Millie and the Night Heron (12 page)

‘You look gorgeous,' Sheri said to Mum. ‘You look fantastic. Life here must suit you. I'm thinking of moving. I looked the TAFE up on the Net. They actually teach Textile Design. I'm a textile artist,' she explained to Tom, who was
looking confused, ‘and I could just hang around and do some markets while I waited for an opening. No, Kate, don't look alarmed. I won't be moving in. Just hanging around. My heart's broken, that shameless rotter, so there's nothing left for us back in Graystone. We might as well move to where our real family is – that's what we thought, wasn't it, Mitchell?'

‘I didn't ever want to leave you guys,' Mitchell whispered to me. ‘I didn't like the way Brendan smiled with all his teeth but his eyes never crinkled up, you know, the way they should.'

‘I'll never look at another man,' Sheri declared.

‘Go on, Sheri, just because Brendan Trotter was...'

‘A complete arsehole. Sorry kids, but that's the truth. I'm focusing on my career now. I'm going to expand my range. Do you like the van? I got it cheap. Mitchell helped paint it. I'm going to take up screen printing. It's amazing what you can do with screen-printed fabric. Kate, you and Millie can be my walking advertisements. I might even do some men's shirts, very groovy subversive ones, screen-printed. Tom, how would you feel about wearing ‘So funky's' new line of shirts around town?'

‘I'd be honoured,' Tom said, which was exactly the right thing to say and Mum, Sheri and I all
beamed at him.

‘He's a keeper,' Sheri said, ‘unlike Brendan, who was a loser. And, Mitchell, I don't mean that in the way you kids at school use the word. I mean he was someone I needed to lose. I think this deserves champagne. Now Kate, I know you've just got back from Sydney or wherever you were, so what I suggest is that we all toast to Life and Recovery from Twelve Step Programs and then Mitchell and I will stay here tonight with Millie and you and Tom can go off and be romantic at his place.'

‘Well,' Mum said, looking helpless, ‘I don't know.'

‘It's a great idea,' Tom said and got a further smile from Sheri.

‘I think this could be our kind of town,' she said. ‘Not too far from Mitchell's dad, a fresh start for us, but most importantly back with Kate and Millie, our family—oh, and Tom, too, of course.'

‘A toast to the families you make,' Mum said. ‘And welcome home, Sheri.'

After Mum and Tom left, Mitchell and I made up a bed for him in the study.

‘You're lucky,' Mitchell said, putting a pillowcase on the pillow, ‘Tom's eyes really crinkle. Hey, do you know what Mum did to Pig's Trotter? She went into his office, at home, you know, where
he kept all his stuff – client reports and accounts and everything – and she pulled everything out and put it back all wrong.'

‘I rearranged things for him,' Sheri said, appearing at the door. ‘It was a mean and horrible thing to do but he deserved it. I was particularly messy with his accounts. It will take him days to sort it all out and it's GST time looming, which he hated anyway. I'm not normally into revenge, but honestly, Millie, he was such a lying user. I had to do something, otherwise my rage would have spilled over and on to the innocent.'

‘You just broke into his office?'

‘It wasn't locked so I didn't break in.'

‘Couldn't he call in the police?'

‘What, and say that the woman he was living with and cheating on had rearranged all his personal files so he couldn't find anything? He'd look too big a fool.'

‘She went around to the other woman's house, too,' Mitchell said. ‘She was awesome.'

‘She had to know,' Sheri said calmly. ‘I just told her exactly what Brendan had been saying and promising to me. Turned out he'd been saying the same things to her. She didn't take it too well, either.'

‘I wish I had seen you do it.' I said.

‘Oh no, baby.' Sheri hugged me. She smelled of
roses and vanilla. She always did. It was a completely different scent to the one Mum wore but just as swoony. ‘I don't think you want to see that kind of thing. Better that you see people loving and respectful of each other, the way your mum and Tom are together. That's what you should be seeing, not the wild acts of wronged women.'

‘That's such a cool thing to say, Sheri – it's like poetry. The wild acts of wronged women. Do you mind if I write that down in my journal?'

My brand new journal was very thick and had a great cover, red with bright polka spots all over it. Inside it Mum had drawn a funny picture of me and underneath it she had written:

To Millie, hoping that the entries in this book are filled with joy and delight. Please note that I bought an unlined book, because I thought you might like to stick some photos in, too, now that you are a photographer.
lots of love, Mum.

I hadn't thought of photographs, not in my journal. But I could see what she meant. It was a brand new book, waiting just for me.

I both love and hate that moment when you begin to write in a new journal. This book felt almost too beautiful to write in. I found my best
pen. It was an actual fountain pen Mum had used when she was around my age. It even had her name engraved along the side, in silver.

I wanted to do something really special in my new journal, something that would make the person who read it in the future say to themselves, ‘What a girl that Millie must have been'.

So on the first page I wrote a heading: ‘Things I've Learnt This Year', and then I sucked the end of the pen for a little while thinking, before I started writing my most important list to date: