'Starving,' she said.
21
'EVA!' KAREN MICEH dropped the platter she was drying, and it smashed into pieces on the tiled kitchen floor. Her two-year-old daughter, Eva, began to cry at the noise and the shock of Mummy yelling at her.
Within three lurching strides, Karen had reached the child sitting cross-legged under the dining room table and removed the pointed filleting knife from her lap. Eva howled more loudly.
'Oh my God, Eva! How many times have I told you, you mustn't play… owww!'
Karen banged her head on the table as she bundled wet-faced Eva up from the floor. She held her close, stroking her back, automatically jiggling her little body up and down. Manoeuvring one hand out from under her daughter's chubby legs, she glanced at her watch. Oh for heaven's sake, she thought. How am I going to get everything done on time?
For the third time already this morning, she cursed her ratbag husband, Eddie. Ex-husband, she reminded herself, and good riddance. She didn't miss his lazy, bludging friends calling at all hours of the night; she didn't miss his subtle putdowns and the way he leered at other women. She certainly didn't miss the bong under his side of the bed. When she'd found her daughters, Maryana and Eva, giggling and grimacing over its stink one morning, she knew her fool husband would never grow up, and that her marriage was over.
Actually, in some ways life had never been so peaceful for Karen as it was now – just her and the girls, homework and shopping, and her part-time work as a sandwich hand at Castle Towers. The one thing she couldn't do without, though, was Eddie's pay cheque.
She walked the sniffling Eva back to the sink and settled her into the highchair she'd set up so her little girl could 'help' with the dishes. This time, though, she pushed the chair further from the sink. How had she missed Eva grabbing the knife?
She sighed tiredly and looked into the loungeroom of her Baulkham Hills home. This place is perfect, she told herself again. I can't move the girls now, they're just settling down after the separation. She bent to pick up the shards of the ceramic platter. One of her favourites; her brother, Ken, had bought it for her in Spain. She turned to frown at Eva, but her daughter's self-occupied chortling over her tea-set left her smiling instead.
It was her brother who'd given her the rental idea.
'This is really a great room,' Ken had said to her the previous month, when he'd come to install the above- ground pool he'd bought for his nieces – getting it ready for Christmas, he'd said. He always spoiled them.
'Yeah, the girls love to play in there,' she'd said around a peg, as she hung out the washing on the hoist next to the lemon tree.
'You could rent that out to another family,' he'd laughed.
Karen didn't know anyone who'd ever taken in a boarder, but actually it was the perfect solution for her. With the extra income, there'd be no need for her and the girls to find a cheaper place to rent. Of course, the self- contained space under the large balcony couldn't actually house a family, but a single person would have plenty of room.
The problem, the real-estate people had warned her, was that her house was some distance from public transport, and the sort of people wishing to rent a single room typically didn't have their own car. This would reduce the number of applicants, they told her. Karen was not daunted. She knew she might be idealising it, but she had an image of herself selecting from a few young people first moving away from home, preferably a girl – Karen would be her mentor, a friend; she'd really enjoy the company. Maybe her tenant would be from the country – here for her first year at university. She could imagine how the girl's family would appreciate the family home away from home that Karen would provide. Macquarie Uni was not too far from here, she reasoned.
Six months had passed with just a single application submitted. The couple had been young, but that's where her fantasy tenants ended. They'd pulled up to Karen's house in a car she was certain was their home at the time. Even had there not been boxes and clothes piled high, the driver would have been hard pressed to see through the grime that covered the windows. The occupants didn't alight for a good five minutes, and from behind the curtain in her loungeroom Karen watched them screaming at one another. At least their windscreen was relatively clear. From this vantage, she could also see the drapes moving surreptitiously at number nineteen. Mrs Robotham. What would she have made of Jackie and Troy as new neighbours? Jackie picked at sores on her arms while Troy did the talking. Neither of them really made eye contact with Karen. As soon as they crossed the threshold, she was planning their exit. Troy smelled like Eddie's bong water and Jackie couldn't negotiate around the furniture. Karen couldn't be certain, but it seemed Troy's interest lay more in her electrical goods than the room for rent. His eyes lingered on the microwave, the DVD, the clunky laptop she used to play Solitaire.
Karen had resignedly begun searching for less expensive properties for herself when someone else had answered her ad.
Now, she threw the last of the scatter cushions onto the couch and kicked one of Maryana's rollerskates back under a chair. Maryana, her six-year-old, was at school. Karen bustled back to the kitchen to grab Eva – couldn't leave her near the knives again – and hurried over to respond to the doorbell.
I hope he likes the room, she thought, opening the door with a smile.
If it hadn't been for the old woman, Karen's first reaction would have been to shut the door again immediately. As it was, however, the tiny, bent lady looked as though she could not stand up for much longer, despite the fact that the man was holding her arm so solicitously.
She showed them in and asked the old woman if she'd like a drink.
'Just some water, please,' he answered for her.
'My grandmother has lived through war and famine,' he said when Karen returned with the water. 'She has arthritis and she turned ninety last year, but she still insisted that she come and inspect the room before I take it.' He smiled fondly at his grandmother as he helped her accept the glass.
Karen smiled uncertainly. She did not like his long hair, but he seemed a much nicer person than her first glimpse of him had indicated. Anyone who was this close to his grandmother must be a good person. She had a sense about these things. Just goes to show, she reminded herself, you can't judge a book by its cover – her own grandmother had taught her that.
'I'm afraid there are a few stairs,' she said, shifting a shy Eva to the other hip. 'But when you're both ready, I'll take you down to see the room, Henry.'
'That'd be great. Thanks.'
Karen smiled more brightly and led Cutter and his grandmother from the room.
In one of the Department of Community Service's many attempts to 'help' him, at thirteen Cutter had been sent to a small group home for troubled children. The house was in leafy Baulkham Hills, and he was pretty sure that most of the neighbours didn't know the purpose of the home. A couple, Debbie and Ian, chosen and paid by the Department for their extraordinary progress with even the most difficult kids, ran the home.
Cutter had loved Baulkham Hills. Sure, everyone was racist there, but that was the case pretty much everywhere when he was a kid. The Australian families fascinated him, and after twilight, he would sit in the bushes for hours watching the mums preparing dinner, the kids doing their homework, their dads arriving home from work. He'd laugh quietly at the funny way they ate, the way the kids were disciplined and ran crying to their rooms. Better than any TV show he'd ever seen, however, were the backhanders he saw some of the perfect dads give the perfect mums. He'd found at least four of these households, and he would sit in their azalea bushes, the camellia shrubs, and stuff his hand in his mouth to stop his laughter being heard. The suburb was so quiet in the evenings that he'd even taken to bringing a towel to muffle the chortles while he watched his special TV screens – their well-lit loungeroom windows.
Debbie, his group home 'mum', had told him he should be coming home earlier. She would sit with him at night and quietly ask him where he went, why he never ate with them. He couldn't tell Debbie that he skipped school and went home most days to eat rice balls and fish soup. Debbie would be furious that the school had not told her he was seldom there. Things were going just fine for him at that school – he didn't want to be there, and
