Ben was planting more trees in the yard when the car pulled up. Who’s this? he thought as he watched the woman in the driver’s seat check her reflection in the mirror, fuss about with something in her lap.
Probably someone for the neighbours, and he shook some potting mix into the hole he’d dug for the tallest melaleuca, wetting it down before he eased in the plant. He’d lost count of how many they’d planted in the three years they’d been here. Paperbarks, honey myrtles, tea-trees, ficus, eucalypts, more. The trees made a crescent of different greens around the edge of the big corner block.
The particular judder of a closing car door: Ben looked up towards the road again. He rarely heard that sound without the memory of Lucy slamming shut an orange taxi door late on a Sunday night and running across the grass to where he stood. ‘Here I am.’ Her voice light; her smile wide. ‘Here I am. I’ve come home.’
He closed his eyes; it still made him smile.
‘Hello?’ The woman was standing on the kerb. Her dark red hair glowed bright, like Lucy’s, but her clothes were very stylish, very fine. ‘Excuse me—do you live here?’
Ben wiped his hands and blinked. ‘I do,’ he said. ‘Yes. Can I help you?’ She could have been one of the other Lucy Kisses, snuck through to this one’s world. Her vardøger.
She took another step towards him. ‘It’s a strange thing to ask,’ she said, ‘but my nan lived here—and I—’
‘Elsie? You mean Elsie Gormley?’ He shaded his eyes. ‘We bought the house, three years ago, from her.’
‘Yes, Elsie Gormley. She died last week and I—’ And then the woman was crying, without trying to wipe at her tears.
‘I’m so sorry,’ said Ben, unsure if he should offer a handkerchief or reach out a hand. He glanced back at the house, half expecting its shape to have changed with this news. ‘Would you like to come in? Could I get you some water? Some tea?’
The woman smiled. ‘No, thanks. My uncle said you’d done wonders with the garden; I wanted to come by and see.’
Ben nodded at the digging and the planting. ‘We’ve got a kind of forest out here now,’ he said.
‘There used to be a kookaburra Nan fed,’ said the woman. ‘I don’t suppose he still comes round?’
‘No—although I think he did, right at the beginning. We haven’t seen him for ages, though my wife’s always hopeful he’ll come back.’ Ben made another gesture towards the house. ‘You’re sure I can’t get you a drink?’
The woman shook her head, and stepped into the shade. ‘But I wouldn’t mind just stopping for a while,’ she said. ‘I loved it here, when I was a kid. All the stories, things to do—there was a swamp at the back, you know, spotted with blue hyacinths. My grandfather used to take me foraging in there—plants, things that people had thrown away; I guess it was a bit of a dump. But I thought it was like having a treasure chest over the fence.’ She looked along the side of the house and down to the park that had replaced the swamp. ‘You were all right in the last flood?’
‘We were fine.’
‘It went under in seventy-four, you know,’ she said, and Ben nodded.
A chocolate-coloured myna bird hopped across the grass, and the woman laughed. ‘When did they get here?’ she asked. ‘It was all the other kind of small grey noisy miners in my day.’
‘They’ve been coming the past year or so,’ said Ben. ‘Our boy’s been watching them move down from the hill.’
‘He was a baby when you moved in, wasn’t he? I remember Dad telling me that. I thought Nan would like it that the house had a new family.’
‘Yes. He’s four now,’ said Ben. She was very glamorous, standing there in her smart black clothes—the longer he looked, the less she seemed to look like Lucy. He was conscious of being grubby from the dirt.
‘Elsie lasted a long time,’ said the woman. ‘She was ninety-three. She had a stroke a couple of years ago, and wasn’t really with us since. I meant to come home more, you know—meant to bring her here and see if you’d mind if she had a look around. You never know if that’s a good idea.’
They both shrugged.
‘We’d have been happy to see her,’ said Ben. ‘For a long time we thought of this as Elsie’s house. My wife used to imagine her coming back to visit in the middle of the night.’
‘I wouldn’t have put it past her,’ said the woman.
The myna bird hopped across the branches of one of the callistemons, roughing up the thicker bark with its beak, and balancing as the thinner twigs swayed beneath it. At the apex of the tree, it pushed off, and flew into the sky.
‘Wouldn’t you love to be able to do that?’ said the woman, as she watched its curving flight. ‘I know they’re pests, but they’re just so rich a colour. They’re part of the starling family—or that’s what we call mynas in England. I think starling is a much nicer name.’
‘Do you live there?’ There was something round and polished in the sound of her voice—it reminded him of what he remembered of his own mother’s.
‘For years,’ said the woman. ‘I left Brisbane as soon as I could—never really got on with my mother. But I felt very sad to leave Nan.’
There was a clattering inside the house, and a great shout, and Lucy and Tom came down the front steps, each with a rocket and each making the crackling sounds their rockets needed to blast off.
‘Tom, Lu,’ called Ben. ‘Come here a minute. This is Elsie’s granddaughter.’ They dropped their arms and their game, their blast-off, paused.
‘You’ve got some lovely rockets there,’ said the woman, nodding at the toys. She crouched down next to Tom, holding her hand out towards the dark green spaceship he held, a tube of cardboard with a plastic funnel on the top. ‘Would you mind if I had a look at this? I’ve always fancied making a rocket, and you look like you’ve done a good job.’
Tom passed it to her. ‘This one can go all the way past the end of the last universe,’ he said proudly. ‘Mum and me tested it the other day.’
‘That sounds like an impossible mission.’ The woman laughed. ‘Are you good at impossible things?’
‘Yes, I am,’ said Tom with the certainty of being four. ‘Mum and me see impossible things all the time. We saw a pitch drop thing that had taken thousands of years—’
‘Well, not thousands—thirteen or so,’ said Lucy, resting her hand on his head.
‘We saw it slowly in real life, and then we saw it speedy on Mum’s phone. We saw a whole year in ten seconds.’ Tom’s voice was rising and his face was one great smile.
‘Ah, time lapse,’ said the woman. ‘That’s one of my favourite things. You know, my grandfather saw one of those drops of pitch fall—imagine that: the right place, the right time.’
‘Mum says maybe when I’m finishing school, I can maybe see the next one.’ His face clouded. ‘I’m not even at big school yet.’
‘Well, it’s good that you’ve got rockets to keep you busy while you wait.’ The woman smiled. ‘I met a boy once in this very city who told me he was building a rocket, and I mean a real one. I used to wonder how that voyage went.’
Ben brushed at his face as if something had landed on his skin; he had the sense of having tripped and stumbled, although he stood stock still in his own yard.
‘Ours are always highly successful voyages,’ said Lucy, looping her arm through her husband’s. ‘But will you come inside and have a cup of tea or something? It would be lovely to hear more about your nan. I used to talk to her—I mean, pretend to—when we first came.’ She blushed. ‘We had a run-in in the end.’
‘Is that why she sent you those roses? My mother was appalled by how much they cost.’
The woman laughed as she handed the rocket back to Tom, but Lucy and Ben stood suddenly silent and still. Ben shivered, and some great silence chilled the world. He felt Lucy’s fingers tighten on his arm.
‘I won’t come in, thanks. I’m on my way out to the airport—flying back to London today,’ Elsie’s granddaughter said, her voice breaking the pause. ‘I just wanted to see the place before I went. I was so relieved you hadn’t demolished it—little cottages like this, they turn them into concrete monsters these days.’
‘Concrete monsters?’ Tom’s eyes blazed out to wideness. ‘Real monsters? Like the real rocket you talked about?’
‘Not really,’ said his dad, pulling him in against his legs. ‘It’s just an expression. There are no monsters around here.’
Then the silence widened around them again, and the sun shone hot and bright.
‘Can I ask you a favour?’ The woman spoke after a moment. ‘Would you mind if I take a quick picture of the house, just to keep, before I go?’
‘Of course not,’ said Ben. ‘I can take it for you if you like, so you’re in it?’
‘Yes.’ Lucy felt in her empty pocket for a phone. ‘And if you could take one of the three of us too—we don’t have many of us three here together. Ben? Have you got your phone?’
He nodded, holding out the small device to their guest.
The woman smiled. ‘Of course,’ she said. She pulled a phone from her own pocket, fiddling with the switch. ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘It’s my nan’s phone—Mum says it’s got some of Nan’s photos, stuff that everyone thought had been lost. Sorry,’ she said again as she fumbled with another button. ‘I’m still figuring out how it works.’
‘It’s like mine—’ Lucy reached for it, and Ben saw her start. ‘It is like mine,’ she said slowly, turning towards her husband. ‘Look. I had this cover and then . . .’
‘Yes,’ he said quietly. ‘I see.’
‘Don’t know how Nan ended up with something like this,’ said the woman, passing the phone to Ben and standing at the foot of the stairs. ‘One of my cousins’ kids must have got it for her. And I should warn you, I hate having my photograph taken—you’d never believe I take pictures for a job.’
Ben tensed his hands to stop them shaking as he stood to frame the shot.
They swapped positions then, Lucy, Ben and Tom ranged up the stairs and Elsie’s granddaughter framing them on Ben’s phone. Ben felt his throat catch each time he swallowed—with excitement or fear, he wasn’t sure which.
‘That’s lovely,’ the woman called, ‘and another?’ Snapping five or six times. The garden beside them was bright with flowers, red and white.
Passing the phone back to Ben, the woman took a deep breath and combed her fingers through her hair. She was taking in every inch of the house’s exterior—he could almost feel it being sucked towards her gaze.
Gloria, he thought suddenly. Her name is Gloria. She knows my real first name is Alex. He stared at her, wanting to say something—wanting to say, It’s you; I think I know you; stay a while.
‘All right,’ Gloria said. ‘I’d better push on. Thanks for the photo—and for planting all these trees. It looks like an oasis.’
‘We love it,’ said Lucy.
‘Our home,’ Ben said, looping his arm around his wife’s shoulders and holding her close. ‘Or Lucy’s house. As it should be.’
‘That sounds all right too,’ called Gloria, halfway towards her car. Somewhere overhead, a kookaburra called, and she looked up to see it sitting on a cable beyond the yard, its feathers hunched and its tail swaying slightly to keep its balance.
There you are. There you are. Safe and sound.
She waved once as she drove down the street, glancing in the mirror to see the bird launch itself across the sky, and three people—Lucy, Ben and Tom—together on the grass, looking down at a picture of themselves.