Cicada Summer

  Lorelei Swan swung round to Dad. ‘You told me the house wasn’t covered. If it’s registered by the National Trust, we can’t touch it.’

  ‘It isn’t,’ Dad said.

  ‘Only because I haven’t told them about it,’ said Mo. ‘Yet.’

  ‘Simmer down, everybody,’ soothed Dad. ‘Hey, hey, this is supposed to be a celebration, isn’t it? How about we leave the child-rearing to Mo, and Mo leaves the business side to us, and then we can all get along nicely.’

  ‘She isn’t my child, Stephen,’ said Mo.

  ‘But it is Stephen’s house,’ said Lorelei Swan sweetly. Her lips stretched in a smile, but the rest of her face didn’t move at all. It was the creepiest thing Eloise had ever seen.

  ‘Let’s go into the living room and have another drink.’ Dad ushered Lorelei away and a minute later there came the loud pop of another champagne cork.

  As Mo and Eloise cleared up and washed the dishes in the kitchen, they could hear Lorelei’s raised voice and Dad’s quieter rumble, and then finally screams of laughter, punctuated by long stretches of silence.

  ‘Hope they’re not planning to drive back to the hotel,’ said Mo. Then she added darkly, ‘And I hope they’re not planning to stay here.’ She peeled off her rubber gloves with a weary sigh. ‘Think I might have a lie down, Eloise. It’s been a long day. You’ll be all right?’ Eloise nodded, and hung her damp tea towel over the oven rail.

  ‘Good girl.’ Mo pottered to the door, then turned back. ‘What they don’t understand is that it’s all about trust.’ She looked hard at Eloise. ‘You know what I’m talking about.’

  Eloise nodded again, but slightly guiltily. Because as soon as Mo closed her bedroom door, she knew exactly what she was going to do.

  Thunder growled overhead as Eloise eased the back door open and gingerly picked up her bicycle. Dad and Lorelei wouldn’t hear her, and Mo was probably asleep by now. It was late afternoon, and the sky was slated over with dark clouds. Mo had said it wasn’t going to rain. ‘That thunder’s just empty promises,’ she’d sniffed. The air was still, close and muggy. Eloise decided not to bring a jacket. After all, she wouldn’t be gone for long.

  As she stood on the pedals, shifting her weight to force the bike down the street, Eloise didn’t notice Tommy peering out his front window. And when she reached the red church at the top of the hill, she didn’t notice another bicycle toiling up the street behind her.

  The streets were empty. Everyone was inside recovering from Christmas dinner, and the town was deserted. The shops were shut, no cars were on the road, and the lowering sky brooded over the paddocks. Eloise hurried on, anxious to escape from the eerie atmosphere, anxious to slip across into Anna’s time. Anna’s house could never be demolished; Anna’s garden was safe.

  Eloise let the bike drop near the front steps and began to run. She wanted to hurtle through into the other time, right through that invisible wall, through the muffling barrier of silence, and burst out into Anna’s protected, sunlit world.

  She closed her eyes as she ran. The noises of her own time fell away like the dry husk of a cicada, and the wave dumped her on the shore of the other time, soft and vulnerable. Eloise opened her eyes.

  And saw a different world.

  Eloise felt jarred, as if something had struck her on the side of the head. This was all wrong. This was a nightmare. It couldn’t be. She closed her eyes and flicked them open again.

  There was no house. No swimming pool. No summerhouse. They were gone.

  The pitiless sun beat down on a wasteland. There were trees and a bald stretch of earth where the lawn should be, but there was nothing like a garden – just a half-dead tangle of plants, fallen branches, uprooted bushes, and weeds. Where the pool should have been, there was a kind of sunken place strewn with rubble and broken bricks. Where the summerhouse had stood, Eloise saw shards of splintered white timber, gleaming pale against raw dirt.

  She stumbled up the slope toward the place where the house should have been. But there was only a blasted landscape of dust and rubble, smashed concrete and broken tiles, twisted iron and shattered glass.

  ‘Anna? Anna!’ she called out, her voice weak and shrill in the stillness.

  From a branch above her, an unseen magpie cawed. Eloise jumped in fright, bashing her ankle on a jagged chunk of concrete. The magpie eyed her sideways, then spread its wings and silently swooped down at her.

  Eloise cried out, covering her head with her arms, and stumbled away, sliding and scrabbling across the rubble. The magpie’s wings grazed her hair, and she beat the air with her hands. ‘Anna!’ she screamed. ‘Anna!’

  The magpie swooped again, and this time its beak struck Eloise’s head. She threw herself forward, away from the wasteland of rocks and dust, across the mangy stretch of ground where the lawn had been, crashing between the thick stalks of thistles and dandelions that snatched at her bare legs.

  She was still crying for Anna, though she knew Anna was gone. In this place, there was no Anna. She sobbed for breath. The garden had turned against her: smashed walls and swooping birds, thorns and prickles. Let me go home. I want to go home!

  But this time the garden didn’t want to let her go. Eloise stumbled forward and back, trying to beat her way back to her own time. She called for Anna, but she was alone in this wild time, this bleak and barren time, and there was no way out.

  Eloise screamed and screamed. The noise filled her ears, blotting out everything. She screamed until the world went black.

  14

  Eloise woke into night.

  She lay on her back in the long grass, staring up into the dark. A hard lump of pain pressed into the middle of her back. Slowly she sat up.

  The sun had set while she was in the other time. Clouds blanketed the sky; there was no moon, no stars, just blackness overhead. A growl of thunder shook the ground, and Eloise clambered up. Her hands were trembling. She didn’t understand. Where had it all gone? Where was Anna? Where was the summerhouse and the main house and the pool?

  A horrible thought struck her: what if she was still trapped there, in the ruined time? She whirled around. Her eyes had started to adjust to the dark and she could just make out the pale shape of the summerhouse behind her, shrouded in its cape of ivy, and the ghostly scaffolding of the diving board looming out of the dark.

  Eloise groped toward the summerhouse, and even before she reached it she knew that she was back in her own time. The summerhouse was overgrown, the curtain of ivy hung over the door. When she touched the archway, she felt splinters, not the smooth painted wood of Anna’s time. But what could have happened to Anna’s time? Where had it gone?

  The first drops of rain spattered onto the leaves, and then on Eloise’s head. She hesitated; should she run for her bike and race home to Mo’s, or shelter in the summerhouse until the rain stopped? It must be late; even Mo would have noticed by now that she wasn’t home . . . But on the other hand, she didn’t want to ride through a rainstorm . . .

  Then she heard a faint sound, so faint that she wasn’t sure if she’d imagined it. A human sound, coming from the swimming pool. She tiptoed to the edge. Rain was falling faster now, splattering the concrete until it blurred to a grey slickness. Eloise peered over the edge of the pool, and at that moment lightning crackled overhead and lit up the garden with a strobe-light flash.

  A body was lying at the bottom of the swimming pool.

  Eloise knelt on the wet concrete, her heart thudding hard. Her lips shaped the word, Tommy?

  As if he’d heard her, he groaned and lifted his head, then let it fall back onto the mat of dead leaves.

  He must have fallen in. He was hurt. She could never get him out on her own. She would have to get help. Her heart squeezed up small with fear. She couldn’t do this. She didn’t know what to do.

  Lightning flashed again, and Eloise stood up. At the junction where the red church stood was a small blue sign: TURNER-BUNGAREE DISTRICT HOSPITAL. All she’d have to do was stick to
the road and keep on riding until she ran into it.

  It was really raining now. Eloise was so wet already that it was pointless to worry about getting any wetter. Her hair clung to her head, rain poured down her eyebrows and into her mouth. She ran through the wet grass, swish, swish, toward the house, back to where she’d dropped her bike, a dark knot of metal on the gravel. A second dark knot lay nearby: Tommy’s bike. What was he doing here? Had he followed her? Or come to find her? Had Mo sent him to look for her? Or . . .

  There wasn’t time to think about it now. Eloise lifted up her bike; the handlebars were slippery, the wheels skidded on the wet gravel. As she pushed off she nearly slipped sideways. But then she had it; she just had to hold on tight, and focus, and pedal tight and careful. Under the pine trees, the ground was almost dry, but it was so dark she almost crashed into the trees.

  Out on the road, the tarmac was slick and the rain came down in curtains. Eloise could just make out the white posts that marked the edge of the road. She swung the bike to the right, away from the town, the direction she’d never been. The bike skidded under her but she managed to steady it. Squinting into the rain, Eloise steered from one white post to the next. If a car came zooming along in the wet, it would never see her in time to stop. The dress she’d worn in honour of Christmas dinner clung to her legs. She began to shiver. She’d almost forgotten where she was supposed to be riding to; she seemed to have been pushing the bike onward forever into the dark, into the rain.

  Suddenly the bike slewed from under her. Eloise hurtled sideways, the bike smashed down on her; pain gashed across her leg, and her hands scraped gravel. She’d come off at the side of the road. She wasn’t badly hurt, but her whole body was trembling as she stood up and groped to heave the bike upright. Her hands hurt. Something was wrong with the bike; the bike wouldn’t stand, it wouldn’t go. The chain dangled loose from the gears, and one wheel was bent.

  Eloise flung the bike away; she’d just have to go on foot. But the accident had muddled her. She wasn’t sure which direction she’d come from and which way she was going. The dark was thick all around her; the rain drove down onto the top of her head. She was almost sure she had to go this way. She bent her head into the rain and tried to run, but the rain pushed against her like a hand to her chest.

  It was almost like wading through water, almost like swimming. Keep swimming through. She thought about Tommy at the bottom of the pool. If it kept on raining, the pool would fill with water; he might drown. She thought of Mo, of Dad and Lorelei. She thought about Anna. She had the strangest feeling that she was walking away from Anna, that every step carried her further away. But she had to help Tommy, he was the one who needed her now.

  Eloise put one foot in front of the other, one, two, one, two, jogging, walking, jogging again. A numb, dizzy chant circled through her head: keep on swimming, keep on swimming. The road dipped and rose beneath her feet, and then at last, very far away, lights twinkled out of the dark, and very slowly, with every dip in the road, the lights grew brighter and bigger until at last Eloise staggered into a world of light, a world that was dry and hot and dazzlingly bright.

  She stood in front of the hospital desk, dripping and shaking. A nurse looked up.

  ‘Hey there, sweetie. Wow, look at you. You’re soaked! What’s the matter, what’s happened?’

  Eloise opened her mouth. For a dreadful moment she thought nothing would happen, but then she heard her own voice, faint and far away, even though she felt as if she were shouting.

  ‘Help.’

  The ambulance careered through the night, lights flashing, siren wailing, windscreen wipers slashing back and forth. Eloise sat in the back, wrapped in a blanket. She shivered so violently that her teeth clashed together. Someone had given her a plastic cup of hot chocolate to drink, but she’d spilled most of it.

  The journey that had taken Eloise so long by foot lasted only a few minutes in the ambulance. In fact, they drove past the house in the dark and had to turn back.

  But when they’d bumped down the pine-tree tunnel and wailed to a halt, there was a car already parked on the gravel in front of the house: a big blue four-wheel drive.

  ‘Which way, love? Where is he?’

  Eloise’s arms and legs were stiff and heavy but she managed to clamber out of the ambulance and stagger across the grass. Someone pulled out a fat torch and a beam of light swept across the face of the house. The rain had almost stopped. The drops sparkled in the light like a fall of tinsel.

  Around the corner of the house Eloise saw another, thinner beam of light, swinging drunkenly back and forth; a faint glow shone from behind the wide back windows. Voices called her name. They were looking in the wrong places; they were nowhere near the summerhouse. Didn’t Dad know she’d be at the summerhouse?

  But that was Anna’s dad, not hers . . . and anyway, she wasn’t there . . .

  Eloise stumbled headlong down the slope, calling, ‘This way, here, he’s down here!’

  The white shaft of torchlight jerked across the summerhouse and lit up the diving board. Eloise flung herself down on her stomach at the edge of the pool. ‘There, there he is, there.’

  And then everything became a blur of shouts and light and flurried movement, lowered stretchers and radio calls. And suddenly Dad was there, white in the torchlight, grabbing her into his arms, pressing her against his black parka all slick with rain. And Lorelei Swan was behind him, wearing a battered old raincoat that must have been Mo’s, her hair flattened to her skull. Someone yelled at her to please hold the torch steady. Dad was asking a million questions, half-shaking her and half-hugging her, not waiting for her to answer, and someone asked if he knew the parents and someone else said Wait a sec, I think it’s Najela Durrani’s boy.

  And then someone else was asking Dad questions, and the torch was shining in their eyes, and Dad held Eloise away from the light, and he kept saying, I just want to take her home. I just want to take her home. And his voice was getting louder and louder. And Lorelei Swan’s voice was shrill in the background and then Dad yelled at her, and she yelled back, and Dad gripped Eloise tighter and tighter, and she craned around his arm to watch as they winched Tommy out of the pool, strapped onto a stretcher under a silver blanket with his eyes shut, and she wriggled away from Dad and Lorelei Swan and ran over to the ambulance man who had his hand on Tommy and was saying, You’re going to be all right, mate. It’s all right now. And he saw Eloise and winked at her and said, Don’t worry, love. He’s broken his arm but he’s going to be okay.

  And then Dad grabbed her again and marched her up the slope, and Lorelei Swan tripped and swayed behind them, all wet and bedraggled and saying, You need to focus on what’s important here, Stephen.

  And Dad swung round and yelled at her, ‘My daughter is what’s important here, Lorelei!’

  And Lorelei yelled, ‘Well, if that’s the way you feel, you can shove it!’

  And Dad yelled, ‘Fine, I will!’ And then he swung Eloise around again and kept marching her up the hill through the wet grass. Lorelei Swan yelled after them, ‘I suppose you’re going to leave me here now, are you? In the rain? In the dark, in the middle of nowhere?’

  ‘Get in the car!’ Dad hollered at her, and he pushed Eloise up into the front seat and buckled her in as if she was still a little kid and kissed her on the head, and Lorelei Swan scrambled into the back seat, sniffing. Dad got in and turned up the heater full bore and they bumped down the driveway behind the ambulance. But at the end of the driveway the ambulance roared away to the right and Dad swung the four-wheel drive to the left, toward home.

  15

  Tommy followed you to the house yesterday afternoon. But after you got there, he lost you somehow.’ Mo lowered herself onto the end of Eloise’s bed. ‘And then it got dark so suddenly, with the storm coming. I suppose he must have been looking for you when he tumbled into the pool. It was very naughty, Eloise, to sneak off like that. Especially after what everyone had been saying. You gave us all
such a fright.’

  Eloise whispered, ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Well,’ said Mo as she lifted a strand of Eloise’s hair back from her forehead, ‘I suppose it was worth it, if it’s brought you back into the land of the living. I mean the land of the speaking. Mind you, I’m not sure Tommy will see it like that, nor his parents.’

  ‘Is he okay?’ said Eloise huskily.

  ‘Broken arm, mild hypothermia, and a bruised behind,’ said Mo. ‘They kept him at the hospital last night but he’ll be home this morning. Might be worth you going next door later with a big bunch of flowers and an apology.’

  Eloise squirmed. ‘Not flowers.’

  ‘For his mother, not for Tommy!’ Mo smiled, and patted Eloise’s leg under the blanket. ‘How are you feeling, anyway, chicken, after that big sleep?’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘Well, you can stay there for the moment. Dr Durrani says a day in bed won’t hurt you. I’m going to make some sandwiches.’

  Eloise thought about protesting, but then she snuggled down. It really was nice to be tucked up in bed. She felt so heavy and limp, as if she’d never move again . . . Before too long she was asleep.

  At lunchtime Dad arrived. ‘Well, that’s that,’ he announced, with an odd mixture of gloom and triumph. ‘She’s gone. Stormed off back to Melbourne.’

  ‘Who has? You mean Lorelei Swan?’ exclaimed Mo. ‘I thought we were going to be stuck with her forever.’

  Eloise wriggled with satisfaction. Then she remembered she could speak if she wanted to, and she whispered, ‘Good.’

  Dad threw her a startled glance. ‘My God. So it’s true. You’re talking again—’ ‘She’s a human, Stephen, not a hamster,’ said Mo brusquely. ‘No need to treat her like a sideshow freak just because she can talk.’

  ‘Well, no, but . . .’ Dad bent down and kissed Eloise on the forehead. ‘It’s good to have you back, Elocution Lessons.’

  ‘Um, Dad,’ said Eloise shyly. ‘Would it be okay if you just called me my name?’