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The old woman across the road never receives visitors anymore. Her once beautiful manor now stands as a sacrifice to the elements: unkempt, unloved and haunted. I know this because 34 years ago, when I was but a kid, I used to sit beneath our huge mango tree to watch the sophisticated "beautiful set," arrive for the exclusive parties where laughter, color and dancing were mandatory. Nowadays I occasionally glimpse the sacrificial ghosted guests of old float up the stairs and hear their faded merriment as though carried on a frosty breeze of gloom.

Never, did the once socially gay Miss Fatimar leave her jail now. On the frequent occasion of my bored voyeurisms across to her wasted, yet still magnificent Old Queenslander, I would daily measure the movement of her slightly gradient altered timber louvers or the gap in her heavily brocaded, aged, maroon curtains. I knew she was in there because Meals on Wheels also did a daily delivery. The driver would battle through the wild, once perfectly tended, Bougainvillea hedge and strategically place the delectable offering on the top stair. I never once caught the old woman come out to collect it though. Surely, if she had died, Meals on Wheels would have known because her gourmet meal of yesterday would have greeted them like the sacrificial corpse Miss Fatimar had become.

I was determined to see her: the not forgotten princess of my long summer childhood. What had happened to her? Why had the magnificent timber mansion closed its sweeping wide verandahs, bay windows and stained glass paneling around her? What went down in 1971, my 10th year, the year that all little girls long to see a real princess.

She was beautiful. She protected her body from the sun by wearing long flowing white caftans and wide brimmed floppy hats of vibrant colors stolen from the hues of tropical floral blooms. Her hair was long and shiny smooth, jet black, and she looked a picture of vogue as she drove in her red car with the large silver decoration on the front bonnet.

My parents knew her. Our houses were the only ones at the end of a long country track. Both original homesteads from founding sugar cane farms, the cane were tended by workers who never gossiped between the two families. Gossiping was unacceptable and would not be tolerated. My father worked away from the farm, while my mother, and Princess Fatimar too I suppose, attended to business not interesting to a 10 year-old girl. Although they were friendly neighbors, my parents were never

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