Etiquette for a Dinner Party by Sue Orr Page A

usually do and no one can deny this. But the main reason I didn't listen was because of the girl. I tried not to stare but somehow I kept looking back at her, like you do when there's a beast being killed on the farm.
    Finally, it was her turn. Mr Frank put his pen down and sat back in his teacher's chair. His hands were clasped together and were resting on the edge of his desk. I wondered if he'd seen the earrings.
    'My name is Gabrielle Baxter,' she said. Her voice was soft and buttery, not much more than a whisper. I leaned forward, watching her lips, listening.
    Gabrielle Baxter Gabrielle Baxter Gabrielle Baxter. I said it inside my head, then I whispered it, to see how it sounded. Gabrielle Baxter. Mixed up with the sound of the wind and the rain outside, it had a delicious flavour.
    'We are on the Mitchell farm. We came from Taranaki.'
    I just knew it, that she'd come from somewhere amazing. Taranaki has a mountain — I'd seen it on the calendar in the hall. September. The mountain is a proper shaped one, an upside down ice-cream cone, not like the ones near Taupo. It has snow on it. Paeroa has no mountains, no hills even, just a stupid bottle. I could picture Gabrielle Baxter on a farm on the mountain, like Heidi. Heidi with earrings.
    'My Dad's name is Ian. Mum's name is Bridie. She's sick. She'll probably die in July.'
    She had finished her talk. She looked at Mr Frank, who seemed a bit shocked. His mouth was open and he was blinking slowly. He shut his mouth and opened it again. Then she looked at us kids on the mat. I looked across at Julie Bray and Erin Donovan, who was my best friend. There was a lot of looking going on generally. I could see Julie and Erin were both thinking about Gabrielle Baxter in the same way as me. They were staring at her earrings and her Levis. When I turned back to Gabrielle Baxter, I smiled at her. I shoved Brian Macey with my elbow and wriggled away from him. I never took my eyes off Gabrielle Baxter. I patted the little space on the mat between Brian and me. She looked at me for a bit longer, then made her way through all the legs and bodies and slippers that had come off people's feet, and sat down next to me. .

    Eventually, I did get a grip. I stopped the whole silly fossicking in the handbag business, zipped it up, and started the walk back to the car.
    There was a little ritual I'd fallen into, on these visits back home. I parked down the other end of town, by the Lemon and Paeroa bottle. I waited in the car until all the tourists had had a laugh and taken their photos. Then I went over and checked my name was still on it.
    We did it on our last day of primary school. All the others had been proud and brave, slashing their names deep into the brown paint halfway up the bottle for the world to see. Not me. Mine was at the very bottom, where the bottle met the base; small and neat, almost like a proper engraving.
    Sam Walker Dec 1974.
    Erin and Julie and the others said I was scared of getting into trouble, but that wasn't it. Part of me wanted to scratch hard and bold into the centre of the bottle too. But another part had had enough of Paeroa. I told them that my name would be there forever; that theirs would only last until the next time the bottle was painted.
    For twenty years, I was right. Then, some time after the millennium celebrations, the powers-that-be decided the bottle needed moving back further off the road. It got spruced up with a new paint job, a cheesy lemon-shaped rubbish bin, and a lemon mosaic showing you the best spot to take your photos.
    My name was gone for good, but I still parked down by the bottle. I liked wandering up one side of the main street, looking at the old shops, then back down the other.
    So there I was, making my way back to the car, when I saw John Beveridge in the Nissan showroom. John was my boyfriend in Form Two, though he never knew it. Don't ask me why, I went in.
    He strutted over, straightening his tie, and started his pitch.
    'She's