Jenny Green s mother died when Jenny was nine year s old. After her death I found it difficult to understand that there was no Mummy. I tried to memorise every story she had told me and keep safe every treasure she had left behind. The things I have now, fifty years on I can itemize in a few lines: an address book, a boomerang, a diamond ring, a gold watch (no longer working), a red crepe wedding dress. It is much more difficult to imagine my mother, to actually remember her face. In 2006, a parcel arrived from her cousin Susan. It was an album. Jenny stuffed it into Pandora s Box It s a name I give for the trunk where I keep my family stuff, hidden but not thrown away. What she finds later that year in Pandora s Box, is an album of letters from her mother written in 1937-39. These and letters of her father s she already had send Jenny on a journey of discovery. She follows Trudie Landsborough and Jack Green imagining their separate lives based on their letters back to their families. They had embarked with a group of teachers in December 1937 on the SS Oronsay as part of the League of Commonwealth Exchange Teachers to Australia and New Zealand. Jenny and her partner, Lawrence, both teachers themselves, now in retirement, pick up Trudie s and Jack s trail in what is now Sri Lanka.

By Jenny Green

Novel, Published by Twelve Acre Publishing