Three Summers

also by Judith Clarke

Angels Passing By
Night Train
The Lost Day
The Heroic Life of Al Capsella
Al Capsella and the Watchdogs
Al Capsella on Holidays
Friend of My Heart
The Boy on the Lake
Panic Stations
The Ruin of Kevin O'Reilly
Luna Park at Night
Big Night Out
Wolf on the Fold
Starry Nights
Kalpana's Dream
One Whole and Perfect Day
The Winds of Heaven

JUDITH CLARKE
was born in Sydney and educated at the University of New South Wales and the Australian National University in Canberra. She has worked as a teacher and librarian, and in adult education in Victoria and New South Wales.

Judith's novels include the multi-award-winning
Wolf
on the Fold
, as well as
Friend of my Heart
,
Night Train
, and the very popular and funny
Al Capsella
series.
Kalpana's
Dream
was an Honor Book in the 2005 Boston Globe-Horn Book Awards;
One Whole and Perfect Day
was a winner in the 2007 Queensland Premier's Literary Awards, shortlisted in the 2007 CBCA Book of the Year Awards and the NSW Premier's Literary Awards, and Honor Book in the American Library Association, Michael L. Printz Awards for Excellence in Young Adult Literature 2008.
The Winds of Heaven
was shortlisted for the 2010 Prime Minister's Literary Awards, Young Adult Fiction, and the 2010 CBCA Book of the Year Awards.

Judith's books have been published in the USA and Europe to high acclaim.

First published in 2012

Copyright © Judith Clarke 2012

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The
Australian Copyright Act 1968
(the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or ten per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) under the Act.

Allen & Unwin
83 Alexander Street
Crows Nest NSW 2065
Australia
Phone: (61 2) 8425 0100
Fax: (61 2) 9906 2218
Email: [email protected]
Web:
www.allenandunwin.com

A Cataloguing-in-Publication entry is available from the
National Library of Australia
www.trove.nla.gov.au

ISBN
978 1 74237 827 5

Cover and text design by Ruth Grüner
Cover photos by Rebecca Parker / Trevillion Images and iStockphoto
Set in 10.5 pt Sabon by Ruth Grüner
Printed and bound in Australia by Griffin Press

1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

To dear Frances Floyd

Contents

PART ONE: SECRET PLACES

ONE

TWO

THREE

FOUR

FIVE

SIX

SEVEN

EIGHT

NINE

TEN

ELEVEN

TWELVE

THIRTEEN

FOURTEEN

FIFTEEN

PART TWO: HAPPINESS

ONE

TWO

PART THREE: THE REAL TRUE THING

ONE

TWO

THREE

FOUR

FIVE

SIX

SEVEN

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

P
ART
O
NE

Secret Places

one

Ruth woke from a dream of Tam Finn, so vivid that for a moment its landscape – the narrow stretch of coarse sand beside the creek, the ripple of brown water over the pebbles, the broad shiny leaves of the bushes on the far bank – seemed more real than the familiar furniture of her room. She sat up, throwing the covers back, breathing hard, while the brown water and the shiny bushes flickered and faded, sucked into a mist which thinned and then vanished, leaving nothing behind except a suspicion that ordinary things were not as solid as they appeared.

She leaned back against the pillows and thought about Tam Finn. Why had she dreamed about him? She hardly knew him; he was the boy from
Fortuna
, the big property five miles down the Old Western Highway where her nan had worked when she was a girl. He'd been in Ruth's class the year before last, but only for a little while. She saw him in town occasionally, and heard the gossip that went round, that was all. And yet in the dream he'd been sitting close beside her on the sand, leaning into her; even awake she could still feel the weight of his body pressed against her side, his arm tight around her, his strong fingers digging into the flesh above her elbow. Such closeness should have felt strange yet instead it seemed oddly familiar. It was like those times when she saw him in town; how the mere glimpse of his pale face beneath the tumble of blue-black curls would bring such a deep shiver of recognition that for a moment she'd feel she could walk right up to him and say, ‘Here I am,' and Tam Finn would smile at her as if they were old friends.

She sighed and closed her eyes, drifting back into the dream, feeling the weight of his body again, the fingers digging into her arm, a flutter of warm breath against her cheek. A girl's voice said clearly, ‘But what if you don't know who you are?' and Ruth struggled awake again, suddenly afraid. She knew the voice; it belonged to Helen Hogan. Not Helen as she was now, seventeen, grown up, but Helen when they were little kids in the playground, telling stories to each other in the shade of the peppercorn trees.

You could walk out of your house in your sleep, Helen had told them, right into the street where you could meet anyone. It might be a perfect stranger, someone you'd never seen before, or it could be a person you knew and really hated, but none of this would matter, you'd still – here Helen had lowered her voice and whispered, ‘do it with him.' When she'd said this, the listening girls had looked at each other and giggled. Ellie Lester had crossed her eyes. They'd been in grade four, nine years old, but they'd known all sorts of things.

It was strange, thought Ruth, how she could remember that whole long-ago conversation: all the words and even the little gasps and silences, how Fee had been wearing a yellow sundress and Helen's plaits had been tied with two big bows of red tartan ribbon. She could even remember the weather: hot, really hot, full summer, the shade of the peppercorn trees no more than a faint grey dappling on the dry ground.

‘Yes!' Helen had gone on. ‘You can do it with
anyone
in your sleep, and not even know! And if another person comes along and wakes you while you're doing it, well—' here Helen had drawn in a long breath and finished dramatically, ‘well, then you die!'

Kathy Ryan had gasped, ‘Oh!' and put her hand across her mouth.

‘It's true!' Helen had insisted, tossing her long heavy plaits back over her shoulders and staring at the other girls defiantly. The plaits were blue-black and shiny, glossy as a crow's wing.

None of them had believed the story, at least not in the daytime.

‘That's bullshit!' Fee Lachlan had protested. ‘It's bullshit, Helen!'

‘Yeah?'

‘Yeah. My mum says that when you sleepwalk, you can't do anything you wouldn't do if you were awake. She says you can't do anything that isn't really
you.

' That was when Helen said the thing that had somehow found its way into Ruth's dream. ‘
But what if you don't know
who you really are?
' The words had come out very clear and separate, like footsteps down an empty hall, and there'd been a funny little silence beneath the peppercorn trees. It was as if those words had been important in a way they couldn't quite understand. Important, and scary too.