When Annie wakes up, she thinks of Alex. And then she quickly goes outside, distracting herself with the chickens and guineafowl and the dogs who sleep outside. She can hear Susan and Pip, Pip’s laughter. Giddy follows her around, watching sadly when she doesn’t let him jump into the car with her.
She drives to Len’s practice, going the long way past Jenny’s house on the other side of town. She slows as she drives past. She sees Alex and Jenny in the doorway, him tugging a garbage bag from her hands, her not letting go. He manages to get it off her and she slams the door in his face. He stands still for a moment. Annie can see his shoulders heaving. Then he turns and puts the bag in the bin and Jenny cracks the door back open. Annie sees someone walking past yell something at the two of them. She sees Jenny’s raised middle finger and her completely unruffled expression.
Alex is so recogniseable. His dark skin and brown eyes. The loping way he moves. He’s broader than she remembers. He looks up at the car warily and Annie keeps driving. She texts Tom quickly as she pulls up next to Len’s car, then stuffs her phone into her back pocket. Len is slumped at reception, staring down at his appointments book.
‘Morning, sunshine,’ Annie says.
He smiles at her. ‘Good morning. What can I do you for?’
‘A big favour.’
‘Oh?’
‘Can I help out here?’ Annie sits down on one of the hard plastic seats. ‘Mum and Pip are driving me up the wall.’
‘That would be great!’ Len says. He looks exhausted. Annie wonders how he’s managed being on his own since the fires. She suspects the condition of the animals up here has plummeted. Injuries from the fires, distracted owners forgetting to vaccinate, to get nails trimmed, to lock gates to keep animals in. Owners not noticing a limp until the animal can’t bear any weight. Owners not noticing a small scratch until it starts to ooze pus. Len mentioned a few months ago how much tetanus he’d been seeing and it made Annie feel blanched with sadness.
‘Might go out onto the tracks if you’re here,’ he said. ‘Just for an hour or two. I swear I heard something the other day. Like a …’ He makes a strange, guttural noise. ‘Like that.’
Annie winces. ‘Wow.’
Len shakes his head. ‘It was something. Some sort of bird call, but it was like a bird trying to be something else, you know?’
‘Yeah. Well, off you go. I’ve got this. Just keep your pager on you.’
Len grins. ‘Then I think I’ll drop in and help Alex and Jenny out for a bit. Well, I’ll try. Jenny’s not very happy about people being near her stuff, from what I gathered last night. I guess it’s normal. I think because their place is right down on the edge of the fire zone, it got cleaned out pretty good by thieves.’
Annie grimaces.
‘I think she’ll only let me come over if I don’t go in the house.’
‘This year’s hit her pretty hard.’
‘It has.’
‘Can you imagine her moving off the mountain? I can’t picture her living in the suburbs.’
‘Me neither.’
‘She’ll be closer to him, anyway.’ Annie picks at the reception desk. ‘If she moves.’
‘Yeah.’ Len scratches his chin. ‘Don’t know whether she’s very taken with him at the moment. Seems to blow hot and cold.’
‘What else is new?’
Len waves at her and goes upstairs, whistling loudly.
Annie looks at the book. A lame horse. Vaccinating a goat. A cow with a cut on its rump. Annie thinks they must be townies, moved up here for a tree change. Most people on the mountain vaccinate their own goats.
Annie grabs her handbag, her pager, makes sure the boot of the practice car is full of the right supplies. Then she drives off, feeling strangely calm. Joyful, even. She turns the radio on.
It’s too easy to forget how good it feels to have purpose.
* * *
Tracing the rainforest tracks. Like blood along a vein, pulsing after the lyrebirds. The scratch of Len’s pen on his notepad, the quiet of his breath, held as he listened. Holding up a finger so that Annie listened too.
She wanted to be a vet. She’d wanted to be a vet since she was very young, since Len had come over one day after a kitten Annie had been trying to nurse had died. He’d come with his stethoscope and pressed it gravely to the kitten’s chest. He’d shaken his head. ‘She’s gone, Annie. Have a listen.’
He’d pressed the stethoscope to Annie and she’d put it on and listened to the silence. She’d heard her own breathing in her ears. Then Len had pressed it to his chest. ‘Hear that?’
She’d dreamt of the sound of Len’s heartbeat. The thrum of it. It was what she thought about when she decided to go into vet science. The thrill that sound gives her, even now. She presses her ear to Pip’s chest, delighted and soothed by the sound of Pip’s blood, Pip’s heart.
Gladys was the one who said it straight. No Just do your best, kiddo. No Oh, you’re so clever! You’ll do wonderfully, darling. Gladys sat Annie down and leant back with her arms crossed and her legs spread. She looked Annie dead in the eye.
‘You’re competing with students from schools that cost tens of thousands a year,’ she said. ‘And schools with more funding in a year than little Quilly High gets in ten.’
‘So I shouldn’t even bother trying? What the hell, Nana?’
A flicker of a frown. ‘No, Annie. Don’t be like bloody Susan and jump down my throat. I’m saying you’ll have to try harder than any of them. If they’re told to read the book five times, you’ve got to read it ten. Learn everything. Give yourself a chance.’ She bit into her tart. ‘There’s other ways in. You can do other degrees and work your way up to vet, but set yourself up as best you can.’
When Annie actually looked at what was needed for veterinary medicine, she was dismayed, startled, by how much maths there was. By what she would have to be good at in order to do what she already knew she loved.
So Annie worked. She read while Alex rode and quizzed herself with flashcards while Trent and Rose got drunk.
Her marks weren’t good enough. Not even close. She scored in the low nineties. The best in the school, but not high enough to give her any sort of look-in on the courses she’d been hoping for.
She enrolled in another course. And worked hard. She cried when she didn’t get the marks she wanted.
In her third year she was able to transfer to veterinary medicine and felt a seething resentment towards the other students, mostly three years younger than her, straight out of expensive schools. They squealed at the dead animals in the lab and snickered at the reproduction units. She didn’t see Tom for weeks during the last year of her course, but he never minded. He never demanded more from her than she could give.
And Annie learnt the strange, bewildering lesson that there was often a path of unrelated, unpleasant things that had to be followed to get somewhere that you loved.
* * *
Malcolm Rainer has set up his mechanical bull in his front paddock. Annie glances at him as she drives by, on her way to the lame horse on the western flank of the town. He’s living in a caravan in the middle of the paddock, tarp stretched out like a verandah out front. Annie can see a pile of work boots and cheap plastic furniture set under there. There are no trees, where he’s set himself up. Annie thinks that he must get hot in the sun.
Malcolm grew up with Len. The two went to the same schools, the same events, had had the same friends for their entire lives.
He looks older than Len, though. Even from the road. Has spent more time out in the mountain sun, while Len spends his days in the surgery, under trees and the corrugated-iron roofing of barns and cow sheds.
Malcolm’s been hiring out the mechanical bull to parties and functions around the mountain for years. Normally he sets up a blow-up landing, so when you get tossed it doesn’t hurt. But now he’s got the thing rigged up to some sort of generator and is riding it. Annie pulls up on the road and watches as the mechanical bull bucks and twists and throws him hard onto the summer-baked ground. Annie unclips her seatbelt to make sure he’s okay. Then she sees him get up, switch the thing off and climb back on. The controls, which he usually operates from outside the blow-up area, are now rigged so he can control the bucking and be on the bull at the same time.
Annie watches him getting bucked off again. She watches him get back on.
She clips on her seatbelt and drives off then. Her mouth sour. Her eyes prickling.
* * *
Annie is soothed by the animals she treats. The owner of the horse smiles at her. She’s a townie, recently moved up from the flatlands. She has three hundred dollar gumboots on. She lives on one of the grandest properties in Quilly, which she likely snapped up cheap this year.
‘I’ve always loved horses,’ the woman says, stroking her horse’s face. ‘He’s walking a bit crooked today, though. What do you think it is?’
Annie runs her hand down the horse’s legs. He has a massive oedema stretching around both sides of his neck and down into his shoulders. It’s leaking serum, clear and yellow and sticky. He swishes his tail as she probes him.
‘How long’s he been swollen like this?’ Annie asks.
‘Swollen?’ The woman’s face creases suddenly. ‘Where?’
Annie points to the massive swelling along his neck and shoulder. ‘And it’s starting in his face now. I think his lameness is because the oedema is tender and restricts his movement.’
The woman stares at her, wide-eyed.
Annie sighs. ‘It’s an allergic reaction. I’ll give him an antihistamine shot.’
‘Thank you! What’s caused it?’
‘Could be anything.’ She hesitates for a moment. ‘You know, it’s up to you to keep a close eye on your stock. You should be familiar enough with your animals to know that this sort of swelling is abnormal.’
The woman blinks. ‘Oh dear. I’ve made a mess of this, haven’t I?’ She titters, like it’s all a joke. Annie snaps her latex gloves off and goes to rummage in the back of the car.
After the horse, she drives back to the other side of the town and stitches up the Jersey cow’s rump and leaves smelling of cowpats. She drives back to the empty practice and leaves the keys to Len’s car on the hook in the reception area. The appointments book has nothing else in it.
She sits in her car with the windows open, staring at Len’s house. Sweating and smelling of manure and calmer than she’s been in months. She’s missed the large animals. There is something deeply satisfying about treating a cow or a horse.
She drives home and pulls up without Susan or Pip noticing. She sits on the edge of the verandah so she can just see them around the corner of the kitchen window. Susan blows her breath out and sits back, pressing her legs out in front of her. Beside her on the floor, Pip is splashing paints across thin notepad paper and humming under her breath. Her smelly green scarf is pressed under her belly. She’s been pulling it over her head less.
‘I need to get you some proper paper out for next time,’ Susan says.
‘Proper paper?’ Pip looks up at her.
‘Thicker paper. It’s what grown-up artists use, but you’re so good I think you deserve some too.’
‘Thanks Gran.’
‘You know, my dearest dear one, you talk when you sleep.’
Annie tenses, she hasn’t mentioned the sleeptalking to Pip, worried that it will only make her daughter feel stranger, more out of place, than she already does.
‘I do? In my sleep?’ Pip considers this for a long moment. ‘Wow.’
‘You talk about bananas and cakes a lot, my pet.’
‘Well, I love bananas and cakes.’
‘And basketballs.’
‘Yeah. If I’m as tall as Dad, I’m going to play basketball in high school.’
‘How glorious!’
‘Yeah!’
‘You’re having fun painting?’
‘Yeah.’ Pip sits back on her heels and peers up at Susan. ‘Are you?’
‘Well, no. Not really.’
‘Oh.’
‘I love painting, it’s my favourite thing to do in the world.’
‘More than making cupcakes?’
‘Yes, more than making cupcakes. And it’s just become really hard for me. And it’s not very fun, having something you love doing suddenly feel really hard.’
‘How’s it hard?’ Pip says. She grabs Susan’s hand. ‘Look! Just like this, Gran! Just like this!’
She presses the paintbrush into Susan’s hand and drags it across her saturated notepad paper. Susan smiles. ‘You’re right. I’m being silly, aren’t I?’
Pip giggles. ‘It’s not hard.’
‘Hmm. Maybe you’re just so good it doesn’t feel hard.’
Pip considers this, then nods solemnly. ‘Maybe.’
Pip starts on a new sheet of paper and Susan sits back and stares at the empty canvas. She sighs, a long, heavy sigh that makes Pip glance up at her.
Susan peers at the canvas through slitted lids. ‘I want to do something for your mum,’ she says.
Pip nods.
‘Bloody thing,’ Susan mutters at the canvas.
‘Bloody, bloody,’ says Pip.
Annie listens to them for a little longer, but they’ve grown silent. So Annie lets herself into Luna’s paddock and bunks up onto her back. She rides out, Luna cranky and sulky at the indignity of being ridden.
They gallop, Annie not feeling as secure on Luna’s broad back as she did when she was younger, before Pip. They skirt along the edge of the forest and enter via a wide track that Annie knows she won’t get lost on. They ride fast and when they get to the creek Annie slides off onto the ground and dips her feet in the water.
‘Annie!’
Annie startles. Alex is sitting on the opposite side of the creek wearing a white shirt rolled up to the elbows with a notebook in his hands. Nigel, who’s flown along with Luna, flutters across the water to him.
‘What are you doing here?’ Annie asks.
‘Mum.’ He shakes his head. ‘Len’s there, so I thought I’d give us both a break. I’ve been marking off places I’ve been.’ He shakes the notebook. ‘You know, for Len.’
‘That looks just like your school shirt.’
Alex glances down at himself and smiles. ‘Mum’s been hoarding clothes from the Salvos. Why’re you looking at me like that?’
‘Nothing. It’s just … it looks like you’re in your uniform. That’s all.’
She nearly tells him how she checks his Facebook, when Tom works late. Searching for something she’s missed. Scouring through for something new, although he never posted much even before the fires. There’s been nothing since. She wants to see if he remembers that they’d come here as teenagers. Or near here, at least. Pressed up against a tree one particularly heinous Father’s Day, when Gladys and Jenny and Susan became sullen and cranky and all their friends were busy at lunches or dinners. They climbed a tree with a bottle of vodka and then stumbled into the forest, laughing and raucous. And then how everything changed between them.
Alex meets Annie’s eye and something in his expression makes her think that he is thinking of the same thing. Barefoot in the forest. He looks quickly away and stands up.
Luna snorts and butts Annie again. She wants to say that she’d better go, but then she realises that she doesn’t want to. Not really. It’s hard to be furious at Alex when he’s standing right in front of her, more than an idea or a memory.
Alex shifts from one foot to the other and drops his hand from Nigel’s neck. Nigel shrieks with impatience and fluffs himself up. Then he flaps up into the air and settles on Luna’s rump. Luna pins her ears at him.
‘I dream of these tracks,’ Alex says.
‘Me too.’
‘Do you want … to walk for a bit?’ He still asks for her company in the same way he did when he was sixteen, speaking quietly and looking away from her. ‘Look for the lyres?’
Annie doesn’t answer. She bunks back up onto Luna. She struggles for a moment and feels Alex’s hand on her calf, pushing her up.
‘Annie.’
‘What?’
‘I know you’re still angry,’ Alex says, looking towards the creek. ‘And that’s okay.’
‘I’m not. I’m not angry, Alex. Not at you. Look, my whole life has been turned upside down. Pip’s struggling, I’m sleepwalking, I don’t know if I’ve still got a job – I’m just mad. But not at you.’
They walk side by side, Luna nudging Alex. He murmurs to her and rubs her neck. He weaves his hands into her mane and, from behind, looks so much like he did at sixteen that Annie wants to cry.
He glances back at Annie as they walk. Furtive, quick glances from under his eyelashes. Like he’s trying to puzzle something out about her. Like maybe he can’t believe she’s here.
They wander without talking and Annie thinks about how she’s not mad. Not even a little bit. She’s filled with sadness, with wonder. With the impossibility of them being here, as adults, with Luna, wandering in the blackened forest.