Review of Australian Fiction, Volume 5, Issue 2
Page 4
‘Oh, she was a very sick little girl, dear. Her whole life, in and out of hospital. These days they could have done something, but back then... well, it was very different. Very difficult.’ Carol closed the heart and made a fist around it. ‘And to think, all this time, she had it buried right in the backyard.’
‘It was her? Fidge—I mean, Emily?’
The woman smiled fondly. ‘Oh yes, Emily took it. The locket belonged to our grandmother, before she gave it to me as a Christmas present. Emily got the purse—she was so jealous, but I think Nana wanted the locket to be passed down through the family, you see, and... well, Emily wasn’t going have a family of her own. We all knew that, deep down, even Emily.
‘But that’s not fair,’ Ghost blurted out. Suddenly, the skin on the back of her neck prickled and she had to force herself not to turn around to check if there was a dead girl standing on the steps behind her.
Carol was shaking her head. ‘No, it wasn’t fair at all. Still, I was furious when she stole it. She was always doing that, taking my things and hiding them, making me beg to get them back. My sister could be a right royal terror when she set her mind to it.’
‘She never told you where the locket was?’
‘Her health took a turn for the worse,’ Carol explained. ‘Her liver was having problems again and... well, this time she never came home from the hospital.’
Ghost bit her lip, unsure what to say. Unsure what Fidget would want her to say. ‘Are you... are you still mad at her?’
‘Mad?’ Carol seemed startled by the idea. ‘Oh, dear girl, of course not. Do you know, I’d give a million of these old lockets just to have my sister back for one day, for one hour.’ The woman reached out and squeezed Ghost’s shoulder. Her eyes were shiny again. ‘But I’m so very glad you found it, Gina. It’s like... it’s like having a little piece of her heart here with me again.’
The smile on Carol Eddington’s face was still welcoming, still warm, but there was an extra brightness to it now. It was a smile that had been lost, that had been hidden away in a dark place for too long, and was just now finding its way back to the light.
As quickly as it had come, the prickly feeling of being watched disappeared and Ghost let out a breath she didn’t know she’d been holding.
‘I’m glad I found it as well,’ she said.
* * *
That night, Ghost sat up late in bed. She watched the digits on her alarm clock cycle through to midnight and still Fidget did not come. Finally, wide-eyed and wakeful, she got up and retrieved her mother’s engagement ring from the Flotsam box.
Jemima was fast asleep in her room. Lying on her belly with her face turned to the wall and one bare foot sticking out from beneath the covers. The trashy vampire novel Jem was reading had been left on the bedside table. Ghost leaned over and placed the ring in the centre of the cover, where it would be impossible to miss. Then she stood in the dark for a few moments, listening to her sister breathe. No matter how awful Jemima could be sometimes, the thought of losing her felt like a hole opening up in the middle of Ghost’s chest. Cold and black and inconsolable.
Careful not to disturb her, Ghost pulled the doona down over her sister’s foot then padded back to her own room.
* * *
After school the next day, Ghost spread her Flotsam out across her bed. None of it seemed special or even particularly interesting anymore. There was nothing important here—nothing like Carol Eddington’s missing locket, for instance—just pieces of junk, an assortment of lost and broken and mislaid scraps that no one cared about. Jemima was right; she should throw it all out with the rubbish.
‘Thank you,’ said a small, faint voice from the corner of the room.
Fidget wasn’t glowing anymore. In fact, she seemed faded somehow. The blue smock, which Ghost now realised must be some kind of old-fashioned hospital gown, was almost transparent.
‘You’re going away,’ Ghost said, surprised to feel herself on the verge of tears.
‘I think I have to.’ The dead girl’s hands were knotted together. ‘Because you gave the necklace back. And because the lady isn’t mad at me anymore.’
‘She’s your sister, don’t you remember?’
Fidget pressed her lips into a thin line and frowned. ‘I want to remember. I do.’
Ghost swallowed back tears. It was stupid, but the dead girl was the closest thing she’d had to a real friend for ages, and she didn’t want her to leave. Not now, not ever.
‘Why can’t you stay?’
‘I don’t belong here anymore,’ Fidget said. She looked so faint, so forlorn and utterly out of place, as she reached up to twist a strand of hair anxiously around her finger. ‘But I can’t... I can’t remember.’
Suddenly, Ghost knew. The dead girl had lost something as well, had lost it or maybe just set it adrift too long ago for memory to ever recover. One final piece of Flotsam, a scrap Ghost had picked up without even realising its importance. And, if she was really Fidget’s friend, she had to return it to her.
‘Your name,’ she whispered. ‘Your name is Emily.’
Then the girl—who wasn’t exactly dead anymore, who wasn’t exactly anything Ghost had words to describe—stared Ghost straight in the eyes and smiled. And in the moment before she vanished, the girl who was Fidget, who was Emily, who was Carol Eddington’s lost little sister, who was loved and forgiven and finally found—that girl blazed brighter than all the light in the world.