The Minnow

  ‘For sure,’ I say. I turn the camera on us and lean my head on Jonah’s shoulder.

  The Minnow and I are eating lunch in front of James Wo’s mural. Jonah is going to join us after his meeting with the maths teacher. It’s a school day and kids keep stopping to say hi—to the Minnow, not to me. She loves it.

  I think Mum is here, too. Right now the Minnow is making little hand movements as though she is holding onto someone’s fingers. Watching her makes me realise just how hard it must have been for Nana all these years. She must have heard me talking to Papa a million times, but she has never said a thing, never asked me anything. I can’t imagine such restraint.

  Jonah arrives and plonks himself down next to me. ‘Starving,’ he says, and opens his lunch box. The Minnow lets out a little noise.

  ‘Hi, baby,’ says Jonah. He leans across to her pram and gives her a smile. She smiles back.

  ‘You finished already,’ Jonah says to me when he realises he is eating alone.

  ‘Uh huh,’ I say. Jonah is in the top maths class. I can barely add up.

  ‘I had better feed the Minnow before the bell,’ I say. Jonah doesn’t answer. He is like an animal when he is hungry. For the next ten minutes, Jonah and the Minnow eat their lunch while I stare at James Wo’s mural.

  It is after midnight, and Annabel and I are walking to the inlet in time for the moonrise. The night is clear and perfectly still. I have never been swimming this late. As we walk along the pier, I notice Annabel isn’t carrying any snorkelling gear. When we reach the end, she turns to face me and steps in closer, placing her hands briefly around my waist. I notice a stream of bubbles rising from her shoulders. Definitely blue. I want to say something, but the moment passes.

  ‘It’s time,’ she says.

  She holds out her hand. I give her mine. She smiles. My world fills. ‘I won’t let you go,’ she says, and without another word she pulls me over the side.

  The water is beautiful, clear, warm. ‘Follow me,’ says Annabel, and we dive deep into the inlet. I’m almost out of breath when she turns and points above my head. At first I think she is instructing me to swim to the surface, until she pulls, hard, on my arm. Again she points, more enthusiastically this time.

  It’s the full moon, orange and low on the horizon, but high enough to escape the trees on the eastern side of the inlet. It’s wobbling on the current, huge and magnificent. But my lungs are screaming. I push away and race to the surface.

  When finally I spot Annabel, she has made it to the far side—probably in a single breath—and she is waving at me. I can’t help but be amazed.

  The Minnow is still betting she’s a mermaid.

  Oscar says she’s just a good swimmer with great lung capacity.

  There are only two people who call me Holly: Martha who is really Will, and Mrs Haversham who is a bitch.

  ‘Holly!’

  ‘Holly Thomas!’

  Mrs Haversham. I think I’ll ignore her for a while longer.

  The Minnow kept me awake most of last night. I’m not sure what was upsetting her, but by the time my alarm went off for school, it was me who was upset. Now I’m so tired, I don’t see the point. I should have stayed home. Instead, I have my head on the desk and my mind out to sea.

  I don’t know how he did it, but Papa found Dad, and the three of us are deep-sea fishing off the Coast of Mary; the most beautiful fishing boat I’ve ever seen.

  ‘It’s a launch,’ corrects Papa.

  The Coast of Mary is a gleaming white launch with an aqua trim that runs in little stripes along the deck. At the moment she is rocking slightly, and if I look over the side I can see that she is also painted aqua below the water line. She’s built for deep-sea fishing, which is quite different from the type of fishing I’m used to. For one thing, they don’t catch the fish to eat, instead it’s all about the hunt. That, and the size of the catch.

  Everything on the launch is purpose-built. Some of the rods are fitted into the frame of the boat, with winches for hauling in the fighters. There are two large white chairs at the stern, with rod holders and foot supports and drink holders and neck rests. Totally over the top, if you ask me, but Dad and Papa are lapping it up: lines cast, a cold stubbie each and an esky full of reserves at their feet.

  There is a lookout above deck—which is also the helm. I’m up there now. You can see for miles, and I haven’t even tried the binoculars. I turn one-eighty degrees at the sound of Papa’s voice. Papa is telling Dad something and the two of them peel off a laugh at the punch line. I turn back to the view. The breeze is light, there is not a cloud in the sky and, no matter which direction I look, there is nothing but ocean.

  The Minnow is below deck, sleeping like a baby. I went to check on her earlier, but Dad caught my eye and shook his head. When I hesitated he winked. I think he knows that Mum is down there with her. Well, at least I’m getting to spend time with Dad.

  ‘Lunch will be in twenty minutes,’ says a voice.

  ‘Fantastic,’ says Papa.

  I continue to stare at the view. In a word, it is mesmerising. I want to write that down as today’s word, but I’m not sure where I put my notebook. It’s here somewhere. I had it earlier; I was writing words that were similar but different, like launch and lunch. Now that lunch has been mentioned, I realise I’m quite hungry. I wonder if Mum will join us.

  Someone is shaking my arm. I can hear the sound of a crowd, laughing. It makes no sense.

  ‘Holly,’ says Dad. I can’t believe he has called me Holly. I’m about to reprimand him, but he has disappeared.

  ‘She won’t answer to Holly, Miss,’ says a male voice belonging to the boy from across the aisle. Crap. I have fallen asleep at my desk. Not for the first time.

  ‘Sorry,’ I say, eyes still closed.

  ‘Follow me,’ says Mrs Haversham’s voice.

  Double crap.

  Jonathan got rid of the rental and has bought a brand-new baby car seat. This one is cream (to match the Bentley’s interior). I secure the Minnow.

  The weather has changed. Rain clouds have blown up from the west—a bad omen. Jonathan waits for me to get settled. It takes ages. First I can’t find my biology notes, then, once they’re found, I realise I’ve lost my timetable. I empty everything out onto the seat. It’s a mess. I need a system. Maybe a new schoolbag would help; one that has more pockets and compartments. Eventually I find the timetable tucked into my notebook. Then I take a deep breath and put everything back in some kind of order. Mess does my head in these days. I have to be especially orderly with my school stuff. I think it’s a coping mechanism.

  At last, I’m buckled in. Ready.

  ‘You right to go?’ asks Jonathan.

  ‘Yep,’ I answer, even though my readiness is obvious. ‘Sorry.’

  Jonathan drives me to and from school, most days. Jonah rides his bike. The Minnow and I used to catch the bus. It’s any easy walk with the pram, and the bus stop is only fifteen minutes away. But then Jonathan started turning up, and then it became a habit. At first he used the drive as an excuse to get me alone to talk about Bill. He wants to take my case to the police. He says it is abuse, pure and simple. I’m not sure. I think he is right, but I don’t think I want to dredge it all up. Everyone at school would find out. The thought of it makes me sick.

  I’m exhausted. Luckily Jonathan isn’t talking. Even the Minnow is quiet. Occasionally she makes a sucking noise.

  ‘I have asked your grandmother to marry me,’ says Jonathan, suddenly. I open my eyes to look at him, but he is staring at the road ahead.

  I’m not surprised. It seems so natural, like it was always going to happen.

  ‘What did she say?’

  ‘She said she would talk it over with you.’

  Nana’s roundabout way of getting Papa’s approval.

  ‘Well, you know how I feel about you, Jonathan.’

  ‘Thank you, Tom. It means a lot.’

  The Minnow claps her hands. I turn to look at
her.

  Papa is sitting in the backseat, staring out the window.

  Jonathan and I say nothing for the remainder of the trip. As we enter the grounds of the Mavis Ornstein Home for the Elderly, I notice that the hedge is looking worse for wear. At least it isn’t brandishing a negative message. But, come to think of it, maybe that is exactly what it’s doing.

  Papa has disappeared by the time I get the Minnow out of her car seat. I have to find him, talk to him. If he feels betrayed, who could blame him?

  Caleb Loeb has done a runner. I have to monitor my face. Constantly.

  ‘He’ll be back,’ I say. Luckily the wind is blowing— to distract Jonah from the hollowness of my words. It is pointless saying I told you so. But part of me wants to shout it over and over. Instead, I touch Jonah’s shoulder, rub my hand across his back.

  Jonah fiddles with his watchband. It was his mother’s watch. He found it in the shed yesterday morning. ‘Look at this,’ he had said, holding it by the buckle. Then he put it on. It was a significant find, but he had waited over an hour to show me. Jonah is like that. He took almost a week, once, to show me a cufflink. I can’t imagine Jonah’s father wearing the sort of shirts that required cufflinks, but what do I know?

  Still, I thought it strange that stuff could just reappear, so long after the fact.

  I thought it was Papa’s doing.

  ‘Not me, sport,’ he said when I asked.

  ‘Then, who?’

  ‘Beats me,’ was the reply. He caught my look. ‘But I can ask around.’

  ‘Thanks, Papa.’

  Jonah’s eyes are bloodshot. He probably hasn’t slept a wink. I know things are bad because he isn’t even chatting to the Minnow. Nana always says that if you’re lost for words in a crisis, grab a pot and cook something. She says it gives you something to do and, while you’re doing it, the activity is relaxing. I’m following her advice and making scrambled eggs and toast. I hardly ever cook, because Jonah is better at it, but he has been sitting at the kitchen table for over an hour and if I don’t eat something soon, I’ll fall over.

  ‘Jonah,’ I say, as he walks around me to the fridge. ‘Things seem to be turning up.’

  ‘Turning up?’ he says, grabbing the milk and sitting back down at the table. It doesn’t matter how many times I ask him to use a glass, Jonah drinks from the bottle. But right now I haven’t the heart to get cross at him, so I watch while he empties a litre down his throat.

  ‘Yeah,’ I say, ‘you know, your mother’s watch.’

  ‘That’s only one thing,’ says Jonah.

  ‘Okay,’ I say, ‘but you have to admit, it’s unusual. After all this time.’

  ‘Yeah. So?’

  Sometimes conversation is an art, and to get anywhere with Jonah when he’s feeling down, persistence is the key. ‘So,’ I continue. ‘I wonder if stuff might be turning up at mine.’

  ‘Like what?’ he asks.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I say. ‘Stuff.’

  ‘And…’

  ‘And,’ I say, passing him a piece of toast, ‘I want you to come with me to look.’

  ‘We didn’t see anything at the tree house.’

  ‘True,’ I agree, ‘but we didn’t look around. I’d like to go back and look around.’

  ‘Sure,’ says Jonah. He looks at the piece of toast in his hand and looks up at me. It is as though he has forgotten what to do next.

  ‘Butter it,’ I say, and I use my eyes to indicate where the butter is sitting, right in front of him.

  ‘Sure,’ he says. ‘Okay.’ Jonah grabs a knife and starts buttering. I hand him the second slice. ‘I can’t believe you’re actually cooking breakfast,’ he says, and he gives me the full-wattage Jonah Whiting smile.

  His face is so pretty and his eyes are so kind. I wish, for the umpteenth time, that I had killed Caleb Loeb when I’d had the chance.

  I was only three when Dad gave me my first car. My first and only car, as it turns out.

  ‘Here, little squirt,’ he said.

  We were standing in the shed, and I was willing my eyes to adjust to the gloom.

  ‘For god’s sake, Lucas,’ Mum said to Dad. ‘The poor kid has no idea what she’s supposed to be looking at.’

  Dad lifted me up and swung me onto his hip, grabbed a large object off the ground with his free hand and walked us both outside. The sunlight was blinding but, as my eyes adjusted, I could make out a shiny red car. I stood, unmoving. The tension must have been excruciating.

  ‘Put her in it,’ suggested Mum. Dad obeyed. He lifted me up and guided me into the seat. He placed my hands on the wheel, then lifted each leg until both feet were resting on the pedals. For the next hour, Dad pushed me around the yard, coaxed me to pump my legs, taught me how to steer.

  After lunch I was on my own. I got more adventurous. The driveway had a small slope running away from the shed. It ended in a dip and I would drag my feet on the ground, to help slow my approach. When Mum realised there were no brakes, she made me wear my gumboots. This was even better as it meant I could brake at the last minute, skidding to a halt in the dirt.

  That little car and I became inseparable. When Dad was fixing his truck, I would pretend to fix my car. Sometimes he would prop it up on boxes, so I could lie underneath it and fix the drive shaft. But mostly I drove it in the house. I would get out of bed in the morning and drive to the kitchen for breakfast. I would sit in the car and eat lunch on the front porch. I probably would have slept in it—if I had been allowed.

  The day came when I was too big to get my legs under the bonnet. Reluctantly I passed it on to Sarah who used it as a dolls’ playhouse.

  ‘Your father found that car at Bunter and Davis,’ says Papa, when I ask him about it. ‘He spent months fixing it up. The mechanics of those little pedal cars were fairly simple. All he had to do was straighten the drive shaft and remove the rust. It was the panel beating and respraying that took the most time.’

  ‘It was metal?’

  ‘Yes, sport,’ replies Papa, ‘and it was a little beauty.’

  Oscar is really adventurous. He says that leaving Mrs Blanket was scary at first, but once he got used to it, he could never go back to being a tank-dweller. In a way, I know what he means. As much as I miss Mum, Dad and Sarah, I love my new life with Jonah and the Minnow. I don’t think I could ever go back either. It was a strange realisation.

  ‘Have you given the sinker to the Minnow yet?’ asks Oscar, during one of our late afternoon swims. Ever since he suggested I keep the sinker, he hasn’t left the subject alone.

  ‘Not yet, Oscar,’ I say. ‘I still feel uncomfortable about it.’

  ‘Are you talking about the sinker, or Bill?’

  This is the problem with perceptive friends. They take no notice of your camouflage. ‘Can we not get into this now?’ I plead.

  The water is warm and dark. I just want to enjoy it.

  ‘Bill is the Minnow’s biological father,’ says Oscar, playing the same record as Papa.

  ‘I don’t care to dwell on it.’

  ‘No one’s asking you to dwell, Tom. But for your own sake, you might want to give up suppressing the fact. It’s taking too much energy.’

  ‘I don’t want to talk about it, Oscar,’ I say, my voice rising involuntarily. ‘Please, just drop it.’

  ‘Okay,’ he says.

  We swim across the inlet to the dinghy, which is moored about thirty metres from the pier. It is Bill’s tinny, but he has been unable to collect it since Jonathan lodged an AVO against him. He isn’t allowed anywhere near the inlet or Jonah’s house. He can’t even go to the boatshed unless he has prior permission. Jonathan said that once charges are brought against him, he will probably go to jail. Until then, he is living in town, in a room above one of the pubs. It is nowhere near the pet shop or the pie shop, so I haven’t got much chance of bumping into him accidentally. Even if that happens, Jonathan says I am to remain calm and walk away. Bill is not allowed to approach me or speak to me.
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  ‘Can I tell you something?’ Oscar asks. We have finished our swim and I’m about to climb into the dinghy.

  ‘Do I have a choice?’

  ‘Sure, Tom,’ he says, waiting until I’m comfortably aboard. ‘On this, you most certainly have a choice.’

  I wrap myself in a towel and lean over the side. ‘Okay, Oscar,’ I say. ‘Spill the beans.’ I brace myself for a lecture.

  ‘You are the strongest person I’ve ever met,’ he says.

  That’s it? I’m not sure what to say.

  ‘I’ll be off then,’ he says, and he dives under the tinny and disappears. A moment later he surfaces, about ten metres away. ‘I forgot to tell you,’ he shouts, ‘I’m visiting friends on the other side of the outcrop.’ What he means is: it’s safe to cast my line anywhere this evening.

  ‘Thanks, Oscar.’

  I dry off and pull on my tracksuit over my swimmers. The sun has dropped behind the trees and the inlet is cast in shadow, but the sky directly above me is still light, deepening to a deep red smudge in the west. It’s probably only half an hour till sunset, meaning I’ve got less than an hour to catch dinner. But the conditions are perfect, there is almost no breeze, the water is calm—and within no time at all I’ve cast two lines off the bow and am readying a third. My feet are cold, even though the rest of me is warm, and I make a mental note to bring socks with me from now on. Then I sit back and wait.

  A fish tugs on the line that is tied to my wrist. I must have nodded off. I open my eyes and get a fright to see that it’s quite dark. I sit up and hurriedly pull in the line, but it’s empty. The two off the bow are no different, although the bait has gone from all three. Rascal fish.

  Nothing for it, but to pull up anchor and go home.

  I’m almost at the pier when something catches my eye: a small flint of light, coming from Ponters Corner. I continue rowing, keeping my eyes steady, waiting for it to happen again. I’m about to give up, when I see it, brighter and closer, and, if I’m not mistaken, heading for the pier.

  I row faster, not caring whether it’s obvious or not that I’m in a hurry. If it’s Bill, he knows all my moves anyway, so the important thing is to make the pier before him and get home fast. Thank god I’ve got Jonah’s bike.