Inside, Mo’s house was dark and musty, the awnings drawn down to shut out the glaring summer sun. Eloise sidled along the narrow hallway after Dad, trying not to knock anything over. Books tottered in piles on the floor, spilled from shelves, slid from heaps on chairs and tables.
‘What’s for lunch? Hope we haven’t come all this way for one of your famous baked-bean jaffles!’ called Dad. He winked at Eloise. ‘Don’t be scared of Mo,’ he whispered. ‘She loves a good fight. You have to stand up to her.’
Dad and Eloise squeezed themselves into chairs and Mo banged bowls onto the dining table. ‘It’s soup.’
Eloise spooned it up and let it trickle back into the bowl. Unidentifiable lumps floated in a steaming pinkish-brown liquid.
‘Got the recipe from the next-door neighbours,’ said Mo. ‘Beetroots were on special this week, apparently. I was just making up another batch.’
‘Thought beetroots were a winter thing.’ Dad slurped warily. ‘Mm. That’s not bad, actually.’ He flashed Mo his most charming grin.
Eloise lifted her spoon cautiously to her lips. There was a flavour she couldn’t quite identify. Mo was watching her across the table. Eloise’s heart began to thump again. She chased a thread of yoghurt with her spoon and it dissolved into nothing.
‘Magnificent. I’m impressed.’ Dad laid down his spoon and cleared his throat. ‘Actually, Mo, there was a small favour I wanted to ask.’
Mo folded her arms. ‘Spit it out.’
‘Accommodation,’ said Dad. ‘For Eloise. Just for a few weeks, while I’m running around. I’ve got to go back to the city for a while, finalise the investors, talk to architects, put the plans together, that kind of thing.’
‘Why couldn’t she stay where she was?’
‘That was . . . only temporary. Not suitable.’ Dad didn’t say anything about Bree.
Eloise had never liked Bree much. Bree always called her Ellie. Bree thought Eloise was weird.
‘She can’t stay here,’ said Mo flatly. ‘There’s nowhere to put her.’
‘What about my old room?’
‘Excuse me; you haven’t lived here for seventeen years. Things change. That’s my study now.’
‘You’re not still writing that book, are you? The same one? The boat thing?’
‘A Brief History of Sea Voyages, yes.’
‘Brief ? You’ve only been writing it for twenty years! Lucky it’s not a long history!’
‘Hilarious,’ said Mo coldly.
‘Not to mention the fact that you’ve never even seen the sea—’ ‘Haven’t you heard of the internet, Stephen?’
They glared at each other. Then Dad said, more cajolingly, ‘How about that old flop-out in the sunroom, is that still there? She won’t mind roughing it for a while, she’s used to it. Aren’t you, Elder Statesman? As long as she’s got her pencils and paper, she’s happy.’
Eloise stared at the tablecloth. Her stomach was turning corkscrews.
‘She doesn’t look happy to me,’ said Mo. ‘Maybe you should have discussed this plan with her before. Maybe you should have discussed it with me.’
‘She’s your granddaughter; you haven’t seen her since she was four. I thought you’d love to spend some time with her!’
‘No, you didn’t. You only thought about what was convenient for you.’
‘Come on, Mo. It’s not like you’ve got anything better to do—’ ‘Just the small matter of my work.’
‘Oh please. You call that work?’
‘You think you’ve done better, do you? Dragging that poor kid around since Anna died. What kind of life is that for a child? Look at her! She hasn’t spoken a word since she arrived! What’s wrong with her?’
There was a terrible silence.
‘There’s nothing wrong with Eloise,’ said Dad.
‘When did she stop speaking? Or didn’t you notice?’
‘She’s just quiet. She lives in her own world. She always has, even when Anna was—’
There was a rapping at the back door. Dad folded his arms, and for a moment he and Mo glared at each other, chins jutting, like mirror images. Then Mo said grimly, ‘I am not going to take responsibility for your damaged child. That’s your job, not mine. Is that clear?’
She pushed back her chair and marched out of the room.
Dad glanced at Eloise. ‘All right, Electron Microscope?’
A tear ran down the side of Eloise’s nose. She shook her head.
‘Oh Lord,’ muttered Dad. ‘Not now . . .’
There were voices in the hall. Then Mo reappeared in the doorway, propelling before her a dark-haired boy a year or two older than Eloise. He held a cardboard box full of groceries.
‘Tommy Durrani,’ announced Mo. ‘From next door. He does all my errands. Worth his weight in gold, this boy. Be lost without him.’
Tommy mumbled something and ducked his head. His grey eyes were fringed with long lashes.
Dad jumped up and thrust out his hand. ‘Pleasure to meet you, young man. Tommy, was it? Glad to hear you’re taking such good care of my old mum.’
Tommy shook the tips of Dad’s fingers, hampered by the box in his arms.
‘My son, Stephen. My granddaughter, Eloise,’ said Mo.
Tommy looked at Eloise. ‘You coming to stay?’
Eloise stared at her soup bowl. Another tear stung at her eye but didn’t fall.
‘Eloise might be staying here for a little while,’ Mo said grudgingly at last.
‘Wonderful!’ Dad shouted. ‘That’s marvellous. Thanks, Mo. Thanks, err . . . Tommy.’ He fumbled for his wallet and tried to press a fifty-dollar note into Tommy’s hand. But Tommy stepped sharply backward.
‘I don’t help Mrs Mo for money.’ He scowled, and turned to Mo. ‘I’ll put this in the kitchen.’ He vanished, and a minute later they heard the back door click shut.
Pink-faced, Dad shoved the fifty dollars back into his wallet.
‘Not everybody lives for the almighty dollar, believe it or not,’ said Mo. ‘A thoroughly nice boy, that Tommy. His family’s been in Turner nearly two years now. Sydney before that. The mother’s our local doctor. The father used to be a professor in Afghanistan. Hasn’t got a job here yet.’
‘Professor of what?’ Dad was grumpy now.
‘Psychology.’
‘Huh,’ said Dad.
‘Don’t say it,’ warned Mo.
Dad spread his hands. ‘Say what?’
Eloise didn’t know what either, but then Mo spun around and fixed her with a ferocious stare. ‘As for you, young lady, you need a rest. Think I can’t recognise an over-tired child when I see one? Go and lie down on my bed.’
Eloise froze, but Dad nudged her. ‘Go on. Mo’s right. We’ve had a long day, and a late one last night.’
Mo swept Eloise into her bedroom. Numbly, Eloise removed her shoes and scrambled onto the high white bed. Mo grunted and closed the door.
Eloise lay flat on her back and gazed up at the blotchy ceiling. It was a relief to be alone. People tired her out, especially new people. A murmur of voices came from the living room. Probably Dad and Mo were talking about her. She rolled onto her side and pulled a pillow over her ear.
Even with the awning down, Mo’s bedroom was like an oven; the sun had baked the roof all afternoon. The world was getting hotter and hotter, Eloise knew that. But there were lots of things she didn’t know. Bree had told Dad she was unbelievably naïve. That was one of the things Eloise wasn’t supposed to hear. But she was pretty sure that Bree had never seen a ghost . . .
A shiver ran across Eloise’s skin. She sat up and looked around for a pen or a piece of paper, but there was nothing to draw with. She lay back down and imagined the ceiling was a sheet of paper. She raised one hand and traced the shape of the girl in the air: the grey shadows behind her, the pale outline of her dress, the dark cloud of the girl’s hair beneath her hat. Eloise moved her hand this way and that, tilting the invisible pencil, slowly filling in the blankness with lin
es, with smudges and shadings of grey. A mist of sadness spread through her as she realised something she hadn’t really noticed at the time: the ghostly girl was so happy. Eloise hadn’t been happy like that since . . . not for a long time . . .
Curled on the white bedspread, Eloise fell asleep.
3
It was cold. Eloise pressed herself into the mattress. Her head swirled with images of floating pale figures, sunken ships, dark ribbons of seaweed twined through portholes. She was swimming from room to room, swimming after a ghostly girl who drifted just ahead of her. A voice called, I’m coming! But Eloise didn’t know if it was herself who spoke, or the girl she was chasing through the dim green water. Eloise swam through the dark, deeper and deeper, colder and colder, until she shivered awake.
The first three seconds after Eloise woke were always the same. In the first second, she knew there was something she had to remember, but she didn’t know what it was.
In the next second she did remember. Mum.
In the third second she squashed that knowledge into the tightest ball she could and wedged it right into the very back of her mind, so she could pretend it wasn’t there. Then she opened her eyes.
Eloise blinked. All the things that didn’t really matter came flooding in: Dad, the house, Mo, the boy next door.
The bedroom was almost dark. Eloise slid unsteadily off the bed and stumbled out into the hall. Mo was in the kitchen, dipping a chunk of bread into a bowl of beetroot soup. She gestured to the stove. ‘Plenty left if you want some. Bread’s on the bench.’
Eloise looked around for Dad.
‘He’s gone,’ said Mo. ‘Back to the city. Sent you his love. Said he’ll be back soon.’
A lump came into Eloise’s throat. Mo grimaced. ‘Couldn’t face saying goodbye to you, so he ran away. We McCredies are good at running from our problems. Runs in the family, you could say. Ha!’ She scooped up a spoonful of soup. ‘Go on, sit down. Don’t stand there like a shag on a rock. Eat something.’
They sat on either side of the kitchen table in silence. Presently Mo pushed her bowl aside and looked at Eloise over the top of her glasses. ‘Since we seem to be stuck with each other for the time being, we’d better set up some rules of the house.’ She ticked them off on her fingers. ‘One: you don’t disturb me while I’m working. Two: my study is out of bounds. At all times. Is that clear?’
Eloise nodded.
‘Three . . .’ Mo stopped, and sighed. ‘How shall I put this? You might think I’m a crazy old woman, but the fact is, I don’t . . . I don’t like to leave the house any more.’ She narrowed her eyes at Eloise. ‘Young Tommy runs my errands and so forth these days, bless him, and his mother’s been kind enough to pop in and have a look at me if I’m ever sick, which, touch wood,’ she rapped on the table, making Eloise jump, ‘so far, I haven’t been, very. The point is, I’m not going to ferry you about. Understand? You want to do any,’ she waved her hand vaguely, ‘activities - netball or soccer or hanging about the train station or whatever it is the young do for fun these days – you organise it yourself. There’s a bicycle in the garage and a helmet somewhere, you’re welcome to use them. Just don’t get into trouble . . . Ha! That can be rule number three: don’t get into any trouble. That should cover most eventualities.’ Mo popped a piece of bread into her mouth. ‘You could get Tommy to show you around. He knows what’s what.’
Eloise kept her face neutral. She didn’t want to join in any kind of activities; activities filled her with dread. At the last few schools she’d been to, she’d spent most of her time avoiding them. And she certainly wasn’t going to trail around after that boy; she’d die of embarrassment. At least Mo wasn’t going to make her do anything.
‘And, of course, there are rules about water,’ Mo was saying. ‘Dishes are washed in that little tub in the sink. Three and a half minutes for showers; there’s a timer in the bathroom. Make sure you put the plug in, I bucket the grey water onto the garden. And the toilet. You know the old rhyme?’
Eloise looked at her blankly.
‘If it’s yellow, let it mellow. If it’s brown, flush it down. Understand? Good.’ Mo pressed her lips together and rose to her feet. ‘I think we’ll manage quite well, after all. Now I’m going to do some work. You want to watch television? It’s in the living room.’
Eloise shook her head, and Mo shrugged. ‘Suit yourself. I’ve made up your bed in the sunroom. Your bags are in there.’ She shuffled away to her study and soon Eloise heard the faint clackety-clack of a computer keyboard. She took a chunk of bread and went to find the sunroom.
It was hardly even a room, just a tiny alcove beside the back door. The laundry, the back toilet and the back door all opened off it. The fold-out sofa filled almost the whole space; it had been made up into a bed, the sheets tucked in savagely tight. There was no table, not even a shelf, nowhere for Eloise to unpack.
But she didn’t mind that. Bree had a very neat apartment, all shiny and bare, and she made such a fuss if she found any of Eloise’s things ‘cluttering up the place’ that Eloise had ended up living out of her bags and never unpacking anything. The single bed in Bree’s junk room had become Eloise’s private island, her lifeboat in someone else’s ocean. Mo’s fold-out was a double bed. Eloise stretched in luxury.
She wondered when Dad would come back. He’d said soon – maybe tomorrow. He was always coming and going these days; she didn’t like it, but she was used to it. And Mo was going to leave her alone. If it was only a day, or a couple of days, she’d be all right. Though Mo had been talking as if it would be longer than that.
Her stomach was starting to tie itself in knots, so she sat cross-legged on the bed and pulled out her sketchpad and pencils. She flipped to a blank page and started to scribble. The knots in her stomach loosened when she drew. First she sketched the big white house, almost drowned between the trees. Then she drew the pattern in the glass panels by the front door. As she shaded the triangles, swinging the page this way and that, her heart calmed.
She took a fresh page and drew Mo as she’d first seen her, brandishing a knife, her hair writhing like snakes. Drawing the witchiness made Eloise see that Mo really wasn’t as scary as she’d thought. She looked at that picture for a while, pleased with it.
Next she drew the boy who’d brought Mo’s shopping. Eloise wasn’t good with names. But his face came alive under her pencil: strong nose, straight-across eyebrows, long eyelashes, curling hair, a soft mouth. He frowned out of the page at her, as if he were annoyed about being captured in her book.
Now she was ready. Now she’d draw the girl on the stairs: the big hat, the tripping feet, the fingers light on the rail. But her pencil stuck; she couldn’t transfer her memory onto the paper. She traced a tentative line; stopped; drew another. Her heart was beating fast again. It was all wrong—
‘Eloise! ’
She jumped, and slammed her book shut. Mo glared from the doorway. ‘What are you, deaf ? Didn’t you hear me? It’s almost midnight.’
Eloise blinked, startled.
‘Not that I care, particularly, but apparently it’s good for young people to go to bed at a reasonable hour. When I was your age, I used to stay up all night reading with a torch under the blankets. Ruined my eyes. So if you must stay up reading or scribbling or whatever, please keep the light on. What’s that, your sketchpad? No, it’s all right; you don’t have to show me. One thing I can do is mind my own business. Good night.’
Mo stalked away, and when she’d gone, Eloise leaned from the raft of the bed and clicked off the light. She lay awake for a long time, staring into the dark, trying to think about nothing, before sleep pulled her under at last.
Eloise’s eyes flew open. Something was rattling near her head. Then a voice called, ‘Hello, Mrs Mo?’
Eloise sat straight up in bed and found herself staring into the startled grey eyes of the boy from next door. He had pushed the door open as he called out to Mo and had almost tripped over the end of Eloise’s be
d. And there she was in just her singlet.
The boy’s face flushed deep red. ‘Sorry . . . didn’t . . .’ he mumbled and backed away, almost falling down the steps. The screen door banged and sprang open again behind him.
Eloise hurled herself out of bed, pulled on her T-shirt and shorts and slid her feet into her thongs. She heard the front doorbell chime, then Mo’s slippers shuffled down the hallway and there were voices at the front door.
‘Tommy? You’re very formal today.’
Then, very muffled, ‘. . . back door . . . the girl . . .’
Mo, loud and brisk, ‘Gave you a fright, did she? Don’t pull that face. Come and have a proper look at her; you’ll see she’s nothing to be scared of.’
Eloise didn’t wait to hear more; she flew out the back door. The garage had old-fashioned double doors that gaped apart. She squeezed through the crack, heart racing.
‘Eloise?’ Mo banged the back door open and called into the yard. ‘Elo-ise!’ There was a pause, then the screen door slammed again as Mo went back inside.
Now was her chance. There was the bicycle – a faded-red boy’s bike, propped against the garage wall. Eloise dragged it outside, swung up into the saddle and wobbled down the driveway. The bike was too big for her, and the tyres were soft; she had to push hard. She jammed her feet down on the pedals and flew out into the street, the hot wind in her hair.
She zoomed round one corner, then another. She’d never ridden so fast without a helmet before. She felt wild and reckless. Her shadow dipped and swayed on the broad black ribbon of the road.
The big red-brick church crouched at the top of the hill, and Eloise pedalled toward it. She knew where to go. The last time she’d ridden a bike was when she and Dad had first moved in with Bree, when Bree was still pretending they could be a family. One weekend they’d all ridden along the river.
She remembered calling to Dad to slow down, so it must have been before she went quiet.
That was how she thought of it, going quiet. It had happened gradually. Somehow there was less and less to say, and now she seemed to have forgotten how to speak at all. Bree and Dad pretended not to notice; maybe they’d got used to it, too. It was a bit of a shock when Mo had pointed out that it wasn’t normal.