I’m out checking pears, sitting in a tree, hunting for bud-eating bugs, when the bus stops way down on the road. I watch, hoping that Pomegranate won’t step out and ruin my plans for bee. Only one person gets off. A woman. She stands in a way I know, shoulders rolled forwards. She’s dragging a big case on wheels and she looks around when the bus leaves, like she ain’t never been here before. As she sets off at a slow pace up our road, I jump from the tree and run down the hill towards her. I give her the names of all the women I know, and none stick. Part of me wishes it was Ma, finally come to her senses, but that will never happen.

I’m real close, close enough even to hear her puffing, when she lifts her head and looks at me and stops me dead. I pull out my bug spike and hold it out in front of me.

‘Well!’ she says. And she looks like Lily. Lily, AJ’s mum, dead and buried on the hill.

‘You come back from the dead to take your children away with you?’ I ask.

The woman drops her case and grabs her knees and laughs, and laughs. ‘Oh,’ she says and grabs a breath. ’Splains why you look like you’ve seen a ghost!’

Now I look at her, her face is fatter than Lily’s and she’s larger all over and she has bits of grey hair over her ears. She slaps the tears from her cheeks.

‘At least I know I’m at the right place,’ she says. ‘I’m Lavender. I’m Lily’s older sister.’

I tilt my head and study her. ‘You come to visit AJ and Mangojoy?’ I ask, coz if she’s come to take them away I might go ahead and poke her with this pest spike anyway.

‘Well,’ she says, and slaps her thigh. ‘I have to tell you a story. My own boy is grown and working for himself now and I thought, “I wonder how my little sister is doing with her boy? I got some money I could send her.” So I make some calls and wind up talking to the Foreman of this orchard. He tells me poor Lily is no more, and there’s not one boy, there’s two! He also tells me Applejoy is a fine young man who’s already a bee and has a nice shed, and he wouldn’t want to see him go, but that an old man was taking care of Applejoy and Mangojoy and they were in need of some help. So Foreman tells me if I can survive on what I got put away, and some picking and packing money then why don’t I get out of the city? And I thought, why don’t I? So here I am. Ready to move in and hoping like mad AJ thinks that’s a good idea.’

I smile and nod. Lavender’s real cherries. It’s not often an adult will stop to tell a kid a whole story like that, and she’s a real good sister to Lily. This is the kind of thing me and Mags will do for each other one day if we have to.

‘AJ will love it,’ I tell her. ‘Coz that’s what you do for family.’

‘I reckon,’ Lavender says.

I take the handle of her bag and help her drag it on its slip-sliding little plastic wheels all the way up to the farm, and down past our place to AJ’s shed.

Gramps comes out holding Mangojoy and we tell him the story.

Everyone’s happy and grinning and Aunty Lav is bouncing a happy MJ on her hip when AJ arrives home from working with the bees. He stands and stares and his eyes fill with water that leaks out the sides. His chin sets to wobbling and puckers up real bad with little white dimples in the middle like the muscles there are out of control.

I run over to him, in case he thinks it’s a fat ghost of Lily too. ‘It’s your aunt Lavender,’ I say quickly. ‘She’s come to live. She’s come to help.’

AJ hitches in a couple of breaths and runs stumbling to her, he wraps his arms tight around her middle like he’s never gonna let go.

‘Hey, now, my boy,’ she says softly and wraps an arm around him and rocks him from side to side.

Gramps pats his hair. ‘You’re all safe, little man,’ he says.

‘You’re looking real smart and grown-up in your bee vest,’ Lav says. She passes MJ back to Gramps and gets down on her knees and holds AJ up and looks hard in each of his eyes. ‘I want to move into your shed and take care of you and Mangojoy. Is that something you want too?’

AJ nods and sniffs and keeps nodding so hard, we all laugh.

We spend the rest of the day tidying up AJ’s shed and getting the fire roaring to dry it out properly so Lavender can move in.

Gramps still rocks Mangojoy to sleep that night but then he delivers him next door to Lavender. I miss his little fast breaths in the night, even though he has been sleeping with AJ on the bottom bunk since Lily died, and I’ve been sleeping on top with Mags.