IF Gabrielle would just stop buzzing around the house then her mother could hold her in her arms forever and every muscle in her body could relax and the universe could pause for eternity because it knows Louise Upton's love for her daughter is a force far greater than something as intangible and uncertain as a child's destiny.
Dear God, do something. Freeze it all right here, with 12-year-old Gabrielle resting on the beanbag next to her brothers' Lego table, home where she belongs, in a red-dirt outback house in Charleville, 680km west of Brisbane. But the girl won't stay still. Louise wants to touch her, hold her, but all she gets is fleeting brushes of arms, brief and tender squeezes of hands, a reassuring rub of her knee, before Gabrielle is off again, packing clothes, wrapping pictures, texting friends. It's only Louise who pauses, frozen in her daughter's bedroom doorway next to a big, colourful hanging "G". G for going. G for goodbye. G for gone.
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