When she pulls up back outside Susan’s house, the car stops but the gravel she’s kicked up keeps moving in a slow, low cloud. She feels like she’s trapped in half-set jelly, still warm from the saucepan.
The air is thick and the trees around the house are still. Annie is struck by how light the place is. It has struck her every time she’s been up the mountain since the fire, since the cypress crushed half the house. How shadowed her childhood was, because of that cypress. How dappled her memories are, filtered through the cypress’s heavy branches.
Eucalypts spring back to life after a fire. It spurs them on – new shoots, new seeds. Like a burst of adrenaline, the gum trees on the mountain have already sprung forward into a sprint. The air is already thick with the smell of them. Their deep, strong smell. Like rushing water, even in the hot air.
But the cypress trees are not from here. The shock of the fire kills them. No new shoots, no seeds dropped into hot, gaping soil. Their branches groan in the breeze. Their needles don’t chatter.
Some trees don’t belong on the mountain.
Pip comes running out of the house, green gumboots on the wrong feet, holding her arm out.
‘Look, Mumma!’
Annie lifts her sunglasses.
‘What happened?’
‘Bee sting,’ says Susan, coming out barefoot after her. ‘She was very brave.’
Annie grabs Pip’s wrists and Pip twists free. ‘Ouch, Mum!’
‘How do you feel?’ Annie asks.
Pip rubs her wrists, wounded. ‘It hurts!’
‘Has she had any swelling?’ Annie asks Susan.
Susan rolls her eyes and holds out an icepack to Pip, who slides it back into place over the sting. ‘Oh, Annie. She’s not allergic! Calm down, for Pete’s sake. You’re being ridiculous.’
‘I’m not.’ Annie crosses her arms and then uncrosses them. ‘You okay, Pip?’
‘Phillip,’ Pip mutters, stalking with her icepack back into the house.
Annie leans against the car. ‘You said you wouldn’t let her get bitten.’
‘Stung. And I said she’d be fine and she is. A bee sting isn’t a catastrophe, it’s childhood.’
Annie spins around. ‘You don’t get it! The buck never stopped with you. It stopped with Nana. You don’t get what it’s like having a tiny human reliant on you!’
Susan goes very still. Her eyes narrow. ‘Really? You really think I don’t know what bringing up a child is like?’
Annie blows her breath out. ‘Oh, Mum. I’m sorry. That’s not what I meant. I just – it’s different. That’s all.’
‘I was a single mum.’
‘I know.’
‘I didn’t have a Tom.’ Susan sniffs. ‘And I was less than half your age.’
‘I know, Mum.’ Annie leans her head back on the roof of the car. ‘I bloody know.’
‘You have no idea what it was like for me here. Not one bit. And I’m sick of you attacking me every time I disagree with you over Pip.’
‘All right, Mum.’
‘It’s just a bee sting. Remember your bee stings?’
Annie remembers Susan bent over, trying to tweezer the stinger out before Gladys came home and reprimanded her for not keeping a closer eye on Annie. The sadness when Annie realised the bee had died. How Susan pressed the icepack to her skin until it felt hot. How she explained to Annie that bees communicate in ways other than stinging, how they butt you with their heads to warn you away before they start to get more aggressive. Annie took solace in their headbutting, afterwards. And when she moved away, it always felt like she was complicit in something; a secret language. Watching the bees.
Susan leans next to Annie against the car.
‘Mum, how come you never mentioned the television series that company wants to film up here?’
‘What? Oh, that silly thing! Because I don’t care either way. I don’t have a television and, let’s face it, I don’t get out that much these days. So what do I care?’
‘Hmph.’
Susan shifts. ‘She loves them, you know?’
‘What?’
‘The bees. Pippa loves them. She loves the bees and the hives.’
‘Okay,’ Annie says, crossing her arms.
Susan sighs. ‘I do get sad about them.’
‘Your hives?’
‘The drones.’
‘The drones?’ Annie blinks. ‘The male bees? Why?’
‘Because it’s just so sad. They don’t actually serve any function except having sex with the queen and then dying. And then the poor little things that don’t get with any queens get thrown out before winter and die anyway!’
She looks sadly at Annie. ‘I do wish I could make them a little bachelor hive, keep them snug over winter.’
‘Oh, Mum!’
‘Doesn’t it make you sad, though? Annie?’
Annie grunts and heads into the bathroom, which is hot and smells of things green and rotting. Like the parts of the forest that are in quiet hollows, damp and stagnating.
The door jams when she tries to push it closed. ‘Mum?’ she calls. She sticks her head out the door. ‘Mum!’
Susan arches her neck around the kitchen door. ‘What?’
‘The door won’t shut.’ Annie steps out into the hallway and tries to pull Susan’s bedroom door closed. It clogs halfway against the floor. ‘Mum, none of the doors work!’
‘Hmm,’ says Susan. ‘Didn’t bother you yesterday.’
‘It did! It did bother me yesterday! And the cupboards!’ Annie tries to open the vanity above the sink. ‘The cupboards are all stuck!’
‘Yeah.’ Susan leans against the door. ‘I’ve taken most of the doors off. It’s easier that way.’
‘Mum! That’s why you’ve taken all the cupboard doors off in the kitchen?’
Susan shrugs and stretches. ‘You quite finished?’
‘You’re getting someone to come out and check the place out. Now. Okay?’
‘Yes, Mum!’ Susan calls over her shoulder, heading back into the kitchen.
‘I’m serious!’ Annie calls. She stands in the bathroom for a moment before trying to slam the door shut. It stutters and screeches on the lino a foot from the frame and she kicks it hard. ‘Fucking thing!’
* * *
It’s five o’clock, but this deeply into summer it seems earlier. The light here is fierce. There’s still that heavy, squashing heat. Even early in the morning and late into the evening. It stretches across the paddocks, disappearing into the crosshatch of tree-trunk shadows and into the rainforest.
Annie leans her chin on her knees and holds out a cheese and biscuit for Pip, who’s playing on Annie’s old Etch A Sketch. Annie’s hair has nearly dried.
‘Fun?’ Annie asks as Pip takes the biscuit.
Pip nods. ‘Wish it was coloured, though.’
‘I used to wish that too.’
Pip keeps touching the place on her arm where she was stung. ‘I like cheese.’
‘Me too.’
Susan comes striding out onto the verandah and puts her hands on her hips. Annie tilts her head back. ‘Did you call the insurance company?’
Susan shakes her head. ‘I’ve been busy.’
‘Busy doing what? Working? Have you done any pieces since the fires?’ Annie frowns. ‘Have you spoken to your publisher?’
‘Course I have! Don’t start, Annie.’ Susan beams at Pip. ‘Let’s all go to the community dinner!’
‘I dunno, Mum. We’re pretty tired.’
Susan’s face falls.
‘What’s the community dinner?’ Pip asks. She holds out her arm. ‘It hurts.’
Susan kisses Pip’s arm. The sting has already faded.
‘It’s just a lovely party where everyone gets together with delicious food and catches up. You like dancing, don’t you? There’s all sorts of dancing and jokes and fun things.’
Pip nods. ‘I like dancing.’
‘All right,’ says Annie. ‘We’ll go. But I’ve heard rumours about you, Mum. Sure you’ll be allowed back?’
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake! It was on a chair, Annie! The bloody squares in this town. Sometimes I wake up and can’t believe I’m still on this bloody mountain.’
‘Are you cranky, Gran?’
‘A bit, sweetheart. You see, Granny didn’t tabletop dance at the community dinner, but people around here are bored and seem intent on making up all sorts of rumours. Because there’s apparently not enough real stuff going on. Did you know that Malcolm’s been gasbagging to everyone about how the Bluff family’s been accessing donations even though they were renting their house and didn’t own it? The carry-on, Annie! I swear –’
‘What time does it start?’
Susan glances at her stopped watch and then up at the kitchen clock. ‘Oh! In about fifteen. Perfect, just enough time to put on a fresh face. The cupcakes are already in a container.’ Susan waltzes off down the hallway. The house vibrates with her weight. Her energy. Annie thinks of Gladys, how her grandmother would roll her eyes if she could see Susan. Buzzing around like a fart in a bottle.
Pip stares down the hallway after Susan. ‘What’s a fresh face, Mum?’
That sigh. Of Gladys and trees dropping their leaves in the heat. Annie looks away from the too-bright light and wipes a hand across her own sweaty forehead. ‘Makeup, Pip. Mascara and lipstick and stuff. That’s what Gran means. How’s your wrist?’
Pip half shrugs. ‘Phillip.’
‘How about I just call you P? And you know it means Phillip?’
Pip tilts her head and thinks about this for a moment. ‘All right. Call me P.’
‘And your wrist?’
Pip holds it up. ‘Kiss.’
Annie plants one on her daughter’s translucent skin and runs a finger around the sting.
‘Can barely see it now,’ she says, thinking of Gladys. A kiss won’t do anything. Give it a rub or an ice pack or a heat pack. But she’d always give Annie a sort of quick, brusque hug. Once Susan wasn’t looking. Annie’s scabbed knees and bruised elbows and sunburnt nose and shoulders. Her splinters and nail-punctured soles. Annie always went to Gladys when she hurt herself. And it’s only since Pip that she realises how painful that would have been for Susan.
In Annie’s memories, it is Gladys’s quick, hard hugs that had the magic, that soothed. Gladys’s magic was like the magic of the forest, unknowable yet familiar. And she listens to her mother now. She listens to Susan being busy with old, mismatched makeup and she feels a thud in her insides and her fingers tighten on Pip’s wrist.
* * *
Growing up, her mother was sweet and fleeting and Gladys was solid and savoury. A bitterness coursed through her sometimes, but this was only something that Annie noticed as she grew older.
Susan baked slices and cakes and mousses. She painted with bright colours. Her Luna illustrations were vibrant and detailed and seemed to smell of summer. Annie still remembers the shape of Luna on the thick watercolour paper; Luna in motion, Luna eating grass, Luna jumping a log. They were the first paintings of Luna that Annie remembers seeing. The beginnings of Susan’s Luna book series. Susan’s work reminded Annie of beach summer, not mountain summer. Where you could still breathe. Where you weren’t trapped.
Susan smelt like pressed flowers and perfume and the essential oils she bought at the market and pressed into the groove of her wrists and pale elbow creases. She smelt like the rose shampoo she always washed her hair with and the ginger caught under her nails from cooking.
Gladys smelt like earth and the tobacco in the pipe she liked to smoke. She slaughtered their old chickens and on those nights she smelt of blood, of rust. She cooked the vegetables and seasoned them so Susan would eat them. She smelt like the fine shavings of wood that she trailed through the house. Like mud in winter and gravel dust in summer. She smelt of wool and iron and green.
Gladys’s husband, Susan’s father, had died when Len and Susan were young, many years before Annie was born. Gladys never talked about it and Susan didn’t remember it. What Annie knew about her grandfather she had heard from other people in the town. He drove his tractor down the main street. He helped Fraser King down a dead gum near his house. He liked cherries. The stories she heard, the ones she remembered, were scant, but she didn’t feel like she needed more. Living here, on the mountain, surrounded by people with memories of him, was all Annie ever needed.
Annie felt safer with Gladys than she ever did with Susan. Susan was forever glancing over her shoulder, cautious of being watched, of being found wanting. She was never easy with Annie. Not like Gladys was. Gladys was as vital and strong as the rain and storms she grumbled about. Susan as unsettled as Luna in the wind, feet drumming on the ground, snorting at everything that moved.
* * *
Annie bundles Pip into the back of Susan’s car while Susan rubs moisturiser into her hands. She’s put on a flowing purple dress that Gladys would have rolled her eyes at.
Annie slots the key in and the car gurgles into life. Susan starts to fiddle with the air vents. ‘I don’t want the icing to melt.’
‘It’ll be fine, Mum.’
Nigel screeches and lands on the windscreen, making all three of them jump.
‘Shoo!’ says Susan.
‘Oh, let him come if he wants to,’ says Annie, reaching out so Nigel steps up onto her wrist. ‘He’ll just doze on the wing mirror once it gets dark.’
‘You let him get away with murder.’
‘By all accounts, he’ll still be less of a spectacle than you.’
Annie puts Nigel in the back seat and Pip grins. ‘Nigel!’
Susan snorts and opens the window. A foul smell fills the car as they pass a dead kangaroo on the side of the road.
‘Good to see the roos back again,’ says Susan.
‘Be nicer if they weren’t rotting,’ says Annie.
‘Gran?’
‘Yes, my dearest of dear things?’
‘How’d the roo die?’
‘I think it was hit by a car, sweetheart. Sometimes they just hop out of nowhere.’
Pip stares quickly out the window at the passing trees. ‘How did it die, though?’
‘What do you mean? It got hit by a car. Gran just said so,’ says Annie.
‘But how does that kill it?’
‘Well, animals and people are made up of organs and blood and bones – you’ve got your doctor game, you know what’s inside people. And animals have the same things. A stomach and a heart and lungs. And they’re delicate and if something big and fast and heavy like a car hits it, sometimes it damages all the fragile stuff inside. And if no one’s there to make them better, they die.’
‘Was it dead, though?’
Annie sighs. ‘It was dead, Pip.’
‘P.’
‘It was dead, P.’
‘We should check,’ says Pip.
Susan turns around in her seat. ‘Check what? The dead kangaroo? Sweetheart, that kangaroo’s been dead for days. No living kangaroo’s going to smell like that.’
‘Well, we should see how it died.’
‘It got hit by a car,’ says Annie. ‘That’s how it died.’
‘But what happened? Inside it? We should check.’ Pip turns in her booster seat and strains backwards, staring at the road behind them.
‘We don’t need to check,’ Annie says.
‘But we should.’
‘Maybe another time,’ says Susan.
‘No,’ says Annie. ‘We’re never going to stop and see how very dead roadkill has been killed. We’re never going to do that, Pip.’
‘P,’ Pip mutters, crossing her arms. ‘Hey, Gran?’
‘Yes, my treasure.’
‘What happened to Bess?’
Annie glances sideways at Susan and raises an eyebrow. ‘Bess the cow, you mean, P?’
‘Yeah. Bess the cow. Gran’s cow.’
Annie winds down her window as they turn onto the road. ‘Yeah. Where’s Bess, Mum?’
Susan narrows her eyes at Annie and then turns in her seat to look at Pip. ‘Well, sweetheart, Bess is in heaven.’
‘Heaven,’ repeats Pip.
‘Yes, dear. Heaven. She had a good, long life and now she’s up in heaven, eating lots of grass and dandelions and being a very happy cow indeed.’
‘She died,’ says Annie. ‘Like Angela’s old cat. Remember?’
Pip swallows. ‘But I liked Bess,’ she says. That warble in her voice.
‘Sometimes people and animals die. Whether we like them or not. You know that.’
Pip pulls her scarf over her face.
‘Oh! Look! We’re here,’ says Susan, running her fingers up Pip’s leg. Pip bats her away but peeps out through her scarf. They lock the car and leave Nigel on the side mirror. He puffs himself up and hops onto the ground, searching through the nuts and scraps in the gravel.
The community dinner is held in the main hall at the school. It still smells of paint and fresh, cheap wood. Annie wrinkles her nose when they go in. There are tables and gladwrapped food and paper plates and someone strumming a guitar. There’s a stall with a few community service workers handing out brochures.
Annie steers Pip towards the table. ‘What do you feel like?’ she asks.
‘Gran’s cakes.’
‘Okay. But you need something else too.’
Rose loops her arm around Annie’s waist. ‘You didn’t heed our warning.’
‘She insisted.’
Rose shakes her head. ‘Well, she might behave if you guys are here. She was a bloody nightmare last time. Drink?’
‘Thanks.’
A woman with wavy blonde hair and a tight tank top sees Annie and pauses. ‘Hey, you’re that bloody horse lady.’
‘I’m sorry?’
The woman rolls her eyes. ‘You’re the one in all the papers and that. Fucking yuppie from the city and you end up in all the papers.’ The woman shakes her head and Annie feels Pip’s fingers lace through hers. The feeling of her daughter’s fingers makes her eyes blur with a confusion of tears.
‘My mum’s not a yuppie,’ says Pip, her voice loud and firm.
The woman snorts. ‘Fucking journalist pricks. Should’ve picked one of us real locals.’
Annie feels herself steeling, her fingers curling up into fists. ‘What the hell is your problem? I grew up on this mountain. I lived here for twenty years. Twenty years! How long have you lived up here?’
The woman clears her throat.
‘And you know what? My mother lives here. And her mother. And her mother. Four generations. And for your information, I hate the freaking photo. Every time I see it I feel sick. So next time, keep your trap shut and don’t make assumptions. Excuse me.’
‘Freaking,’ Pip says, gazing up at Annie.
The woman doesn’t move for a moment, then slowly goes and sits down at her table. Annie hears the woman muttering something to someone over the plastic tablecloth. Judy is there, across from the woman. She waves at Susan, her mouth full of sausage.
A man Annie has never met suddenly brushes her arm. ‘You’re Annie Thompson, right? My name’s Hector Ross.’
‘Yes, I’m Annie.’
‘I’m from QPD. Mind if I have a word?’
‘QPD?’
‘It’s a television company.’ He steers her and Pip to the quietest corner of the room. ‘I’m sure you’ve heard about our documentary series.’
Annie crosses her arms and says nothing.
‘We want you to be in it.’
‘What?’
‘Just as a sort of host. We want to interview you and have you helping to interview the other survivors alongside John Peter. You heard of him? Brilliant interviewer. He was on the scene after that awful avalanche a couple of years ago in the high country. Anyway, what d’you think?’
‘No thanks and let go of my arm.’
Hector releases her. ‘It’s a brilliant opportunity. It’s going to have national coverage.’
‘So did that photo of me coming down the mountain and a fat lot of good it’s done. Excuse me.’ Annie shrugs away from him.
‘You right?’ Rose asks.
‘Yeah. Apparently some yuppie from the city shouldn’t have been in the paper representing locals.’
‘Who said that? Oh, Charmaine. Don’t worry about her. She didn’t have any insurance and she’s not eligible for anything grant-wise. Chip on the shoulder, that one.’
‘And the television company wants me to be in the show.’
Rose stops trying to drag her to the food table. ‘For real?’
‘To host it or something.’ Annie shudders.
Rose chuckles and then starts to laugh so hard that her eyes run. ‘Oh my, that’s the best thing I’ve ever heard. I suspect you politely declined?’
‘More politely than I should’ve. Is that why everyone’s on edge? Because he’s here?’
‘Oh, there’s all these politics at play. People wanting their land to be used – they’re incorporating some reenactments or something and need space for sets. It’s a giant mess. C’mon.’
Rose steers her and Pip towards the food table. It’s laden with stews and salad and barbecued meats that make Annie’s stomach turn.
‘I spent all week on this,’ a silver-haired woman is breathlessly telling her friend. They’re leaning over a cake. Its icing is melting in the heat.
‘All week? How could she spend all week on a cake?’ Annie whispers.
Rose gives her a strange look. There is a flicker of Charmaine there. Disdain, maybe. Rose leans into Annie’s ear. ‘Of course she’d spend all week on it! She didn’t have anything insured either. She’s living in one of those tiny units set up next to the oval. You get the ones like Charmaine who whine and bitch, and then the ones like Leanne here who just keep busy and give back as much as they can.’
Annie swallows hard. ‘All right.’
‘Anyway. Have you said hi to Jenny?’ Rose asks. She nods towards one of the back tables where Jenny Rivers is sitting by herself with a bowl of pasta salad and a plate of sausages. The tables on either side of her are empty too. People keep looking at her, falling silent, then dragging their chairs closer together.
‘C’mon, P,’ says Annie. ‘Grab a sausage and we’ll go say hi to Jenny. You remember Jenny, don’t you?’
Pip glances at Jenny and shakes her head. ‘Don’t want a sausage.’
‘Here. Quiche. Yum.’ Rose crams a mini quiche into Pip’s hand. Pip looks down at it for a minute, and then back at Rose. She slowly puts it in her mouth. ‘Good,’ she says, swallowing. ‘Mum, do I like quiche?’
Annie sits down opposite Jenny and pulls Pip into her lap. ‘Apparently.’
Jenny startles at her and then half smiles. ‘Annie! I didn’t know you were back on the mountain.’
‘Just for a visit.’
Jenny nods. She’s a tall woman, but she’s hunched over, bent towards the table. Her hair is greasy and pulled back unevenly into a ponytail. Her forehead is slicked with sweat, her upper lip dotted with it. She brushes a few stray hairs clear of her forehead and stares at Pip.
‘You’re huge!’ Jenny says and laughs. She smells like wine, the rancid smell of too much. Annie’s stomach tightens. Jenny always got along better with Gladys than Susan ever did. Susan always said it was because Jenny was ten years older than she was, but Annie thought there was more to it than that.
Even when her husband died, even when all that happened, Jenny was always showered and smart and upright. She saved her drinking for late into the night. But here she is, in the early evening, swaying in her chair, her lips stained with wine.
Pip presses against Annie. ‘I like quiche,’ she murmurs.
Jenny rests her head sideways on her hand. Annie reaches across the table and squeezes it. ‘How’re you doing? It must be bloody awful,’ she says.
‘Bloody,’ says Pip, nibbling the pastry of the quiche and swinging her legs into Annie’s shins. ‘Fucking,’ she adds.
‘Pippa!’
‘What? That lady said it!’ Pip nods across the room towards Charmaine.
Jenny lifts her head enough to meet Annie’s eyes and laughs. ‘Not how I thought things would turn out, but I’m still vertical. Most of the time. Can’t ask for much more than that, can you?’
Pip watches Jenny eating her sausages, fascinated, her head tilted to one side. Jenny waves her fork at Pip. ‘Get your eyes off ’em. They’re mine.’
‘The sausages?’ Pip asks, utterly nonplussed. ‘I don’t like sausages. They come from pigs.’
‘You don’t like pigs?’ Jenny says.
‘I love pigs,’ says Pip.
‘Well, you should love sausages.’
Pip glances from Jenny to Annie and bites her lip. A man comes up to the table, a can of VB in his hand. ‘You’ve got some nerve.’
For a moment Annie thinks he’s talking to her, but his slick eyes are focused on Jenny. ‘You’ve got some fucking nerve being here after what your son did.’
Jenny gazes at the man as though he’s a vaguely interesting piece of roadkill on the gravel shoulder of a highway. Then, very slowly, she raises her middle finger and just sits there, holding it up.
‘Stupid bitch,’ the man mutters, turning away.
‘Do you kiss your mother with that mouth?’ Jenny yells after him.
‘How’s your back?’ Annie asks. For as long as she can remember, Jenny has suffered from a bad back. The result of a nasty riding accident when she was younger. Most days she couldn’t ride the horses and limped around, lunging them and caring for them while Alex rode. Since the fires, her back has been even worse. Susan has told Annie in hushed tones that some days Jenny can barely move at all.
‘It’s fucked,’ says Jenny. ‘Need a new one.’
Annie glances down at Pip, who mouths the word and has another bite of quiche.
‘Have you heard from Alex? He doing okay?’ Rose asks.
Jenny’s voice cracks when she speaks. ‘Hear from him every now and then. He’s at me to move down to the city with him.’
‘He’s living in the city?’ Annie says, her voice flat now. It seems impossible. Too strange. That Alex has been sharing that alien place with her. The car sounds and fumes and constant sound of people. That he is moving in his own small circles, right near hers.
‘Where’d you think he was?’ Rose asks Annie, tapping her hand on the table. ‘Seriously, Annie. You can be pretty dense sometimes.’
Jenny sniffs. ‘He wants me to move down there with him. Stupid boy.’
‘Wouldn’t be that bad an idea, would it?’ Rose pokes at the wilting lettuce and tomato on her plate. ‘Your back’s been bloody awful lately. Wouldn’t hurt to have another set of hands around to help you. And be closer to a hospital.’
‘I’m fine,’ Jenny snaps.
‘The hospital,’ Rose continues. ‘It’s an hour away. That’s a long way, particularly when you have to be driven to emergency at three a.m. because you need morphine for your back.’
‘I’ve already thanked you for that,’ Jenny says. ‘And I offered to pay for petrol.’
‘Well, he can’t live up here. Obviously. Not with how everyone’s scapegoating him. If you want to see him, you’ve got to move down.’ Rose chews and swallows. ‘I’d want to, if he was my kid.’
‘Well, you don’t have any kids, do you?’ Jenny skewers a piece of fairy bread and her sausage. ‘So you can fuck right off, Rose.’
‘Jenny,’ says Annie, wanting to cover Pip’s ears, but knowing she will just violently shrug away.
‘No, you can fuck off,’ says Rose. ‘Has it occurred to you that Alex might actually want you closer? Might want to see a bit of his mum after the time he’s had? You’re bloody selfish, Jenny.’ Rose gets up noisily and crosses to another table.
‘What stuff?’ asks Pip. ‘What’s happened?’
Jenny frowns. ‘Him starting the fires and all that.’
Pip clings to Annie. ‘Alex made the fires?’
‘No, P. It was an accident. Like when you broke Dad’s phone. He made a terrible mistake.’
Pip frowns up at Annie. ‘But she just said he did it.’
‘It was an accident,’ Annie says. ‘Pip, you’re shaking.’
‘A person made the fires.’
‘Pippa, listen – ’
Pip drags herself off Annie’s lap. Annie feels the burn of little fingernails on her wrist. ‘My name is Phillip!’ she roars, and disappears under the table like some sort of furred animal wiggling into a burrow.
Annie rests her head in her hands and tries very hard not to think of Alex.
‘You right, love?’ Len sits down next to her.
‘Peachy. Don’t tread on Pip.’
‘Phillip!’ Pip squeals and Annie feels a little fist against her shin. She snaps the tablecloth up. ‘Pippa Thompson, it’s okay to be upset and angry, but you are not to punch me. Do you understand?’
‘Leave me alone!’ Pip smacks her leg and Annie has to stop herself from dragging Pip out by the arm and smacking her. She’s never smacked Pip, but it’s something, shamefully, she’s frequently close to.
Len touches her arm. ‘Why don’t you go get a drink and I’ll hold the fort, eh?’
‘I need to get her out!’ Annie hisses.
‘Why? Let her sit down there. She’ll get bored and come out herself in no time. Go get a drink. Calm down.’
Annie spins around to face him. “What?’
‘She’ll come out.’
‘You know what? When you have kids you can start giving me advice. Back the heck off, thanks.’
Len winces and holds his hands up. ‘Well, up to you.’
‘All right. All right, I’ll go out. I’m sorry.’
Len turns back to the table.
Annie pours herself a wine and goes outside. It’s warm and still and she can see Nigel on the wing mirror, fast asleep with his head under his wing. She makes herself breathe slowly and deeply.
She walks slowly along the edge of bush that hems in the south side of the car park. The leaves clatter restlessly. The ground is cracked and hard, littered with branches from a recent heavy wind. Annie’s head pounds – that tight, deep nook behind the eye. Stress and anger and helplessness. And something else. Something that flared at the mention of Alex’s name.
Something that makes her pound all over.
She feels calmer now. She feels oddly lonely. She presses Tom’s number into her phone.
He answers on the third ring. His voice is groggy, she hears the television snap off in the background. ‘Hello?’ he says.
‘Hey. Did I wake you up?’
‘Just fell asleep watching the news,’ he says. ‘Are you okay? How’s Pip?’
‘We’re fine. Pip’s realised the fires were made by a person and is currently hiding under a table.’
‘Shit. Is she okay?’
‘I guess so. How are you?’
Tom pauses. ‘All right.’
‘And how’s Boogey?’
‘The usual. Hating life. Not moving much.’
Annie misses Tom’s smell, the feel of his hands. She swallows. I’ve made my decision. We’re okay.
‘Hey, listen. I’m by myself,’ she says. ‘Talk dirty.’
‘What?’
‘Talk dirty.’
‘We never talk dirty, what’s got into you?’
Annie thinks of his hands and closes her eyes, suddenly near tears. ‘Just say something, okay?’
‘I love your boobs.’
‘Oh, Tom. No.’
‘Well, what? What do you want? Hell, Annie.’
‘Just talk! Please? Try again. I’m sorry.’
Tom sighs. ‘I, umm, love your nice legs.’
‘You’re really bad at this.’
‘Well, I’m sorry! You haven’t given me much practice. What if I did the same to you?’
‘I’d say something about cocks and throbbing and . . . Oh, I don’t know. But something better than nice legs and boobs.’
Tom doesn’t say anything.
‘Tom?’
‘What?’
‘Are you all right? I’m sorry.’
Tom sighs. ‘I just don’t know what you want from me, Annie.’
‘Right now, getting turned on by you over the phone would be pretty nice.’
Trent leans up against the side of the building and Annie jumps when she notices him. ‘Shit, Trent! What are you doing here? Tom, I’ll talk to you later.’
Tom’s voice hardens. ‘Everything okay?’
‘Yeah. Just being spied on. I’ll call you tomorrow.’
‘All right. I love you.’
‘You too.’
Annie puts her phone back in her pocket and glares at Trent. She’s known Trent her whole life, too. Like Rose and Alex, but different. Trent’s parents were separated and his father lived on the mountain. Trent stayed with him over holidays and sometimes the start of summer term. He wasn’t around when the sky darkened and the mists came and everything started to freeze over and then rot in winter. Trent is short and wiry, tanned and blond.
‘What are you doing here?’ Annie says again.
Trent smiles and hunkers down next to her. ‘Visiting the old man with my kid. He’s three now.’
‘How’d that happen?’ Annie shakes her head. Trent wasn’t up here when the fires went through.
‘So. What did he say?’ Trent asks, sitting down.
‘What?’
‘Tom. What did he say?’
‘None of your business.’
‘Oh, come on! Be kind. Was it, like, gross bad or pathetically bad?’
‘He said he liked my nice legs.’
‘Oh, man. That’s terrible. And he didn’t even know you were calling him from the community hall. You could’ve been swirling in a bath full of rose petals or whatever ladies do.’
‘Whatever ladies do?’
‘You know what I mean.’
‘Pig.’ Annie bends her head to her knees. ‘Go away now, please.’
‘I mean, you could get away saying that to your nana, you know? True dirty talk you shouldn’t be able to repeat to anyone.’
‘Go. Away.’
‘Can I tell Rose?’
‘Only if you want me to castrate you.’
Trent snorts and Annie looks up. ‘Seriously. I can castrate in my sleep. That’s what I do all day for work. Chop off testicles.’
‘Should’ve led the whole dirty talk conversation with that.’ He stands up. ‘I won’t tell anyone about your moment of sad sexual desperation.’
‘Okay. Now go away.’
Trent grins and goes back inside and Annie sits for a moment, listening to the cicadas and the sound of people talking too quickly. Her stomach is knotted. She’s never asked for dirty talk before in her life and it makes her feel so old, so lonely, to have asked for it now.
Back inside, a man she doesn’t know nudges her. ‘We’re taking bets. There’s a kid under the table. How long do you reckon until she comes out?’
Annie grits her teeth.
Someone has started playing Cher songs and Susan is up on one of the tables, trying to coax the others sitting around it to dance.
‘We’re here! We’re alive!’ Susan yells, holding up her arms. ‘Let’s celebrate!’
Judy is laughing and clapping and Charmaine has tactfully moved away to the drinks table. Susan spins and nearly loses her balance.
‘Annie!’ she trills, holding out her hands.
‘And she’s not even drunk this time,’ Len mutters into Annie’s ear.
Annie ignores Susan. She can see Hector, standing near the community services table, watching Susan and Pip with a big grin on his face. Probably wishing he had a camera handy. Annie stalks across the room, grabs Pip under the arm and swings the girl out and up onto her hip. Pip twists the skin on Annie’s arm painfully. Len follows them towards the door.
‘Mum!’ Annie calls, without looking directly at her mother. ‘We’re going.’
‘Why, dear? It’s only early!’
‘You’ve got a grandkid now, remember? Routines? Bedtimes? Ringing a bell?’
Len touches her arm. ‘Just take a breath, Annie.’
Annie keeps walking. Susan gets down off the table and follows them out into the still night.
Annie buckles Pip into the car. Pip is quietly crying and pulls her green scarf over her legs and up to her chin. Nigel hisses at them from the wing mirror until Annie holds out her wrist and transports him onto the top of her seat.
She brushes a finger down Pip’s cheek but is still seething from the punching and smacking and pinching when she pulled Pip out from under the table. Pip is like a wild animal cornered at the surgery. All sharp edges and unfamiliar shapes because she is terrified. Annie needs to remember that. That so much of what makes Pip difficult comes from fear.
Annie straightens. ‘C’mon, Mum!’
‘I might walk home, if it’s all the same to you,’ says Susan.
‘Mum, don’t be stupid.’
‘I’m not. You’re just in such a foul mood, I think I’d prefer the walk.’
‘Foul mood? You danced on the tables. Again!’
Susan sniffs and doesn’t reply.
‘I can drive you, Suse. Don’t be silly,’ says Len.
‘No. You don’t need to, Len. Just come on, Mum. Please?’
Susan sighs. ‘I didn’t finish my jelly cup.’
‘I’ll make you a jelly cup at home, okay?’
Susan sticks her bottom lip out, huffs. So like Pip. ‘There’s no jelly there, though.’
Len laughs, that rolling belly laugh. Making him laugh like that had always made Annie so proud when she was younger.
Susan settles into the car and crosses her arms.
Annie turns on the engine. ‘Oh, Mum.’
Susan sniffs. ‘I’ll survive. How’s my darling?’ She strains backwards, craning her neck to look at Pip. ‘Did you have something yummy to eat?’
‘A person started the fire,’ Pip says as they pull out of the car park. ‘Alex started it, Gran.’
‘That doesn’t sound tasty.’
Pip slams her fists into the side of her booster seat. ‘Gran, it was a person. A person made the fire.’
‘Oh,’ says Susan. ‘Well, never mind. Nothing we can do about that, either way.’
‘Can I sleep with you, Gran?’ Pip asks quietly. Annie’s fingers tighten on the steering wheel. She thinks of Gladys. Of wood shavings and tomato soups and the striding walk. How like Gladys Len is in this way. The way they both moved. Slicing through the tall grass.
Susan tries to catch Annie’s eye, but Annie stares at the road. ‘Absolutely, darling. Maybe Mum and I can swap.’
Pip lets out a breath. ‘I’d like that.’
Susan squeezes her hand. ‘Me too.’