Ma has me scrubbing the black off that stupid pan where the pig meat burned. Grease slicks my hands, so when Esmeralda starts up screaming from the other room I’m left wiping my hands on my shirtfront as I run.

Esmeralda is hanging onto the frame of the open front door while a man in a black hat tugs her hand.

I race over to kick him for trying to steal our Esmeralda, but when I get there, she’s screaming. ‘No! Bring it closer.’

‘I can’t, Miss,’ the man says. ‘It’s as close as I can get it without ruining your mum’s plants. Come on now, we’ll be late.’

Outside a car waits with its door open.

‘Ez?’ I ask.

She turns and looks at me and lets go of the frame and lunges at me instead. ‘Peony!’ she says and wraps her hands around my arm. ‘You have to come with me. I can’t go outside.’

Ma runs up and pats Esmeralda’s hair. ‘Blossom,’ she says, ‘it’s alright. I’ll hold your hand to the car.’

So no flat-out dragging or toe-stubbing for Esmeralda. Is this even my Ma?

‘I want Peony to come with me. Peony isn’t afraid,’ Esmeralda says.

‘Peony can take you to the car too,’ Ma says.

‘She has to come all the way to school. I hate going in the car alone,’ Esmeralda yells.

‘But Blossom, we need Peony here to help clean the house,’ Ma says and a length of Esmeralda’s shiny black hair slides through Ma’s wrinkly-backed fingers. ‘And you have Jonagold with you all the way. You’re never alone.’

‘Please!’ Esmeralda says, winding her voice out long and high like a galah.

Ma turns her dark eyes on me and her serious face, and she drops her voice low. ‘You go with her, but you stay in the car, and then you come right back. Don’t you give Jonagold any trouble. Don’t you dare leave his side.’

I nod. And Ma bundles me and Esmeralda out the front door, like we’re one thing with four legs now, and into the back of the big car. She waves a finger at my face before she shuts the door on us.

Jonagold climbs in the front of the car, and the wide gates in front of us roll open. Esmeralda puts on her seat belt and waves at me to do the same. The car moves out onto the street and Esmeralda grabs my hand and squeezes.

The big houses fly past the window too fast for me to try and understand how huge they are, and how much wood and stone and bricks went into building these square-eyed monsters, and how many people might live in them. They can’t all just have three people in each one.

‘Ez?’ I ask, but when I turn to her, her eyes are squeezed as tight as her fingers are wrapped around mine. ‘Open your eyes. There’s nuthin’ bad here.’

She cracks one eye open and looks at me. ‘How come you call me Ez?’ she says.

‘Oh soz,’ I say. I’m s’posed to treat her like a cherry blossom, and I keep forgetting.

‘No,’ she says and opens both eyes. ‘I like it. I don’t feel like scared little Esmeralda when you call me Ez. I feel brave, as if I could run along tree branches like a bee.’

I laugh coz there’s no way she could be a bee. She’d get to the first tree and tell me to do it for her.

Esmeralda screws up her face. ‘I could be a bee. My grandmother Esmeralda was a famous bee!’

‘Really?’ I ask.

‘Yes, in the ballet,’ she says.

‘Where’s ballay?’ I ask, but she just laughs.

‘I’ll show you when we get home.’ She leans forwards to Jonagold and says, ‘Take me to the factory.’

‘Miss Esmeralda, no. You’re goin’ straight to school,’ Jonagold says.

‘It’s on the way. I just want to show Peony, and you know it’ll save time sitting in the drop-off queue if we’re a little late.’ Esmeralda smiles at the side of Jonagold’s head and he turns and glances at her and gives a nod.

Soon we’re in some giant concrete park full of cars, next to a wide tin building built like a packing shed, but the size of about fifty packing sheds.

‘My father owns this,’ Esmeralda says and waves a hand towards the giant white packing shed.

Jonagold drives the car in a loop and passes some huge black glass windows in one end of the giant packing shed.

‘My father’s office is in there,’ she says and points at the windows. ‘In front of the coolstore.’

I have no idea what a coolstore is, but on the front of those windows, lined up in a row, is a whole pile of signs. And one of the signs is the same as the sign on the packing boxes that we pack at my farm.

‘That’s my farm!’ I yell and point at the sign. ‘The one with the green pear and two apricots on it!’

‘Goulburn Valley Farms?’ Esmeralda says.

It’s a name I remember Foreman saying, so I nod and cling to the window as Jonagold drives the car back into the street.

Esmeralda slides across the seat a bit towards me as we drive away from that beautiful sign, my sign, my farm, Goulburn Valley Farms.