Transformation of Minna Hargreaves, The (10 page)

Dinner was late. I stared up at camera number one. ‘Did you know roasts take hours and hours to cook? Welcome to the crash course in practical skills. Gran Hargreaves — you will be so proud of me.’

It was lucky she wasn’t there to eat it because it was a different variation of disastrous from the sumptuous sausage meal. The meat was red in the middle and I don’t care what Dad says about meat being all the more tasty when it’s rare, I like it when it doesn’t bleed all over the plate. And the spuds were rare in the middle too. He didn’t say they were nice.

Day Three bit the dust. I did a video diary so blah it’s a wonder the camera didn’t die of boredom. Then I wrote to the girls. I poured my heart out, and my eyes too but it
didn’t matter because this was another letter I wasn’t going to send. Likewise the one I wrote to Seb.
Dear Seb, you are the star that keeps me going. Only the thought of you loving me keeps me sane in this madness. I will be faithful always. I wish I’d given you a ring too. Don’t forget me.

Tomorrow I’d do the full hair and make-up routine before I did the video diary. Maybe I should make more of an effort anyway. Look bright and cheerful as well as sounding it. I thought back over the past few days and cringed because there were a few instances where I had not sounded bright and cheerful — actually quite a few. Bloody Cara. I drifted off to sleep not with Seb’s image in my head, but with a picture of Cara falling off the cliff and turning the shattering waves to red. It was very satisfying. I slept well.

In the morning I jumped out of bed. Maybe today we’d go home. Did I even want to go home? Of course I did. I turned on the shower so the bird-shit water could wash me clean, yeah right. Who wouldn’t want to go home away from this?

But Dad — when we got home, he’d vanish. I’d never see him again except on Sunday afternoons so foul that not even he would be stupid enough to head for the hills.

I dressed and hit the kitchen, half expecting Mum to be up and dressed and clacking around cooking. She’d have the dreamy look on her face that meant her mind was deep in some arty project. She’d smile at me and say
Morning Minna sweet girl
, and then she’d put muesli in the toaster and pour milk over a slice of toast. I’d tip the muesli out of the toaster, watch her drag her mind
into the real world and then I’d ask her what she was working on.

She wasn’t in this kitchen and neither was Dad. I tiptoed up to the bedroom. I don’t know what I was expecting — some miracle reconciliation? Dad would be lying on his side of the bed smiling and Mum … Forget it. Mum was there, by herself and as sick as ever.

I stood for a second or two watching her. I tried to remember when we’d last done a morning chat. Prepregnancy? I didn’t want to think about it. I crept back to the kitchen and ate muesli that hadn’t been put in the toaster.

When Dad did show, I took reconciliation off the radar. It wasn’t going to happen. A chill settled in my chest. ‘Dad …’

He glanced in my direction but his mind was definitely somewhere else. Not the best time to talk, but there was never going to be a best time for this, so what the heck. ‘Dad, what’s going to happen? When we get home? Will we still see you?’

He kept on piling cereal into his plate. ‘Of course you will. Don’t be dense, Min.’

‘But Dad, we hardly see you now, and …’

He spared me a glance, a mighty irritated one. ‘Don’t fuss, Min. We’ll sort it out. Now leave it.’

I left it but I wasn’t convinced and I wasn’t happy even though I was practically an adult and wouldn’t need him because I had Seb and my friends. Damn it, he was my father. He was supposed to stick around — according to all I’d ever heard, sticking around was part of the job description.

He stuck around long enough to do the morning listening watch.

And so began another day.

Weather: Cloudy but dry with a slight wind.

Tempers: Ranging from foul to very foul to breezy to not known.

Occupations: Well, who would know what Dad was going to do with the day but, apparently, Noah was going to do it with him. Dad must’ve decided Noah was his Big Project for the duration. Glad it wasn’t me. Especially as it looked like the project was going to involve hard physical work judging by the gear Dad put together — slashers, protective gloves, spades and boots of the work variety. Noah jibbed and bucked, but Dad held the reins tight and steady (see how I extended that metaphor, Mr English Teacher who put on my last piece of writing that I’d better leave metaphors to those who could use them without mixing them) and the two of them left the house, Dad lugging the gear while Noah exercised his muscles by carrying half the food from the pantry.

So. They weren’t coming back for lunch. Just me, Mum and the chooks then. Great.

Dad came running back. ‘Nearly forgot! Have to check the meat.’

He checked. (Coming along nicely.) They went.

Well, hello Min, the day’s all yours.

What do you do with a day? Damned if I was going to hit the correspondence work and anyway, I’d be back at school before I missed too much.

I fed the chooks.

I made Mum a cup of tea. She asked if I’d boil another spud and mash it for her. She ate two teaspoonfuls.

I talked to the chooks and collected five more eggs. I held them in my hands and they were warm and perfect — just like a family was supposed to be. I walked to the fence where the chooks couldn’t see me, and I hurled each of those perfect eggs at the wall of the garden shed. Splat. Splat. Splat. Splat. Splat.

Satisfying, but it didn’t help.

I walked past the meat strips dangling on the line with their paper covers over them. By the look of it, the covers hadn’t been one hundred per cent successful.

I looked at the vege garden behind the shed — things looked droopy. Aha! Water! I gave them water.

I played the guitar.

It was only 10am.

I wandered through the house. What with one thing and another, I hadn’t even been in all the rooms yet. I filmed my explorations.

‘Mum’s room. Boxes still packed. That’ll be useful when we do get to go home.’ Noah’s room was next, but I turned the camera off while I searched it. Somewhere, Noah had to have more drugs, but if he did I ended up being ninety-nine-point-nine per cent sure they weren’t in his bedroom.

The spare room was the final one on the tour, especially saved for last because I hadn’t been in it yet and who knew what treasures it might hold? ‘Hmm,’ I said to Lizzie, Jax and Addy via the camera, ‘not all that exciting. But behold — the father has made it his own.’

He’d made up a bed by chucking the mattress that
should have been on the bed on to the floor. I did a shot of the sagging old wire on the bed. ‘Can’t say I blame him. This would not be the last word in comfort.’

The rest of the room could not be said to contain treasure although there was a bookshelf. ‘Gardening books, sheep books, bird books, chook books, fish books, cookbook.’ I pulled it out. ‘Behold! The one and only cookbook on this island and what is it?’ I showed the cover to the camera. ‘The good old
Edmonds
, that’s what. And even I, Minna Hargreaves, non-domestic goddess, have heard of the
Edmonds
.’ I stuck my face in front of the lens. ‘I shall take it with me. It could be useful.’

There was a cupboard with a bundle of greyish sheets and a couple of moth-eaten blankets, four empty boxes and a lot of dust. And that was it. End of tour.

10.30.

Doesn’t time fly when you’re having fun?

I wondered if Dad and Noah were talking about The Situation.

Noah: Bit of a surprise, eh, Dad.

Dad: You could say that, son.

Noah: Think you’ll stay together, Dad?

Dad: Don’t think so, son.

Noah: I’ll live with you, Dad.

Dad: Don’t think so, son.

Noah: Sweet. Whatever.

Dad: Glad you see it my way, son.

I shut the door on Dad’s room. I’d be astonished to death if either of them even mentioned The Situation. I went back to the kitchen. ‘Mum? You want anything? I’m going out for a walk.’

‘Just a cup of tea. Thanks, Min.’

This was weird and horrible, her being all sick and polite. I bet if the guy she’d done it with could see her now he wouldn’t be so quick to … A whole dictionary of nasty words for copulation zinged through my brain, but I couldn’t bring myself to apply them to my own mother. Who was he? Why had she done it? The same old questions.

It would be good to be outside for a while, away from her, and I wasn’t going to try to find Dad and Noah either.

I got my tramping boots out of their box and grabbed the camera. At the door of my room I stopped. I had time to show Seb (and the world) that I hadn’t gone feral, isolated as I was. I turned back into my room, applied make-up and styled my hair. Then, not to waste the effort, I did a video diary explaining that I was about to take my viewers on an Island Tour with a
commentary
.

As it happened, the first examples of island wildlife I saw were not exotic or even unusual.

‘Behold! Wildlife!’ I told Lizzie, Jax and Addy via the camera. ‘Are sheep wildlife?’ They didn’t hang about to chat so I decided they were. ‘I reckon there must be about thirty of them.’ I zoomed the camera in on a woolly back. ‘D’you reckon Dad knows about them?’ I watched them scuttle away. ‘Run, sheep! Dad might turn you into roasts if you’re not careful.’

I did a circuit of the island, giving an intelligent, quirky running commentary as I went. The camera and I saw steep cliffs and I hoped my shots would make the viewers
so dizzy they’d spew because I went to some trouble to snake my way to the very edge in three different places. I held the camera over space so it caught the waves crashing on to the vicious rocks at the bottom. ‘I sure hope helicopters don’t go out of fashion. I don’t fancy our chances of shimmying down there and swimming for it.’

I did a chatty walk down the old access path. ‘This is steep. A gradient of one in two. Ms Wiley — she’s my Maths teacher,’ I told the camera in a confidential tone, ‘doesn’t believe in multitasking —
Minna, you cannot learn if you never stop talking
is what she says. But I’ve just proved that you can. Gradient — one in two. Which equals a driveway you wouldn’t believe. Personally, I’m pretty rapt with the invention of the helicopter.’ I lay face down on the path at the edge of the slip and filmed the view down to the sea. ‘It’s a shame we can’t get down to the sea though. Looks like a reasonable bit of beach down there.’ It was small — about as long as a netball court — but big enough to lounge on in the summer.

Summer felt like a long time away. Then I cheered up — Mum would be better long before summer. I climbed back up the path.

Next, I did a cross-section. I parked the camera on a fence post and crouched in front of it. ‘Did you hear that, Mr Sykes?’ He was my Social Studies teacher and quite into sarcasm. ‘Something did soak into my brain. You stick with me now and I’ll take you on a
transverse
cross-section of Isolation Island.’

That particular cross-section took me through a patch of scrubby trees all bent and twisted by the wind.
‘Not the only things bent and twisted on this island right at this moment,’ I said, wondering if Dad’s frame of mind was smoothing out any.

My foot hit a hole. ‘Ouch! My goodness, how lucky is it that I’m sensibly wearing my strong and durable tramping boots? Dad would not be thrilled if I joined Mum in the lying down flat and doing nothing game.’

There were holes all over the place under the trees. The ground was bare and stank of bird shit. Not an attractive place. I wondered who lived here but a couple of trees and a pack of holes further along I solved the mystery. One of the blue birds lay dead and cold in the dirt at the base of a tree. I crouched down and touched its feathers. ‘Poor little blue bird. You haven’t got the most brilliant radar, have you? You flew smack-bang into this tree, you poor little thing.’

I came across a couple of others as I crossed the pitted ground. One of them was on its back. The blue birds had white tummies.

I left them where they’d fallen and continued my cross-section by climbing over a fence into what turned out to be a sheep paddock, but the sheep didn’t seem to like me and took off. There was a murky pond. There was a big shed. I went inside. ‘Rusty stuff. Bits of wood. Something old with a dead engine.’

I don’t know what made me go right to the back wall, but I did, clambering and scrabbling my way over all the junk and what do you know — there was Noah’s second stash. This one was the actual plants. Six of them about fifteen centimetres high and carefully planted in those black plastic bags you see at the supermarket with basil
and parsley growing in them.

I wondered if he’d brought potting mix with him as well. I stirred with a finger. ‘Yes,’ I told the camera. ‘Potting mix, I reckon, because it sure isn’t that scabby dirt from under the trees out there. And it’s been watered today.’ I sat back on my heels and thought about what to do. To be honest, I didn’t think for very long. Bloody bastard Noah. He was my brother. I needed him and I needed his brain. I stood up and kicked the plants to bits. I trampled on them till I was sure and certain there wasn’t a shred of a chance they’d ever grow again.

I picked up the camera, climbed back over the junk and went back to the house, the camera swinging from my hand and filming the ground. I didn’t care. ‘Bloody Noah!’ I yelled. ‘My entire sucky family are traitors. Mum’s the worst and Dad ought to talk about it, but when did Dad ever talk about anything except stupid ecology and the dumb environment? And I bloody hope Noah rots in hell. Stoner! Useless stoner brother.’

I switched the camera off because yet again I was bawling.

Sandwiches for lunch. The afternoon stretched out like the longest road in the world ahead of me. I wished I had some DVDs to watch, or a book, or my friends. Dangerous ground, to think of Lizzie, Jax and Addy. I couldn’t even let myself think about Seb. What could I do? Boredom. Loneliness.