Walking on Trampolines

by Frances Whiting

  ‘Remember,’ I grinned at her in the semi-darkness, ‘we’re making love, not war.’

  Annie, of all people, had invited Maxine, given her this exclusive on the various warring branches of Frank Andrews’ family banding together to save his tree house.

  ‘We want maximum publicity,’ Annie had continued, ‘and that means, whether we like it or not, Maxine Mathers.’

  Annabelle had looked across at me and rolled her eyes, and she was twelve years old again, making faces at her mother for putting an unboiled egg in her lunch.

  Annabelle and Josh were staying this time, to curate Frank’s work, bits and pieces of art strewn throughout the River House, paintings and etchings and pastels stuffed in drawers and at the back of cupboards, and in the boot of his car.

  Annie was helping too, she and Frank once more entwined together at the River House, Frank, I knew from personal experience, well acquainted with the art of forgiveness. It was during one of Annie’s forays through the house for more pieces of Frank’s work that she’d come across the council’s final notice for the demolition of the tree house. Apparently she’d simply shaken her head and said, ‘No, I don’t think so.’

  Then all of us had been caught up in Annie’s kaleidoscope, a jumble of phone calls and meetings, with Annie at the centre, not drinking at all now but barking out orders with a joint dangling from her dark plum lips.

  Somewhere in the middle of it, Ben rang to ask, ‘Can we come? I’d like to, Lulu,’ and Fergus strolled in saying, ‘So, what are we doing?’, as if nothing had ever happened.

  The Willowers arrived the day before the protest, Julia in thongs and beach shorts, tanned legs and a bucket hat on her head, Boris in a button-up shirt and ironed trousers – ‘I don’t know what to wear to a protest,’ he said.

  The night before, I stayed at the River House where Annie called a last meeting, outlining what time to gather beneath the tree, what to wear, how to behave when the bulldozers, then the cops, moved in: ‘Don’t be rude,’ she said, ‘just stand your ground.’ She taught us to how to link our arms so they were hard to dislodge from one another. In the breaking dawn light, I heard a hum from the far end of the street and I knew it had begun.

  ‘All right,’ said Annie, ‘link arms.’ I felt a little thrill rush through me.

  Maxine Mathers straightened her shoulders and used a small compact to apply lipstick, and everyone was getting into position, except not everyone was there.

  I looked around the tree and thought of Duncan, how much he would have loved this, how he would have dug out a shirt that read Bread Not Bombs and pretended for the entire morning he had been a student radical in the seventies, when really he was hosting fondue parties in a full-length silk caftan.

  ‘Marvellous,’ I heard him boom at me from somewhere in the branches, ‘bloody marvellous, Lulu.’

  And Rose.

  Rose should have been there, Rose who would have been so happy to see Annabelle and me together again with no prickles against our skin, who would have said to Josh, ‘You need some meat on those bones, come for roast this Sunday’; Rose who would have been handing out biscuits still warm in our palms.

  But Rose was not there – and neither, I realised in a flash of panic, was Harry.

  I unhooked my arm from Annabelle’s.

  ‘What is it?’ she asked.

  ‘Harry,’ I told her.

  Annabelle stepped out of the circle, her eyes darting around it. She turned to me and held both of my hands in hers.

  ‘It will be all right, Tallulah,’ she said, ‘he’ll be here, and we won’t start without him.’

  We both looked down the road to where the bulldozer’s lights were bobbing up and down, and I started to worry, my breath little white puffs of anxiety in the air.

  Where was Harry?

  Yesterday he’d said he would not miss this ‘for all the rice in China’, and now he was not there and I thought that if something had happened to my father, I truly could not bear it.

  I trained my eyes on the road, willing Harry to appear, then as a bulldozer lumbered up the street I saw a car with a smaller set of headlights overtaking it, and as it got closer I made out ‘De Longland Plumbers’ emblazoned down its side, and underneath it, ‘Plumbing the Depths of Excellence’.

  Harry swung the ute into the River House’s long driveway, and got out, a buttercup-yellow dress straining over his overalls.

  It had a Peter Pan collar, a row of pearl buttons and its pin-pleated skirt brushed against his work boots as he strode towards us.

  ‘Sorry I’m late,’ he called, then came to link his arms through mine. ‘I had to bring your mother,’ he smiled at me, ‘she wouldn’t have missed this for the world.’

  I smiled back at him, my father in Grace, a rose-pink handkerchief with an R embroidered in its corner, somewhere deep inside its pockets.

  Thanks very much to the team at Pan Macmillan – to Brianne Collins, for being the best sort of pedant, and the wonderful Emma Rafferty for wielding her edits like Edward Scissorhands in a floaty dress.

  Love and thanks to the very glamorgeous and patient Cate Paterson for eight years of solid belief in this book, and in me.

  Thanks also for early help to Julia Stiles, who I loved working with so much I named a character after her, and Bernadette Foley, who told me to write a novel.

  To Sandra for giving me a room of my own when I really needed one, and Peter Jenyns, for telling me about the Dance of the Eugaries and other fishy matters.

  Thank you to Stephen Lamble, who gave me my first job in journalism and taught me pretty much everything I know.

  The Q Weekenders, past and present, especially Matt Condon and Susan Johnson, for such spirited encouragement and teaching me the ways of the book world. The Verdict boys, Crash Craddock and Dennis Atkins, the best part of my working week.

  All the Kingscliff posse, for helping me juggle, and very bad dancing.

  My lovely friends, Rebecca, Nushie, Alison, Jane, Slinky, Liss, Lou Lou, Kate, Maxine, Boo, Sally, Ness and Helen, and in memory of Rosalita prettier than a mosquita.

  Thank you to my family, and John’s family for love and encouragement.

  Thank you to my father, Paul Whiting, for opening the pages for me. Miss you Dad.

  Thank you to my mother, Shirley Whiting, the garden in my pocket.

  And finally, thank you to my husband John, the best man I know, for every step of our way, and to our children, the very epic and awesome Max, and our lovely Tallulah, who no-one saw coming, but was waiting in the wings all along.

  I have always loved the name Tallulah, and when I was told I would not have any more children I gave the name, instead, to another girl, the one in this book.

  Then, much to our surprise and delight, I did indeed have another child, a little girl, who we called, of course, Tallulah.

  For a long time I thought about changing the character’s name, but no other name seemed to fit, and I had, by that time, grown pretty attached to both of them!

  So now I have one Max, and two Tallulahs in my life, the fictional one and the real one. How lucky can one woman get?

  About Frances Whiting

  Frances Whiting is one of Australia’s best known and favourite columnists. For more than fifteen years her weekly Sunday Mail column has engaged readers in the highs, low and the wonderful of the every day. She is also an award-winning journalist and Senior Feature writer for Q Magazine in the Courier Mail. She has published two collections of her columns: Oh To Be A Marching Girl and That’s A Home Run, Tiger! Walking on Trampolines is Frances’s first novel.

  Also by Frances Whiting

  Oh To Be A Marching Girl

  That’s A Home Run, Tiger!

  MORE BESTSELLING TITLES FROM FRANCES WHITING

  That’s A Home Run, Tiger!

  (available as an ebook
)

  That’s A Home Run, Tiger!, Frances Whiting’s second collection of her best columns, was published due to popular demand, and fills us in with what has been occupying the much-loved columnist over the previous few years.

  As well as her unique take on men, women, relationships, family, work, world events and celebrities, Frances, a first-time mum, tackles motherhood head on. Grappling with all the big issues – sleep deprivation, taking to the bottle, and enrolling in Competitive Mothering 101, it’s a warm and funny stroll through the perils of parenting.

  That’s a Home Run, Tiger! also gives readers a peek into the Queen’s handbag, a look behind the doors of Parliament House and offers helpful tips, including a Beginner’s Guide to Extreme Seating at Fashion Week, and how to pick a Prince in a Pub.

  First published 2013 in Macmillan by Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Limited

  1 Market Street, Sydney 2000

  Copyright © Frances Whiting 2013

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  All rights reserved. This publication (or any part of it) may not be reproduced or transmitted, copied, stored, distributed or otherwise made available by any person or entity (including Google, Amazon or similar organisations), in any form (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical) or by any means (photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise) without prior written permission from the publisher.

  This ebook may not include illustrations and/or photographs that may have been in the print edition.

  Cataloguing-in-Publication entry is available

  from the National Library of Australia

  http://catalogue.nla.gov.au

  EPUB format: 9781743289396

  Typeset by Post Pre-press Group, Brisbane

  Cover design by Christabella Designs

  Cover image: Lena Okuneva/Trevillion Images

  The characters and events in this book are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

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