by Jennie Jones
‘How did Cath introduce her to the other kids?’
‘She said the usual: this is Alison, we call her Ali. She’s joining us and we’re welcoming her to our class.’
‘No explanation of the talking issue?’
Adele looked up at him and Tom felt like he was looking inside her heart. The reaction wasn’t lust this time, it was a need to pull her into him for another reason. One that was too close to being emotional for comfort.
‘Cath told them Ali’s a bit shy and doesn’t like talking much, but that’s all right because everyone’s different. Then she sat Ali down at her desk and they began a lesson about respect and different personalities.’
Christ, her eyes were watering. Tom gripped the handle of the pickaxe more firmly.
‘And?’
‘Cath was brilliant, Tom. Just brilliant.’
He nodded. Cath was fantastic, and curiosity about the kid’s propensity to talk to him filled Tom’s mind. He was nothing but off-hand in her presence. He showed no sentimentality. He hadn’t once ruffled her hair or winked at her. He spoke of things she couldn’t possibly understand, yet she liked him.
She liked him.
She wasn’t family so she didn’t have to make a show of caring where it wasn’t felt—but there again, kids didn’t do that. Most kids didn’t know anything but how to be honest. So what was it? She had a mother who loved her unconditionally. A mother who fought silently and protectively for her child.
That was something. Adele didn’t push the kid, either. A mother wasn’t the same as a friend though, and usually friends talked about … stuff.
‘I tell you what,’ he said, putting the pickaxe into the wheelbarrow. ‘I’ll get this concrete and the bin loaded on the back of the ute while you tidy up. Then I’ll go pick up the kid for you.’
‘You’ll what?’
‘Let’s try something different.’
‘Us?’
‘Yeah, hell, why not? I’m your neighbour.’
She got off her knees and stood, pulling her work gloves off. ‘It’s her first day, Tom. I can’t not be there to pick her up.’
‘Why not? She knows me. Hell, she talks to me!’
‘Tom …’
The worried and confused look wasn’t lost on him. ‘Adele. It’s a three-minute walk. You can watch me the whole way. There and back.’ He’d walk down Thompson Street, cross over High Street onto Union Street. The school was halfway down that street. She’d see him the entire time. ‘Let me pick her up.’
He waited. He wouldn’t if she really didn’t want him to.
‘Oh, God.’ She covered her face with her hands for a moment, swiped at the strands of wispy hair falling over her face, then met his eyes. ‘Okay. Do it.’
Tom didn’t wait for her to change her mind.
***
Cath Foster was at the school door. She caught Tom’s eye between smiling and making chirpy comments to the kids passing her on their way home. The older kids waited on the grassy area behind the church for their respective rides home. Usually some car pool deal. They didn’t live in town but on the surrounding farms or small rural plots.
‘Ali,’ he mouthed silently. ‘She okay?’
Cath considered him for a few seconds, then smiled and nodded a moment before Ali appeared in the doorway. They’d known each other a long time, he and Cath. He knew he didn’t have to explain to the schoolteacher that he had no intention of harming the kid. Cath had been the first one to listen to his ranting after Scott’s accident. He’d been at the school, fixing up a partition wall between classrooms when he’d received the call from the site. It had been Cath who had made him go to Imelda’s house first, to regroup himself before making the drive to Canberra.
‘See you tomorrow, Ali,’ Cath said. ‘Tom’s here to pick you up. Isn’t that a good surprise?’
Ali considered him, standing at the end of the pathway.
‘Hey, kid, how’s it going?’
She stared at him, stilled in the doorway as other children pushed past her.
‘I’ve been helping your mum dig up your front path.’ He grinned, then flexed an arm. ‘Been using my muscles. You should see your front garden now. Your mum knows how to yank up weeds.’ Still nothing. ‘She’s just getting cleaned up. My fault, I kept her working too long. I said I’d pop down and pick you up. I hope you’re not going to tell me off for eating eight of the chocolate-chip cookies she made for you.’ It was the most he’d said in one sentence outside of his lawyer’s presence in five weeks. Ali still stared at him and Tom thought he’d overcooked it.
She stepped off the step and walked towards him. ‘Okay.’
His shoulders relaxed. He stepped back when she reached his side, glanced at Cath, who gave him a nod, and waited a second before heading off, his hands stuffed into his pockets. Ali skipped a bit and Tom slowed his pace.
‘Do you feel sick?’ she asked.
‘Do I look sick?’
‘Eight cookies is a lot. I’m not allowed to eat more than two.’
‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘but I bet you pinch a third when your mum isn’t looking.’ He chanced a look down to the top of her head. It might have been a smile on her face but it was hard to tell because from his height, all he could see was a head full of hair a shade darker than her mother’s and a button nose. ‘Presume you know your road drills.’ He stopped at the end of Union Street.
‘Of course I do. I’m eight.’
‘Yeah, well, I’m thirty-four and I sometimes forget to look.’
Two cars went by.
‘Look to the right, then look to the left, then look to the right again,’ she chanted. ‘It’s clear.’
‘Off we go then.’
When they were half way down Thompson Street Tom got an urge for the walk to last longer. Thirty seconds and they’d be at the kid’s house. He had an instant thought of Scott. Scott wouldn’t walk down any road ever again, but the kid at his side would. Scott was trusting Tom to sort out the financial aspects of his disability—even though he hadn’t asked, because he wasn’t talking to Tom, but Tom was doing it anyway—and Tom wasn’t sure he could find enough to give Scott. What was this kid expecting from him? Christ, he had no idea but thirty seconds wasn’t long enough to find out.
‘Fancy the swings?’ he asked.
‘I have to see Mum.’
‘She’s there. Look.’ He pointed to where Adele was waiting at her gate. ‘Why don’t we tell her we’ll take a quick look at the swings in the park? Then you won’t have to do your chores or whatever for another half-hour.’
‘Okay.’
‘Hi, sweetheart!’
‘Hi, Mum. We’re going to the swings. I don’t have any homework. Can I have three cookies when we get back?’
Tom willed Adele to meet his eyes and to see the look on his face, which hopefully told her that this was good. Or might be good—hell, he didn’t know.
She shot her gaze over her daughter, from head to toe and back to Ali’s face. She seemed to be holding her breath. ‘All right,’ she said, her voice a little croaky. She cleared her throat. ‘Don’t be long, you two. And be careful.’
‘Don’t worry,’ Tom said, touching Ali’s shoulder briefly before he moved off. ‘She’s promised not to push me too high on the swing and to go down the slide with me so I don’t fall over the side.’
Ali moved off with him and Tom shoved his hands in his pockets.
***
Ali clambered onto the seat of the swing, taking a moment to haul her school shorts down her thin legs so they weren’t rucked up.
‘Here we go,’ Tom said. ‘Hold on tight.’ He had no idea how much of a push to give her, but he knew he’d better not use anything like his normal strength or the kid’d end up on the middle of the Orange-to-Dulili road at the far end of the parkland. He put the flat of his hand to the middle of her back and pushed tentatively. ‘Enough?’
She nodded.
After a few minutes, he figured it was tim
e. ‘So did you find a buddy today?’
‘There are nine children in my class.’
He kept the swing moving at an even pace and smiled when he thought how relieved Adele would be if she could see him now. ‘And did any of them take your fancy?’
‘We had lessons.’
So she wasn’t going to give. Tom decided to change tack. ‘Time’s up, kid.’ He plucked her backwards off the swing and for a second surprise shot through his system at how light she was. Christ, she weighed no more than a five- or six-year-old. A feather to his brick.
‘Are we going back to Mum?’
‘What?’ he asked with mock outrage. ‘I haven’t had my turn.’
She smiled, and the seriousness in her eyes slid away. ‘You’ll have to go on the big-kids swing.’
‘Yeah. Think you can push me?’
She shook her head.
‘I’ll help out. That’s what buddies do,’ he added, and without thinking, bent and took hold of her hand. She let him.
‘I’ve got a buddy,’ he said as they reached the big-kids swing. He let go of her hand and missed the littleness of it. The slight weight with no pressure.
‘What’s his name?’ she asked as he glanced over his shoulder to check nobody was around. How the hell he was going to explain this to anyone having a nosey-parker moment, he had no idea. He’d rather face a firing squad of OHS officers.
‘Scott,’ he said as he lowered himself onto the sling-seat and took hold of the chains.
Two small hands pushed into his back. He was too heavy for her, so he kicked the sand with his feet to start momentum but kept his boots planted on the ground so that he wouldn’t knock her over in the backwards trajectory. The chain on either side of the sling-seat dug into his hips and he felt like a total effing jerk.
‘My mate—Scott—he had an accident because he wasn’t concentrating.’
‘Why not?’
Tom noted she didn’t ask about the accident. ‘He liked a friend too much, but she didn’t want to be his friend anymore.’ Some marriage that had been. Bristly from the start, they’d only managed eighteen months together before she’d left him.
‘My friend Katrina left.’
He let the moment lie on the breeze for a few seconds in case she continued. Nothing. ‘D’you know something, kid? My mother’s name was Katrina.’ He’d been thinking about that on and off since the time last week when the kid had mentioned her friend. Not that he wanted to think about his mother, but the coincidence of same names had unlocked private memories he hardly ever thought about.
‘Did she leave?’
‘Yeah. She died.’ Later—after she’d left Tom.
‘My friend Katrina hasn’t died. Has your friend Scott died?’
‘No. He’s in a wheelchair though, because of the accident that happened while he wasn’t concentrating on his job but thinking about the friend who didn’t want to be his friend.’
‘Are you my friend?’
He brought the swing to a stop. ‘Yeah, sure.’ Goddamn it, yes. He was. And hell if he wasn’t proud to be her friend.
***
Adele had paced the house for twenty minutes without giving in to the need to stand on the street and look at the parkland. There were no windows on the side of the house facing the park except the frosted glass in the bathroom. She didn’t dare go out to the back garden either. Whatever was happening at the swings, she knew it wouldn’t happen if she made an appearance. Ali might close up if she saw her mother. If she was opening up.
It was possibly the hardest thing she’d done in her life—giving Ali over to Tom. But she’d seen the concentrated look on Tom’s face as he looked at Adele over the top of Ali’s head, pleading with her to let him take Ali to the swings. And, dear God, Ali had spoken. Three or four sentences tripping off the tip of her tongue as though there’d never been a moment she hadn’t spoken. Because of Tom.
Stuff it. They had to be done by now. She turned and ran into the hallway, pulling open the front door she’d left ajar for them. She hopscotched over the weed-free earth and the three bits of broken concrete she’d put down for a temporary path and was at the closed gate in ten seconds, looking towards the park.
Her breath caught in her chest and heaven seemed to arrive in her heart in a rush of angel wings. They were walking across the parkland towards the house. Tom so tall, Ali so preciously small.
She was holding his hand.
His head was bowed as she chatted—Adele could see her lips moving and her head bobbing. She was explaining something to him. Tom kept his eyes on the grassy pathway. He sauntered next to her daughter with long, slow strides. Ali didn’t have to skip to keep up the way Adele had with her father.
Ali stopped talking then, but nothing changed. The picture was the same. Easy silence. A companionable walk home. Tom didn’t change his pace or move his head, he just carried on in his casual manner.
A giant and a ten-cent-high kid. The image of Tom and Ali walking home today would remain with her forever.
She opened the gate. The noise alerted them to her presence. Tom lifted his chin at Adele, then looked down at Ali when they reached the gate. ‘Thanks, kid. Next time we’ll make the slide too.’
‘Okay.’ Ali smiled at Adele and made her way to the kitchen. She didn’t stop to question the jagged bits of concrete or the weed-free area.
‘There’s milk and cookies waiting for you,’ Adele said, then turned to Tom.
He had a wary look in his eye. Or maybe it was a sheepish look. Or maybe … Questions poured into her head: And? Did you discover anything? What did she say? What did you say to Ali?
He stepped forwards, until he was so close they were practically chest to chest and she had to look up at his face. She held her breath and hoped her guardian angel was taking note of how patient she was being. She didn’t want the beat of his wings to leave her heart.
‘I might have an inkling,’ Tom said quietly, and only for her ears.
The five words rolled through her eardrums like thunderclaps in a roaring sea of hope.
Chapter Six
A walk to the park wasn’t a lifetime commitment, but seeing such joy on his neighbour’s face frightened the hell out of Tom.
Adele asked him to wait while she set Ali up in the kitchen with a game on her laptop, and he wanted to run.
He turned when he heard her close the front door. She came up to him, at the gate, expectancy on her face.
‘I tried to talk about buddies—friends,’ he said. There was no need to pre-empt this conversation. ‘She wouldn’t give. So I changed the subject to one of my friends who’d made a mistake because he’d lost his friend—I meant the guy who worked for me, who’s now paralysed, and I meant his wife, who’d left him—but of course I didn’t say that. She said “My friend Katrina left”.’
Adele gasped. ‘Katrina left after Ali stopped talking. About a month or so after. Her family moved out of Sydney. I didn’t even consider this … how stupid.’
‘I don’t see it as stupid, Adele. It suggests that whatever it was that happened, it had nothing to do with Katrina leaving, but you never know. Did she talk to Katrina in that month?’
‘No. Not to anyone. I didn’t associate this with Katrina at all, but I’ll have to think about that time, see if I can remember anything, anything that seemed out of place or not right between Ali and Katrina. Oh, Tom—do you think this could be it?’
Tom shrugged. ‘It was all I could get—except …’
‘What?’
He hesitated.
‘Tom, please. Whatever it is please tell me. It might help.’
He grimaced. ‘She asked me if I was her friend.’
Adele brought her hands to her face as she stared up at him, her eyes wide.
‘I said yes.’
‘Thank you,’ she said behind her hands.
‘Adele, look—’
‘No! It’s all right.’ She took hold of his arm. ‘I know what you’re going to
say. You’re not around enough. This is too much of a responsibility, especially given what you have on your plate. I understand. It’s just that—’
‘Adele.’ He grabbed her hand and held it. ‘I’ll help. Where I can. When I’m here. But I don’t know what the hell to do.’
‘Neither do I.’
Ali’s hand had been nothing more than a wisp of soft skin and little bones, but Adele’s hand was elegant, her fingers long and lean, and gripping his.
He prised them open and held her hand between both of his, because she needed some support and the only other thing he could think of was pulling her against him. And that wasn’t lust either—well, partly, but mainly because here were two someones who’d popped into his great-great-grandfather’s empty street and changed his world. The world that had already changed, before their arrival. The world that would change again.
‘Well if you don’t know what to do next,’ he told her, ‘I haven’t got a hope in hell.’
‘We have to take a breath. We have to go slowly.’
‘So it looks like nothing’s changed?’
‘Yes.’ She nodded emphatically. ‘I won’t ask her about your friendship. I’ll try to carry on as I normally would.’ She bit her lip in what looked like a concentrated effort to figure out the impossible. ‘I think that’s what I should do. I’m not sure yet. I’ll have to think about it.’
‘Want me to pick her up from school tomorrow?’
‘Oh, yes please, Tom. Yes please.’
The plea in her tone was to be expected, the glow in her eyes wasn’t something he wanted to see. He was getting in deeper than he’d intended, and he didn’t mean with the kid. ‘We won’t tell her though, okay?’ In case he changed his mind. In case he suddenly got called to Canberra or Timbuktu. ‘I’ll just turn up at the school tomorrow.’
She nodded. ‘Thank you.’
‘Not needed.’ He hadn’t done much yet, and whatever he did next might cock up the whole thing because what the hell did he know about kids? Let alone kids with problems. ‘Go on.’ He indicated she ought to get back in the house. ‘She’s probably pinching a third cookie.’