Nearly slipping on the alarming amount of hail that was building up on the footpath, I made it into the hostel, the picture of my daughter at the ready. But before I could make it to the front of the queue to push smelly Germans and Poms out of the way and scream “Where’s Priscilla? Where is she?” as I had done so many times before, I saw her. Not Priscilla, but Her. If I didn’t know better from seeing teenage love from the outside, I would use words like goddess and perfection in her description. If I wasn’t 47 years old with a missing daughter who was probably older than this girl, this daughter of divinity, I would feel butterflies in my stomach. If I had known then what she was to become, I would have continued on my charge to find my daughter. I would have ignored this creature curled up on a pappasan chair, reading Joyce, all wild wet hair and busy clothes. But I didn’t. I fucked up.