Free The Spare Room by Kathryn Lomer Page B

— usually the executives, or sometimes business associates visiting from overseas. My father’s company is too small to have that kind of house. Even this house is quite a strange one to Australians. I remember trying to describe it to Daisy, using her method — drawing. You should have seen the surprise on her face.
    But that’s more like a hotel, she said, or a department store.
    The first floor is my bedroom, I said. The second is my parents’ bedroom. The third is the living area and kitchen. The garage is at the bottom.
    You mean you have to take the lift up to breakfast? she said, eyes popping.
    That’s right, I said. But we have intercom so we can talk to each other without changing floors.
    She shook her head. Not that people do much communicating in this house, she said. Perhaps we should try using an intercom.
    What she said was true, of course. I knew by then it wasn’t just my lack of English. Something was definitely amiss in this family. They interacted in as basic a way as possible. Jess was away a lot, at work. Often she didn’t have dinner with us. Rather like what happens here with my father, but reversed. Angie was out almost every night. I hadn’t noticed so much since I’d been working as well. I was very busy trying to keep up with homework, class, work, giving Alex a hand with the boat, and having some social life, mostly with Stolly but sometimes with other overseas students. The Moffats and I settled into routines which were quite pleasurable for me. I worried about Daisy though, and spent time with her whenever I was there. It was partly that she wanted company, partly that she was happy to talk, but I also enjoyed her company. She was funny and lively and full of questions about Japan. A few times, I felt like telling her about you, but then I’d remember how young she was, and stop myself.
    But I was telling you about the shack. We drove up the east coast of the island. The views were so beautiful I don’t know how to describe them. Blue water. White beaches, or yellow. Bush and mountains on one side and the sea on the other. That old idea of ours about riding around Australia on motorbikes popped into my head and I imagined us roaring up that road, weaving around bends.
    Eventually we reached a little community of shacks. They were clustered at the base of a headland where a lighthouse stood. The lighthouse dominated the landscape with its bright white paint and a red strip down one side.
    The shack itself was small, made of vertical boards painted white, and surrounded by low scrubby bushes. It had a dilapidated look, as if no one had been there for some time. But many of the other shacks looked that way too, closed up, curtains drawn. When Alex opened the door he had to brush away a huge cobweb from the door frame before he could go in.
    Inside also, the shack had a disused air. Things were folded away and stacked up. Dead flies lay along the windowsills. Alex poked about a bit and sighed.
    Let’s go over to the lighthouse, he said.
    As we left the shack, I noticed a motorbike helmet in the middle of a pile of beach things — a windsurfer, boogie boards. I put my hand on its smooth surface for a moment. Again, thoughts of you. But then I wondered who this belonged to, who used it. Alex?
    Alex had already gone out and I had to hurry to catch up with him. Underfoot the soil was sandy and criss-crossed with lines of ants. I forgot about the helmet — for the time being, anyway.
    The lighthouse stands at the tip of the headland, overlooking the Tasman Sea. I can understand Alex’s fascination with lighthouses and the people who used to operate them. There is something so beautiful about their structure and their position above the sea. They are so solitary, like their keepers were, but their purpose is safety of all who travel the seas. Now all but one of the lighthouses there are automated. Only the Maatsuyker Island light has a roster