A slice of sunlight cut across Sarah’s face, right over her eyes. She turned on her stomach, burying her face in the pillow. Fresh and clean and unfamiliar. The sunstream warmed the back of her head, a burning patch at the nape of her neck. Her mouth felt salty and some wafty thing was tanging at her nostrils. She slid her hand across the bed, searching for the warm patch of Zan. There was only the end of the bed, too soon, a sharp drop into air. Her eyes felt sticky, but she squeezed them open, looking across to the matching bed next to hers, with the rucksack laid out like a body on top. Her throat felt sticky too, her mouth, everything felt suddenly sticky and breath didn’t know how to force its way through. Sarah sucked and sucked at thin air, opening her mouth right up, but her chest was closed, her throat was too tight. Her body went hotcoldhot; her chest was small, too small for breath and sharp needles stabbed at her eyes. Her mouth was open, sucking like a baby at the air, but nothing was coming out. She wanted Zan’s puffer, or a straw to breathe through, anything to let her breathe again. And speak. She couldn’t think how to scream, though she bashed on the wall with her hand. Breathe. Breathe. Breathe. But the breath wouldn’t come.
Bacon. That’s what the smell was, sizzling at her nostrils. The thought cut through, clear as breath, and suddenly her chest was open again, her throat welcoming gulps of air. She lay for a moment, watching her chest rise and fall. In, out, in, out. Nice and easy, nice and slow. She could hear pans clattering below her, sounds drifting up through the floorboards, and Ruth’s voice coming through as a soft murmur. It had been there all along probably, that sound, but sometimes you just don’t notice things. Not if you’re trying too hard to breathe. There was a deeper murmur, a kind of grunt, coming through the floor. Mal. Zan’s absence was a hard solid gap in between the voices. Sarah looked for the crack in the ceiling, the snake-shaped one with the dog shape at the end of its mouth. Still there. Of course. Where else would it be? Remembered the rule: if the snake didn’t swallow the dog it would be all right, everything would be all right.
The sharp ring of the telephone cut over the murmuring and clattering, and Sarah’s breath stopped again, just for a moment. Zan, Zan, Zan. It was Mal’s voice she could hear, making hello noises, with little pauses between grunts. Zan. Zan. Zan. Sarah swung herself up, letting her feet touch the floor, and waited for the summons. She would tell her it was mad, this place, and tell her about the Sulphide clogging up the land, and tell her she’d be back in just a couple of days and tell her not to go wild or do anything stupid.
‘Sarah.’ A gentle tap on the door.
‘I’m coming, Mum. Is it Zan?’
‘Sorry darl? Can I come in?’ The door opened anyway – tough luck if she’d said no. Ruth stood in the doorway, the mission brown of the corridor framing her, holding out a blue bundle. ‘I found yer old dressing gown. Dooya want it? I thought it might be useful, you know, when you’re here. I’ll just put it here, anyway, on the other, on Kari’s bed. It’s there if ya want it. Now. There’s bacon, eggs, toast, beans. Whaddaya want?’
‘Was the phone for me?’
‘No, love, areya expecting someone to ring?’ Ruth’s eyes had opened wide. Surprise, presumably.
‘Maybe. Doesn’t matter.’
‘Bacon, beans and eggs?’ Ruth’s voice was almost crisp.
‘Just coffee, Mum. Thanks. I’ll be out in a minute.’
When Sarah padded down to the kitchen a few minutes later, wrapped in her blue dressing gown, a plate of bacon, eggs and toast sat steaming on the table next to a white tea cup full of coffee. ‘I thought just in case you changed your mind. Breakfast is the most important meal of the day, you know that, don’t you? Just have a bit.’
‘Thanks, Mum. It smells lovely. Great. Thanks.’ Trying not to look at the hands wrapped around the edges of the upright newspaper at the end of the table.
The hands made a flicking motion, folding the paper in and down. ‘Gidday, Mate. Arya Orright?’ Mal’s face, when it emerged from behind the paper, looked flabby and worn. How had he got old so quickly?
‘Gidday, Dad.’
‘More toast, love? Coffee?’ Ruth fluttered to Mal’s side, snatching away his plate and cup. Moving as though her whole self was being held in, shrunk into one of those Firm ‘n’ Hold garters she used to push herself into.
‘Sarah? Toast?’
‘I’m fine, Mum. I haven’t started on this yet.’
‘Leaver alone, ay? Ledder bloody arrive first.’ Mal flicked nothing upwards except his eyes, and Ruth scuttled away, heading for the bench. ‘Got a new chestnut stallion over in Teralba you’ll wanna see, Mate. Bloody bewdy he is. Never been schooled properly. Bucks and pig-roots around like nobody’s business. Not for long, though. He’ll be a gelding before too long, serves him bloody well right as well. So. Betta getta ride while ya can, before he turns into a lamb.’
Ruth slipped a full plate of toast in front of him. The china didn’t even make a sound, didn’t even clink, when she put it down. Sarah tried to smile at her. ‘Nothing wrong with lambs.’ That’s all, that’s all Sarah said; but her ears were ringing as if she’d just torn down the bloody Berlin Wall.
When he stood up, tipping his chair back on one leg and swinging it into the table like in a dance, Mal looked even looser in his skin. Smaller than she remembered, smaller than he should have been. It wasn’t right for him to be shrunk like that. Sarah tried to rub at her memories, easing or erasing or making things fit. His eyes looked past Sarah, past Ruth, past everything. Like an old man. A twisting little fear bit and chewed and gnawed way inside Sarah’s bones. She squeezed at her temples for a moment. The snake did not get the dog. It did not. It did not. Mal ruffled her hair and said he was off to Teralba because if he didn’t keep an eye on this saucy bloody stallion, who would, and not to get herself into trouble. Then he said seeya and banged the screen door shut behind him.
Not to get into trouble. What the hell did he think she was doing here? But that was the thing, she was supposed to have never been away, there was nothing going on, that was the rule. That had always been the rule. The taste of vomit filled her mouth. She wanted to yell hard at Ruth, wisping away in the shadow, washing and wiping dishes: but it came out soft as soft. Soft as a lamb. ‘I’ll get dressed and then we can get a move on to the hospital. To see Kari.’ Wanted to add, that’s what I’m here for, remember? That’s why we’re here, but instead said: ‘Is there a bus that goes straight there?’
Ruth folded the Snugglepot and Cuddlepie tea-towel (with a green crocheted edge) and hung it over a bar on the oven. Straightened it up, adjusting and adjusting. There is one, I think, but I’ll drive. It’s quicker.’
Sarah’s head twirled madly. Her tongue felt as if it had been weighed down and when she spoke, it felt like her words came from a hollow space way behind her mouth. ‘Drive? Drive a car?’
Ruth gave a final flick to the tea-towel and began polishing the stove-top. Beaming. ‘Mrs Saint Clare taught me. Spent ages learnin, must have been, uhh, easily a year that I spent learnin. Terrified, ruddy terrified. Didn’t believe I could do it and I didn’t tell yer father, of course. Mrs Saint Clare – kept saying, go on, just have a little drive, nothing needs to come of it, just to have a go, you know? Then one day, I went for a little drive with her, laughing me head off all the way about some customer who’d been in and spent all day eating scone after scone – I think he’d had twelve scones or something, would you believe that? Anyway, I’m driving along and Mrs Saint Clare says, just pop up to Charlestown, I need to pick some things up, so I do and then before I know it, she’s directed me into the ruddy licensing office, doya believe that? Well, I didn’t even have a chance to be nervous. Did the test, still giggling about the scones mind you, and got it first go. I nearly died. Doreen White from the doctor’s sold me her Austin for a hundred and fifty dollars. She was going to scrap it, honestly, and it’s fine, it’s really fine. So,’ Ruth suddenly looked around the kitchen and a hand fluttered to her chest, ‘we don’t need a bus anyway.’
Sarah stared hard at Ruth, rubbing at her ears, at her eyes. She was talking, Ruth was talking, and you could see her shape, the whole of it. She took up a whole comer of that kitchen.
There was silence for a moment, while Ruth pulled herself in. She looked at Sarah, eyes down then quickly up. ‘I had to. I had to drive. To get to the hospital. I don’t drive if I’m going anywhere with yer father, of course.’
Sarah looked again at the corner of the kitchen where Ruth had been shining. The sun was behind a cloud and only shadow was slipping in the kitchen window. Ruth looked like another small patch in the darkness.
The Austin was small and the engine sounded like a series of explosions, but Ruth indicated, swerved, changed gears, pulled the handbrake on and off, braked in time to avoid a bus pulling out in front of her and overtook a green wagon on the Bay Road. Sarah kept turning her face to look at Ruth, at Ruth driving. Ruth’s small wrists against the wheel, her feet in blue slippers – driving shoes – braking and clutching and accelerating. She was even more of a stranger than the lipsticked-up, desperate-to-please Ruth who had opened the door the night before. Sarah tried to fit it together: the shadow-silent Ruth and the shining, driving Ruth. She couldn’t make it fit, so she stared ahead thinking of the smells of hospital. I am not like my sister, I am not like my sister.
‘Gawd she loved you. Doted. Ruddy doted.’ Ruth’s voice came from far away, far outside of Sarah.
‘What?’ Trying not to jump, not to look caught out.
‘Yer sister. Didn’t she? Remember those songs she used to sing. All those bloody songs.’
Sarah was quiet. Her voice so quiet. ‘I sang songs too. I sang lots of songs.’ Sounding pathetic, really pathetic. She could kick herself.
‘I know ya did, love. Look up on the hill, see the extension they’ve built to the hospital. Very new, oh it’s lovely, it really is. Two new wings they built. Moved everyone around, moved yer sister from that horrible gloomy ward – what was it called? I can’t remember can you? – anyway, they’ve put her in the other new wing, ya can’t see it from ere. Princess Wing it’s called, isn’t that lovely? Princess Wing.’
The Austin swung across the road and into a long driveway. Ruth’s unpolished nails tapped at the steering wheel as she drove. She pulled into a space labelled DISABLED PARKING ONLY and looked straight at Sarah. Mascara was running down her cheeks with her tears. Two thin black rivers on either side of her nose.