The next morning Pip grits her teeth but doesn’t comment on the pull-up and Annie gets her showered in the lopsided bathroom and dressed and out onto the verandah with a bowl of wrinkled apple, cut up into bite-sized pieces.
Annie was up early, scrubbing the kitchen floors and putting a couple of loads of washing on, all the while listening to Susan snoring out on the verandah.
Everything feels different, but she feels better, back up the mountain. Better than she thought she would. Even with everything altered into something unfamiliar. She wants to tip her head back. Thank you, she’d think as the sun flecked her head. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
* * *
Annie sucks muesli out of her teeth and stares at her mother’s car. The car is covered in bird droppings and berries from the holly bush, but Annie doesn’t have another option. She’s woken up to find her own car’s battery is flat, and she has no idea where any leads are.
Susan is watering her potted plants. ‘It’s fine, Annie.’
‘It’s leaking oil, though.’
‘It’s fine!’
Annie opens the door and turns on the ignition. The car hiccoughs to life and grumbles to itself. The whole of it shaking and trembling with the effort.
Annie hangs her head out the window. ‘Mum, this car’s on its last legs.’
Susan wanders over. Her bare feet are coated in gravel dust. ‘It’s fine. I promise. Now, before I forget. Why is Pip insisting on being called Phillip?’
‘I don’t really know what it’s about. Since the fires, this year, she likes to be called Phillip. The counsellor says it’s a coping mechanism.’
Susan sighs and leans against the car. ‘Right. That’s strange.’
‘Very. Now, if I don’t make it back, I love you. You’ve been a stellar mother and take good care of Pip.’
Susan steps away from the car, wiping bird droppings from her hands. ‘I get Pip?’
‘You’ll have to duke it out with Tom.’ Annie shuts the car door. ‘Right. Do you want anything else?’
‘No. Just the flour. Thanks, darling.’
‘Keep a close eye on Pip.’ Annie stares at Giddy, who is standing by the car with one paw pressed up to the door. ‘Can Giddy come?’
‘He’d love to. Going into town’s his favourite thing.’
Annie sighs. ‘All right.’ She leans back and opens the back door. ‘C’mon Giddy.’ Giddy jumps in, his grinning, panting face obscuring Annie’s view of the paddocks behind her.
‘Don’t let Pip out of your sight.’
Susan frowns. ‘Of course. I’ll show her my hives. Didn’t lose you, did I?’
‘Okay, okay! Just don’t let her get stung. I don’t need her developing irrational fears about anything else. I’ll see you soon.’ She starts turning the car towards the driveway and it groans and shudders. Annie winces. ‘Maybe.’
She drives slowly, pulling over to let other cars pass her on the main road. She picks up what she needs, the flour and milk and the pull-ups for Pip.
Annie doesn’t drive straight home to the farm. Instead, she locks the car and walks down the main street to Len’s house. The air is thick and hot. She wipes sweat from her forehead.
The few people she meets don’t smile at her and she wonders about it. It prickles at her. The town feels strangely restless.
She’s always loved Len’s house, though. And there is nothing restless about it. The sweeping oak trees and bluestone sections along the front. Len moved there when he was in his early twenties and Annie was still in primary school. She didn’t understand then why Gladys was so proud of him for moving into that house. When she started saving for her own, she realised. Len had worked nightshifts while he studied. He knew he’d need a separate place out of town to practice from; somewhere large enough to accommodate cows and horses. For years, he operated out of the bottom storey of his home, and it’s surreal to see him working from there all over again.
Annie sits at the kitchen table with Rose. It’s kept upstairs now. The downstairs cleared for consults and cages and examination tables. So different from the vet practice in the city. Len’s house smells of ammonia and gravel and lavender oil once again. It smells like home.
There’s a breeze outside. A hot, sleepy breeze that makes the dozens of wind chimes murmur. It’s overwhelming, the sound of so many chiming at once. But it is a lulling sound and Annie feels like putting her head down on the table and sleeping. There are so many, strung all around the house and garden, that Annie can’t pinpoint which sound is coming from where.
‘It’s nice, isn’t it?’ Rose says. ‘Sometimes they drive me crazy, but mostly I like them. Particularly when it’s just a breeze.’
‘In the wind?’
Rose grimaces. ‘Len likes them in the wind, but it’s like being surrounded by banshees. I’d rather just listen to the wind. You can still hear it under the chimes anyway.’
Rose puts the mug down in front of her and sits down opposite. She has strung coloured gauze up over the windows. It makes the space upstairs less squashed, more like a cottage hidden in the woods.
Annie runs her fingers over the dints and ridges of the table. ‘You know Gladys made this?’
‘Impressive.’
‘She was a woman born before her time.’
‘And in the wrong place. This town isn’t exactly at the forefront of anything.’
‘No.’ Annie sips her tea. The satiny feel of the milk and tannins. Like pressing a kiss to someone. She clears her throat, not thinking of Tom. ‘Hey, you ever think of moving somewhere? Closer in to work? Away from here?’
Rose rolls her eyes. ‘Seriously? Can you imagine Len in the city? He’d go nuts if he didn’t have his lyrebirds. It’d be like Crocodile Dundee but without the charm.’
Annie snorts.
Rose puts her mug down and frowns. ‘You know? I do sometimes. Think about it. Particularly since everything. Up here’s pretty fucked-up now. It used to be pretty grey, you know? I think most places are grey. But the fires, they make everything shatter into black and white. It’s all so extreme. Everything. Moments where people are so beautiful and so strong and so giving, and then all the other stuff. It’s bloody exhausting.’
Annie props her chin in her hands. ‘So, you do think about going?’
‘Yeah, but I love Len. And Len belongs here. This is his place. This is where his birds are. And I think it’d be different if the city was my place, but I don’t have a place like he does. I have a person.’ Rose shrugs. ‘I think some people either have a person or a place. And not even necessarily a romantic person. Just a person. I don’t have a place, Annie.’
Annie frowns. ‘I’ve never thought of it like that.’
‘Does Tom have a place?’
‘No.’ Annie snorts. ‘He just really, really hates the mountain.’
‘Yeah, well. It nearly killed you and Pip. Can’t blame him. Guess he won’t be watching the telly show then.’ Rose sips her tea.
‘The what?’
‘Seriously? There’s been a huge thing about it! A massive shit storm. This major news company wants to do an in-depth documentary about the fires. It’s got everyone divided. Most people think it’s disrespectful and will just retraumatise everyone, but the company’s promised to contract all locals for sets and transport and catering and stuff.’
‘How’ve I not heard about this?’
‘I’d say because you’re never up here, but it’s been all over the news.’
‘Far out. And what d’you think about it?’
‘Me? I think it’d be great to have money pouring in that’s not from welfare agencies, but I can’t imagine it’s going to do anyone up here much good, being thrown back into thinking about last year, you know? Why can’t they film an eighteenth season of The Saddle Club or something innocuous like that?’
‘I can’t believe I haven’t heard anything.’
‘Well, you have now. And what do you think about it?’
Annie frowns. ‘That everyone should just piss off and let the people up here get their shit together.’
Rose chuckles. ‘Spoken like a true local. It’s good to have you back.’
* * *
When Annie was young, she would collect ten-cent coins for Len. The lyrebird on them pleased her. They made her think of their silent walks through the forest, the smell of sap and moss and wet earth and everything unknown in between.
Once she made Rose come up with her to the counter at the newsagency when they were waiting for Rose’s father to pick them up from school. Annie was thirteen. Rose fifteen, or near enough. She kept her arms tightly crossed. She kept rolling her eyes. Annie remembers the sharpness of the wind, how the pavement was wet and the newsagency seemed snug enough to sleep in.
Rose flipped through an art magazine and rubbed at her ears. She’d pierced them with a pin, but her mother had made her take the earrings out. She’d been sullen over it for days.
Annie put five dollars on the counter and Shelley Cootes smiled. ‘Ten cents?’ she said.
Annie nodded. ‘Len’s birthday. He’s thirty. Can you believe it?’
‘Well, is that right?’ Shelley Cootes counted out the coins carefully, but when Annie counted them later, onto her bedspread, she found that Shelley had given her a few dollars extra. They seemed to gleam more than the others she’d collected. She wanted to fill a mason jar with them. Len had had a slow season finding the male superb lyrebirds. Annie had read all about them in a bird book Gladys had given her. They hid in heavy undergrowth and their mimicry was ghostly; it was hard to find their source. Len was worried they were leaving the mountain or being killed by wild dogs and foxes.
When she gave Len the mason jar, he blinked at it and ran his fingers through the coins and squeezed her hand, tight and long. ‘It’s the most wonderful thing I’ve ever been given,’ he said.
Annie kept collecting coins for him. And when she moved to the city, she’d occasionally send him one or two. Without a note. It was a ritual between them. She sent them and he received them. It had tapered off over the years, but since the fires, since Annie had moved back to the city earlier this year after the two months on the mountain with her mother, she had started sending them again. She put notes in now. We’re okay.
Last year for her birthday, Len sent her a ten-cent coin that had been fashioned into the curved face of a ring. He’d done it with his welder, although Annie couldn’t imagine how.
The press of silver coins. Sometimes the cool, thin weight of them made her giddy. She wondered if they made Len feel the same.
* * *
Back in her car, Annie presses Tom’s number into her phone and it rings twice and he answers but doesn’t say anything.
‘Tom,’ she says, fiddling with the edge of the window frame. Wishing the passenger window unwound too, so she could be sitting in a breeze. She feels stuck.
‘Annie. How’s Pip?’
‘She’s okay, I think.’ Annie pauses. ‘By the way, she wets the bed now.’
‘Oh, shit. She hasn’t done that in …’
‘I know.’
Tom sighs static down the phone. ‘Do you think it’s being back up on the mountain?’
‘Yeah. Yeah, I mean, that has to be it, right?’
Tom doesn’t say anything for a long moment. Annie can hear him breathing. When he does speak, his voice is quiet. ‘What’s it like up there?’
‘It’s … different.’ Annie swallows. ‘Hey, have you heard about that documentary they’re wanting to film up here?’
‘Yeah. Annie, we’ve talked about it.’
‘We have?’
‘You were washing something or ironing or something and you said it sucked.’
‘Well, I wasn’t listening.’
‘What?’
‘When I’m superbusy trying to get stuff done before work, I’m not listening a lot of the time. I thought you knew.’
‘That you don’t listen to me.’
Annie picks at a bit of loose skin next to her nail. ‘Yeah.’
Tom sighs. ‘Well, that’s just great.’ He pauses. ‘I really miss you guys, you know.’
‘I know. We miss you too.’
‘The house is too quiet.’
‘I know.’
‘It’s actually neat, Annie. Do you know how long it’s been since the house was neat?’
Annie closes her eyes.
Tom’s voice grows uncertain. ‘Why can’t you come home?’
‘Because I need to be here. Mum’s not good and … I need to be here. And Pip. I can see her unwinding, Tom. In bits and pieces. She’s better out here.’
‘Explain it to me.’
‘I can’t.’
‘Please?’ His voice catches.
‘I can’t explain it. I feel so weird, Tom. I’ve felt weird this whole year. And our relationship feels weird and I just need to work it out. And I can’t do that when I’m in the city. And Mum needs me here. For a while at least.’
‘Annie, we need to work it out together. You and me.’
‘But we can’t! I can’t. I’ve been trying since I came back off the mountain. I need to work it out for myself, Tom.’
‘Without me.’
‘No. Not without you. I just need to be here. This is the only place I can do it.’
‘Without me! That’s what you’re saying.’
‘It’s not! Come up here with us,’ Annie says. ‘I just need to be away from the city.’
‘Annie, work is insane. If I leave right now, I’ll be fired.’
‘Well then. We both have things we have to do.’
‘You can’t compare you pissing off up the mountain on a whim with me trying to keep my job! Particularly after you bailed on yours! Bloody hell, Annie.’
‘If you can’t see how much we need to be here, I don’t know what else I can say to you.’
‘Okay.’
Annie closes her eyes. ‘Okay.’
* * *
Annie does not miss Tom as a whole, but in pieces. And it worries her. That maybe she should be missing him in a way that is more complete. She misses the physicality of him.
They met in a bar. And it galls her. She always thought she’d meet a lyrebird enthusiast; a horserider; a mountain person. She thought she’d meet someone doing her course or someone who’d also collected ten-cent coins for someone when they were younger.
She couldn’t pinpoint what it was that she and Tom had in common, what had pulled them together. She didn’t like being unable to articulate their connection. As though without words it was somehow less strong.
She and a vet science friend, Lydia, were out at another friend’s birthday. She can’t remember the name of the friend, or how old they were turning. Just that it was a number significant enough for drunk dancing in the city, but not for a cake with numbers iced onto it.
Tom didn’t dance and neither did she. They sat drunkenly staring at their friends singing along to Bon Jovi. Annie smiled at him. She liked his eyes, his hair, how he didn’t get raucous even though he’d had enough beer to slur his words and slow the motion of his hands.
His hands were broad with spade-shaped nails. When she leant forward to pick up a dropped credit card, she liked how he looked quickly at her, her top gaping open, and then quickly away, with a blush.
She would’ve gone home with him that night, but he didn’t ask, didn’t push. Just her number. He blushed twice.
There were no butterflies. No urgency. Tom was always comfortable, loving. They fitted, even if Annie could never work out why. Their happiness was quiet and round-edged. He was not Alex and she was not sixteen and she thinks this has paled things that may have otherwise been so brightly coloured she’d have been dazzled. Tom doesn’t mind their small circles in the city.
He’s been moving in small circles all his life.