“On a nippy overcast day, Helen Hughes is sitting in a corner of Monash University’s Caulfield campus. It’s the winter break and besides a construction team welding the frame of a new library, and a few despondent-looking security guards, there is almost nobody around. Across an aluminium table and its constellation of apple stickers, Helen sits upright in a khaki jacket; beneath its torn tartan lining, a pressed white collar and dark blue jumper, long brown skirt, black stockings, polished shoes. Sitting at a slight angle to me, looking very slightly, thoughtfully upwards, she reminds me of a Leonardo da Vinci portrait –Lady with an Ermine (1489-90), perhaps.”
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