‘I think Mum’s been looking forward to having you home again,’ Tim murmured, slipping from the room and gently closing the door behind him.
Tim sauntered back into the family room to find Annie shuffling back and forward between the kitchen and dining space, sliding steaming plates of roast lamb and vegetables onto the oak table. They usually used place mats, but today the heirloom white lace tablecloth hid the scars and dents that marred the oak surface after generations of use. Tim hoped his mother was not too disappointed given she obviously had this reunion in mind as a special occasion.
‘She’s quiet, isn’t she?’ Annie said to anyone who would listen as she placed the final plate down and announced dinner was ready.
Peter rose from the computer that sat on the bureau in the corner of the family room and spread his palms across his lumbar region, straightening his back with a groan. ‘I’m glad that’s done,’ he said, referring to the farm’s accounts. ‘Leave the girl be, Annie. She’ll come good soon enough,’ he added on his way to the table where he took his seat at the head.
‘I disagree,’ Tim said, pulling out his chair. ‘I reckon she should see that counsellor the doctors at the hospital were talking about. Which reminds me …’ He dug into the pocket of his jeans and produced the business card. ‘Dr Sandhurst asked me to give you these. She said we should ring if we need to.’
He handed the cards to Annie who stared at them, made a face and tossed them on the breakfast bar, sending them skimming across the avocado-green surface. ‘We’ll see.’ She glanced over at Ben on the settee and called him to the table.
Annie’s matter of fact rejections, and Peter’s seething silences, gnawed at Tim. It had been the pattern of communication in his family for as long as he could remember. Rachel had almost killed herself, probably intentionally. Neither of his parents seemed worried about how Rachel got the grog and the ekkies and whether she might do the same again. And both seemed oblivious to how much weight she was losing.
‘How do you think Rachel got the grog and the drugs?’ he persevered from his place at the table, fully aware of Ben’s lifted head, his nonchalant expression indicating he was totally on information alert.
‘It doesn’t matter, love. She won’t do it again, I’m sure of that.’ Annie’s eyebrows met in the middle and her lips pursed softly with the clear message to Tim that he was to cease and desist with this conversation in front of Ben.
‘Did Rachel have grog and drugs?’ Ben asked.
‘Yes,’ Tim answered before Annie or Peter could intervene. ‘But I think she gets now that she made a big mistake.’
‘Is that why she was in hospital?’ Ben said.
‘Yes, mate, that’s why,’ Tim said, undeterred by his mother’s hardened frown and his father’s apparent disinterest.
‘Oh, now I get it,’ Ben said, his feet knocking on the legs of the chair as he speared a roast carrot and took a bite.
‘But you shouldn’t say anything to anyone at school Ben, okay?’ Annie said, glaring her resentment at Tim.
‘The kids at school already told me … this morning before I came home for dinner,’ he said, chewing. ‘But I didn’t believe them. I called Thomas Carrington a liar. He said I didn’t know anything. So I punched him.’
The next morning Tim pulled up at the front of the long, solid brick, single storey, area school. ‘’Bye mate. Have a good day,’ he said, watching as Ben jumped from the ute and ran across the sloping lawn dappled with shadows from the stringy-barks, before bounding up the brick stairs to the front entrance.
‘See you, Rach,’ he said, as Rachel dispiritedly crawled from the ute. ‘You’ll be cool once you get there.’
‘Yeah, right,’ she said, rolling her eyes and sauntering across the lawns. ‘Get a move on,’ Tim called through the passenger window. ‘Or you won’t get there before home time.’
‘Good,’ she called back with a face like stone.
Tim’s sigh as he steered the car towards Laurie’s was more from relief than worry or frustration. Tuesday was a workday for him. He was scorchingly grateful that he would be rid of the farm and his oldies if only for the day, let alone to be doing what he loved.
Laurie’s carpentry and joinery workshop, an original dry-stone construction built in the early 20th century, stretched across two blocks on Smith Street. Fifty metres from Ackland Point’s main road, two kays from the beach and 10 kays from the Hooper farm, it was originally built as stables for coach horses and the mounts of travellers who stayed at the inn during the town’s infancy in the 1800s. The inn still squatted across the road as it had a hundred years ago, excepting the minor extensions and renovations that made it fit for purpose as the local pub.
Tim entered the workshop through the small side door. Looked around. He felt at home among the smells and noted the sawdust, plane shavings and timber offcuts forming a carpet through which the concrete floor was just visible in small patches and in the corners. Three walls were made of the original stone, some neatly hung with tools, or shelving stacked with an eclectic array of spray cans and plastic bottles. Natural light fought its way through a narrow row of grimy windows close to the ceiling.
Putting his full weight behind him, Tim slowly pushed each of the two hugely cumbersome galvanised iron doors framed with jarrah to the side, opening up the front of the building to the street. He sauntered over to the corner bank of cupboards and the small laminex table he and Laurie called the kitchen and switched on the electric jug. As the jug rumbled to life, Tim stood by and glanced around the workshop, wondering as he had wondered many times before how to tell his parents he had no intention of spending the rest of his life as a farmer.
‘G’day, mate,’ Laurie said, striding in. ‘Close them doors, will ya? It’s bloody freezing.’ He placed a basket wrapped in a checked cloth on the kitchen bench and, without removing his camouflage jacket, a beloved Army surplus purchased decades ago, headed towards his office — two glass partitions in the opposite corner. ‘I’ll have a cuppa too, thanks mate,’ he called pulling the narrow glass door closed. Tim watched him slip behind the old timber desk scattered with papers and books, his aged computer rising from the centre.
After taking Laurie his coffee and having a few brief catch-up words about the weather, Tim set some planks on the sawhorses and skimmed the plane across their surfaces, the earthy smell of timber and the sight of the shaved tendrils falling softly onto the sawdust causing him to feel as though he was truly home. Steeped in blissful silence, save for the whooshing of the plane, he allowed himself to relax, probably for the first time since — well, since he had last been here the previous Thursday. But his delicious solitude was shortlived.
‘How’s it hanging, ranga?’
Even before he raised his eyes to the triangular face, the wingnut ears sprouting from a sparse coating of shaved blond quills, Tim knew it was Shanksie, and his body tensed in a Pavlovian response to the irritating voice and grating question. He wondered if Shanksie had come to apologise for calling him names during Tanya’s party, immediately dismissing the possibility with the consoling thought that no one would have believed him anyway, simply because he was Shanksie.
‘How’s your little blister?’ Shanksie said, slipping his long skinny fingers into the front pocket of his jeans and looking around until he spotted Laurie in his office, still at work behind his computer.
His head down, his mind struggling to concentrate on the plane, Tim murmured, ‘Not now. I’m at work.’
‘Yeah, yeah. I know how important you are because you have a part-time job. I get it. I just wanted to see how she is after what happened Satdee night.’
‘She’s fine — thanks for asking.’ Tim lifted a planed plank from the sawhorses and pushed past Shanksie to lean it against the stone wall, replacing it with another. For a moment, he considered asking Shanksie if he knew where the goon and the ekkies Rachel had taken had come from, immediately cringing at the thought of giving Shanksie airspace.
&n
bsp; There was a mere second’s silence before Shanksie continued. ‘I saw her at the party hanging around with Trevor Carson. I’d keep an eye on big Trev if I were you. I think he might be hot for her.’
Suddenly interested, Tim paused and straightened, about to question Shanksie further.
‘Anything you need, Shanksie mate?’ Laurie called from the doorway of his corner office.
‘Nah, Laurie. Just leaving, mate. See ya,’ he said strolling towards the partially open door with a lazy wave. ‘See ya, Hoops. Keep your end up, okay,’ he added turning towards Tim and winking. Tim’s jaw clenched as Shanksie’s skinny frame exited the workshop.
‘Cuppa time. Let’s go,’ Laurie called heading over to their little kitchen and filling the jug once Shanksie had departed.
They each made their tea and sat at the small table in silence. Laurie lifted the checked cloth from the morning tea basket sent by his wife June, and pushed it towards Tim, inviting him to help himself to the large fluffy date scones nestling within.
‘How is your sister, anyway?’ Laurie said, rising from his low canvas chair and striding over to the fridge for the butter.
‘She’s okay now,’ Tim replied. He leaned forward to scrape his knife over the butter’s surface once Laurie had dropped it on the table.
‘What she did … I mean, what she took … it’s a bit out of character, isn’t it mate?’ Laurie said, his bushy eyebrows coming together as he blew on his tea.
‘Yeah. It is. But I think she’s learned her lesson,’ Tim replied, knowing his words were more his mother’s than his own and wondering why he couldn’t bring himself to be honest and open with Laurie, who had been good to him for so many years and who he trusted with his life.
‘Yeah. I reckon you’re right. She’s a corker that one. Strong and smart. You never know, though. Just keep an eye on her, hey?’ Laurie said, avoiding Tim’s gaze.
Tim wondered what could be at the bottom of Laurie’s cryptic comment, hating himself for lacking the guts to ask.
White clouds floated lazily like giant pieces of popcorn in the blue sky. Tim parked the car and wound down the window. The balmy warmth of spring seeped into the car as the sound of the school siren brought the first sprinkling of kids running from the building and down the steps.
Ben climbed into the car minutes later.
‘Mandy Furtherington is an arsehole,’ he said without greeting or hesitation as he climbed into the back seat.
‘Don’t swear, Ben,’ Tim said, watching Rachel saunter towards the car with a sullen pout before turning back to Ben. ‘What did Mandy Furtherington do to annoy you this time?’
‘She told me I had a face like a pixie,’ Ben replied, as Rachel dropped silently into the passenger seat.
Tim turned the key in the ignition, taking particular note of the motor’s throaty purr when he lightly touched the throttle. ‘Pixies are pretty cute, Ben,’ he said. ‘Maybe Mandy was paying you a compliment.’
‘She was laughing at me when she said it. Anyway, I don’t care.’ He fastened the seatbelt with a click.
‘She probably likes you. Girls say things like that when they want attention,’ Tim replied.
‘Can we just get going?’ Rachel snapped.
Tim pulled out into the dribble of local traffic, turning briefly to Rachel and asking about her day.
‘It sucked.’
‘Was someone picking on you, too?’ Ben asked.
‘Just the whole school, that’s all. Then the welfare dragged me out of class. It was hideous.’
‘What do you mean the welfare?’ Tim snapped.
‘You know … the bloody welfare. A fucking social worker dragged me out of class to talk to me.’
‘How come Tim doesn’t tell you off for swearing?’ Ben piped. ‘It’s not fair.’
‘Oh shut up, Ben,’ Rachel snapped.
‘Rach,’ Tim warned. ‘What did they want?’
‘Nothing much. She just asked me about home and what happened Saturday night. She really freaked me out. Then she left.’ Rachel gazed down into her lap where she commenced picking at her bleeding cuticles. She turned to Tim and said softly, ‘Don’t say anything to them.’
‘I won’t. But you should tell them,’ he replied.
‘What are you talking about?’ Ben called from the back seat.
When they arrived home, Rachel went to her room, saying she had stacks of homework. Ben dragged colouring books and pencils from his school bag and set to work at the table colouring in a picture of The Lion King, while Tim settled at the breakfast bar as Annie peeled vegetables for tea, his mind grappling with Rachel’s visit from child welfare today and what it meant for her and the rest of the family. He felt pushed by silence, like a giant hand into a crippling quagmire. Perhaps he should tell his mother about the social worker after all.
‘That bloody southern fence is really dodgy. Next thing we’ll have the stock out on the road,’ Peter’s voice boomed from the porch, shortly after the back screen door had squeaked and thudded shut. He wandered shoeless into the room, ripping the studs of his overalls apart and stepping out of them before disappearing into the laundry in baggy Y-fronts and singlet, his thick toenails peeking from the holes in his socks. His voice boomed out over the sound of running water. ‘You’ll have to give me a hand in the next couple of days, Tim. I can’t do every bloody thing on me own.’ The water stopped running and he wandered out again, wearing dungarees and fastening the buttons on his checked shirt.
‘I’m working at Laurie’s again tomorrow, but I can help you out on Thursday,’ Tim said without conviction or interest as he watched his mother push the lid down on the scrap bin brimming with vegetable peelings before wordlessly handing it to him.
‘Help me out. You should be doing more than bloody helping me out, lad. This place is your bread and butter remember,’ Peter said wandering towards his chair by the fire.
Tim grabbed the handle of the scrap bucket ready to ignore Peter’s rantings and head outside to feed the chickens. But changed his mind. This seemed too good an opportunity. ‘No, Dad. You’re wrong,’ he said, pulling himself to his full height and facing his father. ‘Laurie’s job is my bread and butter. This place is shelter only.’
A knock on the back door caused Ben to jump from his chair and scuttle as swiftly as a cat to open it. Annie lumbered after him, but not before she had shot a bewildered look in Tim’s direction.
‘Hello. You must be Ben. How old are you?’ a female voice floated in from outside.
‘Seven,’ Ben replied.
‘I have a seven year old at home,’ the voice said. ‘His name is Sam.’
‘Does he have an Xbox?’ Ben asked as Annie reached the back door, pushing Ben behind her and asking the visitor if she needed help.
Tim placed the scrap bucket on the breakfast bar and stood out of sight, but within ear-reach, of the back door.
‘Hello, Mrs Hooper. I’m Lauren Quayle from the Department of Child Welfare,’ the small young woman wearing blue jeans and a red blazer said in an incongruously cheery tone. ‘I’m sorry to visit so close to dinnertime, but I wonder if I could come in and have a word. It’s about Rachel.’
Peter stood silently as Annie led Lauren Quayle into the kitchen and introduced her to Tim, who had returned to his stool at the breakfast bar, then Peter, whose stony-faced greeting preceded Annie gesturing to Lauren that she should sit in a particular chair at the table.
‘Tim, could you ask Rachel and Ben to feed Monnie, please love?’ Annie said with uncharacteristic politeness.
Ben examined Lauren Quayle silently from Annie’s side while Tim took giant strides to Rachel’s room, knocked on the door and rushed in. Rachel turned to him from her desk wearing an exasperated expression.
‘The social worker is here. Mum wants you and Ben to feed Monnie,’ he said in a hurried whisper.
Tim watched the colour immediately drain from Rachel’s face. ‘Oh, shit. What the hell does she want? Why doesn’t everyone
freakin’ leave me alone?’ Jumping to her feet, she paced the floor and repeatedly flicked her hands at the wrist as though generating an appropriate response to this intolerable crisis. ‘Fuck, fuck, fuck,’ she repeated as she paced.
Perplexed at what he thought an overreaction on Rachel’s part, Tim ordered, ‘C’mon, Rach. You have to get out of here.’
‘Hello again, Rachel. I’m just having a word with your mum and dad,’ Lauren said with a smile when Rachel entered. Rachel shot Lauren a look that carried a thousand daggers and wordlessly dragged a compliant Ben out of the room. The thwack of the screen door as they left seemed to provide Annie’s cue.
‘What is this all about?’ she said turning to Lauren.
Tim immediately sat on the stool, his elbow firmly resting on the breakfast bar, after Lauren looked at him as though conveying the message he was an unwelcome interloper in the room.
‘He’s alright. I want him here,’ Annie said in a tone that left Lauren Quayle little choice, even though her fixed expression made it clear she would have preferred to have had the conversation without Tim present.
‘This is just a routine visit, Mrs Hooper,’ Lauren went on nevertheless. ‘Please don’t be alarmed. I have spoken to Rachel at school today about her injuries and what appears to have been a deliberate overdose.’
‘Not that again,’ Annie said, rolling her eyes. ‘You will know then that Rachel is clearly saying no one attacked her. We will get her another saddle — something secondhand, perhaps.’ Annie crossed her thick arms lifting her chin in an expression that said, ‘Now your work is done, you can leave.’
Lauren hesitated for a moment before continuing. ‘I understand there is a discrepancy between what the doctors and nurses saw and what Rachel is saying. It is a serious discrepancy and it needs to be sorted. Will you agree to have Rachel seen by a doctor?’
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