Edwina and Rowena's mother-daughter relationship

Edwina and Rowena's mother-daughter relationship is shaped by a devastating reversal: after Charlie’s death, Edwina treats her surviving child as responsible for her brother’s loss, then gradually understands that this blame has prolonged the grief and estrangement. Rowena continues to leave a path back to her, and Edwina’s decision to prepare for Australia makes possible a reunion that neither can simply undo the past to achieve.

Family Bonds and the Loss of Charlie

Edwina’s closeness to Rowena is most clearly exposed through what follows Charlie’s death. Edwina had hoped that Rowena might save her vulnerable twin in Thailand. When Charlie died, however, Edwina could not accept that the fatal decision was his: he put the needle into his own arm, and no one else did. In retrospect, she recognizes that she had deprived herself of a daughter rather than face that fact. Her hope that Rowena could save him had become a measure of the responsibility she laid on her; his death turned that expectation into blame.

The accusation was specific and cruel. Edwina said Rowena should have known how vulnerable her brother was and that he would not have died if she had stayed with him. She went further, saying she might as well have killed him herself. What Edwina later calls her own insane behavior was not a single outburst but a lasting punishment: she ignored Rowena’s letters and refused even to speak to her. The mother who had lost one child in grief shut out the one who remained.

Estrangement and the Persistence of Contact

The estrangement endured beyond the immediate crisis. Rowena was absent from Dickie’s funeral, and Lucas initially found the absence surprising but did not feel troubled by it: he believed the only person the two had in common was dead. Rowena later explained that her partner was being treated for breast cancer, and that she had chosen not to leave her. She said she would have attended if she could. Her explanation does not erase the distance between mother and daughter, but it shows that the absence had a circumstance beyond indifference.

After the attacks, Rowena found Lucas’s email address and sent him a long, kind message. She apologized for missing the funeral, acknowledged that she and Edwina were still estranged, and expressed hope that they might be reunited one day. She also wrote that she had no other blood relatives and that life was too short not to say she was sorry. Her message reaches Edwina indirectly, through Lucas, but keeps the possibility of a direct return alive. Reconciliation is not presented as something already accomplished: Rowena names the estrangement plainly even as she refuses to treat it as final.

Blame, Responsibility, and Recognition

The later meeting between Edwina and Lucas brings the family’s habit of assigning blame into view. As Lucas appears angry, Edwina challenges him to say that everything was her fault. He does not want to blame anyone; he identifies the cycle that has held them for too long: blame, revenge, and then guilt. His admission that he arranged the theft of Edwina’s jewellery box because he was in trouble at school, owed money, and handed over the keys to the house reveals a separate injury within the family. Edwina is left trembling and in tears. This encounter is not itself a reconciliation between Edwina and Rowena, but it gives form to the pattern Edwina must confront if she is to stop making loss the basis for accusation.

In reflecting on Charlie, Edwina finally applies that recognition to her daughter. She accepts that Charlie’s death was his decision, rather than Rowena’s failure to prevent it, and sees that her refusal to accept this distinction cost her their relationship. The change does not mean that grief or regret disappears, nor does it give Edwina grounds to demand forgiveness. She understands that Rowena has no reason to forgive her. Her acknowledgment matters precisely because it does not make reconciliation automatic: responsibility comes before any assurance that the estrangement can be repaired.

The Invitation to Return

Rowena’s latest letter gives the possibility of reunion a concrete destination. She writes that she lives near St Kilda beach, invites Edwina to paint, and says they will light the barbecue. She also tells her that she wears Edwina’s charm bracelet every day. These details make the invitation more than a general hope: Rowena imagines an ordinary shared life, with painting and a meal, while the bracelet shows that a piece of her mother remains part of her daily life despite the years of silence.

Edwina has already bought the tickets and checks them each night alongside her passport. She plans to take the photograph, the children’s teeth, the rings, and the small matchbox of hair. The objects belong to her memories of the family, but their place on the travel checklist also connects the past she carries with the future she is preparing to enter. She will take the battered jewellery box too, now holding the recovered keepsakes Lucas admits he arranged to have stolen. Edwina’s journey does not settle what Rowena will feel when they meet; it marks Edwina’s willingness to answer the invitation and face the relationship she had helped break.