Romy Ash

Oh my gosh, so dear to me.

I do live in Melbourne, but I've been visiting the very specific place where I set this book in southern Lutruwita.

Uh, for maybe about 25 years.

My uncle had a house on a hill there, right on the water, and yeah, I always just used to drop in on him.

And when he died in 2020, I was so lucky to inherit the house with my brother.

And so it's a family house for us now, so we're very often there, swimming in the ocean and walking around that beautiful country.

And how does it feel when you arrive at the holiday house?

It's kind of... shocking.

It's just shockingly beautiful.

And yeah, it's always freezing, and, you know, there's, uh, I think in the book I talk about a southerly always blowing, and it does feel like you, you step onto the island and this great wind buffets you, um, and kind of says, are you ready for this?

I guess like any familial relationship, perhaps especially with your mum, it's a bit complicated.

Uh, I love how, um, when Ursula arrives, she sort of opens the door and Dolores, who's the mum, she just starts talking to Ursula like they're in the middle of a conversation, like no time has passed.

But Ursula, I think, hasn't been the best daughter, and she comes in trying to reconnect, trying to help her mum, but really it's all kind of a bit late and things are sort of spiralling really quickly.

Dolores is gravely ill.

Uh, she's in palliative care, she has a nurse coming to look after her every day, but she's also... Dolores is super fiery and has so much, kind of, verve for life, even in these last, uh, dying moments.

But Dolores is convinced

She has cancer, and I mean, she's smoked cigarettes her whole life, but Ursula's not quite sure that's exactly what's happening.

I laughed the other day when someone was talking about this book and how it was a book about a rash, and I was like, I've never thought about it in this way.

But maybe, perhaps, indeed, I have written a novel where there is a rash at the centre of it.

And the rash, it seems like it's contagious, but no one really knows where it's come from, why it's there,