I climb out of the car, grabbing my scarf, and head towards the chapel. On the way I pass the block of classrooms, with its low verandah extending from one side to the other keeping the doors and windows in perpetual gloom. Somewhere in there is Mr Pegg’s old office. He’s not the headmaster anymore, but I still imagine him sitting inside, behind that big wooden desk. Thinking of Mr Pegg sends panic rising in my chest. Why does being back here make me feel so guilty?
Tiny gumnuts fleck the path. The chapel looms ahead, dwarfing everything. I expect it to be locked, but the doors are pitched open in the gravel. When I take off my sunglasses, everything swims for a minute. Ahead, between me and the altar, are pews, a dozen rows on either side of the aisle, while on my left is the vestry.
Each week, in that cramped, dusty room, I would take viola lessons with Miss Heart, a silver-haired woman with nicotine-stained teeth. The morning light used to flare against the window, illuminating—alarmingly—the whiskers on Miss Heart’s chin.
I take a seat in the back pew. I’ve rarely been inside a church since school. I run my finger over hymnbooks, think about picking one up. I close my eyes, dwelling on the quiet. These days I don’t enjoy a lot of silence—time is always filled with sound or movement or thinking, my mind rarely still, always flitting, like a kaleidoscope. That’s what I’d liked about chapel—the moments of quiet reflection—and, shuffling my boots across the smooth bluestone, I suddenly think of Lara.
I haven’t thought about Lara in a long time. Years, in fact. We knew each other in primary school. Lara lived with her mum in an enormous house overlooking the beach, with a pool at the back and an air-hockey table in a room they called the den. She had a black poodle called Soda who used to jump up and scrabble painfully at my legs every time I went to her house.
Lara had the best clothes of any kid in my class—OshKosh T-shirts and new Reebok Pumps every six months. (She used to give me her hand-me-downs, which I would wear until the soles fell away.) She even had a television in her room with a Nintendo.
Her dad didn’t live with Lara. He had remarried another, younger woman, and they lived in a house in the city. Sometimes Lara and I stayed over at her dad’s house. He’d often go out for the evening, his wife wearing a cocktail dress, and when they were gone Lara would bring out the Nightmare on Elm Street or
Pet Sematary videos. At home I wasn’t allowed to watch anything with more than a PG rating, and these films gave me nightmares. While Lara snored softly beside me, I’d lie awake for hours listening to the noise of traffic, my eyes fixed on the weird glow of the fish tank, full of guppies and pink and blue coral, in the corner of the room.
I was so proud to be Lara’s best friend. She was smart and interesting, and everyone at school liked her.
Like most girls that age, our friendship was intense, passionate even. We spent so much time together: every day at school and several afternoons a week at one another’s homes, and almost every weekend we organised a sleepover. She was the first person outside my family that I truly loved.
I had always been an obedient child. I was studious and well behaved in class, eager to please my teachers and do well on tests and assignments. I didn’t have a huge number of friends, but I was often invited over to play and attend birthday parties. And I also knew my own mind from an early age, knew that I wanted to do well for myself.
But with Lara that independence seemed to disappear. I would do anything she asked of me, no matter if it got me in trouble. If she wanted me to call another girl names, I’d do it. If she wanted me to steal from the milk bar, I’d do it. I was never afraid of the consequences. My only fear was of losing her.
Lara didn’t like my brother. She said he was annoying. It was odd, really: she and Archie looked alike, both with red hair, freckles and creamy skin. They could have been siblings. But Lara was an only child: she never knew what it was to share someone.
Whenever Lara came over to the house Archie wanted to play with us. He liked Lara; he liked everyone. He was only four or five, but we never let him join in. ‘Tell him to go away,’ Lara would whisper in my ear, her breath warm against my cheek. ‘Tell him to get lost.’
I’d always hesitate, looking from my brother to her. ‘Do it,’ she said, pinching my arm, and I stood up and pushed Archie so hard he toppled over. ‘Piss off, freckle-face fart machine,’ I growled.
The words were salty, almost acidic, as they passed through my lips. Instantly I wished I could take them back. I loved my brother. He was my friend; we played together, had our own secrets from Mum and Dad. Tears welled in Archie’s eyes, his cheeks mottling, and after he’d run wailing from the room Lara sat back, grinning.
Later Mum drew me aside to ask, incredulously, why I couldn’t be nice to him? I could feel the disappointment in her uncertain grip around my wrist, and guilt dropped through me like a shaft.
I stand up, lurching along the pews. It’s so dark in the chapel I can barely see my own feet. It’s awful to remember how cruel I’d been to my brother, all for Lara.
In the end our friendship soured. Maybe it would have anyway, but at the time I blamed it on the arrival of a new girl to our grade.
Taylor was blonde and boyish, with an undercut and a stud at the top of her ear. Lara took an immediate interest in her. From day one she was always trying to catch Taylor’s eye, or say something witty to get her attention. Before I knew it Lara was saving Taylor a seat on the bench in the playground, and sitting next to her in class. At lunchtime they stalked off to the canteen together, leaving me to chew morosely at my Vegemite sandwiches until they returned with steaming meat pies and cartons of Big M.
I tried to brush it off. I didn’t like Taylor—she was loud and brutish and not very smart; she couldn’t even do her twelve times tables. Lara would grow sick of her and come back to me. I just had to wait it out.
But then one day Lara didn’t ask me to join them in the playground and I felt the first prickle of fear. Then the invitations to her house after school stopped. I sat alone in class, sniggers cast my way from their desk, until one morning I turned around and told Taylor it wasn’t my fault she was illiterate. She launched herself across the desk, grabbing my fingers and bending them back until I begged for mercy. The teacher made us both sit in the corner until the bell rang.
All this I could weather because I still held out hope that my friendship with Lara might be restored. That she would recognise my unique position in her affections. But weeks grew into months and still we weren’t reconciled.
At home I grew sullen. I never told my parents what happened, but they must have known. Each night I’d lie awake for hours, wretchedly tired, screeching that I couldn’t sleep. For close to a year I slept barely four hours a night.
The term finally ended and summer holidays began. When I returned to school after the long break I was in a new grade, without Lara. I hardly saw her around the playground, though when I did I always felt my breath catch. After all that had happened, I still wanted, so desperately, for her to like me again. For her to forgive me for whatever I had done.
I stumble out the chapel door. My eyes get starry, readjusting from the dark. I stand with a hand against the stone wall, holding myself up. I am shaking, almost in tears. ‘Sometimes,’ my mother once said to me, ‘you have to let go of the things that hurt you most. You just have to go . . . poof.’ And she’d opened her hands, palms wide, facing the sky.
After all these years, I don’t know if I’d even recognise Lara if I saw her in the street. But the memory of her and the memory of me—so acquiescent, so weak—is fresh like an open-cut wound.
~
I walk on, along the orange road dimpled like a corn chip. I pass Miss Lacey’s old house tucked away on the slope, a cluster of trees out the front, and then Mr Hillman’s on the embankment. Two pairs of boots, one big, one small, rest neatly on the front step. I wonder if Mr Hillman and Libby still live there. Which is silly, really. Almost all the teachers from my time have moved on.
Red House looks much the same, except for tufts of grass and a few trees out the front. Curtains hang in the windows. The rocks out the front, once bald and conspicuous, have taken on a sculpted, elegant quality. The place is nearly pretty.
I glance around, furtive again. I want to laugh. I’m a grown woman cowering like a teenager. You didn’t have to come here, I remind myself. No one made you. That it was my choice now seems ludicrous as I linger near a pile of stones in the shape of a cairn, afraid to move.
Clutching my notebook, I walk up the clay path. The deck is empty except for the metal washing crate near the steps, lined with a giant calico. The drying room door is shut. The wind stirs up a low moan through the trees. I move towards the banister, peering over the empty road. There is no one around, no one following me.
I turn back and put my nose to the window. I can make out the desks, the fireplace and, only just, the first bed through the doorway to the dorm. Can almost smell it, the house. The wood sanding, the dust, the girls—the moisturiser, shampoo, sweet sweat. I can smell it all, and my heart starts to beat hard as I open the front door and step inside.
It’s strange to be home for the holidays, sleeping in my own bed. Only I won’t be sleeping in it for long. Nan is coming to stay. She has been in hospital again, and now Mum is looking after her until arrangements can be made. I don’t know what these arrangements are. All I know is one evening Nan climbed out of her hospital bed and fell over.
‘She had a stroke,’ Dad explains on the drive back from the bus depot. ‘A small one, but still serious enough.’ He tugs at his tie, then moves his hand to my shoulder. ‘She’s okay, but she’s not quite herself.’
We are driving across the West Gate Bridge, over the murky mouth of the Yarra River and all those petrol silos. My eyes drift towards the horizon and the sea, unbroken but for the power station’s eerie cooling tower, shaped like a cigarette with red bands for a glowing tip. The news seems unreal to me. Nan is tough and wiry, with a cheeky smile. She spends all day outside in her enormous orchid garden, her ancient moggy, Pushka, basking on the deck. She may be old but she still dresses neatly and cooks for herself (lamb chops with steamed vegetables is her speciality). How can she need looking after? She has always been the one to look after Archie and me. It must be a mistake. Dad must have heard the story from Mum and unknowingly exaggerated it, like a Chinese whisper.
But a few days later Nan comes through the front door, leaning on a stick. She drifts along the hallway, dabbing at the edges of picture frames, her wispy hair spilling from a pin. Her face is covered in maroon bruises.
We all gather in the kitchen. Mum makes cups of tea that no one drinks. I watch Nan sitting with her hands in her lap. She doesn’t speak, except to smile at me and call me Margot, which is my mother’s name.
I don’t want to see her like this, strange and ghostly-looking and muddled. I run away to my room, but Mum comes after me.
‘I’m going to set Nan up in here,’ she says. ‘I’ll make you up a bed in the front room instead.’
‘The front room?’ I say. ‘On the camping bed? Oh, this is great. Just great! I get to spend my holidays on the camping bed. Thanks very much.’
Mum sighs. Framed in the doorway, a damp dishcloth slung over her shoulder, I can see how exhausted she is, sad lines etched around her mouth, and I wish I hadn’t said anything.
After she’s gone I sit at my doll’s house in front of the hearth. It was a present from Nan for my fifth birthday. I pick up the figurines. Over the years I have disfigured them horribly and now the family of a father, mother, son and daughter are amputees, red-pen blood splattered across their faces and torsos, their miniature clothing ripped to shreds.
I turn the daughter over in my palm. I’ve never liked her, or her short blonde hair and white tunic, and I twist her rubbery arm until it almost breaks.
~
I wake up several times in the night. Boxes and furniture that doesn’t fit in other rooms in the house surround the camping bed. It’s so dark in here—the heavy curtain blocks out all the light. I sit up, straining to hear something, the bedsprings heaving beneath me. But there’s only silence.
The next day my old friend Tash visits. We play a bit of Nintendo then take our tennis racquets down to the concrete courts at the local high school. I pretend I’m Anna Kournikova and Tash is Martina Hingis. Tash always beats me.
Some days we spend the whole afternoon searching for pictures of Prince William on the internet. Those we like are printed off on Dad’s colour printer. My favourites are from Princess Diana’s funeral. We stick them in my diary and Tash writes: Yummy! What a babe! Then she glues in her own picture of Jonathan Taylor Thomas, enclosing it in a lavish heart.
Tash stays over one night, sleeping on a mattress beside my camping bed. We don’t talk about Silver Creek. We don’t talk much at all. Usually I don’t mind. But tonight I’d like to tell her about Red House, about Portia and Kendall and all the others. I’d like to ask who she spends time with while I’m away, and whether she likes any boys. Tash and I have known each other for years and years and in some ways our friendship hasn’t changed, nearly every emotion and feeling left unsaid, as it was when we were six years old.
My family don’t ask me much about the term away either. My parents, I’m discovering, always talk around Silver Creek. They ask constantly if I’ve enough tuck or if I’ll be warm enough next term, but not about my friendships, or whether I’ve missed home. Dad’s visit is never mentioned, nor the reason for it.
One evening, however, Archie teases me about one of Mr Pegg’s letters. ‘Mum and Dad are always talking about you,’ he says, laughing. ‘About how bad you are, and how they wish you’d never gone to Silver Creek. “What is she doing?” Mum always says. “What is she thinking?”’
‘Really?’ I look over at Mum tipping a packet of frozen peas into a pot. ‘Well, it’s all sorted now.’
Archie has already wandered off, the television beckoning. Mum stays at the stovetop, staring at the flame. Her shoulders are stooped, the slightly rounded top of her back flushed red. When she glances at me her eyes are glinting, the same as when she watches Nan floating around the backyard. As if she’d lost something.
~
There is no moon tonight, and the air is colder than it’s been all year. My breath comes out as fog. The bus from Melbourne was late getting in. On the way up Simone and I chatted giddily about the holidays, but now we drag our bags up the hill towards the house in silence. I wonder if she is as apprehensive as I am.
I sense it the moment I walk into the dorm. Something has changed. Not in the look of the place—my bed is still pushed against the wall, covered in the faded crescent-moon doona cover—but in the air, like an electrical storm.
Girls are gathered on Sarah’s bed in the corner. Portia is in the middle, and they laugh as she points to something in a magazine.
After I’ve put down my bags, I wander towards them. Sarah is the only one to look up and she smiles thinly. Her acne has cleared over the holidays.
‘Hi guys,’ I say. ‘What are you reading?’
‘Just a magazine.’ Sarah yawns.
‘Which one?’
Portia glares. ‘Just a magazine.’ This makes Sarah laugh, a braying sound, and I hear suck muttered from somewhere. I return to my bed, my stomach congealed. Since when have they been so chummy?
Later, as I brush my teeth, I catch Ronnie admiring her new haircut in the mirror. ‘Looks nice,’ I say shyly, wiping my chin with my T-shirt.
Ronnie smiles, preening in the glass. ‘I like to have something different now and again,’ she says. Leaning against my shoulder, she gazes mildly at my reflection—our reflection, really. I don’t know what to say, but I like the feel of her arm against me. Ronnie doesn’t seem to notice; now she’s baring her teeth, picking at them with floss.
~
My bed area is failed during the first house inspection back. I hadn’t made my bed properly and my
side table was cluttered with mugs and books and chocolate wrappers. Making a note on her clipboard, Miss Lacey promises to fail the entire house if I don’t have it tidy tomorrow.
‘Good one, Rebecca,’ Briohny mutters on her way to the study.
Walking back from class at recess, I glimpse something in the dirt outside my window. Nearer, I realise it’s my doona, and poking beneath it my mattress along with everything from my bedside table. It’s all filthy.
Briohny appears at the windowsill. ‘Next time make sure it’s tidy, you dickhead,’ she says.
Portia leans out further and lets a string of saliva drop near my feet. ‘Next time,’ she says, ‘we’ll throw you out the window.’
They laugh, ducking back inside. I reach down and pick up one of my trolls, shaking dust from its pink hair. Why are they picking on me?
~
‘Have you noticed anything weird since we got back?’
It’s morning. I’ve stopped on the path beneath the chapel so Emma can tie her shoelaces. She always leaves the house half dressed; I feel like this is how we conduct all our conversations—with her straining to adjust some item of clothing.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Portia.’ I sigh. ‘She’s being weird around me, like she hates me or something.’
Emma zips up her polar fleece. ‘Yeah,’ she says. ‘I’ve noticed.’
I raise my eyes to the enormous cross. Birdshit stains the tip like dripping wax. ‘But what have I done wrong?’
‘You haven’t done anything,’ Emma says. ‘That’s just how Portia is. She’s got her favourites and then she moves on to someone new. Don’t worry about it.’
I reach out to help her up. If only it were that easy. If only I was more like Emma, untouched by what others think or say. She never needs anyone’s approval. I’m not like that—I will worry until I’ve got to the bottom of it, even if I know I won’t like what I find. I still don’t know how to change that about myself.
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