‘Abuse the pub staff! Far out – you need to be a bit more polite to get your point across.’
‘Polite doesn’t work.’
‘Of course it does! It’s better than yelling at people!’
Taylor rolls her eyes like she knows better and sags into a camp chair when we reach the annex. I start making a salad for dinner.
‘You could give me a hand,’ I say.
‘No.’
‘Whatever.’
‘You’re such a pushover, Stell.’
‘Arsonist.’
Taylor sighs and cranes her neck towards the door. ‘What’s with everyone wandering around out there with Tupperware?’
‘Oh. The garden night, I guess.’
‘Garden night?’
‘Richard was talking about it. One Friday night each month people get together in the pavilion, have some food and then head out and do some gardening.’
‘I see,’ says Taylor in her lightest voice. I glance at her, but she’s staring out at Fairyland with a very peaceful look on her face. I turn back to the salad, feeling uneasy.
When Mum and Dad come in, Taylor smiles at them very sweetly. ‘Excited about the garden night?’
Mum frowns. ‘What garden night?’
‘The one in the pavilion.’
‘The weird hall thing, you mean?’ Mum’s frown deepens.
‘It’s for everyone in the park. They take food and then go out and do some gardening. You’ll both come, right?’
‘Not really my thing . . .’ Dad starts to say.
‘We’ll come,’ says Mum, glancing at him.
‘Great!’ says Taylor. ‘Firstly, do you both have your self-defence corkscrews? Because we can’t possibly be expected to get so close to Fairyland people without our self-defence corkscrews.’
‘That’s enough,’ says Mum, but she looks a bit worried, like she really does want us all to have our self-defence corkscrews on hand.
The pavilion – which I guess is a remnant of the time when the people who built this place figured it might be a holiday destination – is set up with plastic tables and mosquito zappers and camping chairs. I blink. The group is nearly entirely made up of older women and families with little kids. I hadn’t expected that. I also hadn’t expected Matthew Clarke to be sitting in one of the chairs. He sees Taylor and me and he flushes.
‘Welcome!’ says a lady a few years older than Mum with a shock of red hair and wrists covered in metal bangles. ‘I’m Cassie. You must be lot twelve.’
‘I’m Judy and this is Charlie. And our daughters, Taylor and Stella.’
‘And what brings you to Fairyland Caravan Park?’ Cassie asks, and it seems a bit of a rude question under the circumstances. I mean – obviously nothing good.
I feel everyone’s eyes swivel around to us, including Matthew Clarke’s.
‘Termites,’ says Mum. ‘We had a termite problem.’
‘Actually, our dad gambled away everything we had and we lost our house and we’re in debt up to our eyeballs,’ Taylor says. I step away from her. I mean, I’m mad at Dad, too, but some things are still off limits.
Mum gives Taylor such a dark look that I know she’ll be punished later and I’m sort of glad about that. I see Dad start to shake – the way he does before he cries – but the people in the room just nod. ‘My Darryl was a gambler – loved the track,’ says Cassie, her voice fond. ‘He could have a dollar to his name and he’d bet ten. Cordial?’
‘Outside, please,’ Mum says to Taylor. ‘We need to have a talk. Outside.’
I watch them go. I sit down against the wall with my weak orange cordial and put my backpack down next to me. If I had my own room, I’d definitely flounce back to it now, slam the door and read my books and look up at the ceiling until I’d calmed down. But I don’t even have my own bed, I only have the books I can fit in my backpack and the ceiling above our bed is encrusted with so many seashells that I’ve started having dreams about plucking them all off. So I stay in the pavilion. I look around for Richard, who waves and makes his way over.
‘Cool, huh?’ he says.
‘Aren’t you meant to be in detention?’
‘Can’t keep me past five,’ he says. ‘Anyway, the garden night. It’s cool, right?’
‘Yeah,’ I say, even though it’s probably the least cool thing I’ve ever been to.
‘Where’s your sister?’
‘Being yelled at by her mum,’ I say.
Richard looks at me a bit oddly and I wonder if I should’ve said our mum.
I think about telling Richard how I’ve decided to help everyone at Fairyland to get back on their feet, but I sort of like it being my own secret plan, at least for now. Not that I’m using it as a distraction from my letter. That would be very basic. Much too basic for someone who’s read every single book in the ‘Make Good Choices: Make a Good Life’ series.
Richard tilts his head. ‘Wanna sort some seed packets?’
‘Sure.’
‘We get a discount from that nursery down by the river – mostly seeds just past their best-before dates. They still grow really well, there’s just a lower germination rate.’
‘That means nothing to me.’
He snorts. ‘Just put any for summer planting in this pile, okay? It’s written on the back. I’ll do the others later.’
‘They have to be planted at certain times?’
‘Yeah – of course. Wow, you’ve really never grown anything before, have you?’
‘Nah. We had lawn at our last place. And magnolias.’
‘Oh. Wow.’ He looks at me like he feels sorry for me. ‘Well, lucky you’ve ended up here. It’s pretty great learning about growing food.’
I nod in the same patient way I’ve seen Mum nod at confused residents at the nursing home where she works. A few people head outside with gloves and gardening tools that I can’t name. I see Matthew from a distance, moving between people. A little later, I see him through the pavilion window, knocking on people’s cabins and talking to them with his arms crossed.
‘What’s he doing?’
‘Oh.’ Richard shakes his head. He’s absolutely clobbered me at darts, but he keeps muttering about it just being good luck. ‘His dad’s work,’ he says, his voice distasteful.
When Richard rolls up his sleeves, the word Rahim is written up and down one of his arms in neat, black ink.
‘Is that a tattoo?’
‘What? Of course not! It’s pen! Jeez.’
‘What’s Rahim mean?’
Richard glances down at his arm. ‘My name.’
‘You’re Richard, though.’
‘No. That’s just the name Mum gave me when we got here. People couldn’t get their head around Rahim.’ He shrugs. ‘It’s no big deal. I just like to remind myself sometimes, you know?’
‘It’s a great name,’ I say. ‘Rahim. People are pretty dense. Does anyone call you Rahim still?’
‘Just my mum, sometimes.’
‘Would you go back to it, do you think?’