Lydia walked towards us. ‘Girls,’ she said, ‘I want you to tell me everything.’
Five months later.
Lydia parked in a spot overlooking the water. A sandy path squiggled down to the sea, line with spiky plants. I could look at the view, but only for a few seconds. The school counsellor said it was best to take things one step at a time.
A whole bunch of us went that day: Tahlia, Mahesh, Lydia, Daniel and their new baby, Meredith. We’d picked up Grandpa on the way, from his new home at Acacia Lodge. It was a bit like a retirement village, but with nurses and cleaners to help out.
After the day on the roof, the doctor told us Grandpa had an infection that made him behave extra-bizarrely. I thought the antibiotics would cure him but the doctor said no, he’d improve a little, but he’d still be muddled because he also had something called dementia. That was why he was living at Acacia. I cried a lot when he left us, but the Lodge was close to my new high school so I got to visit him often.
Grandpa had his good days and his bad. On his bad days, he called me Meredith and did things like take apart Acacia’s airconditioning unit to ‘fix the rattle’.
On his good days, he called me Kenzie and told me stories about when he was a kid. On one such day, I told him I was sorry I didn’t manage to keep us together.
He shook his head and said, ‘You did a remarkable job, love, and don’t you forget it. You’re quite a girl, Mackenzie Elizabeth Carew, just like your mum. And besides, I’m in good hands. Let’s face it, I’m still a handsome devil, and this place is packed to the rafters with single women.’ He winked and squeezed my hand.
We’d gone to the beach today so Grandpa could swim with his Polar Bear mates. He already had his trunks on and his wrap-around sunnies. As he combed his hair in the rear-view mirror, he said, ‘Full head of hair, Kenzie. Not many men my age can say that.’
Tahlia pulled her towel around her and jogged on the spot. ‘This sand is freezing,’ she said. She did a pirouette to warm herself up.
Lydia said she’d like to go for a swim too, then a gust of wind blew up from the water and she said, ‘Maybe I’d better stay with the baby.’
‘We’ll be fine with her,’ I said. ‘Mahesh will come and get you if there’s a problem, right Mahesh?’
Mahesh nodded. ‘I have heaps of cousins,’ he said. ‘I can change a nappy in under twelve seconds.’
‘Are you sure you’ll be okay?’ asked Lydia.
I smiled at her. Lydia wasn’t so bad once you got to know her. You just needed to know how to handle her. She and Daniel had moved in with Tahlia and me, taking over the lease at Eggins Avenue. We ate a lot more vegies than we used to and I had to wash every single day. Still, she’d bought me some tassels to tie back my green velvet curtains, and with the new baby, there was hardly any spare time for her to annoy Tahlia.
‘Come on, love,’ said Daniel. ‘The kids’ll be fine.’
Lydia and Tahlia stood either side of Grandpa and took an arm each. ‘I’m not a complete invalid,’ said Grandpa, but he let them help him down the path to meet with the rest of the Polar Bears.
‘See you, Pirate!’ I called.
The sea looked like a huge washing machine, churning, churning. And yet surfers were out there, zooming around on their boards, falling off and getting back up again. Some kids bobbed about on those inflatable ring things. A boat sailed past on the horizon.
‘Not everything sinks,’ I said to myself.
‘What’s that?’ said Mahesh. He put his little finger in Meredith’s hand and she squeezed it.
‘Oh, nothing.’
Meredith gurgled to herself and I held my lucky doorknob in front of her eyes. It caught the sun and a rainbow fell across her face. She let go of Mahesh’s finger and reached out to touch it.
Mahesh took a piece of paper out of his pocket and unfolded it. ‘This is for you,’ he said. He looked out of the car window while I checked it out.
It was a drawing of a girl at the bottom of a well. She had short, reddish hair and she was treading water. It was just like my dream only the picture was different in one very important way: there was a rope dangling from above, reaching all the way to the girl. Up top, Grandpa was sitting beneath a tree, holding Meredith in his arms. Next to him was a line of people holding onto the end of the rope: Tahlia, Lydia, Daniel, Mahesh, Mrs B., and even Basanti and Vijay. All of them were holding the rope with both hands, ready to pull that girl up out of the well.
All she had to do was reach up, grab the rope and hold on tight.
Many thanks to the following people who helped me write this book: those who provided me with very useful feedback (even though it meant lots of rewriting), my mentor Ruth Starke, Mum, Russell Talbot, Dave Rees, Sally Odgers, my critique group Critters – Kesta Fleming, Richard Brookton and Julie Thorndyke, the participants of the young carers group at Raw Energy – Imré, Michaella, Tallara, Jacob and Penny (thanks for your honest answers and for the chips!); Cheryl Orsini for her lovely illustrations; Amanda Bethell, John Bethell and Murray Burdett, who provided me with much-needed technical advice; Jaclyn, Amelia and Scott De Laine and Keira Gopsill for advising me on schoolyard slang; the South Australian Writers’ Centre for being a continual source of information and support; Arts SA and the Richard Llewellyn Arts and Disability Trust for funding my mentor-ship; my publisher, Zoe Walton, a great person to bounce ideas off when my brain was overloaded; the rest of the Random House team who did such a good job bringing my story to the bookshelves; and finally to my agent, Sheila Drummond, whose continued support has helped keep the writer’s angst at bay.
South Australian author Marianne Musgrove got her first taste of success when, at age ten, she won the Sinbad Award For The Most Outlandish Stories To Be Written. In high school, she went on to win the Award For The Least Changed Hairstyle and in 2008, her first novel, The Worry Tree, was granted the Australian Family Therapists’ Award for Children’s Literature. It was also short-listed for three other awards, including the 2007 National Children’s Peace Literature Award. Her second book, Lucy the Good, was published in 2008. She has since changed her hairstyle.
For more information, check out:
www.mariannemusgrove.com.au
or www.randomhouse.com.au/Authors/
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