After the fire, a still small voice - By Evie Wyld Page 0,49

out of line with Vicky. But nothing happened, did it, so there wasn’t a problem. Unless she didn’t like him and told Bob she thought he was a sleaze. If he had a phone he could ring them up and say thanks, gauge the atmosphere. He could drive round there, but they probably didn’t want disturbing. They were a family doing family things. They would have invited him had they wanted him to be there. It wasn’t enough, he realised, because even if you spent Christmas with people, even if you weren’t alone then, the next day was empty, even more empty for following a day with those people and their good looks. Their easy laughs and bare legs. Frank pressed his wrists into the edge of the step he sat on, so that he could feel something through the small hangover and so that his heart could stop beating so loudly.

When Sal returned an hour later, she had her own trowel and, without a word to Frank or even a glance in his direction, she knelt down and began to dig out his newly planted marrow seedlings. He trotted over, his hands flapping girlishly. ‘Mate, I just planted those.’ It came out louder than he’d meant and he saw the back of her neck tense. A sweat started on his face and he tried to pull his voice back, make it lighter, friendly. ‘Maybe we could have a chat about what needs doing here – you want to feed the chooks?’

She sat back, heels supporting her bottom, and regarded him with a blank stare. ‘Marrows won’t grow in this soil.’

So – a smart-arse. ‘Well, how do you know they won’t grow unless you try them out, mate?’

She blinked at him.

There was a silence and then Sal started to laugh.

8

The latest postcard had a cartoon pelican on it, wearing a straw hat and cat-eye sunglasses. It peered over the glasses, showing off its long lashes, and gave the kind of wink that made you wonder if it was American. Behind her was another beach, this one filled with small brown bodies and striped umbrellas. Leon turned it over.

Sometimes I don’t know what we do here. We have bought this little place, it was not expensive, this little wooden house in the forest. There’s a young man I see sometimes who delivers groceries for us so that we don’t have to go into town (your father cannot bear to see the people there). This man is a native – I never met one before – fancy that. We talk sometimes. I tell him about you, how grown up you are, your beautiful cakes.

Your poor father still wakes sometimes and sometimes there are things he does that he does not remember in the morning.

‘Love, Mum’ was crushed into the corner of the card and there were two kisses, barely visible. The postal stamp was Mulaburry. Leon bit his cheek. He held the camera at arm’s length, looked into the lens and clicked the shutter open. He wouldn’t have time to develop this one before he went north for training, but at least he knew it was there. He wondered if Don Shannon remembered in the morning.

On the day he left the shop, closed up and with a notice on the door that had taken him three goes to figure out – Closed for the Time Being – Mrs Shannon stroked his arm and squeezed it. She didn’t say much more than ‘You’ll be right, kiddo’, but it was strangely draining and he was glad to hand over the keys to her and hop on to his bus. He wondered if Amy was done with being finished yet and where she might be. He would have liked to have sent a message to her but the Blackwells had shut up and moved away not long after she left, and there was nowhere to write to.

At the training compound up in Taroom, a bum-numbing twenty-two hours on a silver bus, they were asked if anyone had any useful experience. Construction workers were needed to renovate the R and R camp in Saigon, cooks and bakers would be especially useful there too. He didn’t know why he didn’t put his name forward and his palms sweated.

The uniform was good, it was a sound thing to see everyone dressed the same. You had a space that you had to keep clean and neat, and a gun that you were taught how to take apart, how to