After the fire, a still small voice - By Evie Wyld Page 0,43

eyes.

‘Happy fuckin’ Christmas!’ roared Vicky and they all snorted with laughter, even Sal, who couldn’t resist the word.

Vicky was telling a story and Frank couldn’t recall where it had started or what it was about, all he could see was the three of them, the small family feeding together, heads low to their plates, they all held their forks with a cocked little finger. A fogged memory crept in of a time at the shack when his mum had still been alive. The way he remembered it, when they were all three inside, the shack had taken on their smells and noises, soaked it up: the big hooked fish, the endless hand-washing and table-wiping, the filleting, oyster shells, clams in milk and school prawns, until the floor and the ceiling had smelt of burnt seawater.

In the early dark evening his mother started a game of bloody beetle and the three of them kicked back, inhaling the fug of themselves, eating shellfish with hammers and pokers. In bed, he’d found a dry fish scale stuck to his face, a mother-of-pearl toenail, and he’d put it under his tongue for safe keeping, for luck.

From nowhere the words came out of him, ‘Still no word on the Mackelly girl?’

‘Nah.’ Bob pushed the paper crown on his head back with his fork. ‘Poor Ian. Cripes I’d hate to be in his shoes.’

Vicky refilled her glass and drank from it deeply.

Stupid thing to say at Christmas. He felt his food go dry in his mouth. ‘Probably just gone walkabout, don’tcha think? Teenage girl, small-town-type thing?’

‘Probably,’ said Bob unconvincingly. ‘Still, that’s not much use to her parents on Christmas Day.’

‘Guess not.’ There was more quiet. ‘I made a break for it when I was a grommet. Headed for China.’ It was a lie, he realised once he’d said it.

‘China eh? What’s so good about China?’

Vicky laughed. ‘I’d run away to China just for those little deep-fried mussel parcels they do down at China Jack’s,’ she said, taking her nose out of her glass and focusing on the ceiling.

The skin of her throat looked soft.

‘Be easier, don’tcha think, just to pop down to China Jack’s?’ Bob said.

‘Well,’ said Vicky, standing and clearing the plates. ‘If my cheap-as-chips husband would take me out there once in a while I wouldn’t have to run off with the bugger.’

She winked at Frank.

‘Oh, I see!’ boomed Bob. ‘It’s not just his China food you’re after? It’s Jack’s sprats as well!’ Bob roared at his own joke, thumping the table with his fist and Frank smiled, watching Vicky box the crown right off her husband’s head.

In the early hours of the next day, long after Sal had gone to bed of her own accord, Frank made to leave. He patted Bob’s shoulder; Bob was slumped in an armchair, a beer warmed in his hand, and the black stub of a joint rested blunt and dead between his fingers. His eyelids drooped. Vicky showed Frank to the door and put her hands under his armpits in a strange close hug.

He knew what was going to happen, because he could feel her breath on his neck. He had the feeling that anything that happened that night wouldn’t be counted and what was the harm in kissing a woman on Christmas night, with her husband and child in the next rooms?

But he made sure his eyes were fixed well over her head when they untangled, and even though some of her hair caught in his mouth he didn’t look down to her face. He may have kissed her forehead lightly and he may have wanted to kiss her mouth but instead he slurred, ‘Nice Christmas, Vick, ta for the chooks,’ and he wobbled to his Ute in no fit state to drive, and over-gently put his charges, Kirk and Mary, clucking and sleepy, on the passenger seat while Vicky watched from the open lit doorway, so that he could see the dark shapes of her thighs through her dress. As he backed clumsily out of the drive, he saw the naked body of Barbie, folded in half and stuck through a hole in the incinerator.

6

Mrs Shannon had her hair cut like Jackie Kennedy. The baby Leon’s mother had predicted never showed up and nothing was said. He always gave her something free and he wondered if it wasn’t for the free treat that she kept returning, but for the chance to be given something. She was beautiful, even though the skin of her chest was