Sixteen-year-old Katianna found out last weekend.  

We other girls had headed out to the shops and daddy was working on a noisy motorbike in the back shed – so her cries for help were unheard.

Katianna had decided that a light shower of rain combined with her determination, had created the perfect opportunity to clean the chrome and glass of her vine framed bedroom balcony.

The click of the sliding glass door as she closed it behind her and stepped out onto the narrow timber platform signaled the start of a 90-minute ordeal of being cold and alone with no escape route.  

As the minutes ticked by, she examined all forms of departure and rued the day I had trimmed the vines.  

She stretched out her arm so sunlight could reach her skin and cowered from sleet and hail – twice.  

She began to worry about hyperthermia as her zero body fat under thin layers of damp clothing were failing to warm her.  

Able to eat the piles of hail, she was not afraid of dehydration but did try to nibble some of the green leaves from her pot plants just in case she had to survive a long period without food.  

When we got home Yasinta ran upstairs to respond to the noise of her trapped big sister and freed her to the warmth of indoors.  

She was surprisingly upbeat about all the thoughts of starvation and paths for salvation she had considered during her long entrapment.  

Needing to study for her first ever year 12 VCE Psychology exam, practice her Grade six piano pieces and learn lines for the latest production she is involved in, Katianna bemoaned all that wasted time during which she had been unable to make progress on any of these.  

Most tantalising had been the script, laying on her desktop only a meter away in her snug bedroom.  

She regretted every wasted minute when she might have studied her lines from that little booklet titled ‘Much Ado About Nothing’.

From where she was, there wasn’t much she could do; about nothing. 

YOLANDE GROSSER