‘I don’t know.’ He rolls his sleeves back down. ‘Maybe. But it’s hard when you get older. There are parts of me that are Richard now, you know?’
‘I dunno.’ I glance down, ashamed. ‘I mean, I’ve only ever been Stella. I’ve never thought about it before.’
Across the room, I see Cassie grunting as she lifts up a tyre painted vividly with flowers and vines. ‘What’s she doing?’
‘Oh.’ Richard puts spinach seeds in the summer pile. ‘She has a tyre business.’
‘What?’
‘She steals them, I guess. Turns them into things.’
‘She steals tyres and turns them into things?’
‘Yeah.’
I fiddle with my cup, thinking. ‘How’d she come up with that?’
‘Huh?’
‘Well, it’s pretty creative, isn’t it? Who’d think of that? Turning tyres into things that are beautiful.’
‘It’s not creativity,’ he says. ‘It’s survival.’
‘Still. It’s cool. She could make a lot of money from them. Move out of here.’
He picks up another seed packet, checking the edge of it with the pad of his thumb. ‘You really think it’s as simple as that?’
I blink. ‘I don’t know.’
He tosses the packet into the summer pile. ‘Right. We’re ready to plant.’
***
Richard coordinates the whole thing. He’s very organised. He’s even set up a little perspex lean-to out the back of the pool and this is where we take the summer seed packets. Muriel tags along, stopping to talk to people as we walk. Muriel is about as tall as Taylor, with long hair in a very neat plait and a huge, crooked smile. She’d be in her eighties, I guess. Maybe nineties. She runs her finger along the branches of a rosemary bush and I think it’s so sad that she’s here and not in a nursing home, where old people are meant to be.
‘This is where you grow everything?’ I ask. Every available inch of the lean-to is filled with little plants in pots.
‘I just start them off in here. Then they harden off out there.’ Richard nods to a little shelf set up outside. ‘And then they get planted.’
‘I organise most of the planting,’ Muriel says. ‘I work out what we’re going to plant where. Some plants are thirstier than others and some need more sun. You’ve gotta be clever about it. Make sure you put the needy plants near lots where people will check on them.’
‘Right.’ Muriel should be sitting watching game shows on television with a nice soft blanket over her knees, not poking around outside in the dirt and heat. It’s a travesty, really. Maybe I can talk to Mum about getting Muriel into the nursing home where she works.
Muriel reaches up to prod my shoulder and she’s much stronger than she looks. ‘What about you folks? In lot twelve? Can I trust some of my needy ones with you?’
‘Probably not,’ I say. ‘We’re not good with gardens.’
Muriel nods sombrely. ‘Alright. Disappointing, but I appreciate your honesty.’
‘The ones for around lots six and eight are out in the wheelbarrow there.’ Richard indicates the area outside. I wipe my sweating face on the back of my hand. Richard smiles at me and hands me some gloves. ‘Alright. Let’s get planting.’
***
My nails are black with potting mix. I scrub at them, but they stay stubbornly dirty. Later that night, Mum’s sitting on the wicker couch with the television turned down low, frowning at a list that I suppose is something to do with money and budgeting. It’s all she does now, budget and fret and work. The other parts of her have slipped away and I hope they’re just hidden. I hope they’re not lost. I wish I knew how to find them. I think about telling her about my plans to help people at Fairyland – I know she’d approve. But it still feels like a secret that’s just mine. Besides, I need to sort out my own family, first. It’s amazing how little they’ve learned from me over the years. Sometimes it feels as though they ignore everything I tell them about how to live their best life, just to spite me.
‘Mum? You shouldn’t have coffee so late. It interferes with your sleep patterns.’
She gives me a blank stare. ‘Is that right?’
‘Chamomile would be better. I can get you some.’
She looks on the verge of telling me off for being a know-it-all bossy britches, then she softens. ‘Thanks, love. But I quite like my coffee. Never could stomach that rotten herbal stuff.’
I fidget for a moment. ‘Mum?’
‘Hmm?’
‘Can I ask you something?’
‘Of course,’ she says, eyes still on her list.
‘How did my mum . . . my birth . . . my biological mother get pregnant?’
Mum drops her pen and looks up at me. ‘What?’
‘I’ve just been thinking about her, that’s all.’ I imagine them. My birth parents. They’d be happily married. They’d just had me too young, that’s all. Too young to be parents, but madly in love. And rich, too. They’d have a house bigger than Clem’s; bigger than Lara’s, even. Bigger than any of the houses in Sutherbend.
Mum gives me a searching look. ‘It’s very out of the blue, Stell. Asking that.’
‘Not really. I think about her all the time.’
Mum slides off her glasses and rubs the bridge of her nose. ‘Do you?’
‘Yeah.’
‘What do you mean by all the time?’
‘Just a lot, that’s all.’
‘Is this about Fairyland? Is it about living here?’
‘What? No!’
‘I’m too tired to get into it all, Stell. She was young and silly and she was taken advantage of. Let’s leave it at that.’
I frown. ‘What do you mean by young and silly?’
‘Nothing. It doesn’t matter.’
‘Taken advantage of,’ I say the words slowly, weighing each of them up. My heart begins to beat faster and faster.
‘Yes.’
I know what ‘taken advantage of’ means. I stand up, feeling dizzy. But there’s nowhere for me to go, no place that’s just mine. I go into the bedroom and sit down on the floor with my back against the side of the bed.
‘Stell?’ Taylor looks up from her laptop and pokes me in the back with her foot. I force myself to breathe. Taken advantage of.
Taylor keeps kicking me. I go outside and Dad’s still out there. I close my eyes. ‘You know, Taylor wouldn’t give you such a hard time if you tried to help yourself more.’
He startles. ‘What?’
‘You heard me.’
‘Tried to help myself?’
‘Like, if you joined a sports team or something. Or took up running. Or did more around the house for Mum. Or actually went to counselling. Just stuff that’s going to help you, you know?’
‘I’m not talking about this with you,’ he says, his voice quiet.
‘But . . .’
‘Look,’ he says, pointing at a carving of a fairy on the trunk of one of the trees. ‘Aren’t they great?’
‘Are you listening to me?’
‘They give it a bit of character, don’t they? The fairies. Much more character than that boring old house we lived in before.’