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found it, but the key to wind it was still in the back socket. She wound the clock and smiled. It worked.
    Convinced that the Council people had discarded the clock because it was too old-fashioned for the new modern office building, Angel Day now had to choose what she could discard from her potato sack. Decisions, decisions, she mumbled to herself, sorting tins and bottles to make room for the big shiny clock. Then, recovering from the excitement of finding something so valuable at the rubbish tip, she realised the danger it would bring. She peered outside her shelter, scanning around to see who else might be walking about. She asked herself, what if she encountered the Council men who drove the rubbish truck? They would accuse her of stealing the clock and drive straight up to Constable Truthful’s office to report her. She considered the likely consequences of sitting around like a stuffed mullet at the police station.
    A vision of the Magistrate’s face found its way into her little oleander nook. Come back at night he warned. Come back at night and get it. She looked around, considering where to hide the clock, knowing the wild pigs owned the dump at night. She thought of asking Norm to bring her back when he went hunting for the pigs, but she did not feel comfortable with the idea of walking around in the bush with him during the night. Half of the contents had been emptied from the bag for the clock. To leave without it was a betrayal of the future she was already imagining in which the Phantom children would be going to school on time. No one in the Phantom family would be guessing the time anymore from where the sun sat in the sky. In the new sweet life, the Phantom family would be marching off to bed at the correct time, just like the school thought was really desirable, then they would march off to school on time to do their school work.
    With the clock in the bag, she was preparing to leave her little world of white paper and decaying foliage, when something else caught her eye. First of all she saw the base of the statue with a handwritten date – 1947. It had to be broken she thought, as she pushed the rubbish away, but found it was not even cracked, as she inspected a statue of the Virgin Mary. The statue looked old and the paint was chipped in places. Angel thought Norm might have some spare paint she could use to repaint the statue, particularly where the lines of gold and silver had disappeared on the cloak. The Virgin Mary was dressed in a white-painted gown and blue cloak. Her right hand was raised, offering a permanent blessing, while her left hand held gold-coloured rosary beads. Angel Day was breathless. ‘This is mine,’ she whispered, disbelieving the luck of her ordinary morning.
    ‘This is mine,’ she repeated her claim loudly to the assembled seagulls waiting around the oleanders. She knew she could not leave this behind either, otherwise someone else would get it, and now she had to carry the statue home, for she knew that with the Virgin Mary in pride of place, nobody would be able to interfere with the power of the blessings it would bestow on her home. ‘Luck was going to change for sure, from this moment onwards,’ she told the seagulls, because she, Mrs Angel Day, now owned the luck of the white people.
    Not only would her family be able to tell the time, and be able to tell other poor outsider people like themselves what the time was, but they would also be prosperous. They would become like the white people who prayed and said they were of the Christian faith. This was the difference between the poor old Pricklebush people and Uptown. This was how white people had become rich by saving up enough money, so they could look down on others, by keeping statues of their holy ones in their homes. Their spiritual ancestors would perform miracles if they saw how hard some people were praying all the time, and for this kind of devotion, reward them with money. Blessed with the prophecy of