‘Long-ago man’

Through the gates of a kindergarten in Melbourne’s inner-north, a man strikes up a conversation with two little girls, which violently alters the course of their lives. The bolder of the pair, a child who ‘runs at life’, goes with him. The meeker stays behind, becoming the serial predator’s only known survivor.

Eighteen years on, Till – as the survivor renames herself, after Cat Stevens’s song ‘Tea for the Tillerman’ – is back living with her parents in Brunswick and leading a slow existence in the weeks after Melbourne’s final lockdown. That is, until her flight response is triggered upon recognising that ‘long-ago man’ while walking her greyhound, Birdy.

Despite its thriller-like set-up, Lucy Treloar’s third novel, Days of Innocence and Wonder, is less concerned with the details of the crime and its perpetrator than it is with Till’s identity construction in the wake of her childhood trauma. As well as having changed her name, she eschews brightly coloured clothing (her friend, referred to only as ‘E’, wore a red coat on the day of her abduction), is trained in Krav Maga, and sings professionally, believing herself to be channelling E when she is performing.