Free House of Sticks by Peggy Frew Page B

over.
    How long before she got worried and tried to call him? Or before the truck driver or someone else — police probably — used Pete’s phone and called her? Answering to the foreign voice, that dropping-away feeling, her arms and legs getting heavy.
    Or what if there were no mobile phones? How long would they wait here at the house before she took the kids and walked all the way down to the roadside to flag down a car? What if it got dark? If she kept thinking he’d come, kept looking for his headlights in the falling dusk until it was too late? Waiting longer, sitting by the stove. And then what? Would she put the children to bed? Sit up and wait by herself? Fall asleep and wake in the middle of the night, the fire died down, the chill creeping in? Getting up to put on more wood. Going to stand by the window, staring out into nothing while the kids slept behind her.
    Or would she go down sooner? That night, that evening. Knowing something must have happened. Finding a torch in a drawer. Rugging the children up, strapping Jess to her in the sling. Tottering down the unmade road with the twins clinging, fighting over who got to hold the hand without the torch. The weak beam of light giving them only a wavering little circle directly in front, the black dark pressing in on it, on them. The awful thought of the battery running out.
    The road. A car. Waving the torch.
    â€˜Cock-a-doodle-doo,’ went Edie.
    Bonnie blinked and looked around, and up rose Louie off his stump.
    They walked behind the shack this time, uphill. Jess in the sling blowing bubbles and grabbing at Bonnie’s hair, her cheeks bright with the cold. Edie tramping ahead, gumboots swishing, beanie bobbling. Louie dragging a fallen branch that collected ribbons of bark in a jiggling pile. It was easy walking, the spaces wide between the trees, the ground uncluttered, the grass tussocks scattered evenly as if sown by hand.
    Up they went in a serious procession. ‘Here?’ she said, and Edie looked around and shook her head. ‘Here?’ she said a bit later, and Edie shook her head again. ‘What’s wrong with here? There’s a nice flat spot, and we can look back down at the house and watch the smoke come out the chimney.’
    â€˜Not quite right.’ And Edie stamped on. Up and up between the trees, until behind them enough of the spare bush was aligned to screen the house and it became just a darker blob amongst all the other dark blobs.
    â€˜Oh.’ Edie stopped. It was the fence. Drooping wire and leaning posts, a wattle sapling thrusting through it — but a fence still.
    â€˜Well,’ said Bonnie. ‘That’s it. That’s the end of Jim’s land.’
    â€˜But whose land is on the other side?’ said Louie, poking the wires with his branch.
    â€˜I don’t know. Somebody else’s.’
    â€˜But what’s their name?’
    â€˜I don’t know. Jim might know.’
    â€˜But who are they? Is it a boy or a girl?’
    â€˜I don’t know, Lou. I don’t know everyone in the world.’
    â€˜Can we go and visit them?’ said Edie.
    â€˜No. I don’t even know if there’s a house on that land. It might just be bush.’
    â€˜But where do the people live?’
    â€˜Well, there might not be anyone living there. It might just be bush — trees and stuff, and animals and birds. But the land still belongs to somebody and we don’t know that person and that’s why we can’t go on it.’ She turned back to where the smoke from their fire rose in a string above the treetops. ‘So,’ she said, ‘where shall we have our picnic then?’
    Edie sighed. ‘I s’pose it’ll have to be here,’ she said in a world-weary tone.
    Bonnie plonked down the bag. She spread the canvas-backed picnic rug in a clear spot and knelt on it. She took Jess out of the sling and put her down on her tummy on