Anne scrambles for
help. Some of the emergency trackers who search for Aida
already doubt Annes story.
Nearly two years later and still tormented by remorse
and grief, Anne is charged with her daughters murder.
Witnesses have come forward, offering evidence which points
to her guilt. She is stalked by the media and shunned by
friends, former colleagues and neighbours.
On bail and awaiting trial, Anne works to reconstruct her
last hours with Aida. She remembers the sun high in the sky,
the bush noisy with insects, and her own anxiety, as
oppressive as the heat haze.

Spine: 25.7mm

The
Light
on the

Water

An unforgettable,
aching, magical read.
TONI JORDAN

A superbly written and conceived literary work exploring the best

and the worst aspects of family life, this story asks difficult questions
about society, the media, and our rush to judgement. This is a
thoughtful, provocative and unflinching novel in the tradition of
Helen Garner, Joan London and Charlotte Wood.

Cover design: Lisa White

Cover photography: Getty Images

FICTION

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The
Light
e

Water

OLGA LORENZO

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First published in 2016

Copyright Olga Lorenzo 2016
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in
any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,
recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior
permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968
(the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10 per cent of this book, whichever
is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational
purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has
given a remuneration notice to the Copyright Agency (Australia) under the Act.
Allen & Unwin
83 Alexander Street
Crows Nest NSW 2065
Australia
Phone: (61 2) 8425 0100
Email: info@allenandunwin.com
Web: www.allenandunwin.com
Cataloguing-in-Publication details are available
from the National Library of Australia
www.trove.nla.gov.au
ISBN 978 1 92526 654 2
Set in 12.5/18 pt Minion Pro by Bookhouse, Sydney
Printed and bound in Australia by Griffin Press
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

C009448

The paper in this book is FSC certified.

FSC promotes environmentally responsible,
socially beneficial and economically viable
management of the worlds forests.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the
authors imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events,
locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

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Women found guilty of infanticide were executed

by drowning them in a sack in company with
sundry fauna according to the code of Justinian.
John A. Davis, The Lancet, 27 February 1999

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In the months before her arrest, Anne Baxter had many hours
to think about the future. As she dusted Aidas bedroom yet
again, or repaired the last few items of childrens clothing in
the mending basket, or furtively watered her parched garden,
images of prison flashed through her mind. They left her as
restless as a trappedmoth.
Almost always these visions began with someone slumped
on a bench, hands dangling between slack knees, face shrouded
by a hank of hair. Sometimes it was a man, but more often it
was a woman.
Of course it could be a woman.
Steel bars soared into the heights and metal clanked in the
distance. A guard sauntered by, his waist bristling with weapons.
The guard taunted the prisoner. Afterwards his footsteps echoed
down the corridor, the sound serving to remind everyone that
this was forever and ever and ever.
1

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Olga Lorenzo

There were other dark imaginings, of course. Inexplicable acts

of violence in dimly lit corners. Screams in the night. Curses.
But now that Anne has actually arrived, it seems these
notions might have come from television and movies. The first
two inmates she sees are sitting quietly on a bench against a
sunlit wall. They suck on their cigarettes and look away with
what strikes Anne as discretion. Because of their gauntness, their
haunted eyes, she assumes they are drug addicts, or possibly
alcoholics. Perhaps theyre only damaged, sad souls, she thinks.
Neither nasty nor vicious.
In the first minutes of her stay in Ravenhall, shes still able to
kid herself. After all, no one is scraping tin mugs against the bars.
Prison initially seems a quieter, more subdued place than
shed expected. More like a hospital ward at eleven in the
morning, but with patients who have been misdiagnosed, with
galling consequences. Injustices that leave them pondering
gloomily, nursing their outrage.
f

Her cell has a floral doona. A rattan-backed chair in the corner

also struggles to suggest cosiness. The room smells of bleach and
stale sweat and cough drops, and the door has a number, 23, the
numerals stridently oversized. It could be a cheap motel room.
Except, of course, for the thick metal door, inset with a
double-plated window. And the cameras placed every few feet
along the corridors.
Shes been told she can keep her clothes for now, but she
had to relinquish her sunglasses. What harm could she have
done with them?

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The Light on the Water

Shes been given other things in compensation. A Master Index

Number, for instance. Apparently no one else in the Australian
penal system has the same one, and it will always be hers. The
six digits at first raised the faint hope that her notoriety might
be temporarily annulled.
That illusion ended a few hours into her stay, as she
prepared for her first shower. A young woman bursting out
of her guards uniform accompanied her to the washroom.
No yakking here, she snarled. Anne saw there were neither
discrete stalls nor curtains, just shallow walled recesses with
showerheads.
A dark-haired woman in the prisoners dull green tracksuit
was brushing her teeth. She met Annes eyes in the mirror above
the basin. Toothpaste froth flecked her lips. Anne Baxter, the
woman mouthed. Her smile was more a baring of the teeth,
an angry rictus.
Anne kept her gaze blank, looking down at the grey towel
shed been issued, the small cube of prison soap. She tried to
imagine disrobing. Washing her breasts, between her legs, as
the guard and the woman watched.
For now she would put off the shower. There was a hand
basin in her room. She would use that. She gathered up her
things. Ive changed my mind, she told the guard.
As she walked out, she saw the other inmates strange grimace
again, and realised how foolish shed been to think she might
not be known.
After that she read recognition in every prisoners gaze.
f

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Olga Lorenzo

There will be activities, shes been promised. Theres a recreation

room with a television. There are gardens. But also musters,
thrice daily, which she must attend. She waits, curious to see
if she will be summoned by a dinging bell, or a siren, or an
omniscient voice.
Shes also required to make sure her clothes are washed, at
least every other day. Shed nodded at thisher mother had
that same rule.
She lies curled in the bed in her cell. Its airless and shes
thrown the flowered doona off the bed. She would never
normally do that, would never place something on the floor if
she thought she might need to sleep under it, but shes certain
shes only staying a few nights, and those will be equally hot.
Shell get bail, she tells herselfof course she will. The alternative doesnt bear thinking about.
The prison settles around her, discordant snores and odd
muffled whoops and footfalls in the distance. Scraps of voices,
a sudden hyenas laugh, then intermittent screams shushed by
shouts of shut the fuck up, bitch. The light from the corridor
streams in through the doors window. Sleep is impossible. Her
mind courses between dire fears of what tomorrow will bring
and memories of todays awfulness. She scratches herself until
she draws blood; shes sure there are bedbugs. The pain in her
knotted shoulders is searing.
How could it have come to this? No signpost ever pointed
here. The idea would have been laughable. Anne Baxter, a former
journalist with the citys leading newspaper, once married to a
senior barrister. A tuckshop volunteer at her childrens school,

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The Light on the Water

a fete organiser. A woman born to be a mother. Yet here she

is, in a prison cell in Ravenhall, peering back along a winding
road. Craning her head, trying to see which was the first in a
series of ill-considered turns.

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Its a still November day, a high, clear sky. The bush shimmers
in the heat and light glints on the gums. Quartz crystals sparkle
underfoot. But theres also something sombrethe birdcalls are
muted. Tea-tree roots reach through the earth like the skeletal
hands of the dead.
Anne used to make up stories about those ossified hands
as she and Hannah walked along these tracks, back when Han
was young and wanted spooky tales.
She looks at her other daughter, Aida, scampering just ahead,
her attention snared by a clump of wombat droppings here, some
lichen there, sometimes by nothing at all as far as Anne can tell.
Aida is six. Shes special. Thats how they put it, these days.
And in fact, although Anne dislikes such words, she does feel
her daughter is exceptionalshes just hard put to say in exactly
what way. She watches Aida stumble, then lurch forward. Theres
a small damp patch between her narrow shoulders.
6

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Anne wipes sweat from her own eyes and pauses to readjust
the pack, hoisting it off her back. She searches for her childs
dark head. Aida has walked in the bush other times, day walks
in the Dandenongs and along the Great Ocean Road. And
theyve camped by the carthey did it last night. Shed thought
a short overnight walk, just three hours to Sealers Cove, would
be manageable.
Shes no longer so sure. She doesnt look away from her,
is careful to ensure Aida is never more than a few paces in
front. But the little girl isnt burdened by a pack. Annes is too
heavy. Shes less fit than shed thought. This brief stop, barely a
moments pause, and already the gap between them has widened.
Aida, walk with me, Anne calls. Come here, sweetheart.
She racks her mind for some inducement to bring her closer.
Aida doesnt like her hand held at the best of times. Let me tell
you a story, Anne offers.
She says this, but she knows no words can hold this daughters
attention. In fact, Aida isnt listening. Shes clutching Sealy to
her chest, the ragged toys long ribbon dragging behind her like
a tail. Shes darting forward, her sneakers pounding the path,
increasing the distance between herself and her mother.
Anne attempts a slight jog but shes too encumbered. Then
the path turns, and then quickly twists again. She loses sight
of Aida. The pack bounces on her sore shoulders. She wishes
she had dressed her daughter in brighter colours. Aidas grey
t-shirt disappears in the scrub.
Has she done anything right, from the moment Robert left,
and she began contemplating this walk?

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Olga Lorenzo

It was never supposed to include Aida. Shes only here

because of the new girlfriend. It was meant to be Roberts turn
with Aida, but he wanted the new woman to meet Hannah first.
To meet Hannah without Aida there. It might be too much in
one go, Robert said.
Remembering this, Anne is momentarily unnerved and trips
on a tea-tree root. She staggers, just managing to stay upright.
Jarred, the blister on her foot is rekindled, flaring into a small
blaze on her heel. She smothers a curse.
A flock of parrots startles into the air just ahead, cawing in
annoyance. Aida stops to stare at the crimsons and violets and
greens, fluttering like streamers. They reel and soar. Birds,
Anne says. Rosellas, Aida. Arent they pretty?
Aida grins. A skein of drool catches the light. Anne recognises the faraway look in her eye, the tilt of her head. Shes tiring.
Anne asks herself if shes gone ahead with the walk to spite
Robert. But she doesnt think so. She was looking forward to
walking alone, has always been happiest outdoors, and thought
it was still doable when Robert changed the arrangement.
She remembers a mother, newly single, who failed to supervise a party when Hannah was fourteen. Anne arrived to collect
Han and found her vomiting on the nature strip. Its my exs
fault, the woman inside said. I had to leave for half an hour to
get more food, and look what happened while I was away. She
indicated the liquor piled on the dining table. How can anyone
be expected to raise a child alone? she demanded.
Anne had wanted to slap her. Surely shes not like that woman.
Up ahead Aida is crouching, Sealy clasped in her lap. Like

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a much younger child she has stopped to examine a leaf. She

turns to her mother, exclaiming in delight. It sounds like a bark.
Show me, Anne calls out. What are you looking at, Aida?
The ploy doesnt work. Aida springs up, hurries on, arms
flailing. Anne loses sight of her again.
Its just after two. Theyve been walking nearly three hours,
gently but steadily uphill. They should almost be there, should
at least have reached the boardwalk, but theyre scarcely beyond
Windy Saddle. She looks around, wondering if it would be
possible to camp here, to pitch a tent on the path.
Of course not. They need cleared, level ground. But even
back at Windy Saddle wouldnt do. Above all, they need clean,
clear water, and theres no guarantee of any before Sealers.
She still hasnt caught up with Aida. Anxiety claws her. Its
a dark brooding bird that lives in her chest. Now it stretches,
beating its wings. What was she thinking, bringing Aida outhere?
It suddenly seems an utterly foolish undertaking. Her
marriage ended, people will say. She took her daughter into
the bush.

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3
Almost a year and a half after the walk, Anne is increasingly
held in the cold gaze of those who are certain they know her,
and know what happened to Aida.
Women who used to invite her around for coffee now clump
together outside the supermarket and, like sly schoolgirls, stop
speaking as she walks by. Neighbours who have asked her in
for Christmas drinks are distracted by the weeds in their lawns.
In the health food shop, the friendly attendant disappears out
the back.
Her phone rings but no one speaks. Parents pull their children closer as she walks past.
Can that be right? Or are they just politely making room
as they do for everyone? Perhaps shes seeing things that
arentthere.
Youre never as interesting to others as you think, Robert
used to tell her. It was meant to be a corrective to her social
anxietyshe shouldnt worry about what people thought of her,
10

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as they didnt spend that much time thinking about her anyway.
Maybe shes still exaggerating their interest, and their judgements.
But who is she kidding? Nothing remotely similar has ever
happened before in this neighbourhood.
f

She spends her days on the net, doing whatever she can to keep
people interested in the search. More often than not her efforts
seem fruitless and she doesnt sleep well. Tonight is one of those
nights. She wakes in the mad stillness of three in the morning,
sure shes heard the police shuffling on the porch. Arguing over
who should lift the knocker. Shes roused by a scrap of their
talk. Wake her, Warren, one of them says.
She lies motionless, straining to hear, certain they are there.
Recalling the police car that cruised past her house that morning.
Shed been bent over the garden and had looked up, nodding, but
the policewoman on the passenger side had looked through her.
Maybe they were just cruising the neighbourhood. But thats
not how it felt.
Breathless, she waits for the knock. Wondering why shes
stalled so long about getting a lawyer. Denial. Shes been in
denial. Its not something she can afford any longer.
The minutes multiply towards an hour. The only sound is
a dry susurrus, possibly the trees on the foreshore, but just
as likely the echoes of her neighbours gossip lingering in the
night air.
So much crowds in on her then that she gives up trying to
sleep. She stays in bed, attempting to figure out where the weeks
went, how they could have flashed by with so little to show.

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Olga Lorenzo

Seventeen months and five days. And not a footprint, not a

scrap of clothing, not so much as a single hair.
f

By six-thirty, the light still sulking outside, shes already cleaned

the kitchen, extracting and rinsing the filter in the dishwasher,
scrubbing around the rubbish bin, wiping water spots on
thefloor.
Perhaps the police will admire her housekeeping.
She heads downstairs, allowing herself the small pleasure
she gets from the aquarium. Its a rectangle, a hundred and
thirty litres on a stand in the front hall, the darkest place in a
house full of windows. Two days ago the guppies, live breeders,
hadwhat? Not babies. Fry.
She turns on the fluorescent lamps and the sleeping fish are
startled into motion. The angelfish come to the surface like
eager puppies.
She counts the guppy fry floating in their plastic nursery
within the aquarium. She counts them again because originally there were ten, shes positive there were ten, and then last
night there were nine.
Now there are eight.
Her heart flops towards her throat, the smallest stab of the
grief and fear of the last year and a half.
She pushes the water plants aside. The fry dash away. She can
see to the bottom and there are definitely only eight cowering
in a corner. Yet theres no tiny cadaver, no floating chewed fish.
She considers the goldfish. He often cruises past the nursery,
gulping hungrily. Its possible that he has sucked up any fry who

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lingered too close to the slits between the nursery and the rest
of the tank. The goldfish is the largest fish, and the most vital
in his obese way. But she also examines the cold-water catfish,
who she knows is not delicate or well-mannered.
These days she wakes at night worrying. If shes lucky,
worrying about the fish. Ridiculous, she knows. But its easier
to worry about fish, and less likely to keep her awake allnight.
Easier to think about lost minnows than about her own
lostchild.
f

To avoid giving her erstwhile friends more to talk about (to be

honest, to avoid them altogether), she does her shopping at odd
hours. Its not even eight oclock and shes considering a pyramid
of apples when she sees Aida sitting in another womans trolley.
Her heart jolts. Aida!
But almost immediately she realises her mind is playing
tricks, something that happens several times a day. She sees
Aida everywhere, rediscovers her at various ages, her mind
unspooling time. In those moments she almost forgets that
Aida is still missing, that she would be seven now, nearly eight.
This realisation stuns Anne. She forces herself to look again at
the little girl and sees she cant be more than three. So, no, not
Aida. But like her, like she once was.
Anne stares, feeling a wild movement inside her chest,
a sudden whooshing, as if some vital organ had slipped its
moorings. She arrests the vertiginous drop by examining
the apples and pearsall overpricedbefore picking up a
small hand of bananas. And hears the tuneless, harsh voice.

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Olga Lorenzo

Saying one word, only one. Mu-um. Mu-um. Turning it into

twosyllables.
How is it that a childs voice can be such an assaultmore
than a knife on stone, more than the wet snore of a former lover?
Mu-um. So inappropriately loud for any time of day. Mu-um.
Mu-um. Loud, but flat. No upward inflection, no intonation
whatsoever. Not asking a question, not even whining.
The hands flapping; the loose, useless gestures.
But in other ways this little girl isnt all that much like Aida,
whose hair is curly and whose dark eyes shine like a birds.
The mother must feel Annes scrutiny; they exchange studiedly neutral glances. The childs legs kick out, her back arches.
Mu-um.
Shush, the woman says gently, with an abstracted air.
A beatthe suspension of the assault. Anne plucks up a jar
of fig jam. But then it starts again, louder. Mu-um.
Theyre stubborn at that age, Anne says.
The woman looks through Anne but the child pauses,
studying her.
Anne smiles and waggles her fingers at her. I like your shoes,
she says, staring at an ordinary pair of small soiled runners.
Annes own voice disappoints hershe hasnt managed the
righttone.
The drone resumes. Anne reels away, hurries to the cash
register even though she doesnt have half the things she meant
to get.
She didnt hurt her daughter, she reminds herself. No
matter what her neighbours say, what the polices questions
insinuate, what anyone in Tidal River thinks they saw.

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Just the same, shes had the same thoughts as everyone

else this morning. When one hears that flat monotone, that
relentless and unfulfillable demand, the madness of it, the sweet
unreasonableness ... Well, anyone would have felt the same.
Would have wanted to rush away.
The young mothers husband will have sprinted for the train
by seven-thirty, pretending there would be no parking at the
station were he to leave any later. His wife knows it isnt true but
what does it matter? No day care will accept her, no kinder has
a place if she takes her there on enrolment day. Perhaps even
the local state school will turn them away (though the mother
will try to enrol her daughter without taking her along. She will
not even wait until shes five years old).
Every time her name has been in the news Anne has wanted
to tell the world: You dont understand. No one could love a
child more than I.
She was interested in bibs and baby bottles at twelve, when
other girls were swooning over music idols. By nineteen, she had
thought that the worst tragedy of her life would be to not have
children. She has never seen a sleeping infant without thinking,
Not fair! Its her little joke with herselfnot fair, she means,
that someone else has a baby. The truth is that shes felt truly
blessed to be a mother. Anything else would have been a disaster,
a half-life, no life at all. Not for every woman, of courseshe
knows there are many ways to have a rich, wondrous life that
dont involve children. But for Anne, being Anne, a childless
life was never worth contemplating.
But its equally true that there have been moments when she
wished her daughter gone, at least for a heartbeat. There were

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times, however fleeting, when she let herself think that she
would do almost anything for a moments respite.
f

Shes putting her groceries into the Forester when she sees Gladys
mincing towards her in her high heels. Anne has known her
for years, since their kids were in school together. She supposes
she was once a friend, of sorts, at least back when Hannah
was young. Until Gladyss sons bullied Aida. She wonders how
she can avoid the woman but her heart is hammering and her
mindclouds.
Gladyss youngest was the only child Anne has ever seen
change his own nappy, unfolding it and placing it under himself
on the floor, taking his dummy out of his mouth to better
concentrate on the sticky tabs. All of Gladyss boys will make
their ruthless way in the world. Theyre mostly grown now, but
Gladys remains in the mansion she managed to cling to in her
divorce settlement after her ex absconded to Perth.
Oh, Anne, have you been shopping? Gladys calls, stretching
out shopping as if it were some secret, nefarious activity. Shes
in tight jeans that dont quite meet her fluoro green t-shirt.
Mascara clumps her eyelids like sleep. Everything she says
is infused with innuendo, everything she does has a sexual
undercurrent. It once made Anne laugh; there arent so many
characters in their staid neighbourhood. But Gladys stopped
being amusing when she refused to do anything about her sons
attitude to Aida.
Yes, Anne answers shortly, and then reminds herself that she
has to make more of an effort with people. Shes not winning

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any hearts lately. But How are you, Gladys? is all she can think
to say, and its not the right tack.
Im fine. How are you? Gladys assumes her version of a
warm and caring look. In a benevolent moment, Annes mother
would have called her a scrubber. As far as Anne knows, all
that Gladys has done since her divorce is to sip wine with her
girlfriends by her swimming pool and flirt with their husbands.
Anne searches for her sunglasses. When she doesnt answer,
Gladys shakes her head, making a long, supposedly commiserating ooh sound.
Anne pushes her sunglasses onto her face and puts a hand
on the Foresters door.
How is Hannah holding up? Gladys asks, and Anne cant
win. She cant say that Hannah is fine. That would make
Hannah sound indifferent and callous. But neither can she
admit anything that will be pawed over in the cafe.
Shes trying to concentrate on uni, Anne says. Shes been
working on a filmIve inherited her unemployed actors.
Theyve come to live with me.
Thats nice, Gladys says.
Anne isnt going to explain that the unemployed actors are
the fish in the aquarium, a prop in a film for a course. You
know how to keep fish, Mum, Hannah said. It will give you
something to do was tactfully left unspoken.
Gladys is still staring. Anne imagines her small mind
whirring, trying to think how to deliver her coup de grce.
Desperate to get away, Anne scratches around in her bag for her
car keys, remembering Gladyss sons cruel taunting of Aida.

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Olga Lorenzo

Boys will be boys, Gladys claimed when Anne spoke to her about
it. There was a cold glint in her eye.
She manages to get into the car. But before she can start the
engine, Gladys says it. I saw your name in the paper the other
day. She waits, goggle-eyed.
Anne isnt about to answer.
It must be hard to lose a kid like that, Gladys coos, as if
she were speaking to a lover. You just cant take your eyes off
them, huh? Especially when Aida was, you know ... whats it
called? Autistic. She smirks at Anne. This is not the sort of word
Gladys normally uses and, like a teenager, shes uncomfortable
with it. What she probably says to her friends is that Aida was
retarded. Thats more the sort of word Gladys would use.
Anne stares up at her. You dont know what youre talking
about, she says.
What do you mean? Gladys assumes a confused tone.
Wasnt Aida lost?
Anne might have been tempted to slap her if she werent
already seated. What do you know about autism? she says.
Gladys grins vacantly and shrugs but wont look away.
You really have no idea, do you? Anne continues. Then she
stops herself. Aida did have problems, of course she did. But
shes not going to canvass them, especially not with Gladys.
I guess you cant believe everything you read in the newspapers, huh? Gladys says.
No, you cant, Anne snaps. And promptly feels another stab
of disloyalty. Her first real job was as a reporter for the Age. In
her dreams shes sometimes still working there, but then her
dreams lag as much as ten years behind her waking life. She

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has sometimes caught herself thinking that she was going to

the Age when in fact shed been preparing for some errand. But
such loyalty is irrational. The editors were never good to her
newspaper offices are notoriously sexist places. Just the same,
the paper holds her, she supposes because of the wild idealism
she experienced when she first got the job, when she thought
something she wrote might actually help someone, improve the
world a small bit. It was her first and only real, grown-up job.
Shes altogether sick of Gladys. I have to go, she says, concentrating on placing the key into the ignition. Hannah stayed the
night and if I dont get home to wake her shell miss her class.
She doesnt usually lie, doesnt even know why she feels she has
to. Perhaps to summon Hannah to her side. How sad.
Dont think, she tells herself. Just get away. Leave.
f

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Praise for The Light on the Water

Olga Lorenzo is a writer of sublime skill and intelligence and in
The Light on the Water all her power is on display. Toni Jordan,
author of Nine Days
I couldnt turn away from this novel, even when it hurt to bear
witness. A mesmerising, beautifully wrought story about the limits
and lengths of a mothers love. Myfanwy Jones, author of Leap
A shimmering, luminous, sea-filled novel that balances the horror
of what has happened and the fear of what is ahead, with the daily
business of love, family and seasonal change. Haunting, potent and
redeeming; I could not put it down. Fran Cusworth, author of
The Near Miss
Compelling and insightful, The Light on the Water cracks open
one of our most feared and reviled stereotypesthe bad mother
and gives us a truth that is complex, relatable, and utterly human.
Broaching dark and difficult terrain with intelligence, compassion
and wit, Lorenzo does not flinch, nor falter. Peggy Frew, author
of HopeFarm
An author who writes of a parents greatest fearthat of the lost
childis courting unease. But in The Light on the Water Olga
Lorenzos unflinching gaze transcends the stark subject to explore
larger themes: guilt, the power of the media to drive judgement and
social discourse, and society and the limits of its compassion. Its
a vision of brutality and tenderness shot through with mordant
wit. Lorenzos richly imagined settings form the backdrop to this
compelling and resonant fiction, its troubling present illuminated
by the refracted past. Lucy Treloar, author of Salt Creek

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