All About Ella
by Meredith Appleyard
HQ Fiction
Cutlers Bay, a small seaside town in the Yorke Peninsula, becomes the accidental meeting place for three homeless people. Although Zach, the solitary local police officer in the town, is technically not homeless as he has a soulless government house that came with his job, but it is an empty space after his latest girlfriend and her two sons had left … and he misses the boys more than the ex-girlfriend.
Angie has always been a drifter and has all her worldly possessions packed in her decade-old Subaru wagon. Now 40 years of age, she is beginning to get weary of drifting form place to place and casual job to casual job. Sometime she thinks she’ll settle in a place but something goes horribly wrong and she is on the road again. Angie reflects, “You start to care, then people begin to have expectations, and in the end there is disappointment all round. Better to have avoided it in the first place”.
Seventy year-old Ella has just buried her husband and is living with her eldest son Anthony, her two grandchildren and her daughter-in-law Kirsten who seems to go on regular rampages. Ella’s three children had decided what was in her best interests and sold the family home, but the proposed granny flat was not going to be ready for months and she needed to get away.
Zach receives an alert that an elderly woman is missing from her Adelaide home and might be headed his way after an argument with her son and daughter-in-law. Evidently she has a friend who lives in the area, and there are questions as to her state of mind.
At least Ella’s son cared enough to report her missing. An elderly man who had been living rough in the area had been found dead, but nobody has reported him missing. And Angie hasn’t been able to contact her mother who was last seen in Perth and might not want to be found.
This powerful story is about making unlikely connections, about trust and loyalty and finding the strength to stand up for yourself. It’s about how easy it is to become vulnerable when not having the security of a place to call home, and about how community and chosen family can provide much needed support.
Lezly Herbert
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