‘A trial separation,’ he repeated to himself, moving into the bedroom to find his overnight bag. ‘I suppose you’ll want me to finish that desktop publishing I’m doing at work?’ he called from deep within the wardrobe.
Fancy stood at the bedroom door, and Radcliffe emerged and smiled at her. ‘Because I don’t know if I should be working on the Secret,’ he said, raising an eyebrow, ‘while we’re on our trial separation. What do you think?’
At last Fancy understood. He was threatening her. He could not take this seriously because he had the trump card: he knew the Secret. She could never end their marriage: he would go straight to the press. Of course he would. She could never leave him.
‘Hmm?’ prompted Radcliffe, cocking his head to the side.
Cath was scrambling around the floor of the shed, surrounded by opened drawers and spilling paper, books and cardboard. The photos that Cassie found were all of her. Now she opened and closed folders in a frenzy, grabbed at papers and dropped them. ‘This is my dog,’ she cried, ‘my school report . . . my string art!’ Cassie, sitting on the floor nearby, was turning the pages of another photo album, every now and then looking up at her teacher steadily, and then looking back at the photos.
Radcliffe moved around the house again, carefully packing random items: a CD from the shelf; a kiwifruit from the fridge. He was bluffing. He knew that at any moment she would have to laugh, apologise, and tell him to stop.
Fancy felt a rising helplessness. The telephone rang and she jumped.
Climbing through the kitchen window into the house, Listen thought she had better call one of the Zings. Not Redwood Primary at all. There was something strange going on in that shed, and she was the one who had started it. She looked at the auto-dial buttons on the phone, each neatly labelled, and remembered that Fancy lived nearby. So she pressed the button labelled ‘FANCY’.
‘Listen! Hello, sweetheart, how are you?’ Fancy sounded odd.
‘Who is it?’ That was Radcliffe’s voice in the background.
‘It’s Listen! Listen’s on the phone!’
‘Fancy, I have to tell you something. I’m at Grandma and Grandpa Zing’s place, and Cassie’s here too.’
‘Oh, honey! Well, they’re not there. They’ve gone to look at some balloons! What did you say about Cass – how did Cassie get there? Why isn’t she at school? Can you put her on the phone for me, honey?’
‘I can’t,’ said Listen, bravely. ‘She’s in the garden shed out the back. She’s okay though, because her teacher’s there too. I think her name’s Ms Murphy?’
Fancy was silent for a moment. There was the sound of breathing, and then clicking fingernails on the receiver.
‘Who did you say was there?’ she said eventually.
‘Ms Murphy. Cassie’s teacher? She’s in the garden shed with Cassie.’
‘Listen? Can you get them out of there? I mean, right away?’
Now Listen was silent for a moment. ‘Well,’ she admitted, ‘it’s tricky. Ms Murphy is looking in the filing cabinets at the moment. I tried to stop her.’
Fancy took an immense breath of air and began to laugh: ‘Ha ha ha!’ It was a high-pitched laugh, and she repeated it: ‘Ha ha ha!’
‘What is it, Fancy?’ Radcliffe’s voice was in the background again.
‘Oh well, Listen,’ said Fancy in a fluting voice, ‘the game’s up now! Tell you what, I’ll call my mother back from the balloons. You sit tight and I’ll be right over. Thanks for calling, sweetheart!’
Listen hung up and stared at the phone.
THE FIRE
Radcliffe was standing on the porch, his overnight bag over his shoulder, waiting for Fancy. She approached the front door and he grinned back at her.
‘I should go now?’ he called. ‘Check in to a hotel?’
‘That was Listen on the phone,’ Fancy replied in her musical voice. ‘And then I had to call my mother. Guess who’s in the garden shed going through the cabinets?’
‘Can’t guess.’
‘Try.’
‘The police?’
‘No, Radcliffe. Better! It’s Cath Murphy! She’s in the garden shed!’
Radcliffe turned pale grey. ‘Cath?’
‘Yes!’ cried Fancy, dim in the hallway. He tried to squint her into shape.
‘Then the Secret is out?’
‘Yes! And, Radcliffe, I want a divorce!’
A gust of wind slammed the front door closed.
A gust of wind blew Marbie’s hair all over her face, so that, for a moment, she was blinded. The same gust blew Mr Zing’s eyes into narrow squints. It tangled Mrs Zing’s shouts: ‘We have to go BACK!’ she was shouting. She had been shouting in to her mobile phone as they ran across the first three lanes of the highway, and now she was waving the phone above her head: ‘That was FANCY! We have to go BACK!’
All four stood in a row on a slender median strip as cars raced by in both directions.
‘But the café’s over there!’ said Marbie, hair in her eyes, taking one step forward.
‘Marbie!’ cried Vernon, pressing her back so abruptly that she did not stop on the median strip, but tripped into the lane behind. She fell into the path of a sports car.
A gust of wind skidded across the yard and through the open door of the shed. It tossed papers in the air, extinguished three candles, and knocked the fourth onto the WELCOME mat, where the flame took hold of a loose fibre.
Cath and Cassie, at the far end of the room, grabbed at the fluttering papers and photos and continued reading.
Amongst the papers and manila folders, Cath found: lists of every movie she had seen; charts showing her growth patterns from birth; an Excel spreadsheet of her favourite foods, colours, dance steps and magazines. Everything she touched was connected to her.
There were butterfly paintings she had done when she was six. There were dozens of close-up photographs of her face, aged eight or nine, hair in a high ponytail, leaning forward at her school desk. There were photos of her ankles. Photos of her walking home from school, swinging her school bag. Photos of her, aged twelve, talking to a horse named Buck, and offering a secret carrot. There were lists of her favourite books, along with her own observations on these books. In one drawer, there was an actual collection of each of her favourite toys.
Although she continually gasped and murmured, ‘Who are these people?’ and ‘What is this place?’, she also murmured, ‘That’s right,’ and ‘I loved that doll!’ She found herself feeling elated. Here it was! All of her! Here in this garden shed.
As she climbed back out of the kitchen window, Listen felt her eyes begin to sting. She looked up at the sky which was a strange yellow-grey colour, as if someone had stretched a pair of nylons across it. Tendrils of black smoke were wafting through the open door of the shed.
She looked around for Cath and Cassie, but they were nowhere to be seen, so she ran across the yard. ‘GET OUT OF THERE!’ She ran around the outside of the shed, thumping on the walls. ‘GET OUT OF THERE! THE SHED’S ON FIRE!’
Cath was leaning over Cassie’s shoulder as the child turned the pages of a photo album. ‘That’s me on a jet-ski,’ she said.
‘Okay,’ agreed Cassie.
‘. . . me riding a pony . . . me winning a medal at Brownies. That’s me eating an ice cream . . . that’s me behind that sunflower . . . that’s me at a law class – who took that?’
Cassie quietly turned the pages, coughed and rubbed her eyes. Cath coughed, thinking vaguely that she ought to open a window, and looked up to see if there were any.
The shed doorway had vanished behind clouds of smoke.
‘Help!’
Listen stopped thumping on the shed walls. A tinny voice was calling from somewhere deep inside the shed.
‘Help! Listen, can you hear us? We can’t get to the door!’ The voice was the 2nd grade teacher, Ms Murphy.
‘Call a fire engine!’ That was Cassie’s voice.
Listen backed away from the shed to look
at it again: there were no windows and no back door. She ran towards the open front door again, and saw that it was shrouded in black. The only sound was a low, industrious rustle, and the heat pressed her away.
Next she ran to the garden hose which was neatly wound on a spool by the garden tap. She wrenched it out of its spool, turned the tap to full, and pelted across the yard dragging the hose behind her. The hose reached its limit well before she had reached the shed, and jolted her onto the grass. In any case, looking down at the slender plastic, and feeling the weakish water dribble from the nozzle, she knew it would not have worked.
She stood again, squinting through the smoke at the burning shed. There must be another way out. Her eyes drifted up and caught a glint of sun on the skylight. It was too high for them to reach, but if she could somehow get on to the roof, and lower a rope down to them, she could help them out. Where would she find a rope?
Her eyes swung to the gum tree and its old rope swing. She would climb the tree, untie the ropes, and climb on to the roof of the shed.
But the shed had such slippery high walls, she knew she could never climb it.
She would have to jump from the top of the tree to the roof of the shed.
The tree was smooth but the ropes of the swing were helpful. ‘Use your feet,’ the climbing instructor had always shouted. Her sneakers slipped on the bark.
Panting, she straddled a branch near the top of the tree, dragged the swing seat up to her level, and began to untie the knots. They were tied in re-threaded figure eights which was what they used at climbing. She wound the rope around the seat, and looked over at the shed.
Black smoke billowed from the doorway and crept through cracks in the roof. Beyond the roof of the shed she could see the grounds of the school next door, where a small group of students was gathering. Now they were moving slowly across the yard, watching her.
There was no time to stop. She stood up on the branch and tucked the swing seat, wound in its own ropes, under her arm. The leaves above her tangled with her hair and twigs scratched at her neck, but she knew she had to start in the right position: one knee raised, the other bent, one arm forward, the other back.
There was only room on the branch for two and a half steps of the starting run, but she used them, bumping her head on the branch above, and leapt. She was rising into the air. There was a rush of wind in her face. Her legs were steady as a dancer’s: for the briefest moment, she was flying.
She landed by the skylight with a self-conscious kick, which was the correct way to finish a flying side kick.
There was a small metal handle on the side of the skylight, which burnt her hand when she touched it. She pulled an edge of her T-shirt to cover the handle and wrenched it open, so that the skylight lifted high into the air. Then she was on her hands and knees looking down into blackness.
Cath crouched against the far wall, pressing her arms, her T-shirt, her skirt against her face, but nothing would stop the smoke. She was clutching Cassie tightly to her body, the girl’s face pressed hard into her stomach. This is how my parents died, she remembered. She looked around again for a way out. It was too high to climb to the skylight. Flames were hurtling around the room, excited by the scattering of papers and folders, melting into the plastic covers of photo albums. There was a shrieking wrench as timber crashed on to the floor. The heat felt tight, like a rubber glove.
There was a shout from above.
Listen lay flat on her stomach and lowered the swing seat through the open skylight and down into the shed. The ropes of the swing were looped around her wrists and gripped in her palms, but she had no idea if she was strong enough.
Cath saw the swing above her and reached for it, but then stopped to gather Cassie close again. With one hand, she caught the swing seat.
‘Wrap your arms around the seat,’ shouted Listen, ‘and use your feet on the wall.’ Cassie’s eyes were tightly closed against the smoke, but she nodded, and wound her arms around the seat. With Cath’s help, she placed one foot high against the wall, and looked up towards Listen.
Listen slid back, pulling the swing ropes as she did, and burning her knees on the shed roof, until the ropes were tight. Now she was dragging the weight of Cassie: she started flat on her stomach, inching back along the roof, and then lifted herself onto her elbows and knees, until she was finally standing up, leaning backwards and pulling, arm over arm. Below, the shed was so dark with smoke that Cath was only a pale shape.
When she was high enough, Cassie reached a hand up and Listen helped her scramble out. They both fell back onto the roof for a moment, and looked around. Smoke billowed out of the skylight.
Cassie crouched close to Listen while Listen lowered the swing again. Below, now pressed into a corner by flames, Cath grasped the swing and looked up doubtfully.
But this time, Listen felt the strangest surge of strength. She dragged at the rope with both hands, again sliding back from the skylight on her stomach, and within moments Cath’s hands appeared at the edges.
Now all three huddled together, looking for a way to get down. They could hear the shriek of a fire engine; also, they could see that the Zings’ back yard was crowded with Bellbird students from next door, shouting and waving at them.
‘JUMP! JUMP!’
Cassie straightened up, coughed once, and jumped. A flurry of hands caught her.
Cath and Listen looked at each other and down at the school kids below, and then, feeling the heat burst around them, they both dived into the crowd.
Listen felt hands all over her stomach, arms and legs, and found herself carried in a tumbling rush to the front lawn, away from the heat. There was a bustle of shouting and excitement, and she was lowered onto the grass while students asked where it hurt and whether she was burning.
‘Give her space!’
‘Get some ice!’
‘No, not ice!’
‘Get the hose!’
The students backed away from her in a circle. They were quiet for a moment, watching, uncertain, as she lay coughing and staring up at them.
She tried to focus on the students, to stop them from shifting in her gaze. Just before she passed out, she saw three distinct faces: Carl Vandenberg, the black belt from Tae Kwon Do; Samalia Janz, the girl with the ponytail from rock climbing; and Annie Webb, the new girl with the gold stud in her chin. All three wore Bellbird High uniforms.
Although she knew that this must be a dream, she also felt a soft rush of gladness.
14
SLEEP
Cassie dreamed of roasting mice on sticks around a bonfire. She dreamed of explaining to Lucinda, very slowly and precisely, that her skin would turn to ashes unless she drank her Fanta.
Listen dreamed that she had to climb the walls of Redwood Primary, which scratched her knees like bark. ‘It’s okay if you let go with both hands,’ explained Samalia, her ponytail swinging in the wind. ‘See?’ She flung her hands into the air, and ran up the wall like Spiderman.
‘Thanks,’ said Listen, doubtfully.
Cath Murphy dreamed she was teaching a class of teenagers. ‘Vituperative and scornful rejection,’ she said wisely, ‘of the applicant’s connubial advances.’
The teenagers turned to one another, nodding earnestly. ‘No ice,’ she heard one say to a friend. ‘No ice, no butter, no toothpaste, no tomato.’ The friend nodded: ‘And don’t touch the burn with your hands.’
Fancy and Radcliffe arrived at the Zing house to a clamour of fire trucks, school children, and smoke. There were sirens and ambulances parked at jaunty angles, and there seemed to be girls on stretchers everywhere they turned. Shortish men in uniforms leaned briskly over these stretchers.
‘Cassie?’ called Fancy, but no sound emerged. She watched vaguely as Radcliffe hurried into the jostle, throwing questions around him. After a moment, he returned and told her to get into the car.
They arrived at the hospital at the same time as Mr Zing, Mrs Zing, Marbie and Vernon, which caused some confusio
n in the revolving door. The confusion intensified when they found their way inside and were directed, variously, to Accidents & Emergencies, the Children’s Ward, and the Burns Division. Also when they noticed that blood was slowly spilling from each of Marbie’s knees.
In the lift, Mr Zing said to Radcliffe, ‘We drove straight back to our place like Fancy said we should, and followed the ambulances here. What’s going on?’
‘I spoke to an ambulance officer,’ Radcliffe told him, watching the lift buttons grimly. ‘Apparently, Listen and Cath Murphy were climbing the tree in your back garden, which caught alight, and Cassie had to rescue them. All that smoke, eh? From a single tree!’
In a corridor, Mrs Zing explained to Vernon, ‘I don’t think Listen was involved, Vernon. Cassie had an asthma attack, that’s all, because of the smoke from a bonfire in the school yard next door. Now is this the right direction?’
On a stairway, Fancy said to Marbie, ‘What have you done to your knees?’
‘I fell into the path of a sports car,’ Marbie replied. ‘But it swerved.’
In a waiting room, a doctor said to Fancy and Radcliffe, ‘We suspect that Cassie may have smoke inhalation poisoning.’
‘What do you mean?’ demanded Radcliffe.
‘We understand she was trapped in the burning room – a shed, was it? Or a garage? In any case, she was trapped for some time. She’s under ten. She’s exhibiting difficulty breathing. And there is some slight discolouration of her skin. These factors add up and tell us smoke poisoning is likely. Now, she suffered only very slight burns, and we have already begun treatment – in those circumstances, the prognosis is good. But I must impress upon you that a condition like this can be extremely serious, and the major cause of . . . there is a chance . . . I must ask you to prepare . . .’ The doctor’s voice seemed to fade in and out.
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