The Ellie Chronicles (4 page)

‘How have you been?’ she asked me.

‘OK.’

‘You looked terrible at the funeral.’

‘Were you at the funeral?’

‘You mean you don’t remember?’

‘No. I didn’t think you were there. I was a bit hurt about it actually.’

‘Oh my God, Ellie, we had a conversation, but you seemed so switched off that I didn’t know if you wanted me to stay away or what. So I thought I’d wait a bit, until the first rush of visitors had finished. ’Cos Mum said that you’d be overwhelmed by them at first and the true friends are the ones who are still around when the others have gone back to their normal daily lives.’

‘There’s a book from the funeral, that people signed apparently, but I haven’t been game to look at it yet.’

Fi continued. ‘So I’m here if you want me, and for as long as you want, whether it’s five minutes or a couple of weeks.’

‘Oh, Fi, I’d love you to stay, for as long as you can. For life if you want.’

‘Has it been terrible? Is that a stupid question?’

I nodded. I couldn’t speak. Finally I gulped: ‘Terrible.’

‘You want to talk about it?’

‘No. Not yet. Maybe later. I don’t know.’

There was a bit of silence. ‘Do you remember anything about the funeral?’ she asked.

‘Oh yes. Quite a bit.’ I laughed. ‘Even stupid things, like Mrs Mathers and Mrs Kristicevic wearing the same dress.’

‘Yes, I noticed that. Of course they weren’t actually wearing the same dress. That would have been a bit uncomfortable.’

It took me a minute to realise what she meant. Showed how slowly my brain was working. ‘Oh very funny,’ I said, when I did figure it out.

‘Did you notice Lee fainting?’

‘No! Are you serious? Was he there too?’

‘God, you poor thing, you really were out of it.’

‘Did he actually faint?’

‘Totally. My father was one of the men who helped carry him outside. I’ve been talking to him on the phone just about every day. He’s out of his mind. He’s written about four letters to you.’

Lee. It doesn’t seem right that someone with a one-syllable name of three letters could have caused me more than a year of complicated agonising confusing wonderful sensations, and what was worse, he was still doing it. He loved me, he loved me not, I loved him, I loved him not. Last time I’d seen him we’d made love. But then in my mind the relationship slowly died. But then in my mind the relationship flared back to life. Then it didn’t. Then it did. Didn’t. Did. Now . . . I don’t know. Yes, no, maybe, all of the above.

‘I guess Lee would know what it’s like.’

‘I guess he would, except he never saw his parents’ bodies. He just heard about it.’

I looked away and sighed. ‘I haven’t even opened the mail. There’s so much of it and I think it’s nearly all about Mum and Dad and I just think it’s going to be so depressing reading it. I don’t even answer the phone most of the time.’

‘Yeah I’ve noticed. Well, that’s one thing I can help with while I’m here. We can open the mail together and go through it and work out which ones you want to answer. If any.’

‘Oh, it’s going to be so good to have you here. I just don’t think I should let you read Lee’s letters.’

She grinned. ‘That’s better. You’re getting a bit of life back. Can I have another coffee?’

With my back to her as I poured the coffee I said slowly, ‘You see, Fi, what I keep wondering is, whether what’s happened is my fault.’

A lot of people would have jumped in right there with the comfort hugs, and said reassuring things like ‘Oh no, Ellie, whatever gave you that idea, of course it’s not your fault, you have to stop thinking like that’, and so on. Fi had more sense than that. She didn’t say anything.

I brought the coffee back to the table and sat down again. Without looking at her I said, ‘Why did they pick out this place? Of all the farms, all the properties, all the houses to choose, why this one?’

‘You’re close to the border.’

‘We’re on the border, more or less. Except for a bit of bush. But so are thousands of other people. There are plenty of places they could have gone for.’

‘So you’re saying this is deliberate revenge. That they picked you out because of what we did during the war.’

‘Exactly. We did do rather a lot of damage.’

‘I can’t believe all the stuff we blew up.’

‘Me neither.’ One of them had been her house, which had been used by enemy officers as a base. But she didn’t seem to be thinking about that, and I wasn’t going to mention it unless she did.

‘Well, you might be right about them targeting you.’

‘Oh God, Fi, don’t say that. I can’t bear to be right. I don’t want to be right. You’re saying I killed my parents.’

‘No, you’re saying that. The truth is that you don’t know, I don’t know, no-one knows. No-one on this side of the border anyway. But even if it’s true, what was the alternative? That you should have been a coward during the war? That you should have been able to look into the future and see this would happen and then, I don’t know, what next? You should have surrendered to the nearest authorities and had yourself locked up?’

‘Something like that.’

I knew it was irrational, but I couldn’t stop the thoughts buzzing round in my head like dodgem cars.

Fi took a sip of her coffee and gave Gavin another back rub. After a while she said slowly, ‘Of course if you’re right, they could have been out to get you, not your parents.’

‘Gosh, you’re a comforting person to have around. But yes, that did cross my mind.’

‘Have you done anything about it?’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Like, protecting yourself? And Gavin?’

‘No, because if they come back, I figure it won’t be for a while. They’ll know the district’ll be in an uproar and there’ll be people ready for them. But it doesn’t stop me jumping about a metre when I hear any funny noises.’ I pushed my empty mug away. ‘Oh, Fi, all I want to do is be normal again. Reverse the clock. Have Mum and Dad back, and Grandma, and go to school and muck around on the bus and tell stupid jokes and stir the teachers and play soccer at lunchtime and be in another drama production.’

‘Does anyone really appreciate life while they have it?’

‘Oh, what’s that from? Where have I heard that before?’

‘It’s that play we did in Year 9.’

‘Oh yes.
Our Town
. “The poets and philosophers, maybe they do some.” Wasn’t that the answer?’

‘Something like that.’

‘I think babies appreciate it too. Not babies: infants, toddlers, whatever they call them. You know what I mean? The way they play in water, or look at a butterfly. The way they go crazy if you take them for a ride on a motorbike.’

‘And artists. Monet. When you look at his paintings you have to think, OK, he must have switched off the TV for an afternoon or two. He was right into it.’

‘People who notice stuff.’

‘I guess. Speaking of your grandmother, did you ever hear any more news about her?’

‘No, nothing.’

‘I never told you this, but I felt she was dead when we were hiding in her house during the war.’

‘Really? You mean, like in a psychic way?’

‘Yes.’

Homer came in, banging the kitchen door and making me jump. He twitched a bit himself when he saw Fi. They had a history and although they’d drifted apart they were still officially a couple. I always had an eye on Homer myself and I needed to know where he and Fi were going. I was a bit suspicious of Fi’s claims that her feelings about him had changed. She was always totally fascinated any time she heard me or anyone else talking about him.

‘You want a coffee?’ I asked him.

‘No thanks.’

He sat on one of the chairs. Of course he had to pick the broken one. He got up again in a hurry and looked at it in embarrassment.

‘Don’t worry, it’s been broken since I got my first dummy. Dad was always going to fix it.’

‘I’ll have a look at it after.’

He took the last of the peanut cookies from the jar on the table and ate it slowly, a nibble at a time. I watched him, thinking, ‘Another trace of my mother gone. There won’t be any more peanut cookies.’

Fi said to Homer, ‘Ellie’s thinking the guys who did this might have been after her family in particular. Or her. Targeting people who did the most damage during the war.’

‘It’s possible,’ Homer said, straight away.

I suddenly had the feeling they’d had this conversation already, out of my hearing. Maybe at the funeral. Maybe by phone. ‘What you think?’ I asked Homer.

‘General Finley thinks most of them just target places at random, looking for stuff to steal.’

‘Oh! General Finley! He sent the nicest flowers.’

General Finley was the New Zealand officer who organised some of our ‘guerilla’ stuff during the war. He was pretty important in the Army. I thought of him as a friend, even though we hadn’t spent a lot of time together.

‘Huh,’ Fi said. ‘You remember his flowers, but you don’t even remember me being there.’

Homer said: ‘Well, according to General Finley, there’s been a pattern of killings, groups coming across the border in search of whatever they can find. And he reckons the media only report about a quarter of the cases.’

‘So the rumours were true. I knew I should have listened to them.’ I gazed at Homer, trying to process all this information. ‘You’ve been talking to the General?’

‘Only by phone. But we’ve had a couple of long conversations. Plus his son’s here.’

‘His son? Here in Wirrawee? You’re kidding!’

‘He is in Wirrawee at the moment. But he’s been living in Stratton, and going to school there. His mother lives in Stratton – she’s Australian, but she and the General are divorced.’

‘How old is he?’

‘About our age. I’ve been talking to him too. Good bloke. Got a bit of common sense. You could take him fox-shooting and be pretty certain you wouldn’t get a bullet up your bum.’

Coming from Homer, this was high praise.

‘So why aren’t they doing anything about these raids? How come soldiers can just come over the border any time they want and kill anyone they want?’

Homer tapped a fork on the edge of the table and gazed out the window, frowning. ‘I suppose it comes down to politics in the long run,’ he said. ‘These guys who killed your parents and Mrs Mac. You just called them soldiers, and we all know they are soldiers, everyone knows that, but how do you prove it? They don’t wear uniforms, they don’t carry any papers ID’ing them as military, and every time there’s one of these raids their government says they’re very sorry but they can’t be responsible for criminal elements who take the law into their own hands. I mean, they say all the right things. They even say they’ll track them down and bring them to justice but funnily enough they never seem able to do it.’

He leaned back on the chair. I thought that at any moment we’d have another one broken. ‘Ellie, I don’t know how you’re going to feel about this, but the truth is that it’s too dangerous to let you stay here anymore. We think you should sell the place and move into town. Somewhere safe. General Finley thinks so too.’

Trust Homer to choose words that were bound to stir me up and get the opposite result to the one he wanted. He did that every time. I blamed his Greekishness. He had to be the boss. Well, stuff that for a joke. I had to be the boss.

‘
Let
me stay here!’ I exploded. ‘Since when do you decide whether you’re going to let me stay here or not?’

He pushed the chair back about a metre. Gavin retreated towards the pantry. Fi stayed where she was but she kept her head down.

‘That’s the trouble with you, Homer, you think everything on this goddamn planet should be under your control. That no-one should eat breathe sleep or shit unless it’s with your permission. You know how long my family’s been here? You know what we’ve been through to keep this place? Homer, my family’s eaten dirt and dug dams with their bare hands to keep it going. You think I’m going to walk out on it now, after my parents died to defend it? I tell you what, Homer, I’m not quitting. I’m here to stay.’

‘Go Ellie!’ Gavin yelled.

I looked at him in astonishment. How could he have lip-read all of that?

‘Have you got the slightest idea what we’re talking about?’ I asked him.

‘Sure,’ he replied straight away. ‘Homer wants you to quit the farm and you’re saying “No way”.’

I shook my head. I never could work out how Gavin understood so much of what was going on, but he had his ways. Maybe he had an aerial on his head, buried in his thick mop of hair.

‘What do you think we should do?’ I asked him.

Since my parents got killed, no-one had mentioned the problem of Gavin. I hadn’t thought much about it myself. There’d been no time for that. Everything was still too fresh, too raw, too recent. Was I going to be left to look after him myself? In this new world, even that was possible. There were so many orphans, so many homeless kids. If there was a scale that gave a ‘one’ to kids living in dumpsters and a ‘ten’ to the Brady Bunch, Gavin still rated a three or a four with just me to take care of him, no parents of his own, and my mum and dad, his foster-parents, killed in a massacre.

‘Stay here,’ he said promptly.

‘But it’s dangerous,’ I said.

‘Life’s dangerous,’ he said, with a funny little shrug of his shoulders.

It was a breath-stopping moment. I realised how much I underestimated Gavin sometimes. It was too easy to forget that this boy, with nothing but the strength of his personality, had not only survived many months of the war in the ruins of Stratton but had held together a group of other feral kids under his leadership. He was something special.