Where the Light Falls (27 page)

‘Dom?'

He thought he heard his name. The door clicked open when he pushed it.

He stood at the bottom of the stairs, unsure he could make it all the way to the top with his heavy suitcase. He negotiated the first flight of stairs and rested on the landing with his suitcase at his feet.

It was peaceful in the stairwell. He always enjoyed standing there, in this hall of doors. The winter light through the glass was watery. It filled the stairwell with ambient light. The branches on the trees outside cast spidery shadows on a wall. He felt suddenly alert. He was assessing the room for light, he realised. It was his automatic reaction to the world, to decide whether it would make a good photograph.

He looked up through the staircase towards his own door. There was light seeping out beneath it. It was faint but warm; it was the light they lived by. He took his suitcase in his hand and kept moving towards it.

Acknowledgements

This novel was completed as my creative project for a Doctorate of Creative Arts at the Writing & Society Research Centre, Western Sydney University. It has been one of my life's great privileges to work under the supervision of Gail Jones, whose insight, curiosity and unique intelligence have been an inspiration. Thank you also to Ivor Indyk for his prescient feedback on earlier versions of this manuscript in his usual, direct manner.

I'm also grateful to Rob Spillman whose thoughtful comments on an early version of the book helped me to find the novel's shape.

Thank you to Jane Palfreyman for believing in me and in this manuscript from an early stage and staying
patiently with me through its many revisions. I'm also indebted to the editorial rigour of Ali Lavau.

Thank you to my dear friend Petrina Hicks who allowed me to observe one of her photo shoots and for her beautiful and poetic images.

To my writing friends, Fleur Beaupert, Brooke Robinson, Peggy Frew, Meg Mundell and Tegan Bennett-Daylight who offered kind and supportive words at difficult times. I'm grateful to both Peggy and Mireille Juchau for their generous words about this novel.

This novel was written with the support of a grant from the Copyright Agency Limited's Cultural Fund, which I used to undertake a residency at Can Serrat in Barcelona, Spain. Part of the novel was also written during a residency in Japan undertaken as part of University of Melbourne's Asialink Programme with the support of the Australia Council for the Arts and the Japan-Australia Foundation.

Special thanks to Julien Klettenberg, whose love and support are written into every page.