Transformation of Minna Hargreaves, The

by Beale, Fleur

  Dad’s attention shifted between Mum, the view, which he declared out of this world, and the woodburner, which seemed to need his attention every ten seconds. Cara didn’t rate. The frown lines deepened in her forehead. She’d need botox if she hung around the father much longer.

  She set her cup down with a click on to the saucer, which for sure we’d never use again because who wanted to wash useless dishes just for the fun of it? But as always, old Cara had a trick or two up her sleeve. ‘Right. Attention please.’ She glanced at Mum who didn’t attempt to open her eyes.

  Noah slouched lower on the window seat and didn’t open his eyes either.

  Cara frowned some more and focused in on Dad and me. ‘You don’t need to worry about those cameras.’ She pointed up at the ceiling. ‘I’ll collect the footage from them when I come each month and change the film.’

  I gaped at her, a whole heap of words whirling in my mind that I squashed down because of not wanting to provide Good Television.

  Noah didn’t care about GT. He opened his eyes and actually sat up. ‘You mean — they’re on all the time? Like security cameras?’

  She nodded. ‘Yes. Didn’t Wes tell you?’

  We looked at Dad who didn’t even try to look guilty. ‘I might have omitted to mention it,’ he said. ‘Don’t worry, we’ll soon forget they’re there.’

  And that was meant to comfort and reassure me? I leaned my head in my hands and those damn cameras would have caught the groan I couldn’t manage to suppress. Bloody great. How in hell was I going to appear light-hearted, adventurous, charming, quirky, capable, et-bloody-cetera with those cameras up there recording every move I made?

  I lifted my head and glared at Cara. She smiled back at me and her eyes held exactly the same expression that Gran H’s do when she’s slam-dunked me. I smiled back. ‘I am so going to enjoy the filming, Cara,’ I said. ‘Thank you so much for entrusting the task to me.’

  That took the sparkle out of her eye. Cow.

  She smiled at me again. ‘Time for me to leave,’ she said with just a slight emphasis on me. She let that sink in before she added, ‘We’ll be back in a month to pick up the film and drop off any supplies you need.’ She smiled at me again. I had to admit she was pretty good in the revenge department.

  I trailed out of the house after her because watching the chopper take off would be my last piece of entertainment for an entire month. I watched Cara get into it and refused to let myself think about how long a month was.

  The chopper lifted off with a rush of air that flattened the grass and blow-dried the trees and then it was just the four of us. Dad, of course, was acting like he was five years old, this was his birthday and he still had a mountain of presents to open. He rubbed his hands. ‘Come on, troops. Back to the house. I need to show you how to use the radio.’

  I didn’t even bother sending him a dirty look. I trudged back to the house, lifted my head and composed my face for the benefit of the cameras and headed for the privacy of my own room. Dad had other ideas. ‘Min!’ he bellowed. ‘Here. Now.’

  I went, but only because the alternative would have been an unseemly slanging match caught forever on those bloody cameras. I hated them and I hated him and no way was I going to use the bloody radio which for sure wasn’t going to be any sort of radio that would interest me.

  I was right.

  Dad swivelled around from where he sat at a sort of desk, stuck to the wall midway between the open-plan kitchen and sitting room. He beamed a megawatt grin in my direction. ‘This is it, kids. This is our contact with the outside world.’

  Noah grunted.

  ‘Great,’ I said. It was a box stuck to the wall. It had a microphone and a handset and it didn’t look to me that I’d be able to contact anyone meaningful and important to me in the outside world.

  I was right again. He gave me the benefit of a full six seconds of his attention. ‘This isn’t for social use, Min. We do the listening watch. We can use it for emergencies. But that’s it. Understand?’

  ‘Yeah.’ I didn’t bother asking what a listening watch was. Who cared?

  Dad seized the chance while he had us all in the one place to drop in a couple more gems about Life on Isolation Island.

  One: I was not to use my hair-dryer because it would drain too much power from the solar batteries.

  Two: showers were limited to two minutes and baths totally prohibited.

  ‘I’m just gonna love it here,’ I said. ‘I can tell already.’

  Dad beamed at me. ‘That’s the spirit, Min.’

  I treated him to the raised-eyebrow stare. He couldn’t be that dumb, surely? But then again, maybe he could. I was beginning to think this whole thing had turned his brain to bird seed.

  Noah had had enough of quality family time. He muttered, ‘Going exploring.’

  Yeah right. Going to find a stash for his hash more like but Dad slapped him on the back, said, ‘Excellent idea,’ and trotted out with him, so suck on that, stoner brother.

  Mum hadn’t moved. She hadn’t even drunk her tea.

  ‘You okay, Mum?’

  She wiggled the fingers of one hand at me but didn’t say anything.

  Great. Here I was stuck on an island in the middle of nowhere. My father had run off exploring. My only and dearly beloved sibling had taken himself off to get high once he could ditch the father. My mother was stretched out on a couch and didn’t look like being any sort of company for the rest of the day.

  The camera I was supposed to take with me everywhere I went lay on the table. I left it there and went off to my bedroom. It was a truly awful room. When I felt better — if I ever did — then I’d film it and ever so subtly indicate that it was Cara who had created the nightmare of pink: flowery curtains, flowery floor mat, flowery bedspread, flowery wallpaper.

  Whoever had decorated this lacked the style gene. Or maybe it was her, out for revenge. I wished I’d brought my posters. I wished I’d brought a tin of plain, quiet paint. I wished I was anywhere in the world except here.

  nine

  I took a deep breath, sorted out the sound system and got the music pumping. That was better. I unpacked everything except for Cara’s proper effective clothing. I put my photos on the one shelf and was so glad I wasn’t filming myself. Bloody Cara would just love to catch me weeping all over Seb’s photo and then clasping it and the photo of the girls to my heart. I sniffed and wiped a hand over my face. ‘No way, Cara dear — no way am I going to cry on camera for you.’

  I finished unpacking, arranging and crying.

  I got hungry.

  ‘Mum! What’s for lunch?’

  No answer. Rats — was she still sick? I took myself off to investigate.

  She hadn’t moved off the sofa, and she was sort of whimpering. ‘Mum?’ I squatted down beside her.

  ‘Music hurts.’

  Crap. I ran and turned it off. ‘Sorry.’ I looked at her. She looked spectacularly awful. ‘I’ll get Dad.’

  ‘No. Ice.’

  Ice? Did we have ice? Did we have a fridge? I almost asked her, but didn’t. She looked like death. I scanned the walls of the big room. ‘Aha! Fridge!’ I opened it. No freezer.

  ‘Outside,’ Mum whispered.

  I took myself outside on a freezer hunt and this time I took the camera. With Cara’s voice in my head saying it’ll make excellent television I set out to make damn sure what she got was idiot television, which nobody in their right mind would watch for even a nanosecond.

  The way to do it, I decided, was to pretend I was talking to my friends.

  ‘A freezer outside. Who would have thought it? Still, this is an island and anything can happen on an island. Apparently.’ I put the camera on the verandah seat and crouched down in front of it. ‘Which path will it be? Left, or right?’ The girls would kill themselves laughing when I told them why Cara hadn’t shown much of the stuff I filmed.

  I chose the path to the bundle of sheds because it would be more logical to have the fr
eezer closer to the house than in the shed round the back, but who knew what logic prevailed in this place? All of which I carefully explained to the camera.

  The first shed was the big one with the solar-panel decoration on the roof; it contained chickens, unfrozen and wandering around doing chicken stuff out in their yard. I aimed the camera at them. ‘Meet the chickens: Izzie, Fizzie, Bizzie, Tizzie and — the rest. Looks like there’s ten of them.’ They came over to meet me. They had reddish feathers about the colour of Cara’s hair and they didn’t know a lot about personal hygiene. I didn’t linger.

  There was another mini-shed opposite the Chicken House of Glory. ‘What have we here, boys and girls?’

  What we had was the toilet. I was not impressed. ‘A long drop?’ I filmed it from the top of its spidery ceiling, down the walls to the seat and for good measure I aimed the camera down the drop. ‘Disgusting and gross. Is this the best the twenty-first century can manage?’

  Damn. Cara would like me being grossed out by the toilet.

  I continued my explorations on along the path past the chicken house and discovered that their shed was chopped in half down the middle. ‘Yes! Here we have it, one magnificent freezer.’ I swept the camera around. ‘And the washing machine, plus tub with one lonely tap.’ I bent down and talked to it. ‘Hello, lonely tap. I know just how you feel.’ I hoped Cara would be overcome by guilt. Like that was going to happen.

  I was glad the freezer was out here; it didn’t have the quietest motor in the world. I found a tray of ice and took it back to Mum. She stuck out a hand so I put a bit of ice in it. I thought she wanted to rub it on her forehead, but she put it in her mouth — didn’t open her eyes, didn’t say thanks. She just lay there looking sick.

  Well, one thing was for sure — if I wanted to eat anything I’d have to get it myself. There was bread in the huge pantry and butter in the fridge, along with cheese. I found pickle and relish.

  Dad came in. ‘Oh, good girl — you’re making lunch.’

  I grinned at him. ‘I’m making me lunch. There’s the stuff. Make your own.’ I ducked the cuff he aimed at me.

  He went over to Mum. ‘Liv? You okay?’ He looked at the ice tray. ‘You’re eating ice?’

  She didn’t say anything. Just fished around for another bit. He found her one and popped it into her mouth. Quite sweet, really.

  He sat back on his heels and stared at her as if he had something he wanted to say but didn’t know how to say it.

  I made another sandwich in the time it took him to make up his mind. Noah ambled in just as Dad said, ‘The last time you were sick like this — the last time you were so sick that all you could eat was ice …’

  Mum just lay with her eyes shut.

  Noah said, ‘What’s for lunch?’

  Nobody answered him. Dad finished his sentence. ‘You were pregnant.’

  ‘S’right,’ Mum whispered.

  I put my sandwich down. Wow! ‘Mum! Are you pregnant?’ That would be so amazing. A baby! A sister. It had to be a girl.

  ‘Well,’ said Dad, ‘are you?’ I stared at him. He only ever used that tone of voice for Noah and me when we were in deep, deep, not-get-out-of-able shit.

  ‘Yes,’ Mum said. The effort of making her voice louder than a whisper made her throw up. It went on to the sofa.

  I expected Dad to run off and get a towel. I expected him to fuss over her. I dunno. I thought he’d do something different to stomping out in a tearing rage by the look on his face, which would be captured on telly for the entertainment of the entire country.

  I got the towel instead. And I wet a flannel and gave it to Mum to wipe her face. And gave her more ice.

  ‘What’s up with him?’ I asked. ‘It takes two to get pregnant according to what they teach us these days, or doesn’t he know that?’

  But Mum had used up all her energy.

  Noah drifted off again, accompanied by half a loaf of dry bread.

  I wanted to talk to Mum, but she was too sick. She looked awful. I took out the rest of the ice, put it in a cup where she could reach it, re-filled the tray and took it back to the freezer. A baby. How amazing was that? I wanted to call the girls, I wanted us all to run to BeauTox and drink half a latte and a whole hot chocolate to celebrate, and then we’d go and look at cute baby stuff.

  It was so goddamned lonely here. And this shed was a dump. I left the camera and ice tray on a shelf and went outside, past the chickens who followed me the length of their cage, squawking all the way. I walked to the edge of the island, to where the land dropped into the sea. Over there, in that misty blue, was my life. Here there was such aloneness that I could feel it pressing down and squeezing me to death. For the longest time I sat there, on the edge of the island with the waves shattering to foam on the rocks way below me. I just sat, holding my arms around my knees, and the tears ran out of my eyes. I let them dribble down to make wet patches on my jeans.

  Cara would laugh till she cracked her ribs if she could see me now.

  Cow. Bloody bitch of a cow.

  I sniffed, wiped my face then chucked the tissue over the cliff where the wind caught it and made it drift and fly like a beautiful feather instead of a grubby tissue full of fluids that I will not elaborate upon.

  No way, bloody Cara — no way in hell will I get on camera weeping, wailing and bemoaning my fate so suck that up and see how you like it.

  I wriggled back from the edge, stood up and took myself back to the shed, stopping at the chickens to practise my chirpy camera voice. It was a bit damn rusty to begin with and the chickens didn’t like it. ‘It’s not my fault you crazy birds,’ I yelled, which made me feel better, especially as it shut them up for five whole seconds. I took a deep breath but gave up before I got too far. Let me recommend to never do deep, calming breaths near chicken residences.

  I went into the shed and got on with my job of filmmaker of the century. Cara was going to curse the day she’d had the brilliant idea of me plus camera.

  I set the camera up on a shelf facing the freezer, turned it on and began my performance.

  ‘Enough meat to last a year,’ I said brightly. Bloody Cara was going to get fed up to her eyeballs with me saying stuff brightly. ‘Let’s see what we’ve got. All the usual from steak to mince to sausages. And roasts.’ I leaned close to the camera. ‘Don’t these television people know that roasts are so last century?’

  I shut the freezer doors. Then I opened them again. ‘I am about to choose what to have for dinner on this auspicious first night of our year-long incarceration.’

  I chose sausages, partly because I could recognise them. I did a pan shot of the contents of the freezer. ‘You know,’ I told the camera in my bright, chatty manner, ‘all that stuff in there will have passed through our alimentary canals before the end of the year.’

  I picked up the sausages and went back to the house.

  ten

  The afternoon doesn’t rate as one of the most exciting of my life, but it’s all there, caught on camera. Me making sure Mum had enough ice. Me deciding I would have to cook dinner if we wanted to eat. There was no way Mum would keep anything down, but Dad would be hungry and Noah might even decide he wanted more than dry bread.

  I found spuds and peeled them. Then there were the carrots and broccoli. My first attempt at a meal that didn’t need thawing and microwaving would have earned me a failed miserably in any test or exam devised by humankind. The spuds burnt, the sausages shrivelled up into turds, the broccoli cooked to mush and I don’t know what happened to the carrots but I do not aim to cook carrots again for the rest of my life.

  I reached for my phone to text Jax, who did know about cooking. No phone. How long would it take me to get used to it?

  I went outside to yell for Dad, but he was already striding along the track towards the house. Nature, of which there was rather a lot, hadn’t soothed him any by the look of it.

  He stomped inside, sat down at the table and started eating. He said nothing — not e
ven thank you — which I felt was a bit harsh because I had tried, I had used my initiative, which he is always going on about. But I didn’t say anything either because, man, he was steaming.

  Noah appeared, sat down, shoved the broccoli and carrot disaster out of the way and chomped on the charred turds.

  The room was silent apart from the noise of us chomping.

  When this interminable, everlasting, god-awful year was over I would live at Lizzie’s until I had the money to go flatting and leave my family far behind.

  The food didn’t seem to do anything for Dad’s temper. He stabbed the sausages, jabbed at the vegetables and chewed everything like he was killing it.

  At last, I got mad too. All my feminist genes jumped up and fired my tongue. ‘Listen up, Father dear,’ I said. ‘How come you are being so bloody-minded about this pregnancy? Your baby, I might point out.’ And I pointed with my knife.

  He crashed both hands down on the table. He scared the tripe out of me. Noah actually lifted his head and it’s a wonder Mum didn’t miscarry on the spot. ‘My baby! You hear that, Liv? My baby?’ He stalked over to the sofa. ‘Well? Is it my baby?’

  She shut her eyes. Noah and I stared at Dad, at her. ‘No,’ she whispered.

  Dad stormed out into the darkening day.

  Oh joy and bliss. All that captured on camera. Dumb Dad. Why didn’t he just pretend, and then we could have had the family drama on top of a hill away from all recording equipment?

  Noah slouched off out of the room away from all parental emotion. If I hadn’t been so stunned I’d have gone after him and got high too but I couldn’t move, other than to shake my head. It couldn’t be true. I looked over at Mum. How could she do that — to Dad, to us?

  She’d gone off with some bloke and done it with him. I stared at her pale, sick face and said, ‘How could you? How could you do that?’

  She didn’t try to answer, didn’t even open her eyes. ‘You are the world’s hugest hypocrite,’ I said, speaking slowly and clearly so that the words would slide into her brain whether she wanted them to or not. ‘You wouldn’t even let me go out with Seb.’ I stood up and marched over to her. ‘What makes you think I’d be a slut like you?’ I bent down and prodded her shoulder. She didn’t say anything but a tear slid down her cheek.