Avril

Avril rests a hand gently beside his face while he talks to her in a wheeze of words punctuated by rushes of air as his hand lifts on and off the opening in the tube. Miraculous. And she remembers a conversation from yesterday.

The thing about miracles is that they make you hungry for more, she’d told Pascale. One miracle, then another, and soon you’re expecting them, taking them for granted. I’m scared I’ve used up all my share.

She’d spoken lightly but Pascale knew. She knew.

Cooper’s saying, in little bursts, that he doesn’t like having the pressure suit taken off, something they do once a day to bathe him and apply new dressings.

Because it’s painful? she suggests, rushing in to complete the breathy explanation.

He’s momentarily irritated and she admonishes herself. Let him speak, for god’s sake. He’s short on breath, not words.

No, he manages. The pain—here he falters, and leaves a space, just moves past it. Because this—he makes the gesture of patting the suit, here, here—this … my skin.

She has to turn her face away.

Laura’s on the other side of the glass. Coop’s seen her, too, and lifts a hand to wave.

Look at Laura, look at that smile.

Laura waves back and then gestures to Avril, holds up a bakery bag.

Back in a while, babe. She leans down for a kiss—the kiss without touch she always gives him.

Uh-kay.

As she pulls off the gown, she looks through the glass at Coop, her Coop, his new skin protected in the all-body pressure suit they have made for him in three pieces. And she smiles, as she always does, at the colour of the fabric that she and Laura chose for the head piece, startling against the white bedsheets. Everyone who comes in for the first time has something to say about it—What a gorgeous shade! Err … that’s different! Sure brightens up this place! But they chose it simply because it’s Coop. The brilliant, flaming red of his hair.

~

They sit either side of the coffee table in the lounge, cappuccinos and an extravagance of Danish pastries spread between them. Laura’s face is pink-and-gold warm. Young.

You know what I saw on the drive in? she says. You know that burnt-out strip just before the highway …

A cool shudder along Avril’s arms. She nods.

… I caught a glimpse of something scuttling out onto the road. Only just managed to brake in time. Thank god no-one was behind me.

What was it?

Echidna!

Avril shakes her head.

Can you believe it? Life from all that ruin …

She picks up a pastry and breaks it in half. When will you go back to work?

I don’t know. Laura shrugs. I guess I should check my emails, though.

What do you mean?

Well, I told them I was taking the long-service I was due but I didn’t exactly wait for permission.

Avril’s eyes widen. Laura! Her mother-in-law’s grin is 100 per cent Coop’s.

She’s curious when Laura clears a space on the table for her Landcare bag. A clunk, metal on glass.

I found something else in Grunnie’s kist, Laura says, leaning forward. Right at the bottom under everything else.

A small pulse of excitement.

Laura takes a large tin out of the bag and turns it so Avril can see. Old and scratched, a few rusted indentations. A faded scene painted on the lid—horse and cart, a man in rolled-up sleeves, two smart women with hats and parasols to match their long dresses. The words Mills & Ware embossed across the top. Laura uses her fingernails to pop open the lid.

The first thing she picks out is small, a broad cone, dirty white with sepia stripes. Avril takes it from her, feeling its rough outer surface with encircling ridges, the inside powdery smooth.

Limpet, I think, Laura says.

A barefoot girl with a bucket, trudging across the shore, prising shells away from rocks, breaking new ice crusting shallow pools.

Next, two books. The first, The Girls Forget-Me-Not Annual of Prose and Verse, covers bound to the spine with industrial tape. And a compact volume of Underwoods, well worn, its dog-eared pages furred at the edges. Laura thumbs it open at the frontispiece and hands it to Avril. There’s an inscription in small, neat letters:

To Miss Margaret Neish Duthie

Never be content with what the world expects of you, Meggie, for you will always be more than that. Good luck!

Mildred Birnie

Roanhaven, Buchan, May 1905

Avril gasps when Laura extracts, with a flourish, a broad white feather. She runs the tip of a finger along the yellowing vane, thick as toenails and hollow at the base. It’s not the bird her mind conjures—the wings suspended on a northern thermal, merging white with sodden sky—no, not that. It’s the girl again, the girl with her arm down a rabbit hole, the girl with the gift of a feather and a promise balanced on the palm of her hand.

Laura unwraps something from tissue paper and passes to Avril a wooden hairbrush, the glaze of its back a web of fine lines. Avril turns it over, feeling the stiff boar bristles, and it takes a minute for her to realise what she has in her hand, what is caught in the vintage lint and dust. Oh, she breathes, disentangling one of many long wiry hairs and holding it to the light. Rich, plum-bright, jarrah red.

The last thing in the tin is unrecognisable at first—a dark, decaying pouch of something once soft, perhaps fabric. Avril takes it gingerly from Laura. Yes, fabric, folded over and over into a square, its fibres stiffened with age. You can almost see the shape of the hand that smoothed it flat.

Purple silk, Laura says softly.

And the girl is laughing, her eyes following a swathe of purple shooting into the air, up through the plasterboard ceiling, up through four floors, through the sheet-iron roof of the hospital, up, up into a cold, clear West Australian sky the colour of the North Sea.

Avril hears the cries of gulls on unseen winds. On her tongue, the taste of salt.