After the fire, a still small voice - By Evie Wyld Page 0,29

to smile with his top lip.

‘You look like a pervert!’ Eliza managed to squeak out between hysterics. And then it went quiet and they did some sitting still and Frank was worried that he might piss himself, even though he was sure he didn’t need to go. Eliza’s face was multi-sided. She had a new hair wrap that he hadn’t noticed before, purple and black thread wound around in stripes just above her ear. Like a bandicoot tail. He’d never seen a bandicoot.

‘Bandicoot,’ he said out loud and Eliza looked at him as if she didn’t know who he was. But she did. He reached out and touched the side of her boob, which he could see was next to her armpit where it belonged. She shrugged him off. Maybe they didn’t know each other. He sweated. Had he just touched a stranger’s boob? Would he go to jail? Her bandicoot tail twitched.

‘My mum’s had it off with your dad. Did you know that? That kinda makes us brother and sister.’

Frank waded back into the shore holding his fists tightly at his sides, that ache in his jaw from clenching. There were headaches some mornings and he’d tried going to sleep with a piece of bread in his mouth to stop the grinding, but had woken up choking. To shake off the feeling he ran the length of the bay, then turned and ran back. He kept on up and down until sunspots clouded over and he felt weak and steaming, then he slopped himself in the shallows like a hot dog.

4

On his sixteenth birthday Leon was confronted by a heart-shaped cake that his mother had baked. ‘We can have a party, chicken, if you’d like,’ she said in a way that made his toes grip the insides of his shoes. ‘You can invite your friends, we can have maybe some sherry and cake.’ To look at it, so bright and red, made him uncomfortable.

‘Thanks, Ma, but I’d rather not, ta.’

‘Why, sausage? Are you embarrassed?’

He cleared his throat. ‘No, a few friends – man friends – want to take me out somewhere, is all. I’m just busy, and . . .’ He let the ‘and’ fill the room.

‘Oh? And who is taking you out?’

‘Oh, you know, the usual crowd.’ He tried hard to think of who that might be. ‘Darren, Sid, Johnny. Des. Mark.’ He said boys’ names as they came to him.

‘Darren Farrow? That boy who hit you?’

‘That’s a long time ago, Mum. It’s fine.’

The last time he’d seen him, Darren had been leaning solidly against a girl behind the Four Square at night. He’d seen Leon looking and given him the finger, which he trailed down the girl’s front and hooked under her shirt, all the while meeting Leon’s eyes. His fat had turned hard and he was thought of as a dangerous kind of a bloke now. It was a pity that he’d never got around to running off to Korea. Leon imagined them having a drink together and it almost made him smile.

His mother shook her head, but cut the cake for him anyway, and he ate a piece in front of her. It had too much colouring in it and it was dense and far too sweet; it made his teeth sing. She smiled and cut herself a piece and left immediately to have her bath, leaving her slice dead on the table, and he went to chop the date slabs that had cooled on the shop counter.

A moment later a girl put her head round the door of the shop.

‘Got some black pears for youse.’

She smiled as she bumped her way through the door, ricocheting it off her hip so that the bell rang several times before she got through. It took him a minute to recognise Amy Blackwell. She took up her space differently, as if she’d been taken apart and put back together in another way somehow. Her hair was piled on top of her head out of her face, her cheeks were pink from hefting the box of pears. She wore a pair of brown work overalls that were filthy, streaked with dirt and a pinch too small for her. She chewed gum and he could smell it on her breath. He looked at her chest in amazement. They’d just grown, like potatoes do.

‘Thought you could make a tart out of them,’ she said.

‘Thanks,’ he said, frowning hard at the pears – it seemed important to look interested in the fruit.