Heartbreak is the colour of concrete. I was in zombie mode for days after the visit. I didn’t know how many days because I didn’t colour in my calendar. I did my chores. I made the bread. It was soggy. I cooked, but the food had no flavour. The chooks no longer chatted to me.
Mum asked me what was wrong, but I couldn’t tell her, not when she’d done the exact same thing to Dad.
Dad had a go at me for what I’d called Lizzie.
‘Yeah. Whatever,’ I said.
He put the camera on the table. ‘Cara said to tell you she doesn’t accept your resignation.’
‘Yeah. Whatever.’
Noah gave me an occasional funny look but left me alone.
On one of the zombie days the wind came up. It screamed over the island but it didn’t blow the colour back into my life. If only I could talk to Jax and Addy it wouldn’t be so bad. If only I didn’t have to keep it locked in my head where it went round and round and never stopped. I went to bed but the wind got into my dreams.
In the morning, Dad pulled me out of bed. ‘Breakfast in two minutes.’
‘Don’t care.’ I pulled the scattered blankets around me and stayed where I was, huddled on the floor. He stood over me. I shut my eyes.
‘Minna,’ he said, ‘I don’t know what went down with you and the girls, but you’re not wearing your ring so I can guess.’
I didn’t even bother to grunt.
He squatted down beside me and stroked the hair back from my face. ‘Look, kiddo — it’s only going to get worse if you keep on like this. Get up, come out and eat a proper breakfast. Then we’re going to try out the yacht.’
‘Don’t want to.’ I didn’t even want to crawl, let alone stand up and go out of the house into the wind.
Dad kept stroking my face. ‘You don’t have a choice, Min. You do it, or I get that camera and I film you lying here. Defeated and beaten.’
‘You wouldn’t.’
He stood up. ‘You’ve got five minutes. And by the way — Maritime Radio asked last night if you were okay. They miss you.’
My door shut behind him. Damn him! He wouldn’t do that — film me looking like a hunk of spewed-up seaweed. But I wasn’t certain enough to stay where I was. I got up. Showered. Came out to the kitchen with hair wet but tidy. Hair-dryers and home. Don’t go there, Min. You’ll cry.
Dad gave me a smile and dumped a plate of bacon, sausages, tomatoes, eggs and spud in front of me. I couldn’t eat it. I did eat it.
‘Noah, you wash. Min can dry,’ said Dad, getting bossy and sharp but that was probably because Mum appeared. ‘I’ll see you two in the shed. Bring the camera, Min.’ He scarpered.
Mum ate a piece of toast.
Noah made her a cup of tea. She didn’t say anything to me, but judging by the looks zinging in my direction, she was thinking plenty.
Good. Let her. Made a change from me thinking. I was sick of thinking.
We put on overalls, Swannies and tramping boots. ‘Will you be okay, Mum?’ I asked. If she even looked like she mightn’t be, I’d stay and crawl back into bed.
‘I’ll be fine,’ she said. ‘You go off and have fun.’
Nothing would ever be fun again. Didn’t she know that?
It wasn’t easy, getting to the shed. We had to crawl over the places where the wind ripped across the island. I think Dad had given instructions, because Noah kept on at me. Wouldn’t let me turn back.
‘Get a life!’ I yelled at him.
‘You can film me. But you go first. I don’t want shots of my butt,’ he said. So I did. It didn’t seem to matter now — my battles with Cara. She wanted film, she could have film. I didn’t care.
We got to the shed.
I looked at the yacht. They hadn’t solved the strut problem. Dad said, ‘I reckon we aren’t going to need a sail in this wind. Probably be too dangerous.’
They hauled the yacht out of the shed, up to the path above it — to the very spot where Lizzie had told me she’d stolen my boyfriend. The wind bashed me. I sank to my knees. Noah and Dad wrestled the yacht with Dad holding it and Noah settling himself on it. ‘Aim for the scrub at the bend,’ Dad yelled. ‘It’ll stop you.’
He let go of the yacht. Noah yahooed as the wind caught him and propelled him and the yacht up the track. It didn’t go that fast. Not fast enough to drag me out into such shitty weather. Noah pulled himself out of the scrubby bushes, lay on the yacht and kind of paddled it back down the track. He was grinning.
‘Your turn, Min,’ said Dad with that hint of steel.
I got myself on to the yacht. He let go. It felt fast. It felt like the world was a blur and ripping past me faster than the wind. I held the ropes steady that guided the steering and wham! I tumbled off and into the scrub. Getting back down was harder but I managed.
Dad and Noah cheered. ‘You went faster than Noah,’ Dad said. ‘Less body mass.’
‘Skinnier,’ said Noah, but he was grinning.
Okay. It was an okay morning. I filmed Noah. I filmed Dad. Noah filmed me. I hoped Cara would get sick of seeing our backsides flying up the hill with the wind behind us.
When we got hungry, Dad sent Noah home to make sure Mum was all right. He was concerned about her? No. Of course not. He just wanted to get Noah out of the way so he could bend my ear.
He handed me a sandwich. ‘Eat that, then we talk.’
I ate. I wasn’t going to talk. Not to him. Not to anyone on this stink island.
But I think I get my bloody-mindedness from him and he’s older and sneakier than me and somehow he got me talking. Actually, it was good to talk. I cried too, but hey, what’s new about that?
He didn’t say much. I thought I’d be in for a lecture about boys and self-respect and the whole works but he just said, ‘You’d be over it by now if we’d been at home. It’s hard here. Things just keep going round in your head.’
He gave me a hug. I sniffed. He wasn’t right about being over it. I’d never be over it. But it was nice, sitting here with the wind bashing about over our heads and him talking to me.
He turned so that he was looking right at me. Uh oh, here comes the lecture. ‘Min, I want you to promise me something.’
I managed a half grin. ‘I’m not promising anything without knowing what it is.’
He didn’t smile back. ‘Fair enough.’ He took a deep breath. It’s always bad when a parent takes a deep breath in these circumstances. ‘I want you to promise that you won’t have sex with a boy until you’re eighteen.’
‘Dad!’ I knew I was turning red. I did not want to have this conversation.
He ploughed right on. ‘You know it’s against the law until you’re sixteen?’
I shrugged.
‘Minna. Will you promise?’
It was my turn for the deep breath. ‘Dad, that’s out of the ark! Eighteen!’
His lips twitched. ‘All right, I’ll lower it to seventeen.’
‘Sixteen,’ I snapped, ‘and that’s all I’m going to promise.’
He stared at me for seconds which stretched into one hell of an age. ‘All right. I accept that. Thank you.’
And I was left with the sneaking feeling that that was all he’d wanted in the first place. Fathers.
But I could have promised not to have sex until I was ninety-six. I couldn’t imagine loving anybody enough ever again to want to do that with them.
That night I did the listening watch. Maritime R said it was good to have me back on deck. Somebody from a camp on the mainland chimed in and said he’d missed me too.
I fed the chooks. They came to the wire for a scritch. It looked like my life would go on even though my heart was broken. No, not broken. Just numb.
Dad kept an eye on me over the next few days. He dragged me out with him and Noah. He gave me a hammer and an axe and a pile of old timber. ‘Take out the nails, then split it for the fire.’
Chopping things was therapeutic. I imagined it was Lizzie I was hammering and chopping. In the afternoons I went back to the house to make bread and cook, not because I had to, but because I liked the change of activity.
Mum sat at the table and sketched, or she went outside and sketched. We didn’t talk much but it was okay. I gave up wondering what would happen when Mum had to leave the island. She probably didn’t know. Dad probably didn’t know. I sure as hell didn’t know.
I asked Noah, but he just shrugged.
It was a week before we were due for the next grocery run and I was sick of being vego. I was sick of eggs and cheese and bloody green vegetables. I wanted to eat meat. Meat would help fill the hole where my heart used to be. I eyed up the sheep but they looked old and stringy and I couldn’t really see myself taking to one of them with the carving knife. But I kept thinking about it which was better than keeping on with the merry-go-round in my head.
I asked Dad about the sheep and he said, ‘Great idea, I’ll help you skin it.’
So much for that.
We kept on trucking. I sat beside the chooks, filming them for ages. ‘Just fall down dead, why don’t you?’ I asked Izzie.
Drrrk took took took is what she said.
Why are some people vego? I mean, meat tastes so good.
‘Stop obsessing,’ Dad snapped when I moaned again that night.
‘It’s just that I know I can’t have it,’ I said. Just like I knew I couldn’t have Seb. I let my hands float in the dishwater. Interesting. Would I rather have Seb back right now or a good chunk of steak? A sausage maybe? I shook my head and then my hands. I was losing it, that was for sure. Probably protein deprived.
But I was feeling better, even though it felt wrong to be feeling better, except when I thought about Lizzie. Bitch. Her and Cara — I’d show the pair of them.
I had my Great Idea the very next day.
Possibilities swarmed in my brain while I kneaded the bread. That night, I tackled Noah in his room once I’d surgically removed his headphones. ‘What? Beat it.’
‘Want to go fishing?’
That caught his interest. ‘You got a way down to the sea?’
I had to admit that I hadn’t. ‘Not yet, anyway — but that’s the point. I reckon we try to get down.’
He was thinking about it. I could tell by the fact that he didn’t keep yelling and by the fact that he asked, ‘How?’
I shrugged. ‘How do I know? Cut steps? Use a rope? Hammer in boards to make a ladder? But don’t tell Dad. He’ll say it’s too dangerous.’
Noah gave me a look that said, what do you think I am — crazy? ‘We’ll suss it out in the morning. Now bugger off.’
I left. On the whole, a good result. The problem was going to be how to extract Noah from Dad’s vigilant presence.