Joe startled awake. He felt Lil roll away from him and climb from the bed. He checked the clock. It was just after three. He waited for the familiar scuff of Lil’s slippers, then frowned when he heard the clump of her gumboots instead.
Odd. He watched her move towards the bedroom door. He hoped she wasn’t having one of her turns.
‘All right, old girl?’
‘Fine, Joe. Go back to sleep.’
He settled back, but his eyes stayed wide. He often woke in the early hours, trapped in the grey purgatory between midnight and dawn. These wee hours were long, and yet the days – the bright beautiful days he spent with Lil on the verandah, enjoying lunch or a cup of tea, perhaps a slice of her fruitcake, watching the clouds move across the sky, or enjoying the shimmer of sunlight in the trees – those days were alarmingly short. Lovely days, whipping by too quickly. And then the gloomy predawn again, dragging, dragging, as though nothing else existed and never would exist again.
He was restless, and his bones ached. His body felt heavy. Like knives were poking around inside his chest, making his eyes water. Since Lil disappeared into the reserve the other night, a shadow had claimed him. The angina was bad. He found himself using the spray more frequently than usual. Worse though, were his fears for Lil: if something happened to him, how would she cope alone?
A soft bang came from the other end of the house, and he flinched. Was that the back door?
‘Go to sleep, you old fool. She’ll be back in a tick.’
His nerves had never been good after the war. Loud noises bothered him. Chaos tormented him. He craved order and quietness. Not just craved it, relied upon it to keep him sane. The others had felt the same, his surviving mates. Needing order and harmony. Over the years they’d gone, dying one by one. He was the last, now. The keeper of the flame. The only one who remembered.
Without warning, his bladder began to ache. Wonderful. Now he’d have to piss, too.
Sitting up, he swung his feet over the side of the bed and into his slippers. He was heading to the door when the crunch of footsteps outside drew him to the window. Was that someone in the yard? It was just the barest shadow; was it even real? Figments came and went sometimes. The ghosts of his friends, the mates he’d lost in the war. They drifted in occasionally to say g’day, but he never minded. He had learned in the trenches that the membrane separating life and death was thinner than most people realised. Thinner, and far more fragile.
He bent closer to the windowpane, focusing on the shadow.
That was no figment. That was Lil. What was she doing out there in the dark?
• • •
Lil walked through the garden, the parcel clutched to her chest. She had wrapped the diary – and its restored page – inside an old cotton tote, and bound it with string. She carried it against her as she trod over the uneven ground. She had kept it long enough. Guarded it all these long years, a lifetime, really. Kept its secrets hidden from the world, from the people she loved. From Joe. But now the time had come to let it go.
When the house disappeared behind her, she switched on the torch and made her way along the wallaby track. Ten minutes later she reached a tall tree with a thick white trunk and branches that clawed the night sky. She used the gardening trowel she’d brought from the house, to scrape a hole between the gnarled roots and kept scraping until the hole was almost two feet deep. Then she reached for the parcel.
Her knees throbbed. Her back started twinging. Poor excuses, but she stopped and settled onto her bottom, sitting on the dirt, trying to catch her breath. Letting go had never been her strong point. Especially when it came to Frankie. She examined the string-tied parcel. Maybe she could read it one more time. Not the whole diary, but a page. Or two.
Just to say goodbye.
Since it was my birthday, Ennis took me for a walk in the garden. He showed me the caravan his grandfather had built, and the fruit trees his grandmother had planted around it, and then he took me to see the big iron birdcage. It was full of rust and some ivy had started encroaching the bars, and when I asked about the birds that had once lived inside it – the green and yellow finches and the family of blue wrens – he said they’d all flown away before the war.
Still, it was heavenly to be outdoors.
I breathed deeply, relishing every second. The air glowed yellow from the late winter sun, and the smell of the garden filled my head, making me giddy.
Ennis held my hand the whole time, saying it was romantic. But his fingers grew damp and his firm grip gave him away. He seemed on edge, as though fearing I might dart off into the trees and disappear.
Of course, I wouldn’t. Even if I did manage to outrun him, where would I go? Beyond the garden, the bush stretched for miles in all directions. Getting lost out there would be worse than being trapped in our box of a room.
That was a depressing thought, so I turned my mind to something lovely. To the sunlight on my face, the fresh rush of the air. To the rough warmth of Ennis’s fingers around mine, and the way our shoulders bumped from time to time as we walked.
‘I’ve been thinking,’ Ennis said.
‘Oh?’
I glanced at him. I’d been right about Lilly’s nightmares. She had obsessed over that newspaper cutting, despite only having glimpsed it once. She often woke in the night saying Jean Lee was standing over us, or hanging from the window bars, or waiting in the still silence of the shadows like a ghoul. I tried to tell her Jean Lee was just a poor woman whose life went horribly wrong and that she should feel pity for her, not fear, but some days I’d catch Lilly in the bright room, crouching in front of the Warmray with the door open, peering in, her head tilted as though listening. As though the voice of Jean Lee was drifting from the ashes, recounting the grim tale of her death.
‘It’s time for us to leave here,’ Ennis said.
‘What?’
‘One day, we’ll be a proper family. Do all the things that regular people do.’
My pulse began to race and my fingers grew even damper than his. ‘What do you mean?’
He gestured around the garden. ‘We’ll leave all this behind us, Frankie. Start over. Find a little cottage by the sea. We’ll have milking goats and chickens for eggs, and a garden brimming not just with vegies but with sunflowers and roses. Think of it, love. The three of us living together on the outskirts of some pretty town. What a fine life we’d have.’
I stumbled along beside him, my ears ringing. A warning buzzed in the back of my head, like a fly trapped in a jar. Reminding me how Ennis’s stories and promises had led me astray before, had lured me and Lilly away from Stanley Street that March morning three and a half years ago.
But Ennis spoke so earnestly. His face bright with pleasure, his eyes aglow. Soon, I found myself under his spell once more, eager to daydream with him. To let his wild cheerfulness sweep me away. Because what if it was true? What if we could be a family and live a normal life somewhere out there?
In the garden with the sun shining and new leaf buds poking from bare branches, I could actually see our little beachside cottage. And the longing for a new life, the life he described, grew in my chest, a hungry vine that coiled around me and took root in my soul.
‘What would we do for money?’
‘I’ve always dreamed of being a carpenter.’ Ennis squeezed my hand. ‘I could get a proper job. Buy you and Lilly pretty new dresses. Lilly could go to school, take singing lessons. She’s got a real talent, hasn’t she? And you could do whatever you fancied.’ He furrowed his brow. ‘You’d like that, wouldn’t you?’
I squeezed his fingers. ‘You know I would, Ennis.’
‘You’re fifteen now, Frankie. Next year you’ll be old enough to get married.’
A hot blush crept up my neck. ‘I’m old enough now.’
Ennis stopped walking and turned to look at me.
‘We don’t want to rush things, love. There’s so much to plan. I’d have to sell Ravensong, so we’d have money to buy our cottage and live on. We’re a way from town; it might take a while to find a buyer. There’s repairs, a tidy-up in the yard—’ He gazed about, his eyes shining as if he couldn’t wait to get started. Then he looked back at me. ‘But in the meantime, there’s something you need to do.’
I stared up at him. The sun had pinked his cheeks, and his hair was raked about, catching the light like tufts of black fire.
‘What’s that?’
He grimaced. ‘It’s your sister.’
I let go of his hand and stepped back, wary. Ennis tensed. He didn’t follow me, but he swayed forward as though unwilling to allow too much space between us. I tugged at my sleeves, trying in vain to cover my wrist bones. All my clothes were getting small and my body was in a hurry to outgrow them. I wasn’t quite as tall as Lilly, despite her being younger, but I felt as awkward as a newborn colt.
‘What about her?’
Ennis took my hand again, played with my fingers, fascinated by my fingernails.
‘I’m worried she’ll ruin it for us, Frankie. You know what she’s like. She doesn’t understand things the way you do. Would you talk to her? Tell her what we’re planning, see if you can bring her round?’
Friday, 2nd November 1951
She’s such a stubborn mule. For three months I’ve been trying to win her over. But whenever I start on about the cottage and the sunflowers, even the singing lessons, she slaps her hands over her ears like the child she is and refuses to listen.
‘You idiot, Frankie. There’ll never be a cottage by the sea. Ennis is a criminal, have you forgotten that? He dragged us away from home and has kept us against our will for nearly four years. Do you really think all that’s going to change?’
‘He loves us, Lilly.’
‘If you believe that, you’re stupider than I thought.’
That night after dinner, Lilly sulked off to bed with her dolls. Despite it being nearly summer, the night got cold so Ennis lit the Warmray and we sat before it on a blanket, sipping hot cocoa and, later, a glass of sherry each. Ennis grew ruddy-faced from the wine and set off once more on his ramble about our future life – how we’d be a stone’s throw from the ocean and enjoy picnic lunches on the beach whenever we pleased. But while he spoke, Lilly’s words rang in my mind.
Ennis is a criminal, have you forgotten?
In the three months since our talk in the garden on my birthday, his dreams had become my own. They made me itchy with excitement, and there were days when I thought of nothing else. The cottage with its tidy garden, the goats and chickens and sunflowers. The long lazy days on the beach.
Yet there was also a part of me that ached to see our mum again. Sloshed and foolish as she sometimes was, she was still our mum. And I wanted to see our old red brick house on Stanley Street with its creaky roof and windows that stuck when it rained. I longed to see our favourite teacher, Mr Burg, and our school friends, if only just to reassure them we were alive and well.
Ennis must have noticed my faraway look, because he nudged me with his shoulder and caught my eye. ‘Do you love me, Frankie?’
I looked at him. Perhaps it was the sweet wine, or the icy chill against my back while my face burned with heat, or maybe just the smoke stinging my eyes, but I couldn’t breathe. I felt as if invisible hands were locked about my throat, cutting off my air. When I finally managed to force out the words, they were barely a squeak.
‘Of course I do, Ennis.’
He watched me in the firelight. Flames danced in his eyes and I fell into a dreamy trance, unable to tear away my gaze. I examined his dusky eyelashes, the fierce wings of his brows, the bony jutting of his cheeks and nose and chin. The faint freckles and whiskers and little scar nicks that I had memorised.
‘Then promise you’ll stay with me,’ he murmured. ‘Whatever happens?’
My thoughts of the past began to melt away as the fire crackled and the air grew hot around us. The rawness in Ennis’s face entranced me. The fearful adoration in his eyes, the trembling mouth, the burning flush in his cheeks. Before I knew it, my head was nodding, my lips moving, my fingers curling with equal intensity around his. And the words were leaping off my tongue in a whisper that left me breathless.
‘I promise, of course I do, Ennis. Whatever happens, I’ll stay by your side. Always.’
• • •
Lil flipped through the pages, saying goodbye. Savouring the faint smell of the ink and the paper that had, over the years, grown as soft as rags under her touch. She told herself she was doing the right thing. By removing this thorn from her life, she would stand taller, be able to face her remaining years with a light heart.
But her fingers lingered, and when she reached the end of the diary, they began to fiddle with those pages, the ones that held Frankie’s final entries. And then somehow, before she knew it, she had torn them out and stuffed them into her dressing gown pocket.
‘Just once more,’ she promised herself. ‘And then I’ll burn them.’
She wrapped the diary up again and placed the parcel in the hole. Collecting her trowel, she backfilled the cavity with dirt and then dragged a rock over it. After stomping the edges with her gumboots, she collected handfuls of leaf litter and twigs, and scattered them to conceal the disturbed soil.
She ran her torch beam over the ground. Not perfect. But it would do for now.
Soon the wind and rain would cover her footsteps, erode all evidence that she’d been here. That anything was buried beneath those gnarly tree roots. And when she was gone, time would eat away any trace of the book. She imagined the tree sending its tiny feeders through the pages, drinking up Frankie’s writing. Devouring the paper, digesting her story into nothingness. Letting Lil’s spirit find the peace it had always craved.