Lisa pulled up in the driveway and stepped out of Dino with caution. A cockatoo screeched. There was no sign of the snake. She wondered how Mojo had survived in the wild so long, and exactly how he’d lost that eye.
After a shower, she slipped into a summer dress festooned with roses, the Scarlet O’Hara one she thought she’d never wear. It suited her mood somehow.
Scott’s ute was still on the side of the road. She’d bring him back from the clinic later. And who knows? He might not be going home tonight.
She made a cup of instant coffee and settled at the kitchen table to work. Sunlight bore through the windows. The room was heating up. Normally, she’d open the back door but it was hotter outside than in. Besides which, she didn’t want impromptu visits from the snake. She set up a table fan and pointed it at her face.
Mojo padded across the bluestone, and put his head to one side.
‘Scott’s fine, if that’s what you’re asking.’
The cat sprang onto the table and tried to sit on her keyboard. She lifted him onto the floor. He jumped back on the table, this time knocking the fan. She lowered him down. He jumped back . . .
‘If this doesn’t stop you’ll have to go outside.’
Mojo sprang up onto her lap, turned around three times and nestled in. Lisa rubbed his ears. He was learning to be a writer’s cat.
The Brontë parsonage had never been short of pets. Though the whole family adored animals, nobody loved them more than Emily. Her portrait of Grasper, one of the parsonage dogs, was full of loving detail, each hair and whisker defined. Grasper’s bright-eyed expectancy leapt off the page, even today.
Emily’s favourite was a bull mastiff called Keeper. She painted him lying on a tuft of grass, his globe of a head resting on his front paws, apparently transfixed by something just off the page. The power in his shoulders was palpable; Keeper was not a dog to mess with. The adoration was mutual. After poor Emily died, Keeper lay at the feet of the mourners in church and listened to the service. Keeper’s sorrow ran deep—with that sense of knowing some dogs have, he moaned outside her empty bedroom for nights on end.
Lisa tapped away, and for a couple of hours the words flowed. Emily dumped the earl, who was so heartbroken he sold up and moved to America. After their lovemaking sessions, Frederick cooked superb broths, dumplings and stews. Emily stopped using food as a psychological weapon against those who loved her, instead filling out a little and taking on a healthy glow.
Lisa carried her phone and a plate of stale egg sandwiches outside onto the veranda. Mojo followed and sat on the sofa beside her. The wind was like the inside of a clothes drier. New York could be unbearable in summer, when warmth radiated off the streets and buildings, but this Australian heat rushed in straight from the desert.
She called the medical centre. June informed her Scott was doing well and would be ready to go home around five o’clock. Putting the phone aside, she had another go at the sandwiches. They were inedible. She tossed a crust into the long grass. A flash of white shot after it.
‘Hello there!’
A yellow crest fanned above the blades. She tossed another crust. The cockatoo gobbled it up. Meanwhile, Mojo sat watching the parrot with the intensity of a judge of Australia’s Got Talent. To Lisa’s alarm, the bird waddled towards them and hopped up the step. She rested her hand on Mojo’s back in case he was getting ideas about Thanksgiving arriving early.
The parrot fixed them with a brilliant gaze. He wasn’t afraid. Lisa wondered whether the cat knew the bird from his previous life in the wild. The bird was no pushover, if his claws and beak were anything to go by.
‘Well, I’m pleased someone likes my egg sandwiches,’ she said, emptying the rest of her plate over the step.
The cockatoo relished the egg as much as the bread, putting its beak to one side to hoover up the last crumb. Then, satisfied there was no more food on offer, it hopped down the step and waddled back towards the grass.
‘See you again!’
The bird stopped, turned and spread its wings in what looked like a gesture of thanks.
‘You’re welcome.’
She waited for it to take flight. The wings flapped in a glorious display of pastel yellow feathers, but didn’t take to the air. This had to be the same cockatoo that had been hanging around the property ever since she’d moved in. It was always alone. The flock it belonged to had probably rejected it when it couldn’t keep up with them. The parrot must’ve been fighting for survival since it was first injured.
Lisa went inside and tried to settle to the next chapter, but the hot wind made her restless. Besides, she couldn’t wait to tell Scott about the cockatoo. Finally, she turned off her computer, circled her mouth with regulation neutral lipstick, fired up Dino and spun into town.
At the clinic, June greeted her with a sardonic smile. ‘He’s not here. Discharged himself an hour ago.’
When Lisa arrived back at the house, the only evidence of his ute were tyre marks in the dust. She reached for her phone. Her finger hesitated over his number. Portia’s voice lectured inside her head: It’s political, Mom. Her thumb scrolled down from Scott to Takeaway Pizza. She ordered mushroom and cheese and, with Mojo on her knee, resigned herself to a night of BBC costume dramas.