The Secrets We Keep

by Nova Weetman

  ‘There you are,’ says Ellie, popping up out of nowhere.

  Before PE, I would have found the way she appears wherever I am annoying. But running together this morning has changed that. It’s given us something else to talk about that isn’t the whole mother thing.

  ‘Where’s Tam?’ I half expect her to jump out from behind Ellie and take me down.

  ‘Dance club.’

  ‘Right.’ I laugh.

  ‘What’s funny?’

  ‘We had chess club and French club at our old school. But dance club?’

  ‘Yeah, it’s cool. One of our teachers used to be a dancer. Sometimes they do flash mob stuff at assembly.’

  Ellie brushes away some stones on the ground and sits down next to me, taking out her lunch box.

  ‘Vegemite sandwiches again.’ Ellie bites into one and chokes. ‘Stale bread.’ She sighs and drops it back into the lunch box. ‘I wish Dad would let me bring money to school. Then I could get a pie. But he thinks he’s doing the right thing by packing our lunches. Only problem is, we never have any food in the house, so we’re stuck with stuff like this.’

  ‘Roast potato?’ I offer, hoping she doesn’t accept. They’re cold but delicious because all of the oil and salt has seeped in giving them heaps of flavour.

  ‘Thanks,’ she says, taking the smallest piece. ‘Does your dad cook?’

  I nod. ‘Yeah, he has for a few years now.’

  ‘You’re lucky. My dad can’t do anything practical. It’s a miracle if we even get dinner.’

  I start eating the potatoes at a rapid pace because I don’t want Ellie to take another one. And I can’t really say no, given her bruised apple and stale Vegemite sandwich.

  ‘Why don’t you cook?’ I ask through a mouthful.

  ‘I’ve thought about that, but I don’t want Dad to feel like he’s useless,’ she explains. Her hand hovers over the last potato.

  ‘You have it.’ I can’t believe I just said that.

  She smiles and pulls her hand away. ‘No, it’s fine. I can tell you really want it.’

  Phew. I shove it in before she can change her mind.

  ‘So, do you want to come over after school?’ asks Ellie.

  Do I? I’m not sure. But I find myself nodding, and her grin makes me pleased I did.

  ‘It’s just down the road. We can walk,’ she says.

  ‘Is Tam coming, too?’

  Ellie shakes her head and bites into her bruised apple. ‘Nah. Tam has a million things on every afternoon. Today it’s gymnastics.’

  ‘Oh. Cool,’ I say, remembering how busy my weeks used to be, too.

  ‘We used to go to gym together three nights a week. But then Mum got sick and went into hospital and the visiting hours meant that if I wanted to see her, I had to drop it.’

  ‘Do you mind?’

  She shakes her head. ‘Not really. Tam minded more than I did. I figure I can go back to gym when Mum comes home.’

  We’re back to talking about mums again, but this time it’s about her mum, so it seems okay.

  ‘When is she coming home?’

  Ellie’s frown tells me something isn’t quite right. But then she smiles and shrugs and says, ‘Tell me about your old school.’

  ‘There’s not much to tell. It was much smaller than this one. And we had desks. And no teachers with piercings.

  ‘What about your friends? Do you miss them?’

  ‘Yeah. I do.’

  ‘Couldn’t you just move house and stay in the same suburb? Why did you move here?’

  Bridge asked me the same thing. It’s hard to admit your dad can’t afford to rent a house in the area you grew up in. I don’t want to tell Ellie about the insurance money still not coming through. Actually I don’t want to talk about any of it.

  ‘Not sure. Fresh start, I guess,’ I say, keeping it as light as I can.

  ‘Yeah but why did you change schools? Your house burnt down not your school.’

  I shrug. ‘Dad wanted to be closer to work so he didn’t have to leave me alone for so long.’

  ‘Yeah, that makes sense,’ agrees Ellie. ‘And I reckon that if my house burnt down and my mum died in it, I wouldn’t want to live somewhere I saw reminders every day.’

  ‘It’s not that easy to escape reminders,’ I say, surprising myself. ‘Do you want some chocolate pudding?’

  ‘Are you kidding? I’m not going to say no to that!’

  I pass Ellie my spoon and watch her take a big mouthful.

  ‘Did your dad cook this, too?’

  I nod.

  ‘You are so lucky.’

  Am I? Maybe. I’m not so sure.

  We stay under the shady gum tree for the entire lunch hour while the rest of the school plays or fights or talks. I don’t say much. Ellie does her best to fill the silence. I hear about her brother, Finn, who is two years younger, her dad who works as a builder, and I hear about her mum who has lost all her hair but still looks beautiful even in a grey woolly cap. And I hear about Ellie. That she wants to be a runner or a gymnast, although that might be a bit hard now that she’s had a year off. That she doesn’t like maths, but she loves reading. That she and Tam have been friends since they were in kinder, and that sometimes Ellie wishes she could make other friends, but Tam gets jealous.

  And then, when I think I’ve heard everything, Ellie whispers, ‘I think my mum is dying,’ and looks away at some little kid waving a stick at his friend in the playground.

  I search for words in my head, looking for something reassuring to say. But then I think about how Ellie reacted when I told her about my mum and then I can’t think of anything else. So I say nothing at all.

  Chapter 7

  Ellie’s house is really new. I’m barely in the front door and I can already tell everything will be shiny. It makes our flat seem even browner and plainer.

  ‘Wow!’ I gasp, sounding like I’m five. I’ve never been in such a new house before. All my friends live in weatherboard places that constantly need painting.

  ‘I know. Dad built it and he only finished it last year,’ says Ellie as she leads me through the foyer. ‘It’s not normally this messy though …’

  I see what she means. Every room we walk past looks like someone has started trying to clean up but stopped halfway. There are piles of folded laundry in the lounge room, the kitchen bench is covered with breakfast dishes and LEGO is everywhere. Ellie must pick up about a hundred pieces just walking up the sweeping staircase to her bedroom. I run my hand slowly up the polished wooden banister as if I were a princess. I’ve always wanted a staircase and a bedroom upstairs.

  ‘Dad’s not good at cleaning. I try to help, but Finn’s a total pig and it just gets too much,’ she says, looking down.

  I shrug. ‘It’s fine. I don’t care.’

  ‘At least my room’s clean.’ Ellie opens a door and reveals one of the most enormous bedrooms I’ve ever seen. There’s a swirly green-and-blue patterned rug in the middle of the room and her white wooden bed is against the wall. It’s a loft-style bed that you climb up into with a desk, bookshelf and couch underneath. Everything is green and white and it all matches. There’s also a cabinet of trophies, medals and ribbons, another bookshelf and a whole wall of white cubes that are joined together. In each cube Ellie has something on display. I see china horses, Japanese dolls and jewellery.

  My bedroom BTF was just an odd assortment of furniture and colours. Even though I loved it, it never looked like Ellie’s. Hers is like a showroom.

  ‘I spend most of my time in here.’ Ellie walks across to the couch and plonks down, leaning back against a fluffy green cushion.

  I can’t sit. I’m too busy looking around. I walk over to the trophy cabinet and see that most of the trophies are for running.

  ‘You got to State?’

  �
�Yeah, last year,’ Ellie says, coming up behind me. ‘But I blew it.’

  ‘But you got to State,’ I say again, seriously impressed. I just missed out on making it to State last year. It’s always been a dream of mine to compete at that level.

  ‘You hungry?’ asks Ellie, and I wonder why she doesn’t want to talk about running.

  ‘As my dad says, I’m always hungry!’

  ‘We could make pancakes,’ she suggests.

  I don’t really want to go downstairs. I’d prefer to look at all of Ellie’s things. But I can sense that she’d rather I didn’t poke around in her stuff.

  ‘Okay.’

  I follow her back downstairs. The house is really quiet and I wonder if she has to hang out alone a lot.

  ‘Where’s your brother?’

  ‘Finn goes to after-school care most afternoons because Dad doesn’t think it’s fair if I have to look after him. Besides, I think he’d rather play soccer with his friends than get bossed around by me.’

  I laugh. ‘What time does your dad get home?’

  ‘He picks Finn up at 5.30, then picks me up and we go to the hospital. Dad’s not really working at the moment. He’s just at the hospital,’ says Ellie quietly.

  The kitchen is the size of our entire flat. A gleaming white marble bench stands in the middle with stools along one side. I sit at the bench while Ellie goes into the walk-in pantry to get the ingredients. I guess if the insurance money comes through then we could build a new house on our old block, but I can’t imagine my scruffy Dad living in a house like this. He suits creaky floorboards and doors that don’t quite close, and a kitchen full of Mum’s vintage crockery. Actually, I think that’s probably what suits me, too.

  I can see into a garden, which looks like a jungle. I guess they don’t have much time at the moment to mow the lawn or clip the hedges.

  ‘Is that a shed out there?’

  I hear Ellie banging around, and then she emerges from the pantry with a glass jar of what looks like flour.

  ‘Granny flat. My nanna stays over sometimes.’

  ‘Cool.’

  ‘Yeah. She is. I wish she could live with us all the time, but she has cats and her own place and she’s not ready to give all that up yet.’

  Ellie slides a green glass bowl onto the bench and starts shaking in the flour.

  ‘You can crack the egg,’ she says, handing me the carton.

  I never cook. I can only make toast, heat up baked beans and make scones because Mum taught me when I was little, but I haven’t cracked an egg since I was about four. I hit an egg on the side of the bowl, but nothing happens.

  Ellie looks at me. ‘Just hit it harder,’ she says.

  I do, and this time I crush the whole thing. The shell, the egg white and gooey yolk goes everywhere. Plus it really stinks.

  ‘Ew,’ I exclaim.

  ‘It’s rotten,’ yells Ellie, like it’s somehow my fault.

  ‘It’s disgusting,’ I reply. ‘I’ve never seen a rotten egg before.’

  Ellie grabs the carton and checks the expiry. Then she slams it down on the bench. ‘Out of date. Like a month ago. I’m so sick of this. I can’t even make pancakes.’

  I still have stinky egg on my hand and I really want to wash it off, but I don’t want to upset Ellie.

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ I say quietly, trying to make it okay for her. ‘I’m not really that hungry anyway.’

  ‘I am.’ Ellie looks at me and I can see she’s crying. She wipes the back of her hand across her eyes and starts emptying the bowl of rotten egg mixture into the bin.

  ‘So let’s make something else.’

  ‘I don’t want to. I want pancakes. Fluffy pancakes with heaps of maple syrup. Like we used to have every Sunday.’

  Ellie sounds so angry. I know this is about her mum not being around, but it’s strange being in someone else’s weird family drama when you’ve had plenty of your own.

  ‘Right. Well let’s go and knock on your neighbour’s door and see if they have an egg,’ I suggest.

  She looks at me like I’m a genius. ‘That’s perfect. You can stay here and wash your hands. I’ll see what I can do.’

  She runs out the door leaving me standing alone in her shiny kitchen. I kind of feel like crying, too, but it’s not the right time or place for that. So I turn on the tap with my egg-free hand, wait until the water warms up and then wash all the stinky stuff off. But I can tell it’s going to be one of those smells that lingers. Just like the smell of fire on my clothes.

  So now I’m waiting for a girl I only met yesterday to bring back an egg. Why did I agree to come over when I could have just gone home to my cold flat to hang out with Dad? Just the thought of Dad makes me miss him.

  The front door slams interrupting my thoughts.

  ‘Two eggs, Clem!’ Ellie shouts victoriously as she hurries down the hall.

  ‘Great,’ I tell her, trying to muster enthusiasm.

  I sniff my hand. Yuck. I don’t even feel like pancakes anymore.

  ‘All these months we’ve lived next door to each other and I’ve never asked them for anything. Isn’t that strange?’ says Ellie, getting out a clean glass bowl. This one is blue. ‘But the lady’s really nice. She said—’

  ‘You can crack the egg this time,’ I interrupt, wondering if you can get post-traumatic stress disorder from rotten eggs.

  Ellie laughs. ‘Sure. And sorry I lost it before. It’s just …’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘You get it. Tam never does. It’s nice meeting someone who understands,’ she says, starting to remake the pancake batter.

  ‘I’m sure she tries,’ I say, wondering why I’m defending Tam when she clearly doesn’t like me.

  ‘Yeah. It’s just hard. Her mum doesn’t even work so she’s around all the time. She’s like Tam’s personal taxi service.’

  ‘Wow, lucky her.’

  ‘Yeah, I reckon.’

  Watching Ellie whip the pancake mixture, I think about my mum. Did she think about what would happen to me if she wasn’t around?

  ‘Do you want to flip them?’ Ellie asks, bringing me back from the night of the fire.

  ‘It’s okay,’ I reply. ‘You do it.’

  As I watch Ellie slide pancake after pancake onto a plate, I wonder if Dad has the same questions I do. I wonder if he dreams about Mum, and if he can picture her lighting the flames.

  Chapter 8

  Dad’s asleep on the couch when I walk in, even though it’s only five o’clock. His teacup is nestled in his hand. I try to take it away but, as I do, he opens his eyes. It takes him a second to blink away the sleep before he smiles.

  ‘Hey, Clem.’

  ‘Hey, Dad. Sorry I’m home late. I went to Ellie’s for pancakes,’ I say.

  His smile grows. ‘Great. That’s what I want to hear. Lemon and sugar?’

  I slide down at the other end of the couch. I can see where Dad’s darned a hole in his sock. It makes my heart race. BTF we never darned anything. Maybe I could buy him some new socks with the forty dollars he gave me.

  ‘Nah, maple syrup.’

  He rolls his eyes dramatically and it makes me laugh.

  ‘You’ll have to bring Ellie here one night and we’ll show her how the Timmins family roll with pancakes.’

  ‘But her kitchen can fit into our whole flat.’

  ‘So? I bet we make yummier pancakes.’

  If Dad is upset that we now have to live in this tiny place, he never shows it. In fact, if I had just met him I’d think he was the happiest man alive and that nothing bad had ever happened to him.

  ‘I had a call today, Clem.’ Dad looks down the couch, straight into my eyes. For a second his eyes are darker than I’ve ever seen them. But then he blinks and the light is back.

  ‘Hope you said we weren’t
interested,’ I say, and then laugh.

  ‘It’s the insurance,’ he says quietly.

  ‘Can we make roast potatoes again tonight?’

  ‘Honey, we need to talk about this.’

  I find myself shaking my head. ‘No. We don’t.’

  His hand grabs mine. His squeeze is warm. I can see his tears aren’t far away because he blinks quickly.

  ‘The police are still investigating and they aren’t sure we’re covered. The arson chemist is still trying to establish if the candle burned down and the fire started from that or if …’

  His hand squeezes even harder. It’s like he’s holding on to me because he knows I’ll run away if he lets go. I’ll run and run and run and nobody will catch me. Not even Ellie with her long legs.

  Dad clears his throat. ‘I thought you’d want to know.’

  ‘Right,’ I say.

  ‘And I think it’s important we understand the police are trying to get to the bottom of it.’

  ‘But if we aren’t covered you can fight it, can’t you?’

  He shakes his head. ‘’Fraid not.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘Well, we have to wait until they’ve finished the investigation.’

  The question I want to ask is wedged somewhere in my chest. I can feel it sticking there like a piece of hard bread. I cough but it refuses to shoot free. So I’m left with the questions in my head.

  Is it because of Mum?

  Is it because she lit the fire?

  Instead I ask him, ‘So what do they know?’

  ‘They don’t know anything for sure, honey. Not yet.’

  ‘So we might have to live here? Forever?’

  There’s a sigh. Not angry, but understanding. ‘Not forever. If the insurance doesn’t come through then we can sell the land,’ he says, finally letting go of my hand. ‘And we can replace your stuff,’ he adds gently.