Free At Home With The Templetons by Monica McInerney Page A

smiling back. ‘I just didn’t worry about you, that’s all. There’s a big difference.’ She’d been in the kitchen cooking dinner the evening Tom returned home from the dam
     
    with a bag full of yabbies and a tale to tell. ‘I met this kid Spencer at the dam. He’s from England and he’d never even heard of yabbies before, so I told him they were sort of Australian crayfish, and then he ran home and got his own string and bait and ‘
    ‘Spencer? Spencer Templeton, you mean? From Templeton Hall?’
    ‘You know him?’
    ‘We saw him that day at the fete, do you remember? Dressed up and showing people around.’
    ‘He was that kid?’ Tom said, as if it all made sense now. ‘He told me he’s never been to school, not even for a day. His mum teaches him at home. Can you teach me? That would be so cool.’
    ‘No, I can’t teach you and everything’s cool to you at the moment.’ Nina was surprised at her bristling reaction to Tom’s news. ‘We don’t really know him or his family, Tom. I’d rather you didn’t play with him again.’
    ‘But he’s the only other kid around here.’
    ‘You can have your friends home from school any time you like.’
    ‘But their parents have to drive them and pick them up or you have to drive me and pick me up. Spencer and I can just meet at the dam. I told him about the whistle. He’s going to get one too, so if he blows it I know he’s at the dam and I can meet him there. He said I can go and visit his house any time I like.’
    ‘No, you can’t.’ ‘Why not?’
    It was taking some getting used to, this new, older Tom who questioned everything she said to him. ‘Because I’d rather you didn’t. Because I don’t know his family.’
    ‘So get to know them.’
    ‘Please don’t talk to me like that.’
    Tom’s face turned mutinous. ‘You don’t let me do anything I want to do.’
    ‘I do, actually.’ She kept her voice calm, with difficulty. ‘You have a hundred times more freedom than I did when I was your age.’
    ‘This isn’t freedom.’ He said the last word at the top of his voice as he left the room, slamming the door behind him.
    Nina was shocked at her own anger. She wanted to ban him from meeting Spencer, tell him he wasn’t to go near the Templetons’ house again. She only just managed to stop herself following him into his room and shouting back at him. Again, she was overwhelmed by a rush of feeling, of wishing Nick was here, wishing that she could ask him to talk to Tom, ask him to deal with this new version of their previously sweet-natured son. But if Nick was here, Tom wouldn’t have needed a friend like this Spencer. Nick would have played cricket with him, kicked a football, taken him yabbying. She knew that line of thinking was counter-productive and also untrue. If Nick had still been alive, she and Tom wouldn’t have even been in Victoria. They would have been living in Queensland, with her mother and father just down the road, their kids going to local schools …
    Push it down, push it away, she’d told herself that night. Give Tom the fun he wants. Don’t make a big deal of this. And she’d nearly succeeded. Since then, she’d managed to smile and try to look interested and relaxed and unaffected by Tom’s stories about his new friend Spencer. They’d only met twice more, as far as she knew, at the dam each time. They still hadn’t caught any yabbies, but they’d talked about building a raft together, using wood from one of the old Templeton Hall fences, corrugated iron left over from the new chicken coop at the Hall. They’d transport it all over in a wheelbarrow, Tom had told her. Again, Nina had to stop herself from warning Tom of all the dangers, from thinking too much herself about possible risks - rusty nails in the iron, splinters from the wood. The one thing she didn’t have to worry about was drowning, at least. The water in the dam was only about six inches high at the moment.
    The sound of the ten