‘Do you feel okay?’ Leanne asked. ‘Sometimes with concussion you feel sick.’
‘I think I want to go home.’
‘All in good time, sweetheart,’ said Leanne, clasping my arm.
Kevin glanced around the room. I could see his hand twitching. ‘I’m going out for a smoke.’ He parted the curtains and left.
Leanne watched him go. ‘I thought I’d be the one falling over and hurting myself out there,’ she said, smiling.
‘Yeah.’ I laughed and a rubber band of pain tightened across my head. I lifted my fingers to my forehead and touched the bandage. ‘Sorry,’ I added, ‘I don’t mean that you …’
Leanne smiled. ‘I know.’
I knew Leanne wanted to know what happened, why I was taking off in the other direction, but she didn’t ask and I was grateful for it. Knowing Kevin, he wouldn’t have told her much.
I thought about climbing up that rock, looking out across the water. Why would I fall like that? I had good balance. I was sure-footed. The image of the shimmering water was imprinted in my memory, but the moment after was gone.
I closed my eyes, suddenly weighed down by sleepiness.
‘I’ll let you rest, love,’ Leanne said, and I heard the scrape of her chair on the floor. ‘We’ll be just outside if you need us.’
The waterhole came into view again: the clear, green water, the grey boulders beneath, the trees and rocks on the far side, the curved rock face at the end. And then I remembered why I had fallen.
Jesus, Mary and Joseph.
‘I’ve got to go to work,’ Kevin said, sliding a plate of bacon and eggs across the kitchen table to me. It was a guilt breakfast on his part, but I was hungry, so what the hell.
‘Work?’ I said, picking up my knife and fork.
‘At the servo. In town.’ He looked concerned for a second, like my head injury had given me permanent amnesia or something.
I shrugged. ‘Okay.’
‘Leanne will be over later, to check on you,’ he said.
I stabbed the egg and watched the yellow fluid ooze onto my plate. ‘She doesn’t need to. I’m not an invalid.’
‘Well, she’s coming anyway.’
‘Fine.’
‘Will you be right to clean up?’
I glanced at the kitchen sink full of dishes. ‘Yep.’
‘You sure? I can—’
‘It’s okay.’
The care factor had certainly risen since I’d been home from the hospital. Kevin had even made me some sausages the night before. I had devoured them like a starving dog, then I’d gone straight to bed and had slept like, dare I say it, the dead. I guess my rattled brain needed time to recoup.
After Kevin left I went to the bathroom and lifted the bandage on my head. The small cut on my temple was held together by butterfly clips and the area around it was puffed up into an egg. A purple bruise had spilled down the side of my head and into the corner of my right eye, like day-old Gothic make-up. Quite an impressive sight.
My mind flashed back to the seconds before I fell. I saw her face and her dark eyes, searching. We connected. She was with me. And then I panicked because of the sheer impossibility of it. I remembered stepping back, being suspended in the air for a moment as if she were holding me up, stopping me from falling. And then blackness. My head must have bounced off that boulder as I slipped sideways. Why did I panic?
Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.
Then again, it’s not every day you discover that your mother is haunting you.
I wanted to tell someone about it and ask them why this was happening to me. What was my mother doing there at the waterhole? Clear as day? I thought of her connection to that place. She loved it there. Was she living there now? But why there? Why now? But it didn’t matter because I couldn’t tell anyone.
I guess it was up to me to find out what was going on. I needed to get back up to the waterhole as soon as I could to see if she was still there. I wanted another chance to see her, but for some reason the thought chilled me to the bone.
Feeling a little woozy, I replaced the bandage and wandered back to the kitchen. Who was I kidding? I was too light-headed to go anywhere. Besides, Leanne was sure to turn up any minute, ready to fuss around me. I did a circuit of the kitchen, knowing I was trapped in the house for that day at least. The dogs lay near the back door trying to catch some breeze and the cat slept on the benchtop. He eyed me sleepily as I reached past him for one of Mum’s cookbooks that were piled into the corner of one of the shelves.
Australian Women’s Weekly All-Time Favourite Cakes and Biscuits
I sorted through the pile; she had the whole series.
Australian Women’s Weekly Fantastic Cakes
Australian Women’s Weekly Children’s Birthday Cake Book
Australian Women’s Weekly Chocolate Cookbook
Most of them were vintage, splattered with greying batter, corners chewed by cockroaches. Under the recipe books was a large blue journal. I slid it out and opened the cover to reveal soft, yellowed pages and hundreds of handwritten recipes, carefully printed in perfect slanty letters.
Oxtail Stew and Lemon Meringue Pie shared one spread, Beef Casserole and Home-style Egg Custard another. Not recognising the writing, I turned to the front where I saw my grandmother’s name, Gloria Maguire, and her address printed inside the front cover.
Kingfisher Farm, 59 Kelly’s Crossing Road, Kelly’s Crossing
I lifted the journal to my face and breathed in. Old paper, dust. Nothing remarkable. But maybe this book might have been it for Mum: the secret, the magic spell book of cake making. Who better to go to than her own mother, Gloria, the guru of baking? Perhaps Mum would have found the right incantations in that journal had she
