Loop (12 page)

It was only a couple of kays to McKinley's Point if you followed the water around. But the bush grows right up to the edge in some places, and the way was at least as tough as the obstacle course. I was just lucky it was a clear night, with a full moon, or I'd probably have killed myself tripping over a tree root or falling into some huge hole.

I don't know how long it took Nicole to get there, but it was pushing two o'clock by the time I puffed my way up the final hill and stood at the bottom of the lighthouse.

Apart from the flashing light, there wasn't much to see, especially not Nicole, and I began to wonder if my guess had been wrong and she was actually somewhere else.

McKinley's Point lighthouse is automatic, so I wasn't likely to wake anyone if I shouted.

So I shouted.

‘Nicky!' I yelled. ‘It's me, Ben.'

It worked.

‘Ben!' she shouted. ‘Here. Around the other side.'

She was in trouble. I could hear it in her voice.

I ran around the tower and saw her. And my heart jumped.

She was halfway up the ladder that stretched all the way to the railed platform at the top of the lighthouse, but she wasn't going any further. Somehow she'd slipped and caught her foot between the ladder and the wall. She was hanging upside-down, with her long hair blowing in the wind and the shoulder bag dangling and swinging under her.

I didn't know how long she'd been hanging like that, or how long she could stay that way, and realising that she could fall at any second sent another shock wave through my chest.

Did I mention I'm not much good with heights?

I don't think I did.

I'm not much good with heights.

But suddenly, it didn't seem to matter. I started up the ladder, telling myself not to look down, and I focused my eyes on Nicole. I pulled myself up, one hand, one foot, one hand, one foot, closer and closer. Until I reached her.

It was tricky, but by getting my shoulder under her, and pushing as I climbed, I managed to get her up to where she could grab hold of the ladder and pull herself upright. Her leg was sore, naturally, but she was wearing her boots, so her ankle wasn't broken.

Which was lucky, because we still had to climb down.

Five minutes later we were sitting on a rock at the base of the tower, looking up at where we'd just been.

I was busy trying to be angry with her. And failing.

It's always like that. No matter what she does, I just can't get angry with her. Even when she's almost killed herself.

‘What were you trying to do?' I asked.

But she didn't answer. She just used her good foot to push the bag across to where I was sitting.

As soon as I saw what was inside, I knew.

But it was pointless, now. There was no way, with her leg, that she could climb to the top of the lighthouse.

And the only other person there was her wimp of a brother.

Who was world-famous for not taking chances.

The thing about being scared of heights is that, once you face it, it's like a rush.

‘
I'll
do it!' I said, and ran towards the tower before I could think too much about what I was doing.

I guess it was time for
me
to prove something for a change.

Fifteen minutes later the deed was done and I was back on the ground.

‘Ready?' I asked.

Nicole just nodded. And looked at me in a way she'd never looked at me before.

It was almost five before we made it back to the camp. With Nicole's leg, and the fact that the moon had gone down, the progress was slow, but we were in bed in time for the teachers to get us up.

Just.

Day Four was an early start because Day Four was the hike up to Fowler's Lookout.

You could see the beginnings of large bruises on Nicole's leg. She told the teachers she'd fallen in the night, going to the toilet.

Mr Walker said she was excused from the hike if her leg was too sore, but there was no way Nic was going to miss this one.

Even if she had to hike all the way on crutches.

It was a tough walk, but by midday we were at the lookout, which is a platform looking out over the bay, with coin-operated telescopes that give you a good view of the ships out on the horizon.

Or the lighthouse closer in.

Emma was the first to drop in a coin, and as she swung the telescope around she screamed out and doubled over laughing. Which made everyone want to look.

Nicole and I didn't need to crowd around to get a peek. We knew exactly what was there, but you don't want to stand back and be different, do you?

Without the telescope, it just looked like a coloured smear at the top of the lighthouse tower, but through the telescope you could see it clearly.

An expensive, peach-coloured sheet tied to the railing of the lighthouse platform.

But it wasn't the sheet being up there that made Suzannah burst into tears and run away down the path, leaving everyone to turn and stare at Justin, who didn't know where to look.

It wasn't the sheet. It was what was painted on it, in huge letters, in a sort of olive-green, ‘environmental' kind of colour.

SUZANNAH YOUNG
LOVES
JUSTIN KINGSTON
TRULY, MADLY, DEEPLY

Which was good enough even without the picture. But the picture sealed it.

Two faces kissing, like on the cover of a romantic novel.

I always knew my sister was talented. But it's hard to put in so much detail with an ordinary paintbrush.

I told her so. And I said I was proud of her.

She just smiled, and said that next time we'd have to plan a little more carefully.

We?

I was going to say something, but that was the moment Justin turned and ran off down the path, and I was too busy cheering with the others to say anything.

‘Go get her, Tiger!' Pete Maclean shouted after him.

And
everybody
laughed.

UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES …

The heart has reasons which the
reason cannot understand.

Blaise Pascal

Diary

Monday 24 May

miss tomson she's the Lady that teeches me said i shoud rite this dairy, she sais its (god) gud practis for me to rite wat hapens to me evry dai, i think she Liks me, she alwais smiLs and sais gud work georgie (thats my name georgie!) i no i rite messy but she doesn't mind, i dont thik meny pepl Lik me Lik miss tomson dos … or Lik gemma dos gemma Lovs me she teLs me so evry day! Shes' speshiL
–
the best sister in the worLd! (she taut me to rite that! she taut me to use the sine to, you no this sine(!) its the sine you draw when you reeLy meen wat you sai in the words you rite down, i use it a reeL Lot! ther i used it agen! ritings fun sumtimes) gemma Lovs riting to – evn mor than me.,. she rites storeys about Lov and stufin this big (eh) exise book and pomes to, an aLL the gud Lookin boys in her storeys are caLed sergio (hes the othe boy she Lovs as weLL as me! it use to be chris but he dumpt her and boy was she pised off! thats' wat she to Ld andrea on thefone
–
mum sais i shudnt' sai pised off so i probly shudnt' rite it ether but its wat gemma sed and she reeLy ment it thats why i used the sine!)

i dont Lik sergio as mush as (wat) gemma dos, he Lafs at me Lik the boys on the buss do wen gemmas not Lookjn but she Lovs him so i try to be nise and not get mad Lik i do with the boys on the buss and not hit him wen he maks faces at me wen gemmas in the (ci) kichen cooken cofey for them and mums in the Londry washing my sheets' sumtimes she Lets me hLep i Lerned how to turn on the mashin., but i aLways put in to mush powde and its mor troubL than its worth mum sais,. but shes not reeLy mad with me she dosnt' get mad mush,, just tired she sais speshiLy sinse dad left …

Gemma's story

And I got to look after Georgie.

For a while, I really hated him – Dad, I mean, not Georgie. You could never hate Georgie. He was so damned
trusting.
And he wouldn't hurt a fly. Not intentionally. But he
is
a handful, and with Mum working all the time and Dad off massaging his mid-life crisis with some airhead bimbo, he was
my
handful. Hell, with Year Eleven hotting up, and Sergio getting heavy and serious – even at school – I had a lot on my mind. And Georgie – simple, helpless, trusting Georgie – didn't make it any easier to sort out.

So I hated my dad for dumping us. For turning me into a surrogate mother. For
everything.

Mum never said a word about him. I kept waiting for the dam to burst, for all her hurt and anger to overflow. Something …

But no. It was ‘business as usual': one day he was there, the next he was gone. The world had changed around her, but she just went on, working her shifts at the hospital, cooking and cleaning when she could (and issuing me with lists if she couldn't!), going to bed, waking up and doing it all over again.

But she never talked about him. Not one angry word.

I made up for her silence. She might have been happy doing the Mother Teresa imitation but I was pissed off. (I've really got to stop using that word. Georgie has a habit of picking up things like that. I saw it in his ‘dairy' again yesterday and that's one thing Mum
does
get mad about.)

‘You just don't understand,' she said, when I pushed her. As if
that
was some kind of explanation!

Of
course
I didn't understand.

I didn't understand how my father could walk out after twenty-five years of marriage and put on a different life as if it was a new suit. I didn't understand why it wasn't like it always is on TV – huge angry arguments about money or other women. Something that might have given me some warning.

And I didn't understand how she could talk to him on the phone without breaking down or blowing up, or how she could let him visit when he was down from Brisbane without taking a kitchen knife to him.

On the occasions he did visit, if I couldn't arrange to be out at Andrea's or something, I applied the Big Freeze. If Mum wasn't going to show him what a jerk he'd been, someone in the family had to.

To Georgie, it was like he'd never been away. But that was Georgie all over.

I mentioned it to Sergio one evening when we were ‘babysitting', but he just looked across at Georgie for a moment, then said, ‘Maybe your dad had his reasons.' And he put his arm around me and pulled me towards him.

Trust
him
to stick up for the man!

Actually, looking back, I don't suppose Susan was such an air-head bimbo after all. She was just someone Dad had known for a really long time, and I guess she was quite nice – for a home-wrecker. But I still think he had a lot of nerve bringing her along on one of his visits.

I turned up the power on the Big Freeze that time. She must have thought she was on a day trip to Antarctica. But nobody seemed to be fazed at all. Dad smiled, Mum smiled, Susan smiled. Though I did notice her eyes move nervously away from mine when I stared straight at her while she was drinking her cup of coffee.

It was all so
civilised!

Deborah's story

Poor Gemma. I suppose we should have involved her more in the discussions before the separation. I suppose we should have done a lot of things we didn't think of at the time. But we didn't.

I guess it would have meant bringing up so many things that we had kept to ourselves for so long. Old habits are hard to break. Still, we were in the process of breaking a few old habits anyway, and it would have been much fairer on the kid if we'd been more open.

Hindsight is always twenty-twenty they reckon.

I could see it was eating away at Joe. Every time he came down, Gemma would either disappear for the day or make him feel so unwelcome.

If it wasn't for Georgie, I think it would have been too much for him. But he had to keep up the act for the boy.

He knew how Gemma was feeling and he tried to talk it out with her, but she wouldn't have a bar of it. He was the traitor, the deserter. What was it she called him? The ‘mid-life moron'.

She watched one of those pop-psychology programs on TV once, so of course she knew all about what happens to men when they reach the age of forty. They have a ‘mid-life crisis' and go off chasing younger women. (I suppose at thirty-nine Susan did qualify as a ‘younger woman', but I was only forty-two myself, and so was Joe.)

But you couldn't tell her. Not without going into the whole story. I think Joe might have been willing to, but I wasn't ready. Even if I'd wanted to, I couldn't have found the words. I guess you could call it pride – or stupidity. There really isn't much difference between them.

Gemma's story

Stupidity, I'd call it.

At least, now I would. At the time, I don't suppose I thought about it enough to call it anything. Sergio was giving me the hard word, and I was trying to be cool while I decided whether I wanted to go through with it or not. But I knew it was all or nothing. Give in or give up.

After the experience with Chris, I knew the score, and I wasn't sure I could go through the whole refusal thing again. Not with everything else that was going on in my life. What was the big deal, anyway? Everyone else had already done it. It wasn't like it showed or anything. Even Corina Gemmell, the vestal virgin school captain, was doing a lot more than French kissing with Simon Francis. Everyone knew that – well, everyone who wasn't a teacher or Corina Gemmell's parents, that is.

And I
did
love him. So what was the big problem?

The big problem was that I wasn't sure
I
wanted to do it. And the heavier he got, the less sure I was. Maybe there was something registering deep in my subconscious that I didn't want to recognise. About Sergio, or about myself. Something I'd been willing to recognise with Chris when I finally told him to take a hike (which he did, and went away looking for someone else to exercise his hormones on).

So when it finally happened, it was as much of a surprise to me as it must have been to Sergio, who looked like he couldn't believe his luck – until it was over, which didn't take long.

I don't know if I suddenly decided that the time was right or if I simply got tired of resisting, but all of a sudden I didn't say no, and by the time my defences began to activate it was too late.

And it was awful: fumbling and awkward and almost mechanical.

I remember thinking about those books Andrea used to bring to school in Year Eight, the ones we'd devour at lunchtime in the sun behind the admin, block. Well, it was nothing like the way they described it. Nothing at all.

Sergio was smiling. I looked up at him and he was grinning like an idiot, and I realised that here I was doing it with a total stranger. I'd spent so long convincing myself that I was in love with him that I hadn't noticed that I didn't even
know
him – let alone even particularly
like
him.

Then it was over. And before I knew it I was back home, and Georgie was showing me the latest offering in his diary, while Mum cooked chicken casserole and complained about the new roster at the hospital.

Nothing had changed at all. Except me.

It was a strange feeling. I wasn't devastated. I wasn't ashamed. I just felt … empty.

I knew it was finished between Sergio and me. Oh, we'd go on for a while trying to hang on to what we'd never really had in the first place, but it was over. It would never happen again, and I knew that eventually he'd get sick of waiting and drift away.

And I didn't care. Not just at that moment.

Diary

Saturday 14 August

Gemma hitt me. i hidd in the cubbrd in her (ru) room an sed boo to her Lik i do wen im pLaing and she stratid cring, then she smaked me with her hand and toL me to get out!

i cride to, gemma never hitt me befor and it hert i toL mum and she toL gemma why you hitt georgie and gemma rund out of the hows cring im not mad with gemma evn if she did hitt me but mum is verry mad mis tomson sais my ritings geting reeL (gu) good we Lernd oo yesterday it sais oo Lik in boo and room its hard but mis tomson (sai) sais im geting the hnag of it and im a reeLy good studet, she Liks me wen i tri hadr i hop gemma coms home soon (thats anothe oo werdl)

Deborah's story

Wendy, the triage nurse, looked exhausted, and even in my state of near panic I couldn't help feeling for her. Those damned penny-pinching bureaucrats had got at the rosters, and I was willing to bet she'd just landed a double shift. It's amazing how work issues get inside your head even in moments of crisis.

It's funny I work at the place and I know it like the back of my hand, but Casualty looks totally different from the other side of the admissions desk.

Wendy looked up from the clipboard and smiled a tired smile.

‘Ward Three. She's a lucky kid. That car was really travelling. A cracked leg and a couple of ribs. She'll be bruised, but she'll be fine. They're doing an internal work-up, just to make sure, but it's only a precaution … Debbie, are you all right?'

I realised by the way she said it that I must have looked awful. When the police called, I was already frantic. Then dumping Georgie off with the Rabys next door and dashing to Casualty … I guess I did look a little done-in.

But not as bad as Gemma.

Her eye was already beginning to swell and there was a graze down the length of her right arm. Her leg was splinted – they hadn't got to the plastering stage yet – and they had her dosed up to cope with the pain.

As I entered the room, she turned her head slowly smiled half-heartedly for a moment, then her face crumbled and she began to cry. No noise, just a silent sobbing and the tears rolling down her cheeks.

‘Mum, I'm sorry … I wanted to tell you, but I couldn't … I didn't know how.' Then she rubbed her nose, wiped her face with her hand and fell asleep.

‘She'll sleep for a while.' I turned at the sound of a familiar voice.

‘Rashid.' He smiled and fiddled with his stethoscope that was caught up on his security tag: ‘Dr Rashid Bhandara'. The photo looked nothing like him.

‘Hello, Debbie.' I tried to read the look in his eyes. Had they found a problem? Was everything alright?

‘Is she really okay?' I knew I must sound the same as every other worried parent, asking the question they weren't sure they wanted answered.

Rashid slid a chair over for me to sit on. I took his lead. When he spoke, there was a strange hesitancy in his voice.

‘She'll be fine.' Then that pause, there was something more. I could read it in his eyes. ‘And …'

‘And?'

‘And so will the baby.'

Suddenly there was the feeling I remembered from all those years before that I thought I'd forgotten.

‘The baby?'

Rashid was speaking again. ‘I didn't think you knew. You would have told us. We found out when we were doing the work-up. She's about ten weeks or so.' He paused again. ‘Everything looks quite healthy. Pretty lucky under the circumstances.'

Pretty lucky! I suppose it depended on your definition.

Gemma's story

Was I sure it was
his?

Can you believe the guy? I didn't even answer him. I just gave him ‘the look', then waited to hear what he was going to say next.

He blustered around, looking like Georgie does when you catch him out in a lie.