Free The Hook by Raffaella Barker Page B

for his catch. Christy smiled and went out to greet him. His pale round eyes gazed from a face sprouting hairs, some on the chin, more on his upper lip and a fringe on each cheekbone like low-slung false eyelashes.
    â€˜I’ve just had the two,’ he said, pulling a pair of rainbow trout from his fishing bag.
    As he held them out to her the bag slipped from his shoulder and landed open at her feet. Inside, fishtails and eyes and pink open mouths heaved, bodies flapped, dry-scaled and dull with exhaustion. He had not even killed them.
    â€˜What about those then?’ Christy’s voice spat anger. She would have let him go; she hadn’t noticed the bulge of his fishing bag tucked behind him. Her rage was at her own inefficiency more than his deception. She grabbed the bag and counted. ‘One, two, three,four, five . . . you know we only allow three. The rest should have been thrown back.’ She spoke to a space.
    The man had gone, his plump hips wiggling as he trotted away to his car, throwing the two trout he had declared over his shoulder as he went. Christy gazed after him, her arms full of thrashing fish, astonished by his cowardice.
    â€˜You should at least have the guts to stand up for yourself,’ she yelled as the car plunged up the track and away.
    Christy was confused by Frank’s quick fondness for Mick. It made her feel as if they were married already. Already. How could she think ‘already’ when it was August and she had only known him since May? Mick was often early to collect her. Frank would let him in and lead him through to the porch for a drink. The third time Mick was early Frank didn’t even bother to call Christy. Usually he shouted up the stairs, ‘Christy, your young man is here.’ Mortifying; in the mirror Christy’s face flared crimson hot, imagining what Mick must be thinking. The day Frank didn’t call up to her she was even more irritated. Did he think Mick had come to see him? Had Mick come to see him? She might as well stay upstairs. No one would notice. She hadn’t dressed after her bath yet, but was lounging on her bed, the warm air drying her skin. In the blue light of her room with curtains drawn, her draped limbs gleamed and her stomach and hips curved across the bedspread, taut like theunderbelly of a salmon. She looked down at her body, half closing her eyes, trying to make herself sink and vanish into the deep-water folds of fabric on the bed.
    Finally she dressed and went downstairs, moving quietly through the house to surprise Mick and Frank. She saw them and her urge to disturb them slid away. They were so comfortable talking, leaning side by side on the rails of the porch, looking out through the heat-hazed evening. She and Mick didn’t go out that night. Frank poured her a drink and took one of her cigarettes even though he never smoked; Christy perched on a basket chair, smooth and grown-up in her father’s house. Everything was a little different that evening, like a familiar face subtly altered after a long absence. The shadows and the smells suggested a mood she hadn’t known in this house. Cosy domesticity had been Jessica’s creation, and it had died with her. When they were alone together, Christy cooked her father instant food in the microwave and they ate it on their knees in front of the television or standing up in the kitchen between forays out to the lake to deal with late fishermen. Frank didn’t seem aware of any change, though, leaning back in his chair on the porch, one hand shading his eyes, the other tipping whisky around his glass. Maybe the difference was that she was seeing it all through Mick’s eyes. She felt suddenly as if she was looking down at herself, except it wasn’t Christy, it was Jessica, and her clothes hung in the way that they used to hang on Jessica, sliding over her frame, never crumpled, never tight.
    Frank coughed.
    â€˜Are you sure you won’t have