‘Oh, Stell.’ She cries then and she holds me so tightly that I can feel every tremble in her body. Her crying becomes sobbing, and she turns away and blots her face with her sleeve.
‘What’s wrong?’
‘Your dad . . .’ She swallows. ‘He got money. A loan shark or something, I guess. He left enough money to cover all the loans in my name that I used to bail him out and enough to use as a rental bond on a house. And he’s gone.’
‘What do you mean he’s gone?’
‘He’s left.’
‘What do you mean? Is he okay?’
‘I don’t know.’ She wipes her eyes. ‘He texted. Said he’s heading north. Not to worry. But I do, anyway. I do.’
‘So, we’re moving out? Taylor, you and me?’
‘It’s not a flashy place. Just a rental, near Ascott.’ Mum sips on her milkshake. ‘It’ll be a bit further for you to get to school.’
‘That’s okay. It’s closer than Lockwood.’
‘You’ll have your own rooms again. And there’s a garden. A little one.’
Mum’s still crying. She tries to stem her tears with the spotty napkins that came with our milkshakes.
‘It’s not as nice as Kelly’s.’
‘It has you and Taylor. Of course it’s as nice. It’s better!’
‘I’d rather be at Fairyland, with your father,’ she whispers. ‘I know that makes me a bad mother, but I’d rather have him with us and be in debt up to our eyeballs.’
‘It doesn’t, Mum.’ I hold her hand. ‘It doesn’t.’
***
I go to Fairyland and it looks just as it always has. I try to remember how it looked before I lived here; when I saw only decay and missed all the important things that make it what it is.
‘Stella!’ I look up at Muriel, beckoning me from her front door. ‘Come in!’
‘Thanks,’ I say, taking a last look at the tomato plants, heavy with split fruit and waterlogged leaves, before following her in.
She makes me tea and hands me grocery-store cupcakes, and we stare out at the plants and the trees.
‘What’s going to happen to this place?’ I ask.
‘I guess that’s up to the owners,’ she says. ‘They might land bank it. They might subdivide or develop it. Not our business, I guess.’
‘No. I guess not.’ I bite into the cake. ‘Where are you going to go?’
‘I’ll work out something.’
‘You can stay with us,’ I say.
‘Your mum offered that, too. But I’ll work something out. There’re some waiting lists I’m going on.’ She fiddles with her cup and I know how old Muriel is and I know how long those waiting lists are.
I swallow hard. ‘Where’s everyone else going?’
‘Oh, scattering around. Reg is moving up to Queensland to work on his brother’s farm. Trisha’s . . . I don’t know about Trisha. Ginny’s going west. Richard and Zara are moving into public housing. Cora’s going to houseshare with a school friend.’
‘What about all the trees and vegetable beds and flowers?’
‘You guys have a garden, don’t you? Maybe you can keep them there in pots.’
***
The house is on Sunshine Road, between the train line and the highway. We can’t hear the river, but we can hear cars and the sound of people settling into their houses for the night.
The ceilings are freshly painted. They’ve been done in a rush, so that in the right lights I can see all the strokes, the places where the brush has been.
We set up a bed for Jube in the living room, but most nights he ends up sleeping on Mum’s bed and she pretends she doesn’t like it, but we all know that she does. I set up Mum’s sewing machine in my bedroom, and most nights Mum will come in and check how I’m going with whatever I’m working on. She doesn’t say much, but she’ll sometimes nudge me out of my chair or guide my hands or foot as I try to do something tricky. She doesn’t ever sew anything herself. I suppose she will, eventually. I suppose that all the pieces of her have been cast in strange patterns and it will take her a while to fit herself back together. Now that Dad’s not here.
Taylor frames the Judy and Charlie photo for Mum and Mum cries and puts it on her bedside table, and a couple of times at night or very early in the morning, I’ve caught her just staring at it in the moonlight.
Kelly buys me bedding. A housewarming present, she says. But it feels more like a goodbye. She doesn’t call or text or anything and I wonder if she’s left for her trip, yet. I get a text from Mary a few days after moving out. She tried xo
I text Mary back and soon we’re chatting about everything and nothing. There’s a lot we don’t mention, but there’s so much that we do. She says that Simon’s been asking after me. That he’d like to get to know me, maybe be in my life a little.
Richard brings over a bucket of split tomatoes and cookies, and Zin and Lara come over with fish and chips. Mum’s started visiting Zara in the flat by the cinemas. She’d taken all of Zara’s geraniums; there’d been no outside space for them in the flat. She fusses over them every day. She picks handfuls, wraps them in foil, and takes them over to Zara along with things that she thinks Zara will like – magazines and cookbooks. Jewellery from the op shop that Zara might want to disassemble and turn into something new. They cook together in Zara’s little kitchen. Sometimes Mum and Zara practise some English, but mostly they don’t talk very much, yet Mum always comes back very relaxed. She comes back shaking her head over what a marvellous cook Zara is.
Clem comes over after dinner. He helps me slot my special books onto my bookshelf – the one Mum found for me at the op shop. And when nobody’s looking, we press against the walls and he kisses me, and I can’t believe he’s been right in front of me, all along.
Taylor comes into my room that first night.
‘I can’t sleep,’ she says, slipping into bed beside me. ‘All those months of wanting a bed to myself and now I’ve got it and I can’t sleep.’
‘I wonder where Dad is,’ I say.
‘Who knows?’
‘Do you think he’ll come back?’
‘When he’s ready,’ Taylor says, kicking me off her three-quarters of the bed. ‘I reckon he will when he’s ready.’
***
The garden of our rental is small with a faded fence and weedy lawn, but it looks lush. Beautiful. We’ve set up vegetable beds and transplanted the trees that Clem bought with his birthday money for everyone at Fairyland.
Simon gives me cuttings of my grandmother’s roses and I put them into plastic pots out in the sunshine.
There aren’t many people from Fairyland still in Sutherbend, but Cassie comes over and tinkers in amongst the plants and so does Richard. Sometimes we all tinker out there together, re-potting and weeding and watering and planning. We’ve started inviting the people who live along Sunshine Road into the garden. We share what we grow and they help where they can. Sometimes we all just sit around and talk. Talking feels different when you’re doing it in a garden you love.
I have a notebook, now. And I stick flowers and leaves in there that I’ve pressed in the pages of our phone book. Like Kelly’s little book, but different. I label the things in my book – their names and when they grew and what they looked and tasted like. I don’t really read self-help books anymore. I figure I’ll learn what I need to if I decide to study psychology after school, and until then it’s okay to wing it. It’s okay to read about flowers and gardens and soils instead. It’s okay to read trashy romance novels and play videogames and drink coffee.