We’re late and stoned, and I decide we should go into the hall holding hands. I’m pretending to be the cool one when Vonny’s thinking nothing of it and I’m scared shitless. Sure enough, the group of boarders in the foyer make comments and laugh, and several people stare as we make our way to the dance floor, but after that, nothing much happens. Homophobia is a little tired here tonight. I’m half relieved and half disappointed because, with Vonny holding my hand, I wouldn’t have cared about any abuse, and I’ve been longing to not care.
The dance is dire, anyhow. Two couples are groping on the seats near the stage, a DJ is playing ancient rock, and no-one is dancing but us. We do our best to Ballroom Blitz it, then I suggest we break into the kitchen and get some alcohol. Everyone knows Sister Mary Margaret is a lush. There’ll definitely be wine there, maybe vodka.
‘Is she the ancient one?’ Vonny asks.
‘Last one standing.’
‘Mum finished off form five here. Sister Mary Margaret was her private teacher, and the school nurse.’ Vonny is totally up for stealing from this particular nun.
I lead her from the seventies hall extension, to the older part of the enormous rambling gothic bluestone building which, as far as I know, is home to one drunk nun. 83
We’re in the central hall, which has a big, square staircase in the middle. Everything’s made of wood and smells of sorrow and there are two ghosts staring at me. ‘Holy shit.’
‘They’re just pictures on the wall,’ Vonny assures me. ‘Mary and Ned, see?’
She’s pointing the torch on her phone at Mary, who is scary, and then at the masked robber, who’s not. ‘Phew, thanks,’ I say.
There must be ten rooms on the first floor and I hope the nun’s asleep in one of them.
A door slams, upstairs. I hold back a scream but Vonny doesn’t manage. We sprint together, past the living room, down a dark, tiled corridor, and into the kitchen, hiding under the table as footsteps approach.
The top half of the door is glass and is darkening with a shadow that’s turning into something – a face, Sister Mary Margaret’s, scraggly grey-white round the edges, withered and hateful. I’d have preferred to see the teeth of an actual dinosaur. Vonny and I scramble backwards as quietly as we can, opening a door and locking ourselves in behind it.
The nun’s come in to the kitchen. I hear her switch on the light, checking the back door, walking from one end of the kitchen to the other. At last, the door shuts.
Vonny turns the light on and we realise we’re in the old sick room. There’s a hospital bed in the middle, which Vonny lies on. She closes her eyes.
There’s a window between the rooms, with metal Venetian blinds covering them. I walk through the door to the adjoining room and I’m surprised to see there’s a desk on the other side. There is also a really comfy chair; tweed, orange, goes up and down, swivels. Behind the desk is a metal cabinet. In front of the desk are the blinds. I separate two of 84the blinds and peek into the other half of the room. ‘I can see you!’ I say to Vonny, who may have fallen asleep on the sick-bay bed.
We agree it’s a good idea to down the rest of the cask of Rosé in the old nun’s fridge, and to have a squiz in the cabinet behind the desk.
It’s mostly home to bills and other boring stuff, but one file has clippings in it about how the parish was cleaning up its act after the ‘scandal’ in the eighties. Father Frank, barely in his thirties at the time, was staying on to resurrect the parish, according to the Ash Mountain Free Press. He gave good apology, young Father Frank. He used good words, like sorry.
‘He hasn’t got any better-looking,’ I say. When not in ludicrous robes, he wears the right jeans and the right T-shirt but in the wrong way to the power of ten. He must iron for hours. His hair’s like a wig; maybe it is. Worst of all, he’s a lip-kisser. There are a lot of lip-kissers among the oldies in these parts – for example, Mrs O’Leary and Aunty Cathy and Uncle Dan. It’s downright dirty in my opinion, especially for a fifty-year-old priest. No-one kisses on the lips in the inner city unless it’s sexual, especially not priests, although I never knew one in the city.
‘My gramps adores Father Frank,’ says Vonny.
She’s found something underneath the cabinet and is making a racket trying to move the whole entire thing. She’s managed to slide the cabinet away from the wall. Underneath is a large hatch with a lock, which she’s picking at with a hair clip. She’s too sexy doing this, I’m thinking, then she ruins everything with:
‘I reckon your dad fancies my mum.’
‘I know,’ I say, even though it’s totally the other way 85around. Every woman in town fancies my dad, and every single one of them, especially Vonny’s mum, can fuck right off.
She’s unlocked the hatch and it’s now opening, slowly. It might not be creaking, but I feel it’s creaking. It’s certainly the type of slow-opening secret hatch you would expect to creak. Whatever, a creak manifests and is gone when Vonny finds a light switch.
A staircase, which we head down, of course, chemically confused idiots that we are. It leads to a stone wine cellar, which is lined floor to ceiling with thick wooden shelves. I take a selfie, my first of the night, and I am hoping I will get a chance to take some more. We look amazing together. On the shelves behind us are some small boxes of different shapes and sizes, each covered in cuttings from magazines and posters – there’s a floral one, a Barbie one, The First Eleven and The Ashes, Thomas the Tank Engine, Essendon Football Team, David Essex, Kate Bush and The Proclaimers, Cars, Dora the Explorer.
I look in the Dora one, which has ELLIE 5, written on top, but it’s empty bar a piece of paper with IOU written on it.
Vonny reaches for the hatbox covered in pictures of Kate Bush and The Proclaimers. ‘Thought so,’ she says, looking on the lid.
FRANCESCA 15 – is written in black capitals.