‘It’s not as much money, Millie,’ she said, ‘but it’s a job. They said they were excited about getting someone with my talent. Oh, Millie, it’s a great opportunity for me.’
I walked around our house that afternoon trying to work out what I would miss. It was, after all, just a house. I’d miss my hiding place under the front stairs where I kept a candle, a box of matches and a packet of dried fruit—except mice had eaten the dried fruit.
I walked around our town. I’d outgrown the playground but I would miss the river and the river walks. In the end, though, it was just a town like any other.
‘Okay,’ I said when I got home just as the sun was going down, ‘when do we start packing?’
‘We have to find a place first, and there’s Christmas,’ Mum said. ‘We have to give notice here. Oh, poor Mrs Hetherington. Still, she should find someone else. This is a good house and the rent’s reasonable.’
We spent Christmas Day with Sheri and Mitchell. We had for as many Christmases back that I could remember. Usually Simon joined us, and sometimes Patrick if he was in the country. But this year Simon couldn’t come because Brendan didn’t want him, and Patrick was stuck in London, though he sent me a beautiful teddy bear. It had a hand-knitted jumper on and was softer than any other teddy bear I owned. I know I should have outgrown teddy bears, but it’s okay to have very special ones. He sent Mum some earrings he’d bought on a holiday in Italy and a new CD of some jazzy, bluesy music he knew she’d like. He sent her a hefty cheque, too, to help with the move.
Patrick had more money than we had, but living in London was expensive. Sometimes he gets extra money, when he has a scientific paper published in America or is asked to lecture somewhere, and then he always sends us something.
The truth is that I was an accident. Patrick didn’t really want a child at all. He wanted to be a scientist and he knew he shouldn’t have children until he was at least forty years old, which isn’t old for a man to have children. But then Mum got pregnant and she’d wanted a little girl since she was a little girl so she told Patrick she’d look after me whether he did or not. Of course, when I was born, Patrick loved me completely, because babies are just like that. But he still loved science too.
I know I should want a dad like most other people have, but I don’t know. I have Patrick and he’s like this friend and a dad. But he wasn’t there on Christmas Day and we missed him.
We wouldn’t have missed him so much if it had been a normal Christmas Day with Sheri and Mum drinking a little too much champagne and talking about the stuff they always talked about, like:
Food you shouldn’t order on a first date (spaghetti anything, noodles anything, anything with raw onion – in case he decided to kiss you – garlic bread – ditto – or curry laksa – you always splash it on your good clothes).
Men they’ve fallen for, why and why they fell out of love.
My favourite – what they’d do if they won Tattslotto. And there’s to be no cheating. You have to really believe you’ve won it and make good decisions and know exactly what you want. You get points if you can say, ‘I want a poodle pink handbag, like the one Tessa was showing off at school. You get them from Run Dog Run and they cost $25.95.’
And best of all, we play Cosmic Encounters, the only board game Sheri and Mum will play.
But we didn’t do anything like that and I knew it was because Brendan was there.
Sheri had done a proper turkey, with some weird chestnut stuffing. We never have turkey. We have fish, sausages, kebabs and tofu, cooked on the barbeque, under cover if it is wet or windy. She’d made some strange cake, too. She called it a stained glass window cake and it was beautiful—to look at. We never have that kind of cake. We have Mum’s ice-cream-filled panettone, which is an Italian Christmas cake. Sometimes we mix up toffee into the ice-cream and it’s all cold and soft with the odd crunch. Sheri’s cake had too many of those green and red cherries in it. Mitchell and I hate those cherries.
It was all kind of rushed, too, which Christmas Day never is. It is always the longest day in the year. But almost as soon as we arrived, Brendan had us sitting down eating. We had hardly properly thanked anyone for their presents. And you know how the presents have to be done. First of all you have to open the card, read it and then you have to open the present, slowly if you can so as not to tear the paper, and then you look at the present and exclaim and then you have to thank the person with a kiss and say something absolutely right about the present.
So, if it’s a top in your favourite colour, you have to say, ‘Oh wow! Sheri, purple’s my favourite colour and this will go perfectly with my almost-new black jeans we bought at the op shop only last week and my purple shell bangle. I think I’ll wear it all to this year’s school disco. Thank you soooo much, Sheri. You always buy the best clothes!’
It’s easy to do that with Sheri–Mum–Patrick presents, but it is harder to do with presents you don’t much like. But you have to give it a go, because it is Christmas and that’s what you have to do at Christmas time.
I expected Brendan’s present to be the latest book in the Lady of Glenfair series, because he knew I wanted that and you always give someone the present you think is exactly right and the one you honestly believe they will simply love. I had my mouth open to say, ‘Wow! Brendan, thank you so much. I’ve been wanting this book for ages.’
Brendan’s book was 12 Steps for Successful Teens.
‘I think you’ll find that very useful,’ he said. ‘It’s a book I recommend to my clients.’
Fortunately Mum had taught me what to say under those circumstances. I looked at Brendan and said, ‘Thank you, Brendan. It’s very thoughtful.’
Inside I was fuming. Clients. He recommended it to his clients. Brendan’s clients are troubled teenagers. They have problems. They have big problems, if you believed Brendan. He gave Mum a book, too— 12 Steps for Raising Successful Teens.
‘Do you get professional discount on these?’ Mum asked in her too-sweet voice. ‘Sheri, are you going to open the champagne I bought?’ She didn’t say thank you until her glass was full. I could see Sheri making pleading, be-nice-please faces at her. ‘Thanks Brendan. I’m sure it will be useful.’
Then Brendan bustled us to the table, saying we could open the other presents there. Which we did, but Sheri wasn’t even there. She was in the kitchen, dishing up the turkey. So we couldn’t thank anyone properly and Mitchell was oddly quiet and Brendan was the only one really talking. He was just going on and on and on about rituals in the modern world, how we’d lost them, and I wanted to stand up and shout, well, you’ve changed all ours, you boring old man. But I couldn’t, because Sheri was looking strained and pale and Mum was determinedly smiling and smiling.
It was the worst Christmas Day.
Brendan left straight after lunch.
‘A family in need,’ he said mysteriously, collecting some parcels from under the Christmas tree. ‘I’ll be back later.’ And he vanished.
‘He sees these families,’ Sheri said after we’d all heard his car back out of the driveway and drive off. ‘He’s very responsible. Really. He’s the most selfless man I’ve ever met.’
It didn’t get better without him. Mum and Sheri shut themselves into the kitchen with the rest of the champagne and told Mitchell and me to go and play.
‘Did you get your scooter?’ I asked Mitchell, while we hit a few balls around the snooker table downstairs.
‘Nuh.’ Mitchell potted the black. If Mitchell would only go for the right balls, he’d be a good player. He seemed too depressed to care.
‘What did you get?’
‘From him? A book called Boys: 12 Steps to Loving Yourselves. I don’t understand it. He could have got me a Paul Jennings book. Something I want to read. Mum said she’d get me a scooter soon. She just couldn’t afford it yet. We pay more rent
here than we did when we lived with you, she said, and the food is more expensive.’
‘You pay rent here?’
‘Well, sort of. I don’t get it, Millie. I just want to live with you guys.’
We left before Brendan could get back.
I wasn’t going to sit through another Christmas like that. I was pleased we were moving.
‘Next Christmas,’ I said to Mum, to cheer her up, because she was driving home with the grimmest look on her face, ‘we’ll be in our new house in a new town with new friends.’
‘I’m worried about Sheri,’ Mum said. ‘She’s changing, isn’t she, Millie? She even looks paler—everything about her, I mean.’
I knew what she was talking about – no bright purple tights, no dark plum tints in her hair, no tie-dyed t-shirt. Sheri had been dressed in a long pale skirt and her hair had been pulled back tightly into a little pony tail. She looked like someone else.
‘Maybe we shouldn’t leave while she’s like this. She might need us,’ Mum said.
‘She left us, Mum. We didn’t leave her. And what about your job?’ Suddenly I wanted to be out of this town. I had said goodbye to it in my mind. I didn’t want another awful Christmas Day.
‘You’re right, Millie. The job really has to come first. What it will be like to have some money! I’ll be able to have an exhibition. That’s the first thing I’m going to do, Millie. Organise an exhibition.’
That’s the funny thing with art. You have to have money in order to make it. You have to even have money so you can sell it. Then you have an exhibition and if you don’t sell anything, you’ve spent money trying to make money and you’re further in debt. I tell you, I’m going to be a lawyer. First thing at my new school, I’m signing up for the debating society. That’s how you start being a lawyer. I saw it on TV.
When I make lots of money as a lawyer, everyone can come to my Christmas Days and I will buy everyone the presents I know they’ll love.
Mum’s present was awesome. It always is. And my present to her was pretty good, too. I bought her three sketchbooks in different sizes. One for her purse, so she could make sketches on the run, a bigger one and then a really big one. I’d saved up for them for weeks and I wrote on the biggest one in my best handwriting:
For Kate Childes
so she can enlarge her artistic vocabulary,
from her loving daughter, Millie,
with best wishes for our new life
So we had to move to make sense of my Christmas present.
Later that night I wrote what I got for Christmas in my journal. I do that every year.
Mum’s present – a brand new book of a brand new series by one of my favourite writers, a new purple denim skirt, a pair of rainbow toe socks, a little bag filled with hair thingies, and bath oil with glitter, which I’d better use quickly in case our new house doesn’t have a bath.
Sheri – a CD voucher and a groovy little black velvet bag covered with buttons and with my initials embroidered on it.
Patrick – the teddy bear I have named Merlin.
Patrick’s sister-who-lives-in-Toronto, Bridie – a gorgeous card and a book on Easy Knitting Projects for the Beginner. I think I must have told her in an email that I wanted to learn to knit. And I do.
Patrick’s Mum, my grandmother, although I call her May – $50! And a card telling me to spend it on ‘frippery’. I had to look that up in the dictionary.
Mitchell – a pack of UNO cards, which was great because I think we lost some from our other pack, and a travelling chess set. I can’t actually play chess yet, but this, as I told him, is a good incentive to learn.
Brendan – well, you know that already
Usually you just get over Christmas and there is New Year’s Eve, but this year on New Year’s Eve Mum and I just went down and watched the fireworks on the oval and Mum gave me a sip of champagne and we told each other we loved each other best in the entire world, toasted to our new life and went to bed.
When we woke up, it was a brand new year and it had rained, so it looked shiny and new, just the kind of day I like best.
CHAPTER
FIVE
The house I wanted was a big old rambling one with the kind of windows you read about in really old books, the kind imprisoned lovers carve their names on with a diamond ring, or a lonely sickly child sits at, watching the rain fall and dreaming of her father, lost at sea.
It wasn’t even up for rent. We rented the little house up the road from it.
Our house had carpet older than I was, a thin peppering of mould across one of the entrance room walls and all the windows were locked, but not with keys, with lengths of dowel specially cut to fit.
‘We’ll do things,’ Mum said. ‘We’ll get it right, Millie, and look at the back yard. There’s a vegie garden.’
‘So?’
‘So tomatoes, lettuces, fresh herbs, silver beet, bok choy—we’ll practically be able to live from that vegie garden. And you’ll be able to bicycle to school.’
‘When it rains?’
It wasn’t that I didn’t like the house. Okay, so I didn’t like the house, but I was also nervous. I’d looked at the school. It looked old. It looked old and big and grim. I was used to the school in our old town. It had stopped looking so big. Frannie and I used to ride our bikes down the steep concrete path on the weekend. We used to hide out near the canteen and play mafia gangsters. This new school looked mean—and that’s when it was empty. What would it be like with hundreds of feral kids scattered around the grounds?
‘Maybe I can drive you or you can put a rain jacket on and walk. Maybe you’ll find a friend who lives near by and you can walk together. That’s what I used to do. On the first day of school, everyone will be new. You’ll have nothing to worry about.’
Mum was wrong. On the first day of school all the girls in my class who looked at all interesting—and I don’t mean just pretty or popular but interesting – did know each other. There were three of them and they went around as Helen-Sarah-and-Rachel without a breath between their names. They were the girls I wanted to be with.
‘Why?’ Mum asked when I got home.
‘One of them had the Lady of Glenfair, Book One, in her bag. She’d got it for Christmas. She said she was going to design herself a dress like the Fair Lady wears to her awful sister’s wedding. That was Helen, I think. She’s the middle one. The tallest is Rachel and she’s the sweet one. The shortest is Sarah and she’s mad about vampires. They are the only girls in my grade worth talking to. The others are just bland. Oh, and I’m a singleton. That’s a student who doesn’t come from one of the schools around here. How awful is that? Labelled a singleton from day one.’
‘A singleton? That’s kind of weird, isn’t it? Oh, I suppose as in single rather than a group of kids?’
‘I know what it means, Mum. I’m not totally stupid!’
‘Sorry, Millie, of course you do. Give yourself some time. You always rush at everything. You won’t be a singleton forever, you’ll be a...’
‘See! They don’t even have a proper name if you’re part of a group. Once you’re a singleton you’re always a singleton.’
It was true. I waited for two weeks and nothing happened to change my opinion. The bland girls talked about boys, clothes—but in a boring brand-names way—boys, netball, boys, popstars—usually boys—and TV shows.
I signed up for the Debating Society and who else signed up? Helen-Sarah-and-Rachel. We were the only girls from our grade to put our names down.
‘Not enough to make a team,’ the teacher in charge said, sighing, ‘but we might be able to give you a taste of what it’s like later in the year. Okay, girls?’
That was typical. If there hadn’t been so many bland girls we might have had a chanc
e.
‘School would be like this wherever we lived,’ Mum said. She had started teaching and the TAFE was letting her use a studio over there, as well, for herself. Every day when I went to school, she started the old beast (that’s our car – it used to belong to Patrick’s mum before they said she couldn’t drive because of her eyesight) and drove off to paint or teach at the TAFE. Every afternoon she came home around the same time as me, or sometimes a little later. She didn’t just come home, she bounced, like Tigger.
Her enthusiasm depressed me.
‘You’re absolutely right about enlarging my vocabulary,’ she said, ‘and my students are helping. They are so wonderful, Millie, such talent and such dedication. It’s a privilege to teach them. I hope you’ll be like that when you find something you really want to do when you leave school. It makes my job easy. You know, I wake up in the morning and can’t believe they’re paying me to do this.’
‘They’d better pay you. We’ve got this school camp coming up, Mum, and it costs the earth.’
‘Oh Millie, it sounds exciting,’ Mum said, reading the notice. ‘And what a good idea to have a camp so soon in the school year. It’ll be a bonding experience.’
‘As if we’re all some kind of glue and have to stick to each other. You sound like Brendan.’
The truth was, I was dreading the camp, absolutely dreading it. The idea of being in a dormitory with all those girls, having to get into my pyjamas in front of them, clean my teeth next to them, and eat breakfast in front of everyone, didn’t thrill me the slightest little bit. I was plotting severe sudden illness, like, oops Mum, it’s bubonic plague.
You see, other kids scare me. I don’t know what to talk to them about. I’m too weird. It’s not so bad with kids I’ve known forever. At my old school with Frannie, most of the time we were sworn blood sisters, except for when she played with Tessa. We slept over at each other’s places and we invited each other to our birthdays and it was fine. For a whole year we were witches together. That’s because Frannie is nearly as weird as I am.
Millie and the Night Heron Page 3
