Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

14 March :: Collingwood, the terrace, front step

Clinical summary: Subject F.D. receives an unsolicited parcel at the residence. No return address, no note. Item is a used paperback previously referenced by subject in a public interview. Reporter (self) opens working file for pattern documentation.

The parcel was on the front step at seven minutes past six, which I know because I was reaching for the milk when Franky opened the door and made the small noise she makes when a thing is not where a thing should be. It was a brown paper package the size of a paperback, tied with string. No stamp. No name. Only her first name, in blue biro, in a hand I did not recognise.

She brought it inside with her whole body and no ceremony, and set it on the kitchen bench between the salt and the good knife. I watched her thumb the knot. I watched her not use the knife. Later, when I tried to write this down, I could not decide if that was tenderness or evidence.

Note the impulse to call it a coincidence. Note the impulse to close the file before it exists.

Inside was a copy of The Bell Jar, second-hand, foxed at the corners, a receipt from a Brunswick op-shop dated the previous Tuesday tucked in at page forty-one. She'd named the book on a podcast in October. She'd laughed about it, actually, the girl's guide to being a bit sad and a bit clever, she'd said, and the interviewer had laughed, and I had laughed, alone in the car, on the way home from a court.

"Some fan," Franky said. She was grinning. She flipped it open, sniffed the pages the way she does. "Bit stalkery. But sweet."

I said, sweet is a word people use when they have never had a stalker. I said it in my head. Out loud I said, "Any note?"

I lied. I opened it because I was afraid.

There was no note. There was a small pressed flower between pages one hundred and eight and one hundred and nine, and I recognised the flower before I let myself recognise it: a Wentworth garden geranium, the red kind, from the bed by the visitor entrance, the one Vera had planted after the fire. Franky had not been inside Wentworth in six months and neither had I. The flower was fresh. The flower was two days old at most.

I said, "I'm going to keep this."

Franky looked up. Her face did the thing where the grin stayed on for a beat too long, like a light left on in a room she had already walked out of.

"Keep it how, Gidge."

"In a file."

"You're opening a file on a paperback."

"I'm opening a file on a paperback and a two-day-old flower from a prison I don't work at anymore and a person who knows where we live and did not say hello."

Franky was quiet then, and I hated that I had made her quiet. She reached across the bench and put her hand on my wrist, and my pulse, trained, watched, catalogued did the thing it does around her, which is to slow down and speed up at once. Franky said, "Alright. File it."

I filed it. I am filing it now. If you are reading this, Franky, I need you to know that I opened the file because I love you and because I do not know another language for love that keeps you alive.

Parcel №001 :: The Bell Jar (used)

Origin: left on front step, no postage, blue-biro forename only

Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar. Brunswick op-shop receipt dated 11 March tucked at p.41. Pressed red geranium at pp.108–109, fresh (≤48h). Species matches Wentworth visitor-entry bed.

Physical description: Faber paperback, 1963 typesetting, corners foxed. Spine intact. No inscription. No marginalia. Book was not read for pleasure by the sender: no thumb wear, no folded corners.

Receipt: Brunswick op-shop / 11 Mar / $4.00 cash. No membership number. Tuesday afternoon, per printout timestamp 15:41.

Flower: Pelargonium x hortorum, red cultivar. Compressed, moisture retained. Cut, not pulled clean stem. Wentworth's visitor-entry geranium bed is publicly accessible, the sender did not need site access.

Intent read: The sender wants F. to know they listened to the interview. They want her to know they know the reference. They want me to know they know where we sleep.

He picked a book about a woman coming apart. He is telling me who he thinks she is. He is wrong.

F. :: thread, evening of the 14th

Origin: iMessage / F.D.

First reaction to the parcel, once the front door is closed.

Franky (22:04): u still awake in there doctor

Franky (22:05): of course u are

Franky (22:07): come to bed. bring the file. u can file me

Franky (22:08): make it work

Franky (22:10): gidge

Franky (22:10): hey. we're ok yeah

She asked. I answered too fast. Note for later: she asks when she is not ok.