Cherry Beach by Laura McPhee-Browne

Author:Laura McPhee-Browne [McPhee-Browne, Laura]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781925923117
Publisher: The Text Publishing Company
Published: 2020-02-04T04:00:00+00:00

It was warm outside, with a woozy wind.

Dill told me that when he’d met Rick at Ronnie’s, Hetty had seemed to know him well. I’d never heard Hetty say Rick’s name, but that didn’t mean much. She got to know people quickly, or at least the surface of them. People made her their best friend in minutes, and she never told them she was taken.

We walked up Spadina and turned right, towards Dundas and College and after that Bloor, towards the university and the area of Toronto known as the Annex, where young people and middling families lived in a semi-boho funk.

Dill said that Rick had been talking about his new place, and had told Hetty and Dill he’d moved into a share house just off Bloor that was painted purple, with two women and a dog called Guy. Dill had known as soon as Rick said the house was purple and the dog was Guy that it was the house his friend Shauna lived in, and told Rick this, with astonishment, even camaraderie in his tone. Rick’s response had been blank, as if he didn’t care and wasn’t sure why Dill had even mentioned it. This was when Dill knew that he didn’t like Rick, and he had told Hetty he would catch up with her at home.

‘So unless he’s moved out, or Shauna has decided she doesn’t want to live with him after all, that’s where he lives. In the crazy purple house. Guy is a chihuahua, by the way.’

We laughed at the little dog’s name, and as we neared Dundas I could smell oyster sauce and vegetables. My stomach and my mouth and my chest were sick again from the weed and the heat and the not knowing where Hetty was, and reminding myself she was probably not going well, if she’d missed work and couldn’t charge her phone, and hadn’t been able to tell me anything. Shivers filled me, despite the hot sun.

I looked over at Dill, who was so gorgeous and reliable and Canadian, and I felt homesick. Not just for Melbourne or the familiar, but for when I was just a little younger and when I hadn’t moved to the other side of the world and when life had surely been easier.

The wind was picking up as if it had a fan behind it, helping it to blaze through and beyond. We passed College Street and walked around one side of the big roundabout that came before Bloor. Dill tried calling Hetty again, and it was just her recorded voice telling us her phone was still off. I could hear a tiny part of her coming out of the speaker at Dill’s ear.

‘Hetty. Dill again. Ness and I are worried about you. Please call us back.’

Dill’s phone voice was the same as his normal one, and this felt reassuring in that moment. I was out of breath from the very gradual hill we were climbing: my heart burned. My body seemed to be remembering the other times in my life that I had thought Hetty was lost to me.

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