The next morning Annie wakes up feeling sore and gritty. She drinks a glass of water and pulls on her boots before Susan and Pip have properly woken. She hears their murmured stories and Pip’s dozy giggle as she quietly shuts the kitchen door. We’re okay.
Annie has a missed call from Tom, and voicemails from Hector asking her to reconsider the series, but she deletes them, trying not to wonder too hard about how he got her number. She tries to call Tom but he doesn’t answer. She presses the phone between her hands like a talisman. She sits outside with Luna for a while. Nigel flutters up onto her shoulder, startling both of them.
‘We’re okay!’ he yells and Annie smiles and scratches the back of his neck.
Susan comes outside with a cup of tea. Pip trails behind her and sits on the other side of the fence.
‘Thanks, Mum.’ They walk slowly back up to the house, Pip racing ahead.
‘Do you remember getting up last night?’
Annie startles. ‘Huh? I didn’t!’
Susan points. There are blue lines across the wooden planks of the verandah. Annie strides over and squats to see the wood more clearly, her tea splashing as she puts it down.
Pip starts bouncing her basketball on the gravel, her scarf tied around her waist.
Annie stares at Susan. ‘I did this? You’re sure?’
‘Saw you with my old two eyes.’
‘Own two eyes,’ Annie says without thought.
‘Yes, except mine are old.’
‘Thanks,’ Annie murmurs. ‘Why do I keep doing this?’
‘Just be glad you’re not stripping off and running down the street. This is tame. Almost disappointingly so.’
‘Why am I doing it, though?’
Susan sips her tea. ‘Do you remember what you’re dreaming about?’
Annie thinks of green and dirt and the shadowed call of lyrebirds. The idea of sleepwalking when she feels so unsettled makes her feel nauseous. Panicked. She swallows. ‘The forests. I think.’
‘This has given me an idea, you know.’ Susan sits back in her chair.
‘An idea?’
‘I’m going to paint my hives! All different colours.’
Annie pulls a face. ‘You know they’re going to swarm soon. When’s the last time you emptied the frames?’
‘Not that long ago, Annie.’
‘Well, I betcha there’s queens hatching in there. Why don’t you put in another super? Keep them busy, seeing as you won’t empty the hive?’
‘So what if they swarm? It’s natural. It’s natural for them to get too big for their boots and think somewhere else might be better for them.’
Annie grits her teeth. ‘Is that a dig?’
‘Maybe.’
‘You know what would be even more fun?’
‘What?’
‘Calling the insurance company and straightening out what’s happening with this place before it falls down.’
Susan pulls Pip onto her lap. ‘Guess how much honey a bee makes over summer, my darling?’
‘This much!’ Pip holds her hands out as wide as they go.
Susan picks up the teaspoon from her teacup. ‘Half a teaspoon. And they only live for six weeks.’
Pip takes the teaspoon from Susan, her expression wondering. ‘Really?’
‘Really.’ Susan bends closer to Pip’s ear. ‘Honey’s so special. We need to treasure it. Now, what colour should we paint the hives?’
‘Mum! Your bees are going to swarm! You need to do your insurance! Forget about painting the hives and empty the darn things!’
‘You’re such a drag.’ Susan shakes her head. ‘I don’t know. Would’ve been nice if you’d inherited my appreciation of art, but I suppose I can still pin my hopes on Pippa.’
* * *
On her way to Len’s practice Annie stops in at Jenny’s with a Tupperware container full of cupcakes.
Alex and Trent are in the garden. It’s the size of her yard in the city and as colourless. She hears a flyscreen door slap shut next door and startles. For a moment, caught between the city and the mountain.
Trent is discreetly smoking a cigarette; Alex is leaning his head in his hands. Max runs around in circles, pretending to be a train.
‘You guys right?’ Annie asks, shutting the car door.
‘Mum,’ Alex says.
‘Jenny,’ Trent says bleakly.
‘Cupcakes,’ Annie says. ‘Mum’s still making enough to feed the entire town.’
‘Don’t think Jenny needs any more sugar,’ Trent says.
Alex grimaces. ‘A few sedatives would probably be better.’
‘Or a brick,’ says Trent.
‘What’s she doing?’
Alex puts his head back in his hands. ‘She’s throwing things.’
‘Should I have a go?’
‘If you’re feeling brave,’ Trent says. ‘Good luck, Annie Thompson.’
Annie lets herself inside. ‘Jenny?’
She hears rustling and follows the sound into the kitchen, down the stuffy hallway and past the cluttered living room.
‘Jenny?’
Jenny’s hair is plastered to her face as she frantically pulls open garbage bags that have been tightly knotted.
‘Jenny? You right?’
Jenny looks up at her. ‘He keeps rushing me! Annie, I just need time. If I can just get organised, it’ll all be okay.’
Annie sits down and stares at the garbage bags. ‘What do you need to organise?’
‘This! My things! He keeps throwing everything away and I just need time.’
Annie stares at the egg cartons and empty biscuit boxes Jenny’s clawing at. ‘All right. What can I do? To help.’
‘Nothing! Nothing, I need to sort it out myself. I’ll get confused otherwise. I’ll lose track.’
‘Do you want a drink or something? Is there something else I can do?’
‘No, Annie. I need to do this on my own. You can go now.’
Annie leans against the kitchen bench. ‘Why do you like it here so much, Jenny?’
‘I just do.’
‘This mountain hasn’t exactly been kind to you.’
Jenny glances up, angry, and then she studies Annie for a moment and shrugs. ‘Nowhere worse than anywhere else.’
‘There’re horses down there, you know. All through the city.’
‘I know that. I’m not stupid.’ Jenny sighs. ‘I thought if I stayed up here, we could take off where we left off, you know? We could build up some good horses for Alex again and rebuild everything and … he could go back to competing. That’s all.’
‘He can’t come back here,’ Annie says.
‘I know. I know that.’ Jenny looks up at her. ‘But that doesn’t mean it’s easy to leave.’
‘I know.’ Annie straightens. ‘Is there anything you’re going to let me do?’
‘I need to do this by myself. Like I said to Alex and that loudmouth boy who used to hang around here every summer.’
Annie wanders back outside and Alex hands her a cupcake. ‘Did she swear?’
‘Did she yell?’ Trent asks.
‘No. She just didn’t want me touching her things. Does she have a worker, Alex?’
‘Not any more. The funding got cut.’
‘I think she needs a worker. Could we get her out of the house? Over to see Mum or something? And then just go in and put all the rubbish out?’
Alex shakes his head and bites into a cupcake. ‘She’d go absolutely nuts.’
‘Okay, so on a scale of one to ten, what level of nuts is she currently sitting at?’
‘I’d say a three,’ Alex says, swallowing. ‘However, if we move all her stuff while she’s out, she’ll go up to a thirty.’
‘A fifty,’ Trent says.
‘He’s exaggerating. He’s just put out coz Mum clocked him one.’
‘It was more of a tap,’ Trent says.
‘He touched her empty wine bottles.’
‘I should’ve known better,’ Trent says miserably.
‘Right.’ Annie’s phone buzzes. It’s a message from Len. He’s about to operate on a dog and needs Annie to go check out a sheep with a sore foot.
‘I’ve gotta go do something for Len,’ Annie says. ‘Good luck.’
Trent and Alex both grimace at her. As she comes out from the backyard she notices a woman slipping something into the letterbox. The woman sees her and hurries off and Annie, curious, dips her hand into it.
The envelope is blank. Annie slips it open, her heart pounding. DIE STUPID BITCH AND TAKE YOUR TERRORIST SON WITH YOU.
* * *
Later, there are night sounds. Annie can’t sleep. Every snap of twig, every sound from the trees. She thinks of Tom, unsettled in the night up here so many years ago. How he hadn’t been able to sleep. She hadn’t understood it at the time.
She scrunched the unsigned letter up. She hasn’t mentioned it to anyone. She doesn’t see the point.
She locks the doors and brings Giddy inside. She keeps the phone in her hand, but still can’t sleep. She is rattled here. She keeps thinking of Jenny, surrounded by a nest of gleaming wine bottles and torn cardboard. She thinks of the woman, going out of her way to post that awful letter.
It feels suddenly sane, appealing, to be clustered in among wine bottles and cardboard boxes.
‘We’re okay,’ Annie whispers. ‘We’re okay, we’re okay, we’re okay.’
She whispers it to drown out the night noises. The sighing sound of dropping leaves. Eventually she tires herself and then she falls to sleep.
* * *
There was a night when Annie was ten years old or so. She remembers being woken in the dark thinking it was morning. She remembers the dull glow of her green walls reflecting the hallway light. She could smell vomit and hear her mother crying.
She stood in the bedroom doorway and saw Susan curled up in the kitchen doorway and Gladys shaking her head with her hands on her hips.
‘This is disgraceful, Susan,’ Gladys said, so quietly. ‘Utterly disgraceful.’
‘I’m not old, Mum! I’m twenty-five and sometimes I just want to be twenty-five.’ Susan clambered to her feet and started staggering across the kitchen.
‘You’re a mother. If you wanted to go out and get drunk into your twenties, you should’ve thought of that before you …’
‘Before I what? Hmm?’ Susan, swaying, silhouetted by the kitchen light. ‘Before I fucking what, Mum? Or should that be fucked who?’
‘Susan.’
‘Why are you always so awful to me?’
‘Keep your voice down! You’ll wake Annie!’
‘It’s always about Annie, isn’t it?’ Susan took another uncertain step forward. ‘Your precious Annie. You like her more than me, don’t you?’
‘Susan, if you don’t keep your voice down, I’ll lock you in the shed.’
Susan’s voice turned tearful. ‘Sometimes I don’t think you like me very much at all.’
‘I love you, Susan. Very much. But that doesn’t mean I can’t be furious with you.’
‘Why can’t you get off my back? Just once? I just sometimes want to be young.’
‘When you’re a parent you can’t be young. Not like this.’
‘Annie’s fine!’
Gladys clamped a hand over Susan’s mouth. ‘Keep your voice down!’
They struggled for a moment and then Susan softened and Gladys let her go. ‘You need to stop this,’ Gladys said as Susan sagged into bed across the hallway. Gladys fetched a bucket and a glass of water. ‘You need to be a grown-up. For Annie.’