Part 9 (2/2)

'I've never seen anything like it,' I said. 'It's like being inside a lung.'

'Or inside the womb of the great mother,' she murmured.

'Or a cathedral,' I whispered as we squeezed through an opening into the last chamber.

'Ah, yes,' she said. 'This is the place.' And she took a deep breath and held it in.

Perry must have sensed something because he stopped talking about the caves and said he'd give us time to be alone. The rock formations were like the pipes of the biggest organ I'd ever seen, and a shaft of light shone through a crack in the ceiling.

Granny Carmelene became very quiet and very still, and leant into me, not letting go of my hand. I wasn't sure what to do, or what there was to do, other than to sort of prop her up and sway back at her with the same amount of sway she had towards me.

She started humming as we swayed. Then the hum turned into a type of singing, as though her voice was a crystal clear musical instrument. The sound bounced all over the cave walls and back at me, making my body s.h.i.+ver. I felt warm then suddenly cold, as though I was stretching out of my body, then shrinking back in again.

Granny Carmelene's voice was like nothing I'd ever heard before. And all the echoes made it sound like a whole choir, which reminded me of harps and lyres and angels. I know you probably won't believe this, but I really did see an angel, disappearing up and fading into the shaft of light. I really did.

That night on the Spirit of Tasmania I wrote a postcard to my little baby nearly-born sister, Flora.

Willow jumped and leapt and spun all around me when I came home from school on Tuesday. I could hardly get in the front gate.

She raced up and down the driveway and did laps of the Hills hoist while I was getting the spare key out from its hiding place under the brick near the shed. Boris was watching from up on the garden wall, hissing as Willow sped past.

'Come on, girl,' I said. 'Let's have ourselves a bit of couch time while no one's home.'

There was a note from Mum on the kitchen table.

I kicked off my shoes and lay back on the couch. I had so many big feelings churning around all at once, and I wasn't sure which one to pay the most attention to. I was happy for Granny Carmelene that she got to go to King Solomon's caves, but sad because it had felt like she was saying goodbye. I mean, what else could it have been, given that there was an angel? And I felt guilty about Mum, and how I'd done so much behind her back a and for how I had thought she was so cold-hearted. I felt relieved to be home alone, just like the good old days, and better about Claud and me, and excited about Flora, who was coming really soon. It was all too much.

I closed my eyes and imagined myself up to seat 44K, but I was plonked back on the couch again because both 44K and 44J were occupied by loud Americans, and the rest of the flight was completely full. So I turned the TV on, which is the next best thing when you really need to avoid your feelings.

Mum and I walked down to the back-room restaurant at the Elwood RSL. I actually liked it far better before the grumpy new owners took all the giant wooden salad servers off the wall and painted everything beige and hung a boring picture. I mean, salad bowls on the wall are far more interesting, but maybe that's just me wanting everything to stay the same, no matter how much Mum keeps saying: the only thing that never changes, is that everything changes. Boy, am I tired of hearing that one.

We ordered our dinners and sat down. I really wanted to tell Mum about the Spirit of Tasmania, but I couldn't, which is another reason why secrets are totally bad news. Mum would have loved to hear about the cabins and the tiny little windows, not to mention the caves.

'Did you hear any news on Buster's mum, Sunny?'

'They still haven't found her,' I said. 'They think she may be sailing to Vanuatu with some guy she met who needed a cook on his boat. That's what her last boss said anyway, the one on Great Keppel Island.'

'You'd think she'd at least write,' Mum said, sipping her red wine.

'Yeah, she's not being exactly motherly,' I said, and then I remembered how Granny Carmelene hadn't been exactly motherly either, and I felt bad again, for both of them.

Mum must have read my mind because right after the waiter brought our meals to the table, she looked me right in the eye and said, 'Sunny, you haven't contacted your grandmother, have you? You haven't broken your promise?'

So that I didn't have to tell a lie, I said, 'Would you care if she died, Mum?' and focussed very hard on cutting my chicken.

'I'd care, Sunny. I'd hope she died in peace. I'd hope she didn't suffer. I'd hope her life was fulfilled. I don't wish her any harm, but that doesn't mean we have a relations.h.i.+p, not one that works. It's not going to change anything when she dies. Dying has nothing to do with it, Sunny.'

'Do you want some pepper?' I asked, pa.s.sing over the grinder.

'Sunny a you didn't answer my question.'

It wasn't only because I could still hear the faint and gurgled pinging of the Stash-O-Matic all the way at the bottom of the sea, that I ended up telling Mum the truth. It was mostly because my head felt so cluttered, and I was in the habit of having Mum help me get my cluttered feelings in order. Besides, I really wanted to hear her side of the story about Granny Carmelene and Grandpa Henry (because there are always two sides to a story, sometimes even more). I told her everything a even about wagging school and even about going to Tasmania, which meant she'd dob me in to Dad and Steph and I'd get in trouble for lying to them, too. The only thing I didn't tell was about Granny Carmelene's condition, because that was a secret that I still felt was important to keep, and not one that involved lying to anybody or sneaking about.

Mum was really angry about the Tasmania part.

'For G.o.d's sake, Sunny, what if the d.a.m.n boat had sunk?' She called the waiter over and asked for another gla.s.s of red wine.

But I hardly noticed the trouble I was in at all, and hardly listened to a thing Mum said. Besides, I wasn't necessarily sorry about what I'd done, just about the order I did it in. Finally Mum stopped talking and gave a deep sigh.

'I just wanted to help you and Granny make up,' I said. 'I really thought I could.'

'I know, love. I know you were trying to figure things out,' said Mum, reaching over to hold my hand.

'And you just wouldn't give me any answers, and-'

'It's painful for me, Sunny, to be blamed all these years for something I shouldn't have even had to know about. If I'd told my mother what I knew, it would have caused more trouble than I thought I could handle, and I really wanted to believe it wasn't happening, so I just ignored it and hoped it wasn't real. I convinced myself it wasn't true a not to mention how angry I was with my father and Aunt Clementine.'

'Granny's own sister! And I just thought having a brother would be bad.'

'It's what you call a double betrayal, Sunny. It's the worst sort.'

All that trouble had made me lose my appet.i.te, so I drew my knife and fork together and Mum did too, even though she'd hardly touched her meal either. 'I hope the chef doesn't take it personally,' she smiled.

'Mum, I like Granny Carmelene. I don't like how she was with you, but I like how she is with me.'

'It's all right, Sunny,' Mum said. 'I understand. I used to like her too, you know.' And she looked hard up to the ceiling and tipped her head back a little, to try to make her tears go back in.

Before I went to bed I snuck outside with the cordless phone and rang Granny Carmelene. I was worried about her coming back from Tasmania to an empty house, even though I'm sure for her it was nothing new.

'I'm perfectly fine, thank you, Sunday. I feel remarkably refreshed, actually, and came home to the most wonderful news from my art dealer. Would you believe, he's managed to locate one of the most precious maps on earth, an original, one of the old Chinese ones I told you about, from the fourteen hundreds?'

'That's amazing,' I said.

'It is indeed. I can't wait for you to see it, Sunday. It's made me sing with joy all day!'

Dad was dead angry when Mum told him about my secret trip to Tasmania, especially as Steph was about to have the baby.

That's the trouble with divorced parents who are still friendly: you can't get away with half the stuff that kids do who have the sort of divorced parents who swap them over in the playground on Wednesday afternoons and only speak about whose turn it is to pay for things. Mum and Dad spent ages on the phone thinking up a suitable punishment. I was just hoping Mum didn't talk it over with Carl because he'd come up with a beauty, for sure. Can you imagine? It would be dishes duty for the rest of my life, I reckon. You'd think Mum and Dad would at least have some compa.s.sion, though. I mean, I couldn't tell them about Granny Carmelene's illness, but I did at least own up to my crime. Surely that should lighten my sentence?

Meanwhile, Boris had taken over Willow's dog bed. Every time Willow snuck past, Boris stood up and growled, swiping at Willow with a front paw. Boris also ate Willow's dinner. Willow just sat like the Sphinx, but with her head on the floor, and waited until he had finished. Because Willow had nowhere to sleep at night she'd taken to sneaking onto the bottom bunk in my room. n.o.body had noticed, so I let her keep doing it. Besides, I was worried about Willow becoming depressed. I told Buster about it when we were practising goals before school. He knew all about dogs, which not only made him far more interesting than I'd given him credit for and possibly even nice (don't tell!) but I thought he might also know some sort of way to help, or at least cheer Willow up.

'Cats always win in the end,' he said. 'But I'll think of something.'

'Buster's going to give us a hand with Pizza-A-Go-Girl tonight,' said Claud. 'He's even got some new pizza ideas. Haven't you, Buster?' Claud nudged him with her elbow and gave him the eyebrow.

'Yep, might be just what you need,' he smiled, before shooting his second swish in a row. Buster's idea of just what I need was a bit of a worry. Especially when Claud told me she'd caught Buster pas.h.i.+ng the mirror when she accidentally walked in on him in the bathroom. Can you imagine? Whether he was pas.h.i.+ng the mirror 'cos he loved himself, or whether he was practising so that he could pounce on Claud, pas.h.i.+ng a mirror is just about as wrong-town as you can get! Even Claud thinks so.

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