When I heard Anita Lane had died aged 61 in April 2021, a memory flashed up: I’m sitting beside her at the foot of a bed in the mid-1980s, and she turns to me to say how much my hair has grown.
I don’t recall why we were sitting on that bed in a darkened bedroom of the unpretentious Paddington flat in Sydney she shared with her boyfriend, Andrew. I don’t know why I remember this moment, out of so many insignificant moments evaporated by time and lost in the wash of youthful substance use. But it vibrates with aching, incomprehensible poignancy. Perhaps, I sense a glimmer of the fleeting subconsciousness connecting us in our vulnerability.
