Freia Lockhart's Summer of Awful (29 page)

Gran's sitting on the couch when I take her tea in, staring into space. When she doesn't react to me holding the cup out to her I get worried.

“Everything okay?”

Gran lifts her head slowly, as if it's a huge effort to raise her head. “That was Maisy,” she says. “Archie had a stroke.”

“Is he all right?”

She shakes her head. “The funeral's the day after tomorrow.” She stands, snapping back into Gran mode. “I have to get home.”

She strides past me before I can think of anything comforting to say. After a few seconds, I pull myself together enough to follow her back to the kitchen, still holding the tea.

“You need a new computer!” Gran looks like she's about to throw something at the monitor, which is whirring slowly through its start-up messages.

Dad goes over to the desk. “Why don't you let me book the flight, Thelma, and you can get your things together.”

“Thank you, Terry. I want to go as soon as possible, please, tonight if you can wrangle it. Archie left his funeral instructions with me and if I'm not there to sort it out, his kids'll organise something he'd hate.”

Gran is cramming knitwear into her suitcase when I knock on the open door.

“Mum said to ask if you want dinner.”

“Thanks, Bloss, but your dad's booked me on a nine o'clock flight so I'd better keep going here. He's a good man, your dad.”

“I'm sure Archie was a good man, too.” I want to tell her how sorry I am that her boyfriend's gone and she's all alone again.

“He was,” she says matter of factly before going back to her packing. “Pass me my nightie from under the pillow, will you?”

When I don't hand it to her she looks up again and sees that I'm crying. She pulls me down to perch on the edge of the bed next to her and pats my knee. “Don't be sad, love. All good things come to an end, as they say. I'll miss Archie, but when you get to our age you know you're together for a good time, not a long time.”

Gran holds me and rocks me back and forth until I stop sobbing. It feels just the same as when Mum does it.

I want to go to the airport, but Gran says she doesn't believe in long goodbyes. She puts down Rocky's cage so that she can hug me again.

“Goodbye, Bloss. It's been lovely having this time with you. You'll look after your mum for me, won't you?”

I nod, scared that if I try to speak, I'll start crying again. I've already had to bite my lip and stare at the light while she and Mum were saying goodbye to each other. I don't think there's a clean tissue left in the house.

“The cab's here,” says Dad, quietly.

Mum puts her arm around my and Ziggy's shoulders and we watch Dad carry out Gran's luggage and Gran tell him off for not putting it in the boot correctly.

“I guess things are starting to get back to normal around here,” Mum says as we wave to the departing cab.

I go to the study to get my stuff and pick up Boris, who's sitting on the windowsill, staring sadly at where the cab was, as if he's already missing his partner in food-related crime.

The only traces of Gran left in my room are an empty box of birdseed and the half-finished scarf lying on my desk. The room is so tidy I almost don't want to unpack my things. Gran's done some reorganising in my absence, including arranging my wombat collection on top of my bookshelf. If I'd noticed it yesterday, I would've said she was interfering, but it's kind of nice having them there, looking down on me with their sweet wombatty faces.

I put the photo of me and Dan on my bedside table, right next to the one Steph gave me for Christmas. The last day of term feels like a lifetime ago.

Two weeks later Dan and I ride to Brightside again. This time I lead the way to the willow.

“I take it this is down to you, and not some community clean-up project,” says Dan, inspecting the bottle-free, butt-free ground around the trunk.

I sit cross-legged on the earth. “I couldn't think surrounded by all that garbage.”

“Did you come here a lot while I was away?” asks Dan.

“A few times. Do you mind?”

He shakes his head. “We can share it. Think of it as a replacement Christmas present.”

I'd taken Dan to inspect what was left of Our Tree when he got back yesterday. I told him about the ringbarking but didn't mention who was responsible. (Ziggy made me swear I wouldn't tell Dan it was him, a promise I agreed to keep in exchange for a month's worth of kitty litter duty. Along with the three months of Saturday morning park maintenance the ranger gave him and Biggie, it felt like punishment enough.)

Whatever was in those bandages mustn't have worked because early last week the ranger put up a sign saying that the tree was a hazard and chopped it down, leaving nothing but a few centimetres of wood sticking up from the ground. I watched the truck drive out, loaded with branches and thick sections of tree trunk, and felt sad for Jim and Elsie and Sara and Ty that the last remaining traces of their love were being taken away to be turned into sawdust.

At least Dan and I still had time to make our mark elsewhere.

“Speaking of Christmas presents,” I say, reaching into my backpack. “Yours is finally ready.”

Gran was pretty excited when I called her to ask how to cast off the stitches to finish Dan's scarf. I think she's taken it as a sign that I've inherited her knitting gene because she said she's going to send me some more yarn and some of her old patterns. She told me that Archie's funeral went well and that Rocky's happy to be home and she and Maisy are planning a round the world cruise next summer. There was something just the tiniest bit off-key about her voice that made me question whether Gran was feeling as chipper as she made out, but she said she'd had a few sherries after bingo the night before and she just needed another cup of tea to perk herself up.

Dan takes the misshapen package I hold out to him and peels back the sticky tape at each end carefully, as if it might be something precious. “Wow,” he says when he's unwrapped it.

“It's a scarf.”

“I can see that. It's great.” He wraps it around his neck and holds up one end to inspect it. Unfortunately, he's chosen the end I started at, where the rows are wonkiest.

“I made it,” I say, by way of explanation.

“Don't take this the wrong way, but I can tell.” Dan flicks the scarf round his neck and reaches for my hands. “And I love it, thank you.”

“We'd better get back before it gets dark or Mum'll send out a search party,” I say when I notice that the sky is tinged dark pink and orange. “And if she doesn't, Sooz will.”

Dan groans in protest but gets to his feet and holds out a hand to help me up.

“This is the problem with going on a date with both your parents and your friends,” he says as we climb the steep hill to the temple, “way too many chaperones.”

The grounds of the temple are teeming with people. I had no idea there were so many Buddhists living near us. Vicky says that for a lot of Buddhists lunar new year is just as much a social occasion as a religious one, which explains the dodgem cars and dunking booth we pass as we weave through the crowd. She invited all of us to go with her family to the celebrations at the temple before I knew when Dan would be back. When Mum heard about it she said it sounded like just what she needed, and Dad's been in such a good mood since an editor friend-of-a-friend asked to read his manuscript that he went along with it without complaint.

We find Siouxsie and Vicky near the stage, watching a troupe of traditionally dressed girls dance with fans. In front of them Billy and Tina copy the dancers, tripping over their stocky little feet as they try to emulate their graceful turns. Steph tries not to laugh while she takes photos of them.

“Your mum was looking for you two,” says Siouxsie. “We told her you were off getting some vegetarian food.”

“That would've made her happy.”

“It did. Unfortunately, it also sparked a ten-minute conversation about the health benefits of the Buddhist diet.”

I can't help laughing. “Sorry. I owe you an awkward extended chat with Pam next time I'm over.”

“Noted,” says Siouxsie. “You can listen to her go on about her journey of self-discovery as a newly single woman.”

“How long till the fireworks?” asks Dan.

Vicky checks her watch. “A bit over three hours. They don't start till midnight.”

“What do we do till then?”

“How about we take the twins on some of the rides?” suggests Dan. “I reckon Billy'd enjoy the dodgems.”

Billy stops dancing long enough to nod emphatically.

“Me too!” says Tina.

“Okay,” says Vicky. “But I warn you, this may end in disaster – they're both full of coconut pancakes and sugarcane juice.”

Two hours later the five of us are sitting on a couple of benches overlooking the temple's vegie garden, drinking super-sweet Vietnamese iced coffee while the twins take a power nap in their double stroller. I sit between Steph and Dan, who's still wearing his scarf even though it's hot enough for us all to be in shorts. Siouxsie and Vicky are arguing about whether Chinese astrology is any more credible than western astrology, which Vicky says is typical of an Ox.

Steph shakes her head at the two of them and turns to face me and Dan. “How's the brownie business going?”

“Great. Jay says if I can keep up the supply when school starts, he'll take two dozen a week, and his friend who owns a deli wants to order some, too.”

“Who knew Sooz was psychic?” she laughs, nodding towards my T-shirt. “You really will be the brownie queen of Parkville soon!”

“She already is,” says Dan, proudly.

I'd gone to Switch fifteen minutes before I was due to meet Dan there this afternoon, so I could give Jay the beagle-shaped brownie I made him from my latest recipe, a combination of triple choc fudge and rocky road. It didn't look anything like a beagle except that it had four legs and a tail, but he guessed what it was meant to be straightaway.