Feeling tired, too tired to be bothered asking her what crimes the boys had committed, I sat in silence, doodling crosses with a blunt pencil.
‘Are you there?’ she asked.
‘Yes.’
‘I wish there was someone I could talk to about him, Ellie. I really don’t know how it is that you’re looking after him.’
I understood that she meant I was not ’someone’. I was ‘no-one’, because of my age. I wondered at what age I’d become someone. I felt I was slipping into a sulk, my lips pressing into each other too, and I wanted to be rude and rebellious.
‘Well, I’d better tell you, I suppose. I’ve always been worried about Gavin’s influence on Mark, so up till now I’ve said to Mark that he can play with him but not to sit next to him in class. But I’m afraid Mark is too easily led sometimes. And of course you’ve got to feel sorry for Gavin.’
Grrr. My doodles were turning into sharp pointy things. The pencil was reaching that horrible state where there was so little lead that the wooden ends were scratching the paper, which is almost as bad as fingernails down the blackboard. I didn’t feel sorry for Gavin. Didn’t have the time or energy for it. I don’t think he felt sorry for himself either, although he did feel angry, which is a bit different.
‘So what did they do?’
‘Oh! I can hardly… my neighbours are the Chaus. They’re very nice and we’ve never had any trouble with them and they’ve been so good to Mark. And they have this lovely cat, a little grey thing about three years old, called Missy.’
My heart was heavy now. I knew how these stories always ended, these stories that started with, ‘We had this new car, we’d only had it a fortnight,’ or, ‘My mum had this Royal Doulton vase that her grandmother gave her and it was sitting on top of a bookcase…’
‘They had this lovely cat.’ I formed a great fear for the cat as Mark’s mum continued.
‘And the boys, I don’t know what came over them, but they somehow got hold of this poor little cat and Gavin tied it on the ground… this is awful, Ellie, I don’t know how I can tell you the next bit.’
I didn’t know how I was going to be able to hear it. I was starting to hate Gavin.
‘And Mark’s got this jump for his bike, and it seems like Gavin aimed the bike off the jump, aimed for the cat…’
‘Did he kill it?’ I asked. My voice was husky hoarse.
‘Oh yes. It’s hard to get the full story of course, because of his disability, but I think he landed on it quite a few times.’
His disability. Stuff disability. If Gavin wanted to communicate something, he’d communicate it. He didn’t have any disability.
‘I’ll call you back,’ I said to Mark’s mum, and hit the off button on the phone.
CHAPTER 13
This is my morning routine. I get up at six, and if I’m not awake already the moo clock wakes me. The moo clock was a present from Fi. It’s an alarm in the shape of a cow, black and white, and instead of ringing it moos. Moos, yes, let’s move on. Sometime in the next five to fifteen minutes I slither out of bed, providing it’s Marmie asleep in the middle of my doona. I don’t understand how a small dog can occupy three-quarters of a double bed, but she manages it. If it’s Gavin asleep in the middle of my bed I’m less subtle. I just jump out. I’ve tried to persuade Marmie to sleep with Gavin in Gavin’s bed, mainly because the more they bond the better I think it is for Gavin, but they both seem to prefer my bed.
If Gavin’s in his own bed I stop by on my way to the shower and give him the first of what will be a number of prods or shakes or pushes. The one sure way to get him out of bed is to kiss him, but I’m reluctant to use that tactic too often in case it loses its power.
The bathroom, yeah, well, it’s not too good at the moment because of the rats. It would be nice not to have rats, not now not ever, but it’s a part of our life that I suppose will never change. People from the city think we must live in filth and slime if we have rats but it’s not like that at all. I’m quite tidy and Gavin’s not bad and Mum was always pretty neat. Every year we get waves of mice and/or rats, and they arrive with no warning. Each time we wage war against them and eventually they’re gone, either because we’ve defeated them, or because the owls and feral cats and magpies have wiped them out, or because they’ve heard rumours of a great new chocolate factory down the road. Whatever, they go, and sometimes it’ll be twelve months before the new lot check in.
But it is really disgusting to wander into the bathroom half asleep and find rat droppings all over the floor and the soap half chewed and a roll of toilet paper that they’ve dragged to their hole and eaten away so they can make a nice soft nest with it. You wouldn’t want to wipe your bum with that paper.
So this particular morning I picked up the droppings using a tissue and dropped them into our loo and flushed them away, cos I knew I wouldn’t have time to clean the floor properly till this afternoon or tonight, then I chucked out the soap and the loo paper. We had friends from the city years ago who’d never seen rat droppings and didn’t know what they were, and when they found a half chewed apple in the fruit bowl, surrounded by these little black pellets, they thought someone had eaten part of the apple and put the rest back, so they cut it up and gave it to their little daughter. God, I practically vomited when I realised.
I put some Ratsak right down the hole, but they don’t seem to be eating it at the moment. Then I blocked the hole with steel wool, which sometimes works and sometimes doesn’t. Not far away was a perfect little star on the floor, a daddy-long-legs, with a solid circular black body. I’d never seen one quite like him, so neat and precise. When I counted, he had only seven legs, poor thing. I thought he was dead but I wasn’t sure so I touched him really fast and he didn’t move but I still suspected him and flicked him again and then a third time and he suddenly came to life and went scurrying away on his seven good legs.
My last encounter with a spider had been just a few weeks ago when I’d been getting a bag off the top of my wardrobe. I’d pulled it down and taken it into the dining room to pack it with stuff for school. As I started chucking in the books I felt a tickling across my scalp. ‘Dear God,’ I prayed, ‘please let it not be a spider.’ I thought, ‘I’ll go to the mirror, look calmly into it, and if there’s a spider crawling through my hair I am not going to panic.’
I went to the mirror, looked calmly into it, saw the biggest huntsman of all time crawling through my hair, and panicked. I scrabbled madly at my hair but I couldn’t dislodge the spider. Now I’d made it mad. I imagined it going into attack mode and filling my brain with venom. Amazingly, it didn’t do this, and I was able to have a second go, which was more successful. I swear, he was the size of my ear, and that’s not counting his legs.
Yes, between rats and spiders, not to mention fights to the death with armed enemy soldiers, life was never dull.
Anyway, I took my shower. I’m a long-shower person, because I find it the best place to think. We have a pretty good supply of water at the moment, so I can indulge myself. My favourite shampoo is the citrus with a touch of ginseng, Sunsilk I think. I have no idea whether it is any good for my hair, but it smells so good I have to stop myself from drinking it.
On the way back I generally chuck another load in the washing machine, or unload it from the night before. I pay a second visit to Gavin, then get to my bedroom, pick out which of my wardrobe of dazzling Wirrawee High School uniforms I’m going to wear, get dressed, call on Gavin’s room to deliver the very last final you’d-better- move-right-now-buddy warning, and then tackle the kitchen. It’s fairly embarrassing how many times I have to start by cleaning up from dinner the night before, and no, that’s not the reason we have rats, but once that’s done I can think about breakfast and lunch.
Neither Gavin nor I are big on breakfasts, especially since the money got so tight we can’t afford Coco Pops or Crunchy Nut Cornflakes. If I’ve got time and I’m in a good mood I’ll make porridge, which Gavin quite likes but which I’m not mad about. I just have the boring Weet-Bix with as little sugar as I can manage or some bread and jam. If the bread’s fresh I just eat bread, but if it’s stale I toast it. If the day ever comes when I get sick of bread I’ll starve to death.
By the time I’ve started eating, Gavin is probably stumbling down the corridor to the bathroom, or, on a good day, he might even be coming back showered and clean. Then he’s likely to lean against me and let me feed him
