Chapter One

SOME PEOPLE HAVE a unique gift bestowed on them at birth. Perhaps one they enjoy bragging about or showing off at parties, performing these oddities like show ponies. The only gift I possessed seemed to be attracting unwanted attention.

Unlike many in these strange days of reality TV and phone cameras, I preferred to remain unnoticed. Anonymous. Out of the spotlight. Thank you very much. My dearest friend, Astrid, delighted in pointing out how I drew attention as if I were a magnet. She blamed the fantastical way I’d entered the world. She claimed that it was simply not possible for me to remain in the background after I’d burst onto the world stage in such a public way at my unusual birth.

I adored my best friend even if she did have an annoying tendency to be correct.

Though I attempted to move wraith-like through my days, I tended to stand out like a rainbow on a grey day. That’s how my mother described me, at any rate.

I did not like this state of affairs one little bit.

On this overcast day, the rainbow hovered just out of sight as I attempted to wade through the press of bodies on the overcrowded bus. I tried to move silently, ghost-like. Moving this way and that, shifting to avoid others so I didn’t so much as graze anybody.

“I beg your pardon. Did you say you’re studying poo, young man?” The woman screeched as I pressed against her legs. She clacked her knitting needles at a prodigious rate of knots, quite heedless of how perilously close they were to poking the large man sitting next to her.

“No, ma’am. I said I’m trying to get through.” All eyes were fixed on our interaction, except those who chose sensibly to travel on public transport using earbuds. Those people remained happily serenaded by Bruce Springsteen or some other artist. Eminently sensible, I thought.

The octogenarian knitter nodded and returned to her stitches, leaving me to smile awkwardly at those around us.

Mentioning poo is not the best place to start my story—and I swear there will be no further scatological mentions—but I must begin this tale somewhere.

Much like life, when we are thrust kicking and screaming into this world, starting at the beginning is the best way to go. So it is at my birth that we must begin.

My fantastical birth, as previously hinted at, is quite the tale. It’s also where some might argue I peaked as a person and had my promised fifteen minutes of fame, all in one ignominious day. All this greatness and celebrity happened to me the day I was born, so I don’t remember it myself, yet I feel pretty scarred by it, nonetheless. For better or worse, I also own plenty of photos and articles to look back on so I can reminisce about my extraordinary birth. It’s not everyone who can claim a naked photo of themselves on just about every worldwide newspaper front page.

You see, my mother, the sweetest and kindest woman I’ve ever known, is also somewhat odd. At least my grandfather always described her as such. I prefer to think of her as one of those people that extraordinary things happen to. I think it was from her that I received my gift.

Her strict, conservative father, Grandpa Joe, never had any flavour to his life that I ever saw—no joy. He fancied himself the keeper of everyone’s soul. He lived miserably while trying to save us all from hellfire and brimstone. To my young eyes, he seemed melancholy. He may have loved stomping about his run-down home—asylum, as I liked to think of it—swearing at the television as if the people he cursed might take the trouble to answer. He apparently never found any happiness in it though. A smile from Grandpa Joe would be like stumbling across a blooming corpse flower.

When I think back on Grandpa Joe, sadness at his misery most often strikes me. More times than I could count, I tried to tell him not to worry about what everybody else was getting up to or with whom and instead enjoy what he had around him. Nine times out of ten, he bit my head off for my trouble. The one time out of ten he spread his arms wide and asked, “Enjoy what exactly?”

Poor Grandpa Joe, whether he loved the curmudgeon life or not, it loved him. Mum liked to say that being such a cranky old fart kept Joe alive until his early eighties when he rightfully should have died much sooner. Grandpa Joe loved his daily whiskies and packs of smokes. A courageous doctor once told him that he had the heart of a ninety-year-old. Of course, Joe was only sixty-eight at the time. But that was Joe.

He wasn’t often proud of Mum and me, but he shone with pride the day I was born, or so I’ve been told.

Getting back to that day, you should know that our queen—bless her—has been on the throne for sixty years this year. But when I was born, it had only been forty glorious years. Her fortieth year of reigning coincided with Australia hosting the Olympic Games. It was a festive year for Australia. Our highest medal tally at the games and our longest reigning monarch all in the same three hundred sixty-five days. Celebrations spilled onto the streets.

That year was a big one for my mum too. First and most importantly—she always says—she got pregnant with me. Around the same time, she successfully applied to be a volunteer at the Games. It was to be her first job, not that she’d be getting paid, but just the same, Grandpa Joe proudly told everyone he met. Mum had never had a job before. Too flighty, Joe had often said. Her head always in the clouds. Mine would have been, too, if I’d had to listen to Grandpa ranting and raving daily.

Anyway, Mum volunteered at the Olympic Games and did quite a good job. People liked her good heart and kindness. Grandpa Joe seemed to be the only one who cared about her flightiness and general lack of ambition. In fact, Mum made the news a few times during the games for being Australia’s best mascot, showing the world the kind of people we were.

Mum became so well known that when the queen went on a Commonwealth tour as part of her ruby jubilee—rubilee as Mum called it—she insisted that my mum and a handful of other volunteers were present at the athletes’ meet and greet. Imagine Grandpa Joe’s face when he discovered his daughter would meet the queen. Well, we don’t know what his face was because he’d kicked Mum out for getting pregnant without a husband by then. I guess it’s self-explanatory that he took her back, but that wasn’t till after I was born.

So, the athletes’ parade happened, and we all ended up at Government House for luncheon with the queen. I say we because, of course, I was there in my mum’s belly—but there just the same. During the luncheon, each athlete and volunteer was presented to the queen with cameras rolling for the poor folk at home to gander at.

The volunteers were to be presented at the end, but Mum told me later she didn’t care; she’d have waited all day to meet Queen Anne. Mum admires the guts out of that older woman. Even to this day, she’ll stand and sing “God Save the Queen” as loud as she can whenever she hears it, no matter where or when. No matter that it hasn’t been our national anthem for decades.

I guess that explains why Mum didn’t let the little fact that she’d been having labour pains all day deter her from her chance to meet Her Majesty.

The doctors told Mum later that I must have been crowning when Mum attempted an ill-advised curtsey before the queen. Rather appropriate term, I always thought—and so too did the newspapers when they reported on the baby who’d been born at the feet of the monarch. “Couldn’t Wait to Meet His Queen,” one newspaper headline had declared. That same article described how I’d shot out of my mum and landed on the royal toes. Mum never liked that article. She hated how common they had made it sound, talking about Her Majesty attempting to catch me like a football punt.

And so, there was my fifteen minutes of fame. Photos of my newly-arrived-into-the-world, utterly naked body lying at the feet of Queen Anne splashed in the worldwide media. A few also showed pictures of the queen’s stunned expression or my mother’s contorted face as she pushed the last of me out.

Queen Anne bore the hubbub well. She’d looked down at me and then at my mother before saying, “Well, that is either the best bit of prestidigitation I’ve ever seen, or you’ve just had a baby, my dear.”

And that was how I got my name.

Prestidigitation Jones.

Though I go by Pres or usually Presti. My poor mum didn’t know it was a word meaning conjuring tricks when she decided on it for my name. She’d thought the queen had been naming me at the time, and she wasn’t going against the queen’s wishes.

Mum and I were a bit of a hit for a while. Media wanted to speak to us, and even my dad stuck his head into things—for a while, anyway. Gambling and women lured him right back once our fame declined. I’m glad about that, really. From what I’ve heard, he was not the kind of dad I would want around.

All this occurred twenty years ago, and a lot has happened in the meantime. Grandpa Joe died. Mum eventually got a paying job. I went to school and made a friend like young people do, but as yet, I’d not done much to surpass my inimitable birth. And I was happy about that.

But our past had caught up with us. Mum and I received an invite to the palace as part of Queen Anne’s sixtieth year on the throne celebrations. A reunion, if you like. We could each bring one guest to one of several diamond jubilee dinners planned over the year. Mum’s still working on shortening that one. Dibilee was the current frontrunner, but it didn’t have quite the same ring as rubilee.

Mum will be taking Howard. They’ve been together six years now, and though he is not my dad, he treated me like his son. Better…he considered me a son he both loved and liked. But best of all, he treated my mum as if she were the queen.

I will be taking my best friend, Astrid Rhys-Bomalier. She’s also my only friend. Though she has a boyfriend who told me that any friend of Astrid’s is a friend of his, so I have him as a friend now. Astrid is so good at being my friend that I don’t miss having others. Grandpa Joe used to say people steered clear of me because they found me hard work and somewhat of a fruit loop . I knew he was right, but I didn’t actually care. I liked my life, and I liked who I was. I didn’t see why I needed to change any of that to please other people.

I was on my way to Astrid’s now. Since I invited her to meet the queen, she’s had a near constant bout of nervous dyspepsia. She often told me she had no idea how to act or what to wear. I would try again to get her not to worry. In her sixty years of ruling, I expect the queen had met just about every kind of person we could think of. A nineteen-year-old-vegetarian-glow-worm enthusiast who only wears shades of blues and purples wouldn’t be too shocking for her. Of course, as Astrid’s boyfriend unhelpfully reminded us, purple is the royal colour, so it may be unseemly to don such a shade before Her Majesty. Protocol can be so fiddly.

Astrid lives in a sex shop. Not in it, precisely, but above it. In one of those very out-of-date units they used to build over shopfronts, presumably for the shop owners to live in. Not that Astrid owns the sex shop or even works in it. She only shares the back gate with F*ckingham Phallus.

This brings me to one of those coincidences in life that can’t help but make me smile. Astrid has lived above F*ckingham Phallus with her father for years. Indeed, before she ever met me. Of course, once she did meet me, we laughed for hours over the fact I’d once been naked in the royal presence while Astrid lived above a shop given what could only be the porn name of the queen’s home. We both felt it must be fate bringing us together.

Glorious.

Managing to deboard the bus far more easily than I’d boarded, I strolled down Maxim St with my gaze down. I knew this street as well as the freckles on the backs of my hands. This town had always been my home. Small and insignificant, I considered it the grandest place on earth.

Peter, Paul, and Fairy’s Bakery was on my left. Fruit Tingles on my right, its doors overflowing with fresh produce. Dominic’s Domesticated Menagerie loomed halfway up the block. I wouldn’t say I liked walking past that place. If one must keep an animal, the least one could do was rescue one of the multitudes at the shelters. I often asked Dominic to get at least some of his animals from the shelters. He refused, once telling me he didn’t want any ‘mangy, rejected has-beens’ in his store. That was the day I first met Constable Dickens.

You can imagine Dominic’s surprise when Constable Dickens told him he’d uncovered no evidence of me striking Dominic even though Dominic’s speech was muffled due to his bleeding nose. After Constable Dickens listened quite patiently to Dominic’s retelling of the story, he didn’t even ask me if I’d done it, nor did he show interest in my split knuckles. He just sent me on my way with a warning to avoid the shop in future. I guess it helped that I was barely twelve at the time.

To be clear, I don’t make a habit of physically assaulting people whose ethical moralities do not align with mine. But I’ll admit I lost control when I heard him use abhorrent language to describe the adorable little mites from the shelter.

“Hey, Presti. Going up to see Astrid?” Silkie Bellbird popped her head out of the shop’s back door as soon as I neared the stairs leading up to Astrid’s. I had no doubt she’d watched me arrive on the security cameras inside the shop. Her massive eyelashes almost dusted the tip of her nose as she winked at me.

“I am. And you’ve gone red again.” Silkie’s hair, always voluminous, now flamed the brightest red I’d ever seen.

“You know what they say about redheads, dahling.”

I shook my head. “Um. No.”

“We’re red on the head and fire in bed.” Silkie winked again and cackled.

I loved Silkie. Kind and sweet, she’d always been good to Astrid and her dad. The first time I’d met her, she’d been without her wig and had scared the bejesus out of me with her deep, booming voice and often maniacal laughter. Silkie has owned F*ckingham Phallus since the ’70s. She’d called it a far more discrete name back then—and claimed many times that she never planned to retire or sell. With her applied-with-a-brickies-trowel make-up and glitzy costumes, Silkie described herself as a relic of the early days of drag queens. Every time I looked at her, I could see decades of a life well lived in her sparkling eyes.

“Oh, sweet boy, I just love making you smile. Made use of your gift yet?” Silkie asked, that hint of mischief glistening in her eyes.

Just the mention of the present Silkie gifted me for my twentieth birthday ignited fire beneath my skin, flushing crimson across my cheeks. “You could have warned me you’d already put batteries in it,” I muttered.

Silkie pouted her full lips and tipped her head quizzically. Sighing and rolling my eyes, I continued, “It went off in my backpack during a pop quiz in class. When Mr Jamison made me pull it out to stop disturbing the class, it literally jumped out of my hand and across the floor like a prostate-massaging energizer bunny.”

Silkie threw back her head and cackled again. “My god, sweet boy, this is why I love you. Do not ever change.”

Still laughing, Silkie slunk back into her shop, flaming bouffant red hair and all. I couldn’t bear to tell her Mr Jamison had kept my new and—thankfully—unused prostate massager. He’d had it for over a week, and I never wanted it back.

Astrid waited for me at the top of the stairs. She would have laughed with me about the prostate massager in gentler times, but these were not those times. In exactly two days, we were leaving for London, and Astrid still needed an outfit for meeting the queen.

“Where the hell have you been, Presti? No, do not answer; I know where you’ve been. Downstairs confabulating with Silkie.” Astrid’s dewy, wide green eyes locked on mine. She could be a little high-strung, my best friend. I adored every bit of her. One of the things I love best is her extensive vocabulary of many unusual words. Sometimes it made keeping up with her complex, but never boring.

Astrid’s father, Paul Bomalier, is somewhat of a recluse, rarely setting foot outside his front door. Fortunately, he works from home, and Astrid is old enough now to run out for anything he might need. Paul loves books. Specifically, books on words and the English language. Hence Astrid’s extensive and unique vocabulary. Naturally, some of that has rubbed off on me, which my mum thinks is splendid. She’s often said that I might have dropped from the queen’s loins rather than hers with the way I speak so posh sometimes.

“I only just got here, Astrid. And I’m early. You said four, and it is now three forty-two.”

“Semantics,” she answered, waving her hand in the air. “I have seven frocks to try on. I’ve got quite the collywobbles about the whole thing. Plus, poor Larry is quite beside himself. He says he simply cannot choose because I will look positively radiant in all of them.”

Larry—Lawrence Brooke-Brooks—adored Astrid almost as much as I did. They’d been a couple for a little over four months, but it would have been longer if Larry had managed to ask Astrid out before then. He’d spent the first two months after meeting her fumbling his words. He would flush a colour something like beetroot and run, quite flummoxed, from her presence. His awkwardness had been adorable to watch at the beginning. But witnessing his discomfort became quite excruciating after a while.

“Well, we best get in there and rescue him,” I said as I stepped through the door she held open for me.

Larry Brooke-Brooks sat in the centre of the emerald-green sofa. His long legs spread wide, his gaze transfixed on Astrid. They were a handsome couple. Both were tall and long-limbed, but Larry’s sharp masculine features were a lovely contrast to Astrid’s round face, wide eyes, and full lips—something of a cherubic angel to Larry’s more equine appearance.

“Hello, Larry,” I greeted, dropping my backpack to the single armchair adjacent to the sofa. No sign of Paul Bomalier yet.

“Afternoon, Presti. How’s things?”

“Quite good. They’ll be a sight better once we’ve got poor old Astrid’s frock sorted out.” I flopped onto the end of the sofa. Larry squirmed and shifted to accommodate my presence, yet managed to do so without unlocking his gaze from Astrid.

“I’ll try the first one,” Astrid said as she strode from the room, leaving Larry and me alone.

“Listen here, Presti,” Larry began as soon as Astrid’s bedroom door shut with a snick. “You will take care of her in London.”

He wasn’t so much asking me as telling me. An order not to allow any harm to his beloved. Not that he needed to remind me. I’d never let anything happen to Astrid. “Of course. I won’t let her out of my sight.”

Larry finally looked over at me, his dark eyes watching me quizzically. “Never understand how you’re not madly in love with her. Glad you aren’t, mind, but…”

“I love Astrid, Larry. I’m just not in love with her.” We’d had this conversation often, especially after Larry had been into Paul Bomalier’s batch of Mai Tai. One terribly awkward time, Larry burst into tears because he just couldn’t believe I could be so close to Astrid and not fall terribly in love with her.

Silly. But Astrid thought it was the sweetest thing ever.

Larry shook his head and mumbled, “Never understand it.” He hadn’t found the courage to ask me about my sexuality yet, though I could see the words on the tip of his tongue.

Before either of us managed to utter another word, Astrid burst into the living room, wearing the first gown up for consideration.

She looked appalling.

Like a giant purple feather duster, trussed up in a somewhat hideously bedazzled, feather-adorned monstrosity. I searched for the right words while Larry gushed and enthused beside me. Much of Astrid’s inner strength resembled steel, but a misplaced, thoughtless word could quite easily hurt her.

“Well, Presti?” Astrid asked after a time.

“I should think we’d want to look a little less…showgirl and a little more…Astrid.”

Astrid looked down at herself, nodded and smiled. “Quite right, Presti. Not me at all.”

With that, she flounced—as one must in a dress such as that—back into her room and shut the door. The following four dresses were much the same. Not that they were all as ostentatious and gaudy as the first, but none of them were Astrid.

The sixth dress fit her like a glove; the rich purple illuminated Astrid’s green eyes. A hint of glamour with very little glitz. Not a trace of bedazzlement in sight. Understated, classy, and beautiful. Like Astrid.

Larry looked like he might need paramedics when Astrid stepped out in the deep violet number. His eyes almost popped out of his head like a cartoon character, his words spluttering from him. “Perfect,” he choked. “Just perfect.” I’m pretty sure I could hear his heart thundering in his chest despite the two-foot gap between us.

“He’s right, Astrid.” I smiled as she twirled in the gown. Though aware there’d be more royalty at the shindig than I presently knew existed, I could not envisage any of them outshining Astrid.

“It is rather stunning. Not a popinjay in sight with this one.” Astrid’s smile lit up the small room. At that moment, I understood why Larry wondered at anybody who wasn’t in love with Astrid. Her whole heart and soul made up her smile.

“Not a popinjay at all.”

“Right.” Astrid put her hands on her stomach and gazed down at herself again. “This is the one, then.” She fled to her room, and though I knew there was another dress we hadn’t seen, I also knew we never would. Astrid knew her own mind and, decision made, she never looked back.

Though Astrid offered, I didn’t stay for dinner. I’d have her all to myself in two days, and I knew Larry needed to store up as much Astrid time as he could. I’d expected him to join us on the trip, but work commitments would keep him here. None of us ever spoke of the ill-thought-out two days he and Astrid had kept apart in the early days of their relationship when neither had wanted to be those people. The ones who couldn’t bear to be apart from their paramour, but somehow that was exactly what they were.

The mournful message Astrid left on my phone on the first of those two days remains saved in my message bank. In case I should ever need to blackmail her.

As I left, Larry pulled me in for our first-ever hug. He manfully slapped me on the back and whispered for me to take care of his heart for him. It took me entirely too long to realise he meant Astrid. By then, she’d overheard and weepingly declared herself the luckiest woman alive to have such a love. Time for me to make myself scarce.

By the time I finally extricated myself and slipped out the door, they were—rather violently, I thought—embracing and pledging they’d never be apart again upon Astrid’s return.

With only fifteen minutes until Mum finished work, I thought I’d head over to join her for the walk home. We had a car, but Mum drove like a toddler in a dodgem car, and I wouldn’t say I liked operating anything with wheels. I had scores of unopened toy cars from my childhood as proof.

I’ve never been so happy as when Mum transferred to the local branch of Fosters’ Pawn Stars because it was walking distance from home.

Calling it a local branch sounds rather like Fosters was a giant chain store. Peter Foster had two pawn shops, but he had his eye on a location for a third. Pawning was big business these days, and Peter could see his fortune rolling in.

Mrs Bucket—who surprises everyone she meets by not insisting it’s pronounced Bouquet like the lady on the telly—wrote a harshly worded letter to the local paper about the downfall of our suburb when Fosters moved in. First F*ckingham Phallus and now Pawn Stars, she’d bemoaned; soon, we’d be known as the sex capital of Australia. She still gives Mum the stink-eye whenever they cross paths, though she is always nice enough to me.

“Hey, Mum.” I waved as I approached the counter, the bell tinkling, chasing me into the store.

“There’s my boy.” Mum beamed at me. “How did it go with Astrid?”

“She’s picked a dress. We have a twenty-hour flight and an entire day in London before the party to practice behaving with royalty. So, I thought I’d leave her to spend time with Larry.” I rounded the counter and pecked my mum on the cheek. She sometimes gets a bit teary when I hug or kiss her. Most of her friends’ sons stopped doing that when they were pre-pubescent, apparently.

“Wonderful. Howard’s picking up the suits today; my dress is almost ready. Not long now.” Mum smiled wide. This would be our first trip overseas—our first time in a plane too—and we could not wait. We’d never have managed it except the queen had paid for our tickets. Not the queen exactly, but some way through her. We only had to pay for accommodation and spending money.

“Do I get to see your dress before? Or will it be a surprise?”

“Definitely a surprise.”

I have an entire photo album filled with images of me in my mother’s creations. She is an excellent seamstress; it’s the design aspect she struggles a little with. I like to think that wearing the clothes she made for me taught me resilience. By the time I was twelve, I never gave a damn anymore what the other kids thought of my outfits. It was either stop caring or spend afternoons balled up and rocking in the corner.

As far as I was concerned, it was time I got to spend with Mum while she designed and created clothes for me. I’d spent hours and hours sitting with her by the machine, both of us prattling on about this or that while she worked. Sometimes I’d read aloud while she sewed. I wouldn’t trade those memories for all the peer popularity in the world.

It didn’t mean I wasn’t just a little concerned about what she might wear to meet the queen. But in the end, so long as it wasn’t crotchless chaps teamed with some nipple-exposing top, I’d be just fine.

“Well,” Mum sighed, reaching for her handbag. “That’s it. Finishing time. Let’s go home, Presti.”

We walked through the main street, cut across the bowling club, and made it home just as the sun began to set with its gorgeous pinks and purples on the horizon. I may well have peaked on the day I was born, but my life was nothing to complain about.