The house looks more familiar to Annie in the dark. She can imagine the stretch of the cypress behind it, her schoolbooks on the verandah, out of sight. She can imagine her bedroom, with its pale green walls and sash windows and eventing posters tacked above her bed. She can’t see the broken side or the corrugated-iron sheeting pressed up against its walls.
‘I’m thirsty,’ Pip says as they go inside.
‘Water?’
‘No. I want this.’ Pip picks up the mug of dregs from Susan’s morning coffee.
‘That’s gross. C’mon – water? A hot milk?’
‘I want this!’
‘You won’t like it, Phillip.’
Susan waves a hand. ‘Just let her have it.’
Pip looks from Susan to Annie.
‘What happened to boundaries, Mum?’ Annie asks.
‘The only thing children dislike more than coffee is cold coffee dregs. Trust your poor old mother.’
Annie hands Pip the mug and Pip has a sip and pulls an awful face.
‘See? Told you it was awful, P.’
‘No! I love it, Mum. I love it more than lemonade.’ Pip has another sip, her nose all scrunched up. ‘Mmmm!’
‘Good,’ Annie says. ‘Great.’ She plucks the mug from Pip’s hands and Pip squeals and clambers for it. Annie rinses it in the sink, Pip madly trying to grab it and then bursting into tears.
Annie picks her up and takes her to the bedroom. ‘C’mon, let’s get ready for bed,’ she murmurs. She wrenches a pull-up free from the pack.
Pip aims a kick at Annie’s chin and scrambles madly away from her. ‘I’m not wearing them!’ Pip screams. Annie grits her teeth, sits back on her heels. She lets the pull-up rest in her lap for a moment. Out on the verandah, Nigel starts shrieking. We’re okay! We’re okay!
‘You are,’ Annie says, reaching out for Pip’s arm. ‘You are wearing them.’
As her fingers brush Pip’s skin, Pip jumps backwards and kicks out. ‘Fuck you!’ she yells, tiny and ferocious. Annie’s elbow tenses, drawing her arm up and back, but she resists. What sweetness, in that moment, it would be to bring her hand down hard against Pip’s cheek.
As Pip scrabbles wildly away from her, Annie feels like it’s all her fault. Pip’s wildness, her screaming.
Susan puts on her nineties pop music CD and starts singing. Annie can hear her stirring something on the stove. Annie cannot smell wine, not from in here, but she can hear it in her mother’s voice.
She grits her teeth.
‘Come on, Pip,’ she say. ‘Please.’
She wishes they had enough internet connection for Skype. Pip is the sort of child who responds best to the parent she sees less of, the one she is craving. On Skype right now, Tom could probably convince her to do anything. But there is no Skype and Annie is loath to call him so soon after demanding phone sex, so she settles down on the floor.
‘I’ll give you a ride on Luna,’ she says.
Pip pulls a face.
‘Fine. I’ll … Let you have cake for breakfast.’
‘Gran’s already making me cake,’ says Pip. She frowns. ‘You’re not sleeping in here.’
‘Gran is. But thanks, Pip. That makes me feel really good.’
Pip’s frown deepens and Annie closes her eyes and when she opens them Pip is fingering the pull-up and staring at her.
Annie sighs and strokes Pip’s cheek. ‘Guess you don’t really get sarcasm, hey?’
‘Sarcasm,’ says Pip.
‘I’ll show you how to find the chicken’s eggs.’
Pip’s expression clouds over and she bites her lip. ‘The warm brown ones?’
‘As many warm brown ones as we can find,’ Annie murmurs, barely breathing. So desperate for sleep, for quiet.
Pip considers this for a long moment and then nods. ‘I get to name them.’
‘What?’
‘The eggs.’
‘You want to name the eggs.’
‘They can be my pets. Gran says they’re baby chickens.’
‘Well, no. They’re eggs.’
‘They’re my pets,’ says Pip.
‘Fine! They’re your pets! You can call them whatever you want. Now, put your pull-up on. It’s time for sleep.’
Pip tugs the pull-up up her legs and then stands scowling up at Annie. ‘These suck,’ she says.
‘Pip,’ says Annie.
‘Phillip. They do! Where’s Gran?’
Annie picks her up and tucks her into bed and Pip kicks the sheets off. ‘Goodnight! Goodnight! I love my eggs!’
‘Goodnight, Phillip,’ Annie murmurs and goes outside and sits on the verandah. Susan watches her, but doesn’t say anything. She sets her wineglass on the sink.
‘Goodnight,’ Susan says softly.
‘Night.’ It takes Annie a while to realise her hands are shaking. And then it takes her even longer to make them still again.
* * *
In the weeks after the fires, when Annie returned to the mountain, Shelley Cootes from the newsagency pressed stickers into her hands whenever she went in. They were the sparkly ones cut into the shapes of flowers and leaves. They felt like dirty jelly against Annie’s fingers
‘Umm. I need stamps,’ Annie would say.
‘Keep them, keep them. I’m so sorry about dear Gladys passing.’ Every time. Even after everything. Like Gladys dying was something she could do something about; something she could contain and act on.
Sometimes she handed Annie a ten-cent coin, to give to Len. Annie would close her fingers around it tightly. ‘Thank you.’
Gladys’s passing is the sort of death people are most comfortable with, Annie supposes. The sort of death people feel can be packed away like winter clothes in summer. Even though she died on the day of the fire, she was in her seventies and it was a fallen tree that killed her. Easier for people to work through than a five year old who had had to be identified from a DNA test.
In the months Annie stayed on the mountain with Susan, Kelly Bishop, who lived next door to the Rivers, stopped in sometimes with soup and bread. She brought flowers. She didn’t say so, but Annie knows she brought the flowers over to mask the mouldy, stale smell of the house. Of Annie and Susan. It was embarrassing, when she came. As though Susan and Annie had failed. As though the two of them, alone in the house, were failing so completely that everyone around them could see and was made uncomfortable.
‘Thanks,’ Annie would say through gritted teeth. She always insisted on making Kelly a tea. Sometimes, on a Sunday, when Kelly stopped in after she’d been at church, Annie would make sure the house was all vacuumed, that there were fat scones coming out of the oven.
I’m not useless.
When Annie explained it to Rose, Rose stared at her as though she was missing something vital. ‘But she’s just being nice, you know? Trying to help. You’re not failing. You’ve got a kid and a life and you’re up here. You lost your nana and your mum’s gone whoopsidoo.’
But to Annie that all seemed like a sort of failure too.
She doesn’t believe in ghosts. But she believes that Gladys might be here. The creak of the floor. The way Pip sighs in her sleep, like someone is brushing the side of her face.
* * *
Annie sleeps on the couch. For the past two nights she has craved a bed to herself, but alone in the kitchen she feels disjointed. She smells duck and can hear Susan telling Pip a story about Luna in the next room. There is the glow of the lamp Pip’s demanded be left on. Susan has wrapped Pip’s scarf around the shade, so the light spilling from the room is green and textured. She’s whispering, but the broken house is only two rooms now. There’s no privacy here. No secrets or silence.
A person started the fire.
Annie faces the wall, but her breath fans back in her face. Lying on her other side makes her hip ache. That dull throb from carrying Pip around. It may hurt less, up here. Where Pip can run and race and dance on her own, without the worry of traffic lights or cars. Wide circles.
She thinks of Alex. She thinks of the spray-painted abuse she saw, driving into town. She is prickled by an overwhelming mix of sadness, longing and a tiny flicker of satisfaction, which she does her best to squash away. She so rarely lets herself wonder about him, beyond the fleeting moments where she lets herself be a teenager again, in the forests, in the rain. Her breath catching in her throat.
It makes her feel strange, imagining him living in the city. He always made his money from horses and she wonders what he’s doing now. She wonders what his city place looks like. He was still living up on the mountain, on the horse property he shared with Jenny, when the fires happened.
But she’s angry too. Furious. It’s like the idea of Alex, of him as a person, has been cut into two. The Alex of her childhood, who often feels like a character in a book she read long ago, and the Alex who burnt down the mountain.
She presses him away now. Focuses on the moon through the window. She clears her throat.
‘Giddy,’ she whispers. The dog is on the verandah. She hears the thump of his tail on the wooden planks, over the breathing song of the cicadas.
‘Giddy!’ she whispers again.
She hears the click of his toes as he gets to his feet. He shakes himself and his collar jingles. Annie pulls him inside by it and then taps the couch. ‘C’mon!’ she says. ‘Come here.’
* * *
Annie opens her eyes to a gentle wash of morning sun coming in under the verandah roof. She still has Giddy held tight against her. Rose is drinking a coffee at the kitchen table.
‘Cuppa?’ she says.
‘What are you doing?’ Annie whispers.
‘Don’t need to whisper. Your mum took Pip out to brush Luna.’ She nods at Giddy. ‘What were you doing to the dog?’
‘Cuddling him.’ Annie draws her knees up to her chin. She rubs her eyes. ‘Mum got Pip out with Luna? Wow.’
Rose nods. ‘Yeah. Pip seems happy enough.’
‘I couldn’t even get her to pat Luna over the fence.’
‘Yeah, but you’re her mum. Susan’s all new and exciting. Of course she’ll do things like that with Susan.’
‘Maybe.’ Annie sighs.
‘Why so gloomy?’
‘No, it just sounds stupid.’
‘Try me.’
Annie is quiet for a moment and then noisily breathes out. ‘I just think Pip likes Mum more than me. And it’s … it’s upsetting.’
‘Oh, Annie! All kids like other people more than their parents! Heck, I liked half my teachers more than I liked my mum. But she loves you the most. You and Tom. The liking comes and goes. The loving doesn’t.’
‘I always loved Gladys more than Susan. How awful is that?’
Rose shrugs. ‘Not awful at all. Susan was a kid when she had you and didn’t exactly mature quickly. She’s still like a teenager most of the time. Gladys was just easier. Of course you liked her more.’
‘I think I loved her more, though. I think I loved her more than Mum.’
‘Annie, let’s face it, Susan was pretty much your obnoxious big sister and Gladys brought you up. And it worked really well, I think, but it just means that stuff worked out differently for you than it is now for Pip. Pip going out to brush Luna with Susan is not the same as you preferring Gladys to Susan when you were a kid. It’s just not.’
‘But it is, Rose.’
‘You look after Pip the same way Gladys looked after you.’
‘Maybe. Anyway, let’s change the subject. Sorry.’
‘Don’t be sorry. Want me to take a look at the car?’
‘Yes!’
Rose whistles and murmurs under her breath as she pulls a couple of leads out of her car. Annie cranes her neck towards the paddock. Towards Pip and Susan and Luna.
‘Are you murmuring to yourself or the car?’ Annie asks, unable to see more than the twitch of Luna’s tail from this side of the house.
Rose fiddles with the underside of the bonnet and the jumper leads between their two cars. ‘Both.’ She holds her hand out. ‘Keys?’
Annie tosses Rose the keys and when she turns on the ignition, the engine splutters noisily into life.
‘Thanks so much.’ Annie steps up onto the verandah and stops. ‘You want another drink?’
‘Nah, gotta get going. Alex is coming back up the mountain, did you hear?’
Annie steps back down onto the gravel. ‘He is? For sure?’
‘Yeah. Len told me this morning. It’s definite – he’s coming to help Jenny get sorted. Her back’s just getting worse and worse.’ Rose shakes her head. ‘She won’t budge off the mountain and he’s worried about her. Everyone is.’
Annie crosses her arms ‘I’m so mad at him, Rose. And I know I shouldn’t be.’
‘Well don’t be.’
‘It’s not that simple.’
Rose grabs her shoulders. ‘Let the mad go, Annie. Whoosh! Let it go.’
‘How long’s he staying?’
‘You can ask him yourself.’ Rose stands up. ‘Just … don’t make this harder for him than it has to be, okay? Him being back up here. Even if you’re mad. At least give him that.’
* * *
Annie’s mind trips along the same tracks. Alex was careless. He burnt the mountain. She knows she is mostly angry with herself, for taking Pip off the mountain on Luna and leaving Gladys alone in the howling wind, the heat. It’s a relief to be mad at someone else.
She knows him. She knows Alex, but it’s the Alex of before. Alex as a child and teenager. The Alex in his twenties and thirties is mostly a stranger, seen briefly and never for very long. Their lives no longer lived in rhythm with one another.
She lets her mind trip along the same simple tracks. The relief of them. Alex was careless. Alex burnt the mountain.
Later that afternoon, Annie paces around the house, following Judy’s boyfriend. He is a builder, but Annie’s not sure whether he’s just decided to be one. People have done that, Annie knows. Changed things about themselves, since the fires.
Susan prattles about honey and capped comb and how she wants to grow her own grapevines. Annie stalks along behind, glancing occasionally at Pip, who was drawing pictures of Luna on the verandah but is now hanging backwards off the peppermint gum. She waves her hands to catch Annie’s attention. Maybe. Probably Susan’s. Their whispered stories. The warm glow of their shared green lamplight.
Susan sets her wine down and puts her hands on her hips. ‘So, Riley? What do you think?’
‘Yeah,’ the guy says, his voice catching in his nose. Annie wants to offer him a tissue, but knows Judy will stare her down in that unreadable, unhappy way.
‘Yeah, what?’ Annie says, and Judy gives her that look anyway.
Riley sniffs. ‘Yeah, the whole lot’s being pulled down.’
‘What?’ Annie says. ‘What do you mean, pulled down?’
‘Like, the broken side, this side.’ He points at the fallen cypress and Annie has to grit her teeth to stop herself rolling her eyes or stamping her feet. ‘This broken side is throwing the rest of the house off balance. That’s why you’re getting the crookedness.’ He nods at Susan and Judy and they nod back.
‘Yeah, we’d worked that out,’ Annie says. ‘What can we do about it?’
The guy shrugs and Judy loops her arm around him and smiles at Susan who smiles back. Like he’s said something useful. Or, God help them all, something impressive.
‘Come in for a cuppa,’ Judy says, as though it’s her house. Her cups. Her tea and water and sugar and milk.
‘Lovely idea,’ says Susan, falling in beside Annie. ‘Thanks for coming out, Riley.’
Annie springs forward, suddenly desperate to beat Judy and Riley inside.
‘Here,’ she says, fishing a tissue out of her pocket as she speeds past them, loping along with their arms around each other. ‘Blow your nose.’
* * *
Later, Len arrives in a cloud of dust to take Susan and Pip into Quilly. He and Annie lean up against the car while Susan and Pip get their shoes on inside.
Annie gnaws on a nail. ‘Mum was out with Pip and Luna this morning. She got Pip to brush her. That’s good, isn’t it?’
‘That’s really good.’
‘For both of them?’
Len grins. ‘For both of them.’
Susan comes out. ‘We’re just going to Quilly, Len?’
‘Yeah, just to Quilly.’
She leans in towards him. ‘No further? Just to Quilly?’
‘Just to Quilly.’
Annie watches the three of them drive off, Pip turning to watch Annie through the back window of Len’s four-wheel drive.
Annie cannot remember the last time she was alone in this house. Alone on the farm. Even before the fires, when Susan was able to calmly leave the property, Gladys was always tinkering away in her shed or wandering among her trees or whittling her wood in the living room.
Outside, Annie thinks for a moment that she can see someone walking across the ridge of the paddock behind the house. She blinks and the figure’s gone, but every part of her is rigid.
Outside, the world seems suddenly to stretch into vastness. Into the unfamiliar. Annie wants to lock all the doors and pull a blanket up over her head and not come out until the others are back.
Instead, she lies on the couch with the landline and dials Tom’s number, but he doesn’t answer. Then she just lies on the couch, listening to a fly stuck on its back in the sink.
The sink.
Annie pulls out the videos from the cupboard beneath it and slots one into the VCR player in Susan’s room. The same player and TV she watched things on as a child.
The footage is grainy and unsteady, but it is Alex. Taped from the television footage of him competing at Adelaide. He’d have been nineteen then. Annie was in the city, studying. They hadn’t talked much, that year. After their break-up during high school. But when she went back up for Christmas, they fell softly back into friendship. She watches him now. How gently and skilfully he rides. How his horse, she thinks it’s Barney, moves like something liquid around the course, making it look effortless.
Annie looks away from the screen. There are green fingerprints on the sill and Annie can’t tell if they’re fresh, whether they belong to Pip or whether they’re old. Maybe they belong to her.
The video ends and she rolls onto her side and thinks of Alex.
He’s coming back to the mountain.
She loved him once. More than she thought one person could love another. The teenage love that intoxicates; holds captive. She leans her head in her hands and wants to scream.
There are no neighbours. No one to hear. So she does, a howling scream that sets Nigel off squawking out on the verandah. We’re okay!
Then she pulls on her shoes and goes outside. She drags herself up onto Luna and they disappear into the forest tracks. It doesn’t soothe her, like it used to. But as she rides she thinks of Alex and being a teenager. She thinks of being tiny, running after Len as they listened for lyrebirds. She thinks of being all ages, wandering with Gladys, searching for wood to whittle.
Luna snorts and prances and nothing is familiar. Annie doesn’t stray far. Scared of getting lost in this place that once felt like it belonged utterly to her.
* * *
When Annie was young, she grew veggies with Gladys. It was the only kind of plant that Annie was more interested in than Gladys was.
Annie loved going out there after heavy rain and sun. She’d prod around the beds, looking for shoots. Looking for the first green glimmer of their heads poking up.
‘Nana!’ she’d yell, those glimmers something precious. ‘Nan!’
‘You’ll kill them,’ Gladys would mutter, but she’d come out and squeeze Annie’s shoulder and they’d go inside and talk about what they would cook when whatever it was grew and ripened. The carrots, the spinach. The beetroot or the strawberries.
Sometimes, as a child, Annie was sad for the vegetables. How short their lives were, cooped up in that little tended bed. She liked the trees, the forests. Annie liked to climb up into branches that had been here longer than people, longer than the house.
Annie liked how endless the trees felt.
The vegetables grew quickly, grew brightly.
And then they were gone.