Free Fire Song by Libby Hathorn Page B

and that was all there was to be said, for the nurse soon sent her packing.
    ‘You’ve tired her out, your poor mum. Off you go now.’
    It was then that Ingrid wanted to make her mother believe in her. She wanted to take her mother’s hand in hers and look in her face and get to that stony heart and say, ‘Mum, I’ll look after you. Honest to God, I’ll look after you somehow, some way, and we have no need to do this thing you’re asking me. We’ll find a way just like Grandma Logan always said. We will!’ And then Mum would say, yes, of course we will, and she’d kiss her poor hand and then she’d put her arms round her mother and hug her better, just as she did with Pippa when she fell over.
    But the nurse shooed Ingrid away. ‘She’s going to be all right, if she can just get some
rest.
    ‘No more talking, no more visitors for you today, young lady!’ The nurse was all over Mum then. ‘That’s the way. We’ll have you right as rain in no time.’
    And then Ingrid was outside on the lawn, sobbing into Blackie’s collar, where no one could see her, a new damned fire song starting in her head.
Fire and brimstone, fire and hearthstone, fire and stone, her stony, stony heart.
    When she stopped her crying and mopped her eyes with her hanky, she made a kind of plan. Everything was so awful she couldn’t – wouldn’t – think much more than an hour ahead. But for now, she was not going to go straight home to Mrs Harry Williams’s place to play Sevenies or anything else with Gracie. She’d go home to
Emoh Ruo
and collect a few things from round the house, no matter what Mum had said about not taking too much, because now she’d gone and promised to do what Mum wanted tonight.
    She could take everything next door without a worry, because she was staying there now. She could get Mum’s overnight bag, the strong leather one that Mr Neville Frankshad left behind. Mum had said it was his bad luck and she wasn’t chasing all over Australia for him, if that’s what he thought about his blessed bag. He could come back and get it if he wanted, but he never did. It was big enough. She’d grab clothes, of course, some books and photos and other precious things.
    Most of all she was thinking of Freddy’s letter, the only one they’d ever received – had to be almost a year ago. It was curling up at the ends now and a bit worn from so much reading. She wouldn’t let that precious thing go up in flames, no matter what else did, when
Emoh Ruo
burnt to the ground.
    ‘It’s funny, you know, Blackie,’ she said, as she went out the hospital gate and headed for home. Of course she couldn’t say out loud what was funny. You never knew who could be passing by and think you were nuts – even if you weren’t exactly talking to yourself, but to a dog. The funny thing was that the thought of collecting some of their things from
Emoh Ruo
made her feel calmer again, even though the reason she was doing it was nothing short of monstrous.

6
This kiss is from Freddy
    W allerawang
C/-Wallerawang Post Office
   (but don’t post anything here, because she gets it first and I won’t ever see it. I’ll send you an address. Maybe for Cessnock Post Office next time, but let me find out.)
    Dear Ingrid,
    I can’t believe my luck in getting this letter to you. We are stuck in this hole of a place, Charlie and me, on this stinking farm and seems like we’ve been here forever. Six months now. I’m counting the days, the weeks and months. But it won’t be forever, I promise.
    So he hated Wallerawang and that was why the Wallerawang song got stuck in her head like some bad off-note. He hated it from way back then when they’d been there six months! And so did Charlie, despite Mum saying when she’d talk about them – which was hardly ever, now – how they both just loved it, those boys, free and easy out there on a lovely big healthy farm.
    We don’t get to school much on account of the load of work the old slave driver