Ada saw Toby at the funeral. Alice Layton wore her hair in a bun at the back and was dressed like a grown-up in a dark-blue skirt with a white shirt tucked in and a butterfly brooch pinned on the side. But Toby held his mother’s hand. The church was crowded; half the town was there, and they were all very hushed and solemn, and the men in suits clasped their hands behind their backs and were grave as the night. Tilly said Ada should go and say she was sorry for Toby that his father had died.
The problem was that Ada didn’t believe Tilly about accidents, about life just being like that. Ada believed that everything that happened was purposeful and that there was mystery so deep and full of intent that it could only be sensed, not spoken. These were the signs that the world offered up. Silence was always full of meaning. In the church she’d looked up at Tilly and wanted to ask her again. Did one thing happen because of another thing, because of the living room? But Tilly had frowned and leaned the weight of that frown on Ada’s thoughts, pressing them till they were so limp and shapeless that Ada couldn’t speak them. Then Tilly bent down and whispered, ‘Just think how Toby feels. Let him know you care about him.’
Ada wasn’t sure if she did care about Toby. She knew she should, especially now. She broke free of Tilly and walked over to the people that surrounded Toby and his mother. She pushed through the dark-clothed people. Toby stood with his legs crossed over, leaning in to his mother, and staring out, as if he was separated from everything. When Ada touched him, he jumped as if waking from a dream.
‘Hi, Ada,’ he said. His face was as soft as a cloud.
‘Hi,’ Ada said. She was so surprised to find Toby was still just a boy with a long face, apart from his hair, which was all brushed down and parted on the side, that she completely forgot the words she had prepared to say. Her cheek itched. The light was muted and the air stuffy with the smell of musty suits. She stared inquiringly into Toby’s face for a moment and then felt her own face growing hot.
‘There’s a whole lot of people here,’ she whispered.
Toby nodded. He didn’t look too terrible at all; he just looked like Toby—the aura of death had only touched his hair. But why hadn’t Ada said the thing she was meant to say? She opened her mouth to say it, but Toby said something instead.
‘I might not go back to school next week.’
‘Oh,’ said Ada. She nodded sympathetically. She wanted to tell him she was going to plant new trees where the old ones had died, but the words got stuck inside.
Toby wiped at his eye. Then Mrs Layton clasped his head and pulled him into her hip as if to submerge him in a fresh torrent of tears that erupted with Mrs Aldrich. Mrs Aldrich hugged Mrs Layton to her, and Toby was folded into a privacy that didn’t include him. Ada backed away. She hadn’t had the chance to say she was sorry.
Afterwards, when she got home, Ada sat on her swing beneath the elm and drew long pendulum shapes in the dirt with her feet. How would life go on? What would happen to Alice and Toby now that their father had died in the hole with the fox? And where was the soul of Mr Layton now that it had climbed out of his dead body? Ada sensed that the death of Mr Layton had fallen like a shadow over the family and maybe over the town too. Soon summer would be over and the hush of autumn would only make everything even more solemn.
Tilly came and sat on the bench under the tree. She had a toasted sandwich.
‘What are you eating?’ Ada knew what it was, she just wanted to hear it in case it made her want some too.
‘Cheese toastie. What are you doing?’
‘Being sad.’
Tilly didn’t answer. She never wanted to talk about Mr Layton. It took ages for her to say anything. Then, she said, ‘You can’t count on life doing what you want it to do.’
Ada didn’t appreciate these sorts of explanations. They seemed to mean too much and the truths inside them were locked up and impenetrable. She dangled her feet in the dirt and didn’t look at Tilly.
‘Guess what I did last night?’ Tilly said.
‘What?’ Ada had forgotten that Tilly had a secret that she hadn’t yet shared.
‘I had sex.’
‘Oh.’ Ada felt alarmed.
‘I went to Melbourne to see Raff, but he wasn’t there, so I went out with his cousin and we danced and then I stayed the night with him.’
‘Did what hurt?’
‘Sex.’
Tilly shifted and frowned. ‘No, not really. I only did it to get it out of the way. It has to happen sooner or later.’ Tilly was sad too, Ada could tell.
‘But I thought you loved Raff.’ Ada was hurt by this betrayal. She had given over her own secret admiration and let Tilly have it, but Tilly had ruined it, by taking it in the wrong direction and now it wasn’t even a love story.
Tilly sighed.
‘I did love him. But he wasn’t there, and he didn’t love me. And I wanted to not care about that. I wanted to stop caring about everything. I just wanted to forget myself. And to show Raff.’
‘You can’t forget yourself though, because when you wake up, there you are again.’
‘That’s the problem,’ Tilly said.
There they were—back to where they started, with Tilly emptied of love and Ada swollen with secrets. It was just like the tides and it wouldn’t stop. People were always filling themselves up and emptying themselves out again. It was the feeling she had been avoiding all summer. The feeling that life wouldn’t stop taking away from her everything that she wanted to hold near. And that then it would dump at her feet the life-worn remnants of another tide.
The day before, she had tried to jump on the trampoline with Louis and May but had soon tired of it, and she hadn’t even wanted to play the elf game. Ada had never believed the elves were there in the garden anyway; she had only made it all up to entertain Louis and May. Make-believe games were too little for her. Now that William Blake had turned black. Now that the endless hole had triumphed. Now that Toby Layton had been drawn into his mother and then taken away. These were big important events, events that would mark a life properly. Elves wouldn’t do that.
Ada watched the leaves twirl down, as if fluttering through time itself. Tilly went quiet and watchful too, because the sun-lit elm leaves were a splendour that overtook them.
Tilly stood up and went back inside. She had finished her toastie. There were cockatoos on the apple tree already. Even though the apples weren’t ripe. They bit at them, tossed them to the ground and flew off squawking with the pips. They were the larrikins of the sky. Ada didn’t run at them to scare them off. It was too late already.