The afternoon doesn’t rate as one of the most exciting of my life, but it’s all there, caught on camera. Me making sure Mum had enough ice. Me deciding I would have to cook dinner if we wanted to eat. There was no way Mum would keep anything down, but Dad would be hungry and Noah might even decide he wanted more than dry bread.
I found spuds and peeled them. Then there were the carrots and broccoli. My first attempt at a meal that didn’t need thawing and microwaving would have earned me a failed miserably in any test or exam devised by humankind. The spuds burnt, the sausages shrivelled up into turds, the broccoli cooked to mush and I don’t know what happened to the carrots but I do not aim to cook carrots again for the rest of my life.
I reached for my phone to text Jax, who did know about cooking. No phone. How long would it take me to get used to it?
I went outside to yell for Dad, but he was already striding along the track towards the house. Nature, of which there was rather a lot, hadn’t soothed him any by the look of it.
He stomped inside, sat down at the table and started eating. He said nothing — not even thank you — which I felt was a bit harsh because I had tried, I had used my initiative, which he is always going on about. But I didn’t say anything either because, man, he was steaming.
Noah appeared, sat down, shoved the broccoli and carrot disaster out of the way and chomped on the charred turds.
The room was silent apart from the noise of us chomping.
When this interminable, everlasting, god-awful year was over I would live at Lizzie’s until I had the money to go flatting and leave my family far behind.
The food didn’t seem to do anything for Dad’s temper. He stabbed the sausages, jabbed at the vegetables and chewed everything like he was killing it.
At last, I got mad too. All my feminist genes jumped up and fired my tongue. ‘Listen up, Father dear,’ I said. ‘How come you are being so bloody-minded about this pregnancy? Your baby, I might point out.’ And I pointed with my knife.
He crashed both hands down on the table. He scared the tripe out of me. Noah actually lifted his head and it’s a wonder Mum didn’t miscarry on the spot. ‘My baby! You hear that, Liv? My baby?’ He stalked over to the sofa. ‘Well? Is it my baby?’
She shut her eyes. Noah and I stared at Dad, at her. ‘No,’ she whispered.
Dad stormed out into the darkening day.
Oh joy and bliss. All that captured on camera. Dumb Dad. Why didn’t he just pretend, and then we could have had the family drama on top of a hill away from all recording equipment?
Noah slouched off out of the room away from all parental emotion. If I hadn’t been so stunned I’d have gone after him and got high too but I couldn’t move, other than to shake my head. It couldn’t be true. I looked over at Mum. How could she do that — to Dad, to us?
She’d gone off with some bloke and done it with him. I stared at her pale, sick face and said, ‘How could you? How could you do that?’
She didn’t try to answer, didn’t even open her eyes. ‘You are the world’s hugest hypocrite,’ I said, speaking slowly and clearly so that the words would slide into her brain whether she wanted them to or not. ‘You wouldn’t even let me go out with Seb.’ I stood up and marched over to her. ‘What makes you think I’d be a slut like you?’ I bent down and prodded her shoulder. She didn’t say anything but a tear slid down her cheek.
Oh crap.
I turned away from her and wrapped my arms around my body. It was so cold here. My friends. I needed my friends but I would not cry, I would bloody not. I stalked to the table and crashed the dishes around. Mum winced. I dropped a pile of cutlery on the kitchen floor. I couldn’t begin to imagine what Seb would say when I told him. I thumped a fist against my head. When would I get used to this? I wouldn’t need to tell him — he’d see it all on telly.
I glanced at hypocrite mother. She was all huddled up on the sofa, more tears running down her face and she was shivering. Let her suffer. This whole circus was one hundred per cent her own fault.
I ran water into the sink but over the noise I heard an electronic beep. For one glorious moment I thought it was a phone. It went again. I traced it to the radio. ‘What?’ I snarled.
‘Listening watch,’ Mum whispered.
Oh, fantastic. Where was Dad when I needed him? Where he always was when I needed him — absent. But the chance of talking to somebody was too bewitching to ignore. I switched the radio on.
It crackled with a burst of words. ‘Motutoka Island, this is Maritime Radio. Motutoka Island, this is Maritime Radio. I have one weather observation to pass to you.’
I stared at the radio, then at Mum. No help from either of them. ‘Uh, hello. This is Minna on Motutoka Island and I don’t know what the hell I’m doing.’
Maritime Radio laughed. ‘You’re doing fine, Minna. What you’d normally say is: Maritime Radio, this is Motutoka Island, Zulu, Lima, Mike, Tango. Go ahead, please.’
Zulu Mike … My eye fell on the letters ZLMT stuck on the wall. We had a call sign? ‘Hi there, Maritime Radio,’ I said and I was grinning — a diversion from the churning thoughts lurking in my brain. ‘This is Minna on Motutoka Island, Zulu, Lima, Mike, Tango. Hit me with your weather observation and tell me what the — er — what I’m meant to do with it.’
Maritime R was with me all the way and laughing his head off. ‘Maritime Radio to Minna on Motutoka Island. You write it down and pass it on to anyone else who calls you. It might be a boat, or somebody in a remote shore station. Over.’
‘Minna to Maritime R: you mean there’s poor suckers more remote than I am? Okay, ready to write. Um. Over.’ I could get to like this — talking to a person who talked back to me.
He read out the weather observation. I wrote it down. What it amounted to was northeasterly winds and heavy seas.
‘Minna on Motutoka Island to Maritime Radio. I’ve got your weather. Glad I’m on Motutoka and not out in a boat. Is that it?’
‘Maritime Radio to Minna on Motutoka Island ZLMT: that’s all we have for you. And Minna — when you finish you say Roger.’
‘For real? I thought that was only for movies! Roger, Maritime R! Roger!’
‘Roger, Minna.’ I heard him laughing as he switched off.
What now? I sat by the radio, waiting. Somebody from a boat called up wanting the weather observation. I passed it on. And that was it. At 7pm I switched the radio off.
Reality crashed in on me again. I was Minna on Isolation Island with parents about to split, a stoner brother and all the people who mattered to me an ocean away.
I got up quickly before the tears started. Cara would have telly to die for after Dad’s little performance, Mum’s big confession and then her tears. She would not get any from me.
The room was cold. I looked at the woodburner but couldn’t see any cheerful, cheering flames in the fire. I opened the door and chucked a lump of wood on the embers.
Mum lay unmoving, with her eyes shut.
Babies took nine months to gestate and we were going to be here for a year, unless Dad pulled the plug on the whole enterprise.
All the happy bubbles that I’d got from talking to Maritime R burst and settled in a sludge in the bottom of my stomach. I wanted Seb’s arms around me. I wanted — no, make that needed — to talk to somebody.
I took off to my bedroom to do my video diary but I couldn’t summon up the energy.
I went to the window but didn’t draw the curtains because who cared if a penguin looked in? I hoped one would. Pre the big announcement from Mum, i.e. when Dad was still talking, he’d said yes, there were penguins on the island — little blue ones. Were penguins faithful? Were they monogamous? I bet they were.
It was dark outside and cold in my room. I looked for a heater but there wasn’t one. I opened the boxes of effective clothes and put on a bush shirt which made me cry, remembering how we’d laughed. I sniffed and hiccupped and was glad I’d turned the camera off. This place gave me the creeps. Outside it was howling and yowling — louder than I was. What was that noise?
Thwack! Something belted against my window and scared my heart into stopping for a dangerously long time. I stared at the window and saw my terrified face staring back at me, then there was another thwack and this time I saw the thwacker as it fell down the glass. Birds! I ran across the room and stuck my face against the glass. Hundreds and hundreds of birds sweeping overhead in a great flood — and more hitting the window with skull-shattering thwacks.
I ran to the light switch handily placed near the door, not the bed, and snapped it off. I waited a moment or two, but there were no more crashes.
I ran out to the family room. There might be carnage there too — of the bird rather than human variety this time. I was right. A bird crashed and slid before I could get to the light switch. Another crashed and slid in the very moment I snapped off the light.
‘Poor birds.’ That was a whisper from Mum, which I ignored.
I eased the ranch-slider open and picked up the nearest bird. It was warm in my hands and pretty, with feathers the colour of a washed-out blue sky. It was a pigeon maybe — it was around the right size. Mum might know except that I didn’t want to ask her. I sat there holding the blue bird, hoping it would shake itself and fly away out of my hands.
But it was dead. As dead as my parents’ marriage.
I laid it gently on the verandah seat, then sat beside it watching thousands and thousands of its mates sweep and fly overhead.
Would Dad divorce Mum? Would she want to go off with the baby’s father? And who was the father anyway? I’d never seen her near another man.
I went back to the family room and my faithless mother.
Dad came stomping in from somewhere a long way off. ‘Why are you sitting in the dark?’ He snapped on the lights. ‘And why haven’t you done the dishes?’
‘It makes the birds hit the windows and kill themselves.’ I snapped the lights off again. ‘And exactly why should I do the dishes? I cooked dinner and I did the listening watch.’
He stumbled around in the dark. I heard, ‘Oh, crap!’ which might have been because of whatever he’d bashed into or it might have been about the listening watch. I didn’t ask. He turned the lights back on but drew the curtains. ‘We can’t sit in the dark all night. Let’s hope this’ll do the trick.’
It seemed to, because the birds kept zooming over us but left off attacking the windows.
‘Do the dishes, will you Min,’ said Dad, busy not looking in Mum’s direction.
‘No,’ I said. I was proud of the restraint I showed, but I couldn’t help feeling that a bit of restraint around here right now could be a good thing.
Various bits of Dad’s face flexed and bulged. ‘I have asked you to do something, Min — and I expect you to do it.’
Showdown time. Restraint might have to fly out the window along with the birds, and to hell with the cameras. ‘I cooked the dinner. I know it wasn’t great, but I cooked it. I did the listening watch. I didn’t want to. I wanted to go away and bawl my eyes out, but I did it. No dishes. Not me. Not tonight.’
He caved without another word and, of course, I felt like the meanest slug on the island. And anyway, why me? Where was Noah? Why not him?