Hostage

by Karen Tayleur

  Say hi to Sasha for me.

  xx Roo

  39

  Christmas Eve

  Tully woke to the sound of Griffin cursing.

  ‘Where are we?’ she said, still half-asleep.

  Outside the landscape was rolling hills with only a few houses dotted here and there. The sun was low on the horizon behind them.

  ‘Not sure. Just been following the signs back to Melbourne,’ Griffin said, changing down gears. ‘Okay,’ he murmured to the truck driver. ‘Pull over. Come on. Come on.’

  A shiny B-double truck slowed down in front of them as it strained up the steep incline. It finally pulled over to the slow lane and Griffin pushed the car faster to pass it. As the car crested the hill, the truck flashed its lights at him and Griffin shook his head.

  They pulled away again from the truck and Griffin only relaxed when he lost sight of it in his rear-view mirror.

  ‘Who’s waiting at home for you, Tully?’ Griffin asked.

  Tully gave up on her silent treatment and talked about Bamps and life with Aunt Laney who was such a nag and about the next door neighbour who waxed. She finally stopped when she noticed Griffin had fallen silent.

  ‘What is it?’ she asked.

  ‘He’s back,’ said Griffin softly.

  ‘What?’

  ‘That truck.’

  Tully looked behind through the rear-view window.

  ‘Are you sure? Maybe it’s a different truck.’

  ‘Same truck,’ said Griffin. ‘Same rego.’

  ‘What’s he doing?’

  The truck was weaving from side to side across the road. Griffin kicked down a gear and the car surged forward. The B-double loomed closer behind them, its lights flashing.

  ‘Is there any chance you know the driver?’ asked Tully.

  Griffin shook his head.

  ‘So what’s his problem?’

  ‘I cut in front of him sixty kays back. Didn’t want to sit behind him up the hills. I think I pissed him off.’

  ‘Can’t you go any faster?’ asked Tully.

  Griffin pulled away from the truck and up the next hill.

  ‘What about you, Griffin?’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘Who’s waiting at home for you?’ asked Tully.

  Griffin shrugged. ‘My little brother.’

  ‘And your mum?’

  ‘She ... we don’t get on. She says I mess up everything I touch. I look a lot like my dad. Maybe that pisses her off.’

  ‘No.’

  Griffin shrugged again.

  ‘Why don’t you live with your dad?’

  ‘He’s moved on. He doesn’t want me hanging around.’

  ‘That’s not fair.’

  Griffin groaned.

  The truck had caught up with them once more. It made no move to pass the car, even after Griffin waved it on. Instead it sat as close as possible to the car’s bumper bar.

  ‘Can you pull over?’ said Tully.

  ‘No room,’ said Griffin. ‘Not here. Maybe further down.’

  He urged the car faster up a long winding incline and the truck fell back, only to catch up on the downward slope. This time the truck turned its indicator on, and Griffin slowed the car down to give it time to pass.

  Tully could feel the shuddering strength of the B-double as it drew level with them then passed.

  ‘Jesus,’ said Griffin as he swerved instinctively away.

  The road’s shoulder was a narrow strip of gravel that fell away into a deep ditch. The car cleared the ditch and landed in the scrub alongside as the truck pushed past them.

  Tully swore and bounced out of the car, yelling and finally grabbing a handful of gravel and throwing it at the receding truck. Back at the car, she bent down to inspect the bumper which was pushed up on one side like a half-grin.

  When she sat back in the car, Griffin was still holding tightly onto the wheel, his face damp with perspiration.

  ‘He’s gone,’ said Tully. She touched Griffin lightly on the shoulder. ‘That guy was a lunatic.’

  Tully reached around on the floor until she found a drink bottle, then handed it to Griffin who took it automatically.

  ‘We should let the cops know. I mean, a maniac like that on the roads could kill someone ... hey, did you hear what I said? Go to the cops? That’s a good one.’

  Griffin raised the drink bottle to his lips but his hands were shaking and he spilled half of it down his T-shirt.

  ‘How’s the car?’ he asked finally.

  ‘Not bad,’ said Tully. ‘Hardly a scratch.’

  ‘I screwed up. It’s Mum’s car. She’s going to kill me—’

  ‘Hey it wasn’t your fault.’

  ‘One chance. That’s all I had. She’ll never let me drive it again.’

  ‘But that’s not fair—’

  Griffin laughed—a harsh grating noise. ‘Life isn’t fair, Tully. That’s the thing. Life just dumps a load of shit on you and there’s nothing you can do about it.’

  They sat in silence for a while, then Tully leaned across and drew Griffin into a kiss that stilled the tremors in his body. As she pulled away, Griffin said, ‘What was that for?’

  ‘I think you’re wrong,’ she said with a smile.

  40

  Christmas Eve

  Somewhere between the kiss and the Western Ring Road, Griffin changed his mind. He stopped at a payphone and made a call then checked out the car bumper. Back inside the car he told Tully that he would take her to one last spot.

  ‘Are you sure?’ said Tully.

  ‘This is probably the last time I get to drive Mum’s car,’ said Griffin. ‘Might as well enjoy it while it lasts.’

  It was early evening by the time Tully and Griffin wound their way up the mad mile to Kallista. Houses decked out with Christmas lights lit a path to the main shops in Belgrave. Umbrella-like tree ferns lined the forest road to Kallista village. Tully leaned forward and peered about, reciting the landmarks to Griffin like a lesson.

  ‘Nursery on the right, post office on the left, Owen Street on the left, turn right at Gleghorn.’

  ‘When did you live here?’ asked Griffin.

  ‘When I was four. Four and five,’ said Tully. ‘I went to the school back there on the corner. I used to have to walk home from school. There’s the church. It’s the next street on the right. This is the first place I remember. I had my best Christmas here. I was five and Santa came on a fire truck.’

  ‘A fire truck? How can you remember from that long ago?’ said Griffin, slowing the car down.

  ‘I don’t know. Fifth house on the left. It’s purple ... was purple,’ she said as Griffin slowed the car to a stop.

  ‘Fifth house on the left. That makes it number 159a,’ said Griffin reading the letterbox. ‘Is this the house? Not purple anymore.’

  ‘This is it,’ said Tully.

  ‘Do you think your Mum’s here?’ asked Griffin.

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘I need to turn the car around,’ said Griffin. ‘The road’s too narrow here.’

  Tully got out and pointed up the dirt road, which rose steeply before them like the start of a rollercoaster. ‘You can go up to the top and there’s a road to the right. You should be able to turn around there. I’m just going to...’

  Tully watched the car make its way up the road then she checked out the house. It was smaller than she remembered. The wide veranda held a rocking chair and a small wicker table. Inside the main front window a Christmas star exploded again and again in colours of green and red and gold. A line of party-light icicles dripped from the veranda roof and fake snow frosted the front door.

  Tully moved up the driveway and crept onto the veranda.

  ‘Roo,’ she whispered as she peered hesitantly through the window.

  A man sat in an easy-chair, half-turned away from the window. On his knee sat a young girl, her thumb tucked into her mouth, intent on the storybook before him. The lights on the Christmas tree blinked on and off, hi
ghlighting the wrapped presents beneath its low-hanging branches.

  Her mother entered the room and added more presents to the pile under the tree. She bent toward the girl and touched her hair briefly before leaving the room again and Tully felt a familiar ache where her heart should have been.

  It wasn’t Roo and it wasn’t her mother. It had been a stupid idea to come here.

  Tully crept off the veranda and down the driveway to a waiting Griffin. She shook her head and climbed into the passenger seat, the sound of Christmas carols wafting through the door with her.

  ‘Not there?’ said Griffin.

  Tully shook her head again, dropping her head into her hands. ‘I just ... it’s Christmas and I just wanted ... magic. I wanted Christmas magic. That sounds so dumb but, well, I never said I wasn’t dumb.’ Tully sat up. ‘Let’s go. Time to face the music. Down the end of this road, then turn left.’

  Griffin got back onto the main road, only to find a police car blocking the way.

  ‘Tully,’ he said. ‘I think we’re in trouble.’

  41

  Tully’s Story

  When I was four we moved to a place in the Dandenongs called Kallista where I had crocodiles and tigers on my bedroom wall. People who lived in the Dandenongs called it The Hills, but I could never see any hills when I lived there. Only years later, when my teacher pointed them out to me from the top of the Eureka Tower, did I see that the Dandenongs actually were hills. Blue Hills. ‘I lived there once,’ I said to no one in particular. Sometimes it’s hard to see what things are when you’re right on top of them.

  I started my memory tin after we left Kallista. Did I mention that already? Inside I have pages of an award-winning story that I’d written when I was in Year 4. The award was for best story written during Book Week. The story got typed up and put into the library for other kids to read. Mum missed me getting my award at morning assembly because she had to go to work.

  The story that ended up in the library was not the story I wrote. The teacher typed up the new story with bits taken out of it that she didn’t like. She said it was too long and there was a word limit, but when I think of that now I really think she didn’t want the whole story to be told. But I kept my whole story that took me days to write because that was the real story. It has a beginning, a middle and an end.

  Wrapped up inside the pages of my story is a small scrap of fabric. To anyone else it’s just a dirty bit of material, but to me it’s so much more. It reminds me of how I found out about my mother.

  Living in the Dandenongs

  by Tully McCain

  Grade 4M

  When I was four I lived in the Dandenongs. My best friend’s name was Sasha. Mum and I shared a house with a man named Roo. Mum said he wasn’t her boyfriend or anything, but a couple of times I saw him kiss her on the mouth like in the movies, not just on the cheek like a friend. I liked Roo. He is probably the only one I have ever really liked. He had messy hair and blue crinkly eyes and he always wore check shirts, even when we went somewhere special. He and Sasha got on well together.

  Sasha didn’t like the dark. When she stayed over, Mum or Roo would let me leave the bedroom door open and the hall light on. I didn’t mind the dark so much. I had the crocodiles and tigers to keep me safe. When Sasha stayed over we’d talk all night until Mum thumped on her bedroom wall which was right next door to mine. Sasha was scared of my mum, but I’d tell her just to stay out of Mum’s way when she was grumpy. Mum wasn’t always grumpy.

  People say I look like my mum. My mum’s got frizzy brown hair that sticks out in the morning when she first gets up. She always wears green or black because she says it makes her look thinner, even though she is already skinny. She has brown spots all over her legs and her arms. I remember asking her about them and she called them freckles. Roo used to call her freckles ‘fly dirt’. But he said it in a smiling kind of way, so even when Mum pretended to be cross I knew she wasn’t.

  My hair is frizzy brown and my nose is covered in fly dirt. But Sasha—she was the most beautiful person I had ever seen. She had gold hair that went nearly down to her bum and her teeth were white and even like a row of corn on the cob. Her skin was the colour of vanilla ice cream that Roo and I used to have for sweets every night.

  Sasha had a mum and a dad and a sister and a brother and a dog. She even had a cocky in the backyard that swore in Greek. Our neighbours were Greek and what I remembered about them the most is that they talked loud and drank wine with their meals. Even the kids.

  Sasha’s favourite food was spaghetti.

  Sasha’s mum was a good cook. She even made her own chips. Mum didn’t like to cook. Roo used to say that he could cook eggs 67 different ways and he did know a lot of ways to cook them. We would have a great time in the kitchen, just him and me and Sasha.

  The thing I remember about the Dandenongs is that Mum was sick a lot. When Sasha stayed over we would have to tiptoe around the house because Mum usually had a headache. I liked Fridays best because Roo would come home early from work and Sasha would come over and we would all cook together and have chips and eggs. We didn’t have real chips, just one’s from the freezer. Sasha liked Roo so she never said anything about her mum’s chips being better.

  When I turned five, Roo invited Sasha to go to the zoo with us, but we never got there because Mum came home too late from work. She had a really bad headache and went straight to bed. She didn’t even give me a present. Roo took me to the McDonald’s off the hill where a toy train ran around the tracks near the ceiling and tooted every now and then. We had chips and Sasha said they weren’t as good as Roo’s chips which made Roo smile. He jumped around like he was Ronald McDonald, except his feet weren’t as big. And he wasn’t as plastic and creepy.

  ‘We’re just one big Happy Meal,’ he’d said and he gave us both a hug.

  Whenever Sasha’s mum hugged me she smelled like the makeup counter at the chemist and her hair was long and gold like Sasha’s but she wore it in a bun like a ballerina. In the Dandenongs my mum’s breath smelled like Dettol. When I asked about the smell she just laughed and said, ‘I’ve been to the dentist.’

  I only worked out later what that meant.

  Whenever she kissed Sasha and me goodnight, Sasha held her breath until Mum left the room. Even my wallpaper animals wouldn’t breathe in.

  Sasha said that Mum must go to the dentist a lot. I asked Roo how much it cost to go the dentist but he just asked me if I had a toothache.

  Sometimes I’d pretend that I could live at Sasha’s house and think how great it would be having a dad and a brother and a sister and a dog and a Greek-swearing cocky.

  My Uncle Remo was Greek. Mum said one day, ‘He’s not your real uncle, he’s just living with my sister. You know, Aunt Laney.’ We never saw Aunt Laney much then. Around Christmas, when I was five, Mum and Roo and I went to a funny house that had two white lions sitting at the gates out the front. I thought we were going to the zoo, but Mum laughed and gave me a hug and told me I was a silly sausage.

  ‘It’s European architecture,’ she’d said.

  It was Uncle Remo’s house. The one he used to live in when he was a kid. His mum was really nice. She was the blackest person I’d ever met. Black clothes, black shoes, black hair. Even one of her teeth was black. She kissed us at the front door and she didn’t even know us. Mum seemed to think it was okay to be kissed by this stranger, so I let myself be kissed. The smell that wafted through the front door was, well, kind of like the Pizza Hut. Only better. I don’t remember Aunt Laney kissing anyone that day.

  Uncle Remo’s mum only spoke Greek, so I tried a few words that I’d learned from the kids next door. Uncle Remo laughed so hard he nearly fell off his chair, but his mum just gave me more food to eat.

  We all had sweets and some more wine in little glasses. Mum was so happy that she got up and danced. Roo didn’t say much. He just sat there and got quiet while Mum smiled and danced. I never saw Mum and Roo smile at the same time. It�
�s like they took turns with just the one smile. That’s all I remember about that party.

  Mum sometimes danced at home. She’d dance in the lounge room and swing me around until I got dizzy. If she did it when Sasha was there, Sasha would hide behind the couch saying she didn’t want a turn. And then Roo would come home and he would be quiet. And then Mum would shout and go to her bedroom and Sasha would hide behind the curtains.

  ‘Where’s that Sasha girl gone?’ Roo would say loudly. ‘How about eggs for dinner?’

  Then we would all tiptoe to the kitchen and have dinner.

  On Christmas Eve at Kallista we went to the Christmas Carols and I saw some of my friends from kinder. Roo and I had made special Christmas Carols candles, with tin foil folded around the bottom to catch the dripping wax. The best thing I remember about that night was that I sat on Mum’s knee and she zipped up her coat so I was like a joey in a pouch. And I remember the way the songs sounded outside in the dark with the stars twinkling down on us. And I remember how excited I was when Santa turned up on the back of the CFA Fire Truck and gave out lolly bags.

  The February after I turned five, I was old enough to go to school. Then Mum told me that Sasha and I couldn’t go to school together. I cried a lot but it worked out in the end. Sasha and I ended up in the same grade. We sat next to each other. We held each other’s door at the toilet. We even played on the monkey bars together and we wore shorts under our school dresses so no boys could see our underpants. My teacher liked Sasha and said she was a really good friend. Some of the kids made fun of Sasha but they were just jealous.

  Sasha’s mum made her special lunches with tiny iced cakes. I made my own lunch. Sometimes Roo would make it if he thought to.

  That year I got my worst cold ever. In the winter I coughed and coughed and couldn’t go to sleep. Mum kept banging on the wall. I coughed and Mum banged. She got so mad she finally came into my room. I couldn’t see her face because my light was off. Even the hall light was off. I wasn’t scared of the dark like Sasha.