Free Mothers and Daughters by Kylie Ladd Page A

with a few less pictures, but I reckon he’s just jealous because he doesn’t look like Kelly. I mean, they’re both bald, but that’s about it.
    That’s pretty much all the news. Nothing has really changed here, I just wanted to check how you are and to say that I still think about the year seven disco and that you’re pretty cool. I won’t say anymore in case Mum is reading this (STOP IT MUM!). I hope you can write back sometime, but put it in an envelope because Finn’s a snoop, and he tells Torran everything.
    Have fun,
    Callum
    Tess folded up the letter, heart racing, and shoved it back in its envelope. She pulled her legs up to her chest and hugged herself, at the same time pushing back against the door. Her mum was getting into her bathers, and she’d never barge in on her without knocking anyway, but somehow it had felt important not just to shut the door while she read the letter, but to sit against it too.
    She went to stand up, then changed her mind and pulled out the single sheet of paper again, unable to resist reading it once more. It looked as if it had been torn from an exercise book, the foolscap sort they’d started using once they’d moved to high school. Had Callum written it in class? She could picture him hunched over one of the old wooden benches in the science lab, arm curled protectively around the page while Stevie farted or did something dangerous with a Bunsen burner nearby . . . He wouldn’t have written it at home, she was sure of that. Not in the bedroom he had to share with Finn.
    Tess smoothed out the blue-lined paper, noticing that her hands were damp. I put it on the shelf next to my bed. So he’d kept her postcard, valued it, even . . . The only time I ever look in there is to read it again.
    It had felt so daring sending it to him. She’d wanted to write to him almost since the first day she and her mother had arrived in Kalangalla, but she’d waited two months to carry it out. It wasn’t good to look too eager. She’d learned that at Subway. Lack of interest interested them every time. Eventually she’d chosen a few postcards from the general store—scenes of the beach, turquoise and white. Anyone who hadn’t been here would assume that the colours must have been adjusted, tarted up to impress the recipient and encourage tourism, but they hadn’t; it really did look like that. She’d written as much on the back of each of the cards—to Callum, to Janey, to a few other kids at school. If Callum mentioned that he’d heard from her he’d learn that others had too. That was good. That protected her.
    I put masking tape on the envelope as a test. The tape had been untouched when her mother gave her the letter. Morag wasn’t a snoop, and neither was her own mother, who had handed it to her without a word once she’d got back from showing Fiona, Caro and Morag to their rooms, and Janey and Bronte had left to find them. Nonetheless, Tess hadn’t trusted her with the postcards, instead handing them directly to the postman when he called into the office on one of his twice-weekly stops. It wasn’t that there was anything on them that she didn’t want her mum to see—everything she had written was as bland and cheery as a holiday brochure—it was just that she didn’t need to see them, either. That was part of growing up, wasn’t it? Taking care of your own business.
    How are you enjoying it up there? Tess tipped back her head, staring at the ceiling as she framed an answer in her mind. I really love it , she would write back. When we first arrived it was so humid and hot that I could barely move. I needed a sleep every afternoon like a toddler! And I missed everyone too—Janey and Bron and the school and you. I even missed French! Well, not really, but I missed how we used to pass each other notes, and sometimes you’d write yours in ‘French’ except it wasn’t really French, you just put ‘le’ in front of everything. Was that too much, she wondered,