Annie sleeps badly that night, imagining Gilbert breaking free and ruining her veggie garden. She wakes to a world that’s too light, too sharp. She can’t smell the duck smell of the kitchen, the sweet smell of an oven that’s cooked only cupcakes and potatoes for a year. She blinks and sits up.
There’s damp grass under her fingers. Her boots are on her feet. The sun is up, but angled so sharply that Annie knows it is only early.
Luna nudges her and nuzzles her hair.
‘I don’t have any food,’ Annie tells her, scratching under her chin.
Luna snorts and starts picking at the long, wiry grass. She keeps shooting Annie glum glances and shaking her big, shaggy head.
‘Well, this is interesting,’ Susan calls over. She’s sitting on the verandah with a cup of coffee and her bare feet pressed neatly side by side on the lowest step. ‘Coffee?’
‘Tea, please,’ Annie says. ‘Where’s Pip?’
‘Collecting the eggs,’ Susan says, going back inside and emerging a few moments later with her coffee in one hand and Annie’s tea in the other. She lets herself into the paddock and sits down next to Annie, her green hair catching the early morning sun. ‘I forgot how early children like to wake up. I wonder when we lose that.’
‘Somewhere during puberty, if I recall correctly.’
‘Hmm.’
‘I thought you still got up early anyway.’
‘I do, but it’s mostly because I don’t sleep that well any more.’ Susan stretches. ‘What I really miss is that dead-to-the-world sleep you have when you’re young. One minute you’re being read a bedtime story and next minute you’re wide awake, refreshed, and it’s five-thirty the next morning.’
‘I wouldn’t mind that either.’ Annie tries to stand up and groans. ‘Everything hurts.’
‘It’s sad, isn’t it? When I was young I could sleep anywhere. In fact, the night you were conceived I slept on a wooden floor like it was a glorious feather bed.’
Annie holds her breath. A hangover from being younger, from being made nervous of anything that trod too closely to her father. All she knows is that he was not a local. And that is all she needs to know to be calm. To tuck him away.
Annie tries to touch her toes but can’t get closer than a hand span. ‘I don’t want to hear about how I was conceived, thanks.’
‘Any particular reason why you felt you had to sleep in the paddock?’
‘I was sleepwalking, Mum! Jeez. I didn’t decide to sleep in a paddock. The couch is bad enough.’
‘That couch is very comfy!’
‘As far as couches go, but all things being equal, think I prefer an orthopaedic mattress.’
Susan snorts. ‘When I was a girl you were lucky to get a mattress.’
‘Oh, here we go. You know, you were born only fifteen years before me. The whole when I was a girl thing doesn’t really fly.’ Annie tries again to touch her toes and manages to brush one. ‘I think we’re even technically from the same generation.’
Susan scratches her ankle. ‘Gilbert’s settled in wonderfully.’
Annie groans.
‘You know, I sleep outside sometimes.’
‘What? Where?’ Annie bends down, trying to stretch her back instead.
‘By the fallen tree.’
‘Why would you do that?’
Susan smiles but it’s a sad smile and Annie wonders if she’s about to start crying. ‘It’s the last place Mum was. It’s just nice to be near her sometimes. You get that don’t you, darling?’
‘Yeah.’ Annie stretches out an aching arm towards Susan. ‘Yeah, I get it.’
* * *
Annie sniffs a lot. On these hot days, in a place with more wood and trees than roads. She sniffs hard, searching out the tang of smoke. In the distance, the sirens at the CFA headquarters start going off. As if the siren is the call of something familiar. Annie doesn’t realise until the siren stops after thirty seconds that she’d been holding her breath.
She phones up Rose. ‘There was a call.’
‘False alarm. It’s up on the app.’
‘You sure?’
‘It’s right in front of me.’
‘Okay,’ Annie says, except she’s not.
‘Yeah,’ Rose says slowly. She pauses. ‘It won’t happen again.’
‘Yeah. I know. Thanks, Rose. See ya.’
We’re okay. Annie misses Nigel’s voice.
She dreams of ash. Brown, this time. Puckery in her mouth. Then she is in the forest, flying along the tracks. Holding her breath like she would underwater. Annie is woken by her mother flapping Giddy out of the kitchen. ‘You rotten dog!’
‘What, Mum?’
‘He’s eaten a big chunk of the pudding! Well, eaten’s a bit generous. He’s just spat it all out over the floor.’
Giddy leans in through the door.
‘Shoo!’ says Susan.
Susan looks at her strangely and then there is the sound of crunching gravel and Susan grumbling about her pudding. ‘I’m going to get a gun licence, Annie. I’ve had it with this bloody dog.’
‘Hmm.’ Annie stretches, she feels thick and nauseous. She glances at her watch. She’s napped far longer than she meant to.
‘The truck will be going by in an hour,’ Susan says.
‘What truck?’ Annie throws her arms up over her face.
‘The Christmas truck, Annie! The Christmas truck! I told you about it!’
‘Did not.’
‘Well, it’s this lovely thing. Where this magical truck with Santa picks up all the kids and parents along the way.’
‘Must be a bloody big truck.’
‘We’re just a very weenie town. Oh, please! Pip will love it.’
‘Why don’t you take her?’
Susan’s expression flickers. ‘I don’t feel that great. I just want to put my feet up. I’m an old lady, Annie.’
‘Bullcrap, you’re old.’ Annie sits up. ‘You’ve already mentioned this to Pip, haven’t you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Mum, you’re a menace.’
Susan grins. The guineafowl start screeching out in the yard and the rooster crows from on top of the henhouse. She can hear Gilbert grunting, nosing around in his yard. ‘I prefer visionary.’
* * *
Annie remembers Susan’s first book launch, in the big exhibition space down the mountain that Rose now curates. How publishers and editors had travelled up, all the way from the city. How they had hung Susan’s original paintings of Luna up around the walls.
Annie remembers the smell of wine and thin biscuits. She remembers helping Len truck Luna down off the mountain. She stood in a yard by the door and people delighted in her, snapping photos of each other and feeding her carrots and crackers and apples.
She remembers Len tousling Susan’s hair and Susan shoving him away. You’ll muck it up!
Annie remembers people telling her, for the first time, how brilliant her mother was. How clever. How talented. She felt a swell of pride, watching all the strangers shaking her mother’s hand and asking her to sign copies of her book for their children, their nieces and nephews and grandkids.
She remembers running around the place with Trent while Rose snuck wines and rolled her eyes at the two of them. She remembers Alex being quiet and inspecting each of the hung works carefully. When Annie got him in a headlock, he wiggled away and smiled.
‘Watcha doing?’ she asked.
‘How cool is it?’ he said. ‘All those times when your mum was painting and drawing, she was working on these.’
‘It’s pretty cool.’ Annie swung her arms. ‘Rose says the wine tastes bad.’
Annie swung away from Alex, giggling at Trent who had put a pair of bunny ears on Luna. She looked around for Gladys and saw her in the corner, bug-eyed. She was looking around at everyone almost suspiciously, as though she couldn’t quite believe they were all here, all of them, to see Susan. To celebrate her work.
* * *
The bouncing of the truck is making Annie feel nauseous. She wishes she’d grabbed a drink back at the house.
She’s managed to squash a hat onto Pip to hide her half-bald head. Pip’s draped her scarf over the top, like she’s about to tackle Susan’s hives. She sucks on a box of apple juice and stares around.
When they pass the dead kangaroo on the side of the road, Pip yanks on Annie’s top. ‘It’s still dead, Mum.’
‘Yup.’
‘I can see bones.’
‘Me too.’
Pip frowns. ‘Why can I see bones but no other inside bits?’
‘Because the other inside bits rot away first. The bones can last for a very, very long time.’
‘Longer than a liver?’
‘Yes, Phillip.’
‘What about the lungs?’
‘Even longer than the lungs.’
Pip presses her hot, juice-sticky hands to Annie’s chest. ‘What about our hearts, Mumma?’
‘Bones last longer than hearts.’
‘Oh.’
Annie feels the other parents watching her from the tray. Trent climbs on with Max at the next stop.
‘Fancy seeing you here,’ he says, squashing down next to her.
‘Mum tricked me.’
Trent shakes his head and pulls a very sad face. ‘Max doesn’t care about Santa, but Max loves two things in life – trains and trucks. So here we are.’
‘I like eggs and my scarf,’ says Pip. ‘And Gran’s cupcakes.’
Trent nods very seriously. ‘Me too.’
Annie blinks at the passing scenery. She yawns. It’s meant to be some sort of parade past the best decorated houses in the area with Santa riding up front, but the decorations are mostly fairy lights, fresh from the homeware store down the mountain. They’re difficult to see properly, and the giant cutouts are mostly obscured by trees and shrubs. And she thinks that this is what parenthood is. Being scorched and parched on the back of an eighty-year-old truck while your six year old vaguely enjoys themselves.
If nothing else, it gives Annie a chance to look carefully for signs of the television show. She notices rigging for lights and portable toilets set up. She notices freshly graded driveways and new gravel. She nudges Trent. ‘It’s like one giant television set. How bizarre.’
Trent grunts.
Suddenly Annie hears half a siren sound, from the trees. She glances up and sees a shadow of a bird, low to the ground, with a curling silver tail. Her breath catches and she strains her neck around. Yes, she’s certain. ‘Stop the truck!’ she yells, dragging herself off the back of the tray and hurtling towards the edge of the forest.
The undergrowth is so thick. There is no way to tell where the sound has come from, which way she has to go to find it. She stands there for a moment but all she can hear are the whispers of the people on the truck, the idling of the ancient engine.
Nobody says anything to her, but there is a bristling in the back of the tray. Even Pip looks away from her, embarrassed. When they’re dropped off, Trent smiles but nobody else does and Annie and Pip walk up the driveway. Annie tries to hold Pip’s hand but Pip springs away. ‘Too hot!’
And it is, although it’s so still now. Like wading through cream. Or warm molasses.
When they near the house, Annie stops and grabs Pip’s sleeve.
‘P, is that your gran up on the roof?’
‘Yeah,’ Pip says, staring up at Annie like this is no big deal.
‘She’s on the roof.’
‘Yes, Mum!’
Susan sees them and waves. The sun is setting behind her. ‘I can see everything!’ Susan yells. ‘Gilbert likes it, see? Hello Gilbert!’
‘I want to go up!’ Pip yells, but Annie tightens her grip on Pip’s sleeve.
‘How the hell are you going to get down?’ Annie yells up to Susan.
‘Hell, hell,’ Pip mutters.
Susan holds her arms up. Annie thinks for one panicked moment that Susan will start dancing on the steep roof, but Susan just stands there, in the still dusk, with her hands held up to the bruising sky.
‘She’s beautiful,’ says Pip.
Annie lets go of Pip’s sleeve. ‘She’s something.’
* * *
Annie remembers something that could be a dream. Susan, standing on the roof wearing jeans and a T-shirt. A much younger Susan, drenched by rain. Gladys, on the ground, yelling at Susan to climb down. Susan lifting her arms and spinning around and Gladys grabbing Annie so tightly while they watched that her fingers left a bruise on Annie’s shoulder.
It may have been after a fight or after nothing at all. Annie remembers it vividly now. The smell of rain and wet earth. The feel of it pressing up between her toes.
Gladys yelling up into the rain. ‘Susan, get down!’
And Susan, bellowing back. Drenched and alive. ‘No! I won’t!’