“Andrew and Hayley are having a baby,” I announced at dinner that night.
“Jesus Christ,” Nick snorted.
“How irresponsible,” said Mum, slopping a puddle of tuna casserole onto my plate. “Those two are far too young to even consider raising a child. I bet it was an accident.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
Mum told me to eat my casserole.
“Jesus Christ,” Nick said again. He had been in Hayley’s class at school. I decided he was just pissed because she hadn’t married him.
I picked out the peas with my fork. “I don’t like tuna.”
“I don’t care.”
“How was the boat trip, Ab?” asked Dad.
I shrugged. “It was okay. Justin’s dad showed me where Vanuatu was.”
“Vanuatu,” Dad repeated. “We talked about going there, didn’t we, Sarah?”
My eyes lit up. “Can we go?”
“Why would you want to go to Vanuatu?” Mum scoffed. “Everything you’d find there, you’ve got right here. Money doesn’t grow on trees, you know.”
I wriggled in my damp bathers. The sand in the lining was making me itch. I could hear kids from the caravan park playing on my mini trampoline again. It had been left out in the rain and now the springs squeaked every time someone jumped on it.
“Da-ad, go tell them to leave my stuff alone.”
“Take that annoying whine out of your voice, Abigail,” snapped Mum. “They’re not doing any harm.”
I huffed loudly and squashed my tuna between the prongs of my fork. I wondered if kids had to eat casserole in Vanuatu.
Rachel walked me home from school.
“Anyone interesting staying at your place?” she asked hopefully. I picked up a stick and ran it along a picket fence. It rattled like carriages across a train track.
“No-one interesting ever stays at our place,” I said. “Anyway, what kind of interesting?”
Rachel smoothed her wiry blonde fringe. “You know, hot guys.”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t look really.”
“Have you ever kissed a guy?” asked Rachel.
“No. Have you?”
“What do you think?” Rachel was always alluding to wild love affairs from her mysterious life down south. She called herself a city girl, even though she hated the city. “Everyone’s so mean there,” she said once. “And you have to wear shoes on the beach in case you stand on a needle.”
“Who puts needles on the beach?” I snorted. “That’s just dumb.”
“Druggies. My dad says they’re the scum of the earth.”
“There’s no needles on our beach,” I said.
Rachel was full of disgust for the city; though I found out later it had more to do with the grade six bullies than any needles that might have been on the beach.
“You have to queue for, like, ten minutes just to get served at the supermarket. And you can never find a car park. And you know that Opera House? Yeah well it’s not even that big…”
When she had arrived in Acacia Beach a year earlier, with her heart frame glasses and Madonna pencil case, our teacher had sat her in the empty desk beside me.
“She’ll show you the ropes,” Miss Lucas said. “She’s Acacia Beach born and bred, aren’t you, Abby?”
You don’t have to freakin advertise it, I had thought.
I tossed the stick onto the road. “Look at the haunted house. Doesn’t it look scary?”
The old mansion across the road from my house was covered in chipped grey weatherboards. Its broken windows peered over the street like eyes. The fading light glowed through the cracked glass and the front of the house was bathed in a dark purple shadow. I shivered.
“It is kind of creepy,” Rachel admitted.
Justin called the house ‘Psycho George’s’ and told me some guy had gone crazy in there; slaughtering his wife in the bathtub before hanging himself and proceeding to haunt the place for all eternity. Despite the fact that there was zero evidence to back up his story, the house intrigued the hell out of me. I lived in a constant mix of fear and excitement that Psycho George might one day show himself.
Rachel nudged me. “Hey, isn’t that your violin teacher?”
I peered across the road to see Andrew standing on our front step. When I got to the door, he was already inside. I let myself into the house quietly, pushing my messy brown hair out of my eyes. Through the closed lounge door I could hear Andrew’s voice.
“Your daughter’s a very promising musician, Mrs Austin. I’m sure you know that.”
I pressed my ear against the keyhole.
“Her talent deserves much better training than I’m able to give her.”
Rachel burst in breathlessly. “What’s going on?”
“Shh!” I leant back against the door.
“Well what are you suggesting?” asked Mum. “I thought you were the only music teacher in Acacia Beach.”
“I am,” said Andrew. “And I’m not a specialist violinist. I think Abby should audition for a high school in the city. One with a proper music program.”
My heart began to hammer against my ribs.
“Are you serious?” Sarah’s voice was cold and critical.
“Yes,” said Andrew. “Abby’s a brilliant violinist for her age. And I’m sure she’s told you how much she wants to be a performer.”
“Oh please. She’s twelve years old. She doesn’t have a clue what she wants.”
Andrew hesitated. “Still, Abby’s very talented. She deserves to have a great teacher. There are a lot of fantastic music schools all around Australia. Brisbane, Melbourne, Sydney… If money is an issue most schools have scholarships-”
“Money isn’t the issue!” Mum interrupted. “Her age is the issue! She’s just a little girl! She’s not going anywhere!”
“Please think about it. For Abby’s sake.”
“For Abby’s sake?” Mum repeated. “How dare you suggest I be doing this for any other reason!” The floorboards creaked as Sarah herded Andrew towards the door. I snatched Rachel’s arm and leapt across the hallway into my brother’s bedroom. I pulled the door shut.
“Oh my God!” Rachel’s blue eyes were bulging. “Can you believe that guy?”
I peered through the keyhole. The hallway was empty. I could hear muffled voices on the veranda. Rachel pressed her head against the window.
“He’s going,” she reported, a pink circle forming on her forehead. She flopped onto her stomach across the bed. “I can’t believe he tried to make you go to the city!” she exclaimed, swinging her legs.
I forced a smile. “I know…”
“You know your violin teacher’s really hot,” said Rachel.
“Gross! He’s my teacher!”
“Yeah well he’s not my teacher. I’d do him.”
I glared at her. “You’re sick. He’s way too old for you. And he’s married. And what exactly would you do to him anyway?”
Rachel shrugged. “I don’t know. Just stuff I guess.”
Nick and his friends from the farm decided to go camping in Byron Bay for a week. Sarah said she hated to imagine how much four boys would smell after a week in a tent. Dad said he’d bet they’d drink the pubs dry.
“Can I come?” I begged. “I won’t get in the way. And I’ll pay for myself.”
Nick laughed and stomped on his cigarette. “With what, your peg money?”
I folded my arms. “I saved ninety-seven dollars!”
He slapped my back patronisingly, the way I did to our little brother Tim. “I’ll bring you back some sand.”
I sulked off into my bedroom as Nick and his friends roared down the highway. My violin lay across my bed and I swung it eagerly under my chin, Nick’s road trip fading into insignificance. Andrew had given me a Sevcík study to play and I had shrunk in terror at the amount of notes on the page. But I was beginning to make sense of the piece, bowing through the semiquavers slowly at first, then faster.
My fingers began to sting as they grated against the strings. Sarah poked her head into my bedroom.
“I think we’ve had enough of that for one night, thank you.”
“But-”
“Abigail-” She was wearing the old flannelette shirt she worked in when things in the park needed fixing. “Our guests didn’t pay to listen to you all night.” Her heavy footsteps disappeared into the kitchen. “Those curtains in twenty-nine C are in hideous condition, David,” she was saying to Dad in a muffled drone.
I glanced at my red fingertips and then back at the music. Just ten more minutes, I decided, so I could get the triplets right. I began to bow gently to make sure my parents couldn’t hear, then allowed myself to drift into the music, my playing growing louder and louder. I became suddenly aware of my mother talking again.
“I’ve had just about enough of that damn violin. I’ve a good mind to take her out of lessons.”
I opened the door and poked my head into the passage, gnawing at my thumbnail.
“Oh Sarah, be reasonable. You know how much she loves it. I’ll just have a chat to her and ask her to keep the practising down a bit.”
“That’s not the point. It’s taking over her entire life. What about her schoolwork? And that teacher of hers… I don’t trust him. He’s filling her head with all sorts of ideas.”
I heard Dad chuckle and imagined Sarah’s cheeks flushing with rage.
“Her school work’s fine,” he said. “You know that. And Andrew was only doing what he thought was best for her. Maybe he’s right. Maybe she does have a lot of talent.”
“He wants her to go away!”
Dad gave a slight laugh. “To study more! You make it sound like he’s sending her to work on the railroads or something!”
“So you support him?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“I’m taking her out of lessons.” Sarah’s voice was stony. I was about to rush into the kitchen when Dad replied:
“No you’re not. You’re being completely irrational. It’s not fair to Abby.”
“No,” Mum retorted. “What’s not fair is that her teacher is letting her believe this ridiculous obsession can actually lead somewhere!”
“Who says it can’t?”
Sarah huffed loudly.
I was glad when Dad stood up to Mum. It didn’t happen very often because Dad didn’t like fighting in the house. Peace and quiet, that was his thing. That was why he had finally settled in Acacia Beach after roaming around Queensland for a year after his mother had died. Peace and quiet.
When I was little, he used to take me into the deep water on a surfboard he had bought from a garage sale. I would cling to the sides of the board as the water level rose slowly above Dad’s knees, then his waist, all the way to his chest. When the tide was out, we could go so far away from shore that the people on the beach looked like Lego men under pinwheel umbrellas. I would lie with my eyes closed and listen to the hollow tapping of water against the bottom of the board. Dad pushed me in wide circles around his body.
“Peace and quiet, ‘eh possum,” he would say. “Nothing like it in the world.”
Dad met Sarah-Marie at the supermarket when he was twenty-eight and she was thirty. “I was about to buy a bag of apricots,” he told me once, “when your mum pointed out you could buy them in a can for half the price. She’s a thinker, isn’t she…”
This was my parents’ relationship. Not a marriage of convenience, but one of practicality, of tinned apricots and ticking biological clocks. There was nothing to suggest they didn’t love each other, but also little evidence for it. I rarely saw them touch and when they spoke it was usually about the park or one of us. Wedding vows sealed with a handshake. Children delivered by stork. Ending up with such dull parents felt like the world’s biggest injustice. They were instant coffee, butterless toast, while I overflowed with desperation. Andrew had shown me a way out. I would do anything to take it.