by Lily Malone
Usually she liked the answer though. Already he could see that Jake found it tough to say ‘no’ to her much.
‘Sure you can. Tomorrow we’ll get him saddled up and you can go for a ride.’
‘Can’t we do that today?’
‘Later. Maybe.’
‘You mean when everyone’s gone?’ Her gaze swept the people around the table, and you could hear it in her head clear as day. Come on, you old farts. Hurry up and leave!
‘That’s not the politest way to put it, but yeah. Right now we’re all talking. Later on, okay?’
‘Okay,’ she scowled. ‘You wanna come down anyway, Sam?’
‘Nah. I’m gonna play the box. X-box,’ he clarified at all the blank looks.
‘Would Jasmine want to come with me to see Starburst again?’ Charlotte asked Jaydah before her eyes flitted to Jaz.
JT had been reasonably relaxed during lunch—a little keyed up but given the day she’d had that was hardly surprising—but her limbs hitched at the question and her eyes darted to her sister.
‘I’m not sure, Charlotte.’
‘She’ll be okay,’ Jake said. ‘They’ll be close to the house. The pony isn’t moving too far from the gate. He’s learned that’s where the food comes.’
‘What do you think, Jaz?’ Jaydah said. ‘Would you like to go with Charlotte to see the pony?’
Jaz finished the last of the pudding and custard and dropped the spoon, bumping her thighs on the table as she leapt to her feet. ‘Yes please!’
Brix’s mum’s eyes flashed open and she said, ‘Applecatradio behind who.’
At least that’s what it sounded like to him, but to be fair, Jaz had been scraping back her seat and running after Charlotte, so maybe he never heard it right.
His mum’s eyes closed again.
‘I’ll come down and check on you in a minute, Jaz, okay? Make sure you stay with Charlotte. Don’t go anywhere else,’ Jaydah said, and Brix leaned towards her and whispered, ‘She’ll be fine.’
* * *
‘She’ll be fine,’ Brix said, and Jaydah tried to relax, she really did, but relaxing wasn’t coming easy.
She’d been okay for a while. After Taylor had snapped Jaz out of her funk with the Santa offer, and during lunch, sitting surrounded by Brix’s family, she’d almost dared to feel safe.
But the worries didn’t leave her; they clambered in as the day wore on.
About the monster: What was he doing? What was he thinking? How angry was he? And her thoughts shuddered.
About Brix. He’d been planning for a life with her in his Margaret River house, and she’d handed him a parallel universe complete with new mother- and sister-in-law.
‘Of course she’ll be okay,’ she said, willing herself to believe it.
‘She’s with family now,’ he reminded her, warmth flowing from him in that classic Brix way.
Out of the corner of her eye she glanced at her mum. Rosalie had been sitting on the other side of Jaz, between Jaz and Ella, but Ella had got up to get another bottle of wine and—with Jaz gone—Rosalie was an island between two empty chairs.
Her mum looked a bit like an island, all lost at sea. Ella had finally managed to convince her to change out of her wet shirt before lunch and so Rosalie wore a soft grey-mauve blouse with delicate buttons and nothing remotely like a pattern. Ella said it used to belong to Brix’s mum and she’d fished it out of a cupboard somewhere.
Jaydah had never seen her mum wearing grey-mauve in her life.
‘Do you want to come with me, Mum? We’ll go keep Jaz and Charlotte company?’
‘Yes please,’ her mum said, and she didn’t bump the table like Jaz had done, but she got up every bit as quick.
* * *
‘I have to go to the toilet. I have to go now,’ Jaz announced, and she lifted her arms from where they’d been folded over the fence post as they’d all watched Starburst eat an apple from Charlotte’s hand, and ran for the house.
‘I’ll come back and ride you later, boy,’ Charlotte said, giving the pony a final pat before turning too.
Jaydah and her mum turned from the fence to follow Jaz and the slower-moving Charlotte. Jaydah looped her arm through her mother’s and patted the soft skin of her forearm.
‘Are you okay, Mum? You’ve been very quiet.’
‘I don’t talk as well as them. They’ll think I’m stupid.’
‘Your English is great, Mum. You’ve been listening to Dad for too long. Don’t put yourself down.’
They walked some more in silence—the distance between them and Charlotte stretching—until Jaydah prompted: ‘Is anything else bothering you? Anything you want to talk about?’
‘Where will we live now, my Jaydah?’
‘With Brix. At Brix’s house in Margaret River.’
‘All of us?’
‘Of course all of us.’
‘What about your job?’
She shrugged. ‘I’ll take a holiday. I’m owed some. I’ll call Bill Kennedy in the morning.’
‘How will we have any money?’
‘I’m going to talk to Centrelink once the offices open after Christmas. Lynne—the lady who was at the farm today—she’ll help us find the right people to talk to. We’ll get it sorted so your carer payments come into a new account. Our account. Dad won’t be able to touch it. And I can get a job.’
‘A new job?’
‘Yes.’
‘What will you do?’
‘I don’t know, Mum,’ Jaydah said, trying to be patient. ‘I’ll get one. I’m not worried about what work I’ll find. The important thing is we’re away from him. He can’t hurt us anymore. He can’t tell you you’re fat or lazy or useless. He can’t tell me that either!’
‘He won’t send any money to my parents.’ Her mum wrung her hands, twisting her fingers into knots like bakery rolls.
‘I’ll look after that too. Trust me, Mum. Anything has to be better than living with Dad.’
‘What if Brix doesn’t want Jasmine?’ her mum whispered.
Jaydah’s gut squeezed. ‘What makes you think he doesn’t want her?’
Her mum waved her arm free of Jaydah’s clasp. ‘He is your new husband!’ She said it like it should explain everything and then she added, so softly Jaydah could hardly hear, ‘What if he sends her away? What if he sends me away?’
‘Silly!’ Jaydah wrapped her arm around her mum’s shoulders, but not before her own doubts sent a barb into her heart. ‘He loves me. He’s not sending anyone away. He wants to help us. We’re his family now.’
‘This is his family!’ Her mum swung her arm at the immaculate farm and the gorgeous house and the serenely grazing sheep, all the way down to the dam shining blue as the gem on Jaydah’s engagement ring, and the pretty little gazebo. ‘And this is us. Look at us.’
Her other hand swept across the two of them, Jaydah clinging to her mother’s shoulders, the material of her white dress and her mum’s skirt whipping with the wind, dangling as it puffed and was gone.
‘This is not even my shirt,’ her mum said.
‘JT?’ Brix called, waving at them from the top of the steps. ‘Taylor says Jaz needs you.’
She glanced at her mum who flapped her hands. ‘You go. You go. Help your sister.’
‘It’ll be okay, Mum. I’ll see you back with the others. I’ll find your shirt too—it should be dry now.’
‘Okay,’ her mum said, hastily wiping her eyes.
Jaydah jogged the last part of the driveway and climbed the steps to Brix. ‘What’s up?’
‘I think Jaz might have been sick.’
‘Oh no! I’m so sorry.’
He nipped her little finger into his much larger hand. ‘You don’t have to be sorry. It’s nothing to be sorry about.’
‘Has she made a mess?’
‘Taylor didn’t say. She just asked me to find you because Jaz was upset.’
‘Okay.’
‘Come this way,’ Brix said, moving around
the house to the right. ‘That’s the laundry door around there. The toilet is just inside.’
‘Thanks.’
As it turned out, she didn’t find Jaz in the toilet. When she pressed down on the exterior laundry door and stepped inside, she almost stumbled over a big pair of feet in white shoes, and a flash of legs in bright orange shorts.
‘Here you are, Jaz. I was worried about you.’ Jaydah closed the laundry door.
‘I’m a good girl,’ Jaz muttered.
She sat with her knees drawn into her chest and her arms hugging her knees. Her eyes were red-rimmed, her skin covered with reddish blotches from crying.
‘Of course you’re a good girl, Jazzy,’ Jaydah said, sitting beside her on the tiles.
‘No I’m not good. No I’m not.’ Jaz rocked on her bottom, pushing forward and back with her toes and feet.
‘Jaz, what’s wrong? You’re a good girl. You haven’t been bad.’
‘I did. I did be bad,’ she wailed.
‘What did you do that you think was bad? You can’t do anything bad on Christmas. Santa only comes for the good girls, remember?’
Her twin smelled of the pony, all horse hair and musty. A smear of pony dust lined one cheek.
‘I was sick in the toilet,’ Jaz said, and burst out crying.
‘Oh, honey.’ Jaydah hugged her close. ‘It’s not bad to be sick. I think it just means you ate too much pudding and custard!’
‘But I made a mess.’
‘Your clothes are fine.’
‘Not on my clo-thes.’ She hiccupped and bit her lip. ‘I was sick in the toilet.’
‘But the toilet is okay. The toilet is a good place if you’re going to be sick.’
Jaz rocked harder. ‘I know it’s a good place and I mi-ii-ssed.’
‘Didn’t you get there in time?’
Jaz shook her head and Jaydah steeled herself. Dealing with Christmas pudding vomit was not going to be pleasant.
‘We’ll clean it up, Jazzy, okay? It’s okay. You’re not in trouble.’
The door opened beside them and when Jaydah looked up she saw Taylor’s softly rounded face filled with sympathy.
‘I checked the toilet and it’s really not that bad. We’ll have it cleaned up in no time,’ Taylor said. ‘I tried to tell Jaz that, but she couldn’t quite listen.’
‘Thank you,’ Jaydah said, as Taylor’s face withdrew. ‘Come on, Jaz. We’ll be going home soon. We’ll get this sorted and then it will be time to go home.’
Her face brightened. ‘To see Daddy?’
‘No,’ Jaydah said, probably a little rougher than she meant. ‘Not to see Daddy. We’re going to have more of a holiday over at Brix’s house.’
‘It’s not fair! I don’t want to go to his house. I want to go home.’ Home came out on a wail like an ambulance siren.
‘Well, Zebby Zebra told me he wants to go on a holiday, and he’s in my car, okay. So we’re going on the holiday.’ Jaydah was out of patience and options. She had one last trick up her sleeve. ‘Come on, Jazzy. It’ll be fun. We might even go to the beach.’
Jaz stopped crying. ‘The beach?’
‘Yes. The beach.’
‘Like in Summer Bay on Home and Away?’
‘Just like that.’
Please let there be a beach near Brix’s place that looks like Summer Bay from Home and Away.
CHAPTER
17
Lucky they hadn’t left it any later to leave Chalk Hill. Another half-hour and he’d be trying to park his parents’ caravan in the carport in the dark. He was good behind the wheel, but reversing the van through the gate at the cottage, uphill and then around a corner to get to the rear of the house, and then working it back and forward till he could get the van straight enough to reverse into the carport without hitting the outside wall or the house—that had been a test he didn’t need after the strain of the day.
Having an audience hadn’t exactly helped either.
The Tully women stood near Jaydah’s Subaru—the little car dwarfed by his Toyota and the van—with Jaydah trying to give him directions where he had a blind spot, but not really concentrating because her attention was on her mum and sister, not on the turning circle of his rear right van wheel and how close to the carport cladding it was.
He was damn glad to be home.
Damn glad.
Then his eye caught the three women, all of them lost and alone, and if he thought his day had been draining … well, he should just think about theirs and get over himself.
He sighed, and towed the caravan forward again.
* * *
‘Isn’t it pretty here, Jaz? Can you see the birds on the lake down there? What do you think, Mum? This will be nice to stay for a while?’
She was prattling.
Jaydah never prattled.
‘Where is the horse?’ Jaz wanted to know.
Brix shouted out through the driver’s side window: ‘How close is my back wheel to the shed there, JT?’
She took a look. ‘Maybe half a metre.’
Brix shifted gears and took the car and van forward again before reversing.
‘You said there was a horse,’ Jaz said, bottom lip jutting.
‘I think I said the horse was at the farmhouse, Jaz. Starburst lives at the farmhouse. I don’t think I ever said there was a horse at Brix’s place.’
‘Yes you did. You did. It’s not fair. You did say there was a horse.’
The air whistled through her gritted teeth as she willed herself to find patience from somewhere and huffed out a sigh. ‘Well maybe there is and he’s just in his stable for the night. We can see in the morning, okay? It’s getting late.’
‘How about now, JT?’ Brix called through the Toyota’s window.
Jaydah took a look. ‘You’re closer this time.’
‘Have I got room to open the van door without hitting the house?’
‘I think so. Might be a bit of a squeeze.’
‘It’s a nice sunset,’ her mum said, watching the orange glow in the western sky as Brix shifted gears and moved forward again.
‘Are there apples? That’s a lemon tree and an orange tree, but are there apples? Horses don’t eat lemons or oranges.’
‘I don’t know, Jaz. We’ll find out in the morning.’
‘Maybe there’ll be carrots in the garden.’
‘Maybe. Maybe we can plant some if there aren’t any.’
Brix reversed the lumbering van one more time into the carport, and glanced out the window. ‘How about now?’
Jaydah took a look and gave him a thumb’s up. ‘Perfect.’
He turned the car ignition off and rolled his shoulders, getting the kinks out.
Poor Brix.
For much of the drive from Chalk Hill she’d stewed over all the decisions she’d made to get her family to this day. Her mum hadn’t said much, and Jaz had spent most of the drive with her head buried in her big scrapbook.
Jaz had pages and pages of racehorses cut out of newspapers glued into that book. She knew the races they’d won and their jockeys and usually their trainers, and she never forgot a thing if it was written in that scrapbook.
Brix climbed out of his ute and the four of them stood looking at each other, suddenly clumsy in a silence broken only by the late-evening trill of birds.
‘So this is my place, ladies,’ he said, holding his hands wide. ‘Better come on in and I’ll give you the guided tour.’
Jaydah doubted they’d need long. This cottage was cute, all timber planks and white-framed windows, but it was smaller than the house on their father’s farm.
One by one, they followed Brix inside and the old floorboards shuddered under the unexpected weight.
He tossed his keys into a corner of the kitchen.
‘This is the lounge room. We get a great view from here over the vineyard when it’s light. You’ll see it tomorrow.’ He pointed as he talked. ‘This is the kitchen. Obviously. That door across there goes to the bathroom
if anyone needs it. That one is my bedroom, and that’s the spare bedroom. I’m not sure if you want that one for Jaz? I’ll need to move some of my junk out.’
‘Let’s have a look, shall we, Jaz? You can decide if you want that one, or if you want to sleep in the caravan with Mum.’
‘I want to go home,’ Jaz said, without even glancing at the spare room.
‘You can’t go home, Jaz. This is your home now. We’re on holiday, remember?’
Jaz stood blinking in Brix’s lounge room. ‘I want to sleep in the caravan with Mum.’
‘Okay, that’s fine. If you change your mind you can sleep in the house.’
‘I want to sleep in the caravan,’ Jaz stated again.
‘Shall we unpack?’ Brix said. ‘Or does everyone want a tea or a coffee? Water? Anything to drink?’
His eyes had the look of a man who might need a stiff bourbon or three.
‘Let’s unpack our stuff,’ Jaydah said.
‘Rosalie, my mum and dad say the van is yours for as long as you need it,’ Brix said. ‘Please treat it like your own.’
Her mum ducked her head, staring at her feet. ‘Thank you.’
‘I’ll get your bags,’ Brix said, then he stopped near the couch. A sheen of perspiration covered his brow and there were dark patches beneath his armpits on his white shirt. ‘Is it stuffy in here? It’s stuffy in here. I’ll just open the curtains and let some air in.’
He was nervous, and Jaydah’s heart ached with fresh guilt. He didn’t deserve to be lumped with her relatives and her problems. What bloke would?
She’d used him, and he was such a good man he’d let her do it because he loved her. And she’d lied to him. She’d trapped him.
‘I want to go home,’ Jaz said again, louder.
‘You don’t want to go home just yet, Jaz,’ Brix said, turning his head as his hands worked to push back the plain white curtains and open the front windows. ‘You haven’t played me at Snap.’
A breath of cool air blew into the room, bringing the scent of summer fields. Jaydah breathed deep. Beside her, she sensed her mother doing the same.
‘There’s a challenge for you, my Jasmine,’ her mum said. ‘Brix might be really good at Snap.’
Jaz shifted her weight from foot to foot and rubbed her fingers over the palm of her hand as if she was shuffling the card pack. ‘No one’s as good as Daddy.’
