‘Exactly. We did do rather a lot of damage.’
‘I can’t believe all the stuff we blew up.’
‘Me neither.’ One of them had been her house, which had been used by enemy officers as a base. But she didn’t seem to be thinking about that, and I wasn’t going to mention it unless she did.
‘Well, you might be right about them targeting you.’
‘Oh God, Fi, don’t say that. I can’t bear to be right. I don’t want to be right. You’re saying I killed my parents.’
‘No, you’re saying that. The truth is that you don’t know, I don’t know, no-one knows. No-one on this side of the border anyway. But even if it’s true, what was the alternative? That you should have been a coward during the war? That you should have been able to look into the future and see this would happen and then, I don’t know, what next? You should have surrendered to the nearest authorities and had yourself locked up?’
‘Something like that.’
I knew it was irrational, but I couldn’t stop the thoughts buzzing round in my head like dodgem cars.
Fi took a sip of her coffee and gave Gavin another back rub. After a while she said slowly, ‘Of course if you’re right, they could have been out to get you, not your parents.’
‘Gosh, you’re a comforting person to have around. But yes, that did cross my mind.’
‘Have you done anything about it?’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Like, protecting yourself? And Gavin?’
‘No, because if they come back, I figure it won’t be for a while. They’ll know the district’ll be in an uproar and there’ll be people ready for them. But it doesn’t stop me jumping about a metre when I hear any funny noises.’ I pushed my empty mug away. ‘Oh, Fi, all I want to do is be normal again. Reverse the clock. Have Mum and Dad back, and Grandma, and go to school and muck around on the bus and tell stupid jokes and stir the teachers and play soccer at lunchtime and be in another drama production.’
‘Does anyone really appreciate life while they have it?’
‘Oh, what’s that from? Where have I heard that before?’
‘It’s that play we did in Year 9.’
‘Oh yes. Our Town. “The poets and philosophers, maybe they do some.” Wasn’t that the answer?’
‘Something like that.’
‘I think babies appreciate it too. Not babies: infants, toddlers, whatever they call them. You know what I mean? The way they play in water, or look at a butterfly. The way they go crazy if you take them for a ride on a motorbike.’
‘And artists. Monet. When you look at his paintings you have to think, OK, he must have switched off the TV for an afternoon or two. He was right into it.’
‘People who notice stuff.’
‘I guess. Speaking of your grandmother, did you ever hear any more news about her?’
‘No, nothing.’
‘I never told you this, but I felt she was dead when we were hiding in her house during the war.’
‘Really? You mean, like in a psychic way?’
‘Yes.’
Homer came in, banging the kitchen door and making me jump. He twitched a bit himself when he saw Fi. They had a history and although they’d drifted apart they were still officially a couple. I always had an eye on Homer myself and I needed to know where he and Fi were going. I was a bit suspicious of Fi’s claims that her feelings about him had changed. She was always totally fascinated any time she heard me or anyone else talking about him.
‘You want a coffee?’ I asked him.
‘No thanks.’
He sat on one of the chairs. Of course he had to pick the broken one. He got up again in a hurry and looked at it in embarrassment.
‘Don’t worry, it’s been broken since I got my first dummy. Dad was always going to fix it.’
‘I’ll have a look at it after.’
He took the last of the peanut cookies from the jar on the table and ate it slowly, a nibble at a time. I watched him, thinking, ‘Another trace of my mother gone. There won’t be any more peanut cookies.’
Fi said to Homer, ‘Ellie’s thinking the guys who did this might have been after her family in particular. Or her. Targeting people who did the most damage during the war.’
‘It’s possible,’ Homer said, straight away.
I suddenly had the feeling they’d had this conversation already, out of my hearing. Maybe at the funeral. Maybe by phone. ‘What you think?’ I asked Homer.
‘General Finley thinks most of them just target places at random, looking for stuff to steal.’
‘Oh! General Finley! He sent the nicest flowers.’
General Finley was the New Zealand officer who organised some of our ‘guerilla’ stuff during the war. He was pretty important in the Army. I thought of him as a friend, even though we hadn’t spent a lot of time together.
‘Huh,’ Fi said. ‘You remember his flowers, but you don’t even remember me being there.’
Homer said: ‘Well, according to General Finley, there’s been a pattern of killings, groups coming across the border in search of whatever they can find. And he reckons the media only report about a quarter of the cases.’
‘So the rumours were true. I knew I should have listened to them.’ I gazed at Homer, trying to process all this information. ‘You’ve been talking to the General?’
‘Only by phone. But we’ve had a couple of long conversations. Plus his son’s here.’
‘His son? Here in Wirrawee? You’re kidding!’
‘He is in Wirrawee at the moment. But he’s been living in Stratton, and going to school there. His mother lives in Stratton — she’s Australian, but she and the General are divorced.’
‘How old is he?’
‘About our age. I’ve been talking to him too. Good bloke. Got a bit of common sense. You could take him fox-shooting and be pretty certain you wouldn’t get a bullet up your bum.’
Coming from Homer, this was high praise.
‘So why aren’t they doing anything about these raids? How come soldiers can just come over the border any time they want and kill anyone they want?’
Homer tapped a fork on the edge of the table and gazed out the window, frowning. ‘I suppose it comes down to politics in the long run,’ he said. ‘These guys who killed your parents and Mrs Mac. You just called them soldiers, and we all know they are soldiers, everyone knows that, but how do you prove it? They don’t wear uniforms, they don’t carry any papers ID’ing them as military, and every time there’s one of these raids their government says they’re very sorry but they can’t be responsible for criminal elements who take the law into their own hands. I mean, they say all the right things. They even say they’ll track them down and bring them to justice but funnily enough they never seem able to do it.’
He leaned back on the chair. I thought that at any moment we’d have another one broken. ‘Ellie, I don’t know how you’re going to feel about this, but the truth is that it’s too dangerous to let you stay here anymore. We think you should sell the place and move into town. Somewhere safe. General Finley thinks so too.’
Trust Homer to choose words that were bound to stir me up and get the opposite result to the one he wanted. He did that every time. I blamed his Greekishness. He had to be the boss. Well, stuff that for a joke. I had to be the boss.
‘ Let me stay here!’ I exploded. ‘Since when do you decide whether you’re going to let me stay here or not?’
He pushed the chair back about a metre. Gavin retreated towards the pantry. Fi stayed where she was but she kept her head down.
‘That’s the trouble with you, Homer, you think everything on this goddamn planet should be under your control. That no-one should eat breathe sleep or shit unless it’s with your permission. You know how long my family’s been here? You know what we’ve been through to keep this place? Homer, my family’s eaten dirt and dug dams with their bare hands to keep it going. You think I’m going to walk out on it now, after my parents died to
