The next day Annie goes out to the shallow hole Alex dug. He said he’d be back today to dig the rest, but he is only about ten centimetres in and that took him two hours.
‘Just get him out of the bin, okay?’ he said yesterday and Annie did, biting her lip as she fished out the bag from the rest of the garbage. She didn’t know what to do with Nigel and eventually slotted him into the cool of Gladys’s shed.
Annie doesn’t want to think about Nigel, or Alex grunting as he slammed the shovel against the ground, over and over. Instead, she thinks about the blue drawing she did on the kitchen wall, back in the city terrace. The drawing she did on her mother’s verandah. She rubs her fingers together, imagining them inky.
‘Psst!’ The door creaks open and Susan sticks her head in. She gestures wildly at Annie.
Annie gets up slowly and goes out onto the verandah. ‘What?’ she whispers, closing the door behind her.
‘It’s Tea,’ says Susan.
‘What?’
‘My chicken. She’s sick. Can you take a look? She’s gone all unbalanced. Just out of nowhere!’
‘Have they been wormed and treated for lice?’
‘Of course!’
‘When?’
‘A while ago. They’re all fine!’
Annie goes further out onto the verandah. It’s still and warm.
The brown feathers in the box don’t move and Annie scoops her out gently. ‘She’s gone, Mum.’
‘Oh!’ Susan blinks. ‘Oh, the poor little thing. She was the one you found in the forest. Remember?’
‘Yeah, I remember.’ Annie runs a hand over her croup, which feels about three quarters full, and checks her cloaca, which seems clean and normal. Annie runs her hands along the chicken’s body, but can’t feel any bound eggs. She shakes her head.
Susan sits down next to her. ‘You went out on Luna, it was raining. And you found her nestled in a tree fern.’
‘She was laying an egg. Making a bloody ruckus.’
After the fires Tea was a mess, in the middle of the forest, with feathers missing and her comb torn. She screeched without stopping, but she let Annie pick her up and wrap her in her jacket. She let Annie ride her home slung over Luna’s withers. Luna pinned her ears but didn’t buck, didn’t shy, even when Tea panicked as a car passed and tried to claw away.
At the farm Tea went out with the rest of the flock and Annie went back into the paddock to groom Luna. Tea’s claws had drawn blood, but Luna hadn’t reacted. Annie spent an hour out there with Luna, cleaning the cut and brushing her mane. Luna napped with her ears pressed back in temper, but when Annie went to walk away she nudged her, wanting more.
Beautiful Luna, who seemed to know when other animals were broken or breaking. Who seemed to know when to be steady. How important it was to stay calm.
‘I dunno, Mum. Birds are bloody tricky to diagnose. A virus, I’d say. She’s not egg bound and her croup feels normal.’ Annie brushes gently at her feathers. Like she’s still alive and needs to be soothed.
Susan bites her lip. ‘Sorry. I know I’m being stupid.’
‘You’re not being stupid at all.’ Annie squeezes her shoulder. ‘We’ll keep an eye on the rest of the flock. Hopefully it’s just a one-off.’
‘Yes, yes. The others are all fine.’ Susan sniffs and runs a finger along Tea’s fine bronze feathers.
Annie stares at the still body. ‘You know what’s sad about chickens? They pretend they’re well. They’re so scared of being easy prey for predators, or the flock turning on them, they’ll pretend they’re well until they can’t any more.’
* * *
Annie’s days develop a shape. In the same way the school run, giving animals vaccinations, clipping too-long nails, the yowling of dogs coming out of anaesthetic and the ammonia smell of urine shaped her days in the city.
She lets the chickens out and cups their eggs. Sometimes with Pip, sometimes alone. Brushes their feathers with her fingers. She eats cupcakes and drinks tea and then goes out into the veggie patch. She finds the bones of small animals, which makes her think that Gladys must have buried all of her smaller animals – Len’s too – deep into the beds. For their nutrients. Their blood and bones and organs.
It unsettles Annie. Makes her feel skittish.
Susan spends long afternoons in the shed, hand-spinning her honey with Pip.
Most days, leaning on the shovel with the cordless phone or up on the ridge with the mobile, Annie calls Tom. Sometimes he answers. Talks to Pip. Talks to her. She is always sweaty. He is always polite. They always say goodbye to each other in gentle voices. He mostly doesn’t reply to her long, winding emails, but when he does, it’s with a letter in the post.
Then, as it gets dark, Annie feeds the animals and locks the chickens up and sits down, exhausted, her fingers fidgety. She picks up Gladys’s whittling knife. Her chisels. And works on the wood she’s brought from the city. The wood she fancied so beautiful, precious – so alive – seems plastic and dead in her fingers against the backdrop of her mountain. This breathing place.
Then she is tired. The cracks of her hands spidered with dirt. Covered in wood shavings. She will curl up on the couch and imagine it a bed. Mostly she lets her space fill up with night. Her loneliness quieting against the shocking deepness of stars and sky, which she glances at hungrily before pulling the curtains shut.
* * *
The mountain has become frenzied. Posters are pressed onto the broken sides of houses and the one bus shelter, which was built in autumn. People milling along the main street, talking in hushed voices about what’s being filmed where and who’s being interviewed. Everyone hungry for knowledge; frantic for it after so much of the unknown.
It is the photo of Annie, Pip and Luna. They’ve got the rights from the photographer. Annie is technically unidentifiable. They don’t need her permission.
Annie doesn’t want to go into town any more. Neil, the owner of the property where the show is being filmed, has had his tyres slashed. His house has had its windows broken.
In the months after the photo of Annie and Pip came out in all the major papers, Annie felt constantly on edge. Constantly recognised. Whenever she had Pip with her out on the street, she felt that people were questioning her parenting. Sizing her up. Comparing her unfavourably to the photo. That woman, saving her child.
Except, she didn’t save Pip. She put her in danger. She nearly killed them both. They would’ve been safer if they’d stayed on the farm. Maybe they would’ve been standing somewhere different, Gladys too, when the tree came down.
She has lost nothing in the fires. Except the idea of the place. It was the wind that killed Gladys. She is the face of a tragedy she has largely escape. It keeps her awake long into the night.
* * *
Rose drives up at five o’clock, Fleetwood Mac filling the little yard. Annie is sorting through some of Susan’s outstanding bills and doesn’t look up. She’s trying not to look at Nigel’s grave. Alex spent three hours getting the rest of the grave dug, not speaking. Only pointing it out to her quietly when he finished.
Annie is trying not to look at the little grave and Rose nudges her.
‘Annie,’ she says. ‘Annie. Annie. Annie.’
‘What, Rose?’
Rose sits down on the edge of the verandah, staring up at Annie with a wounded expression on her face. ‘Let’s go out somewhere.’
‘I can’t! You’ve seen the posters! If I go into town at the moment, I’ll end up with a throat scar to match Alex’s.’
‘Oh, c’mon. It’s my birthday. Do you know how sad it is to have a birthday this close to Christmas? Just a few drinks down at the bar.’
Annie sighs. ‘All right. But one drink.’
‘One drink.’
‘Just in town.’
Rose grins. ‘Just in town.’
Annie drives and Rose plays the radio too loudly and at the bar everything is noisy and there is laughter, and the clatter of pool balls, and glasses being thumped down on the edge of the bar.
A few people look up at Annie. Things quieten down. Annie sidles in and sits down and Rose orders them both a beer. The bar is mostly full of men, but Rose just shrugs. ‘Fuck ’em,’ she says.
They talk about being teenagers and about work.
Rose groans and leans close to the bar. She mutters something into the wood.
‘Can’t hear you.’
‘I said that I’ve been trying to get your mum painting again. The gallery boss really wants to do a show of her new work. Will she do it? Course not!’ Her voice is too loud. She wipes her mouth on the back of her hand. Rose has never been able to hold her alcohol, even when they were teenagers.
‘I reckon she will.’
‘Well, I hope so! Your mum drives me mad, Annie. Mad.’ She rests her head on the bar.
Annie glances around the pub, every part of her tense, but most of the men have gone back to their drinks, their conversations, the cricket playing silently on the widescreen television.
Annie and Rose talk about the lyres and Len and Pip and Susan. Their people. They don’t talk about Alex or Jenny. It’s too sad, too hard. After their beer glasses are back on the table, empty and warm, Rose smiles. ‘All right,’ she says, yawning. ‘Let’s head.’
Annie walks out quickly, eyes fixed on the door. Too unsettled to look either left or right. Not letting her breath out until they’re back in the car with the door locks pressed down.
* * *
Later, Annie stares at her phone and dials Tom’s number and when he answers her voice cracks. She sits out on the verandah and closes her eyes, for a moment imagining herself back in the grey square of their terrace garden.
‘Do you think people either have a person or a place, Tom?’
‘It’s midnight. I was asleep.’
‘Shit, I’m sorry.’
Tom yawns.
‘Rose said the other day that people either have a person or a place. She has a person and Len has a place.’
‘I don’t know what you mean,’ says Tom. ‘And would you mind calling me before Pip’s gone to bed? I miss her.’
‘I’m sorry. It’s so hectic when she’s awake. I’ll make sure to call you earlier tomorrow, okay?’
‘Thanks.’
Annie exhales. ‘Anyway. Rose reckons either a person gets into you or a place gets into you. One or the other.’
‘Oh,’ says Tom. ‘Len has the mountain?’
‘That’s what Rose says.’
‘I don’t know,’ says Tom, and yawns again. ‘What do you have?’
‘I don’t know, either.’ Although she does.
Annie stares at her phone when she’s hung up. Her heart too quick. She wanted to ask him about living on the mountain. Had come so close, the words thick on her tongue. But she doesn’t want to hear his refusal. She needs the idea of this place, the possibility of slipping back into its familiarity. Of feeling safe here again.
She goes inside, thinking of living here. Susan is sitting up on the couch under a blanket, glasses on, wine in hand, flipping through a pile of picture books.
‘Annie! Have a nice night?’
‘Yeah, it was good. Rose got tipsy off one beer.’
Susan slips her glasses off and puts her wine down. ‘Was she awful, darling?’
‘No. Quite charming, really.’ Annie sits down next to her.
‘She’s not even charming sober,’ Susan mutters.
‘How was Pip?’
‘Like an angel dropped down from heaven.’
‘How was she actually?’
‘A whirling dervish I had to spend half an hour wrestling into pull-ups.’
‘Okay. I’ll just check on her.’
‘Oh, no need. Out like a light.’
Annie stands up. ‘I’m checking on her.’
‘You’ll wake her, Annie.’
‘No more than you will, getting into bed with her later.’ Annie goes down to the bedroom and cracks the door open. She closes it again.
‘Mum?’
‘Yes, darling?’
‘Why is my daughter’s head half shaved?’
‘She’s expressing her true self.’
Annie steers Susan out onto the verandah. Susan grabs her wine as she is propelled through the kitchen. ‘What the hell happened to her head? And god help me if you use any more counselling buzzwords.’
‘It really is the loveliest night. Summer would be perfect if it was all night.’
‘Mum! She could’ve chopped her head off!’
‘Oh, you can be so dramatic. Hair grows back. Remember when you cut yours off with Nana’s whittling knife and said you were a pirate?’
‘Mum!’
‘And it’s not much longer than Pip’s new do anyway. It was nothing! I just left my sewing scissors out.’
‘You don’t sew.’
‘I use them to trim my nose hair.’
‘Oh, Mum! Why’d you leave them out? How do I tell Tom that my mother let his daughter cut off all her hair?’
Susan shrugs, has a sip of wine. ‘Well, keep him occupied down in the city for a few more months and you won’t have to.’
Annie stares at Susan. ‘Mum!’
‘Mum what?’
‘You let her chop off her hair!’
‘I did not. Anyway, fair’s fair. She dyed my hair green!’
Pip appears at the door ‘Mum …’ she says and yawns.
‘Look what you’ve done to your hair!’
Pip touches it and grins. ‘I like it.’
‘No, Pip. You can’t cut your own hair. You could’ve hurt yourself. We’ll fix it up in the morning and you’re going to do all the dishes tomorrow.’
‘No!’ says Pip.
Annie pushes Pip into the house and closes the bedroom door. Pip throws it open. ‘No! No! No! No!’
Annie goes back into the kitchen where Susan has finished her wine. ‘Never punish them on bedtime, Annie. You should know better.’
Pip stalks into the kitchen. ‘No! No! No! No!’