Living With Leanne by Margaret Clark

Author:Margaret Clark
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Australia
Published: 1994-10-26T16:00:00+00:00

SAM

* * *

I’m starting to miss Leanne. I know this sounds crazy. I always thought my ultimate dream would be for Leanne to leave home. I guess if you’ve had someone terrorising you for thirteen years it gets to be a habit. And habits are hard to break.

Mum’s starting to fall apart. She can’t eat, she can’t sleep. Every night I can hear her pacing up and down in her room. Steve’s been really good. He comes round most nights and mends leaky taps and stuff like that, helps me with my homework, sometimes brings steaks, other times phones up for pizzas and … the important thing, he doesn’t seem to be putting the hard word on Mum. He clears off every night about nine.

Last Saturday he drove me down to Strapper Surfboards so I could do my part-time job while Mum sat home glued to the phone. Then he fixed the lawnmower and cut all the grass. He’s fixed the gutters. He started to sand the old paint off the walls on Sunday and I gave him a hand. And best of all, he’s a nice guy with a great sense of humour. I’m hoping he’s not just feeling sorry for Mum amd propping her up, and when Leanne lobs back in, he’s going to disappear. But I don’t think so. I know you’re not supposed to make snap judgements about people but then some people you’ve known for years (Cooja for one) can turn out to be weird, so … I think Steve’s a top guy and if he turns out to be a murderer or a maniac I’ll stick myself in a monastery because I’ll never be able to trust another human being again.

I’m due to go to school. Still no news about Leanne and no more phone calls. Her lupins are just about hitting the roof—well, not quite, but I can’t wait to show them off. They’ve had to be headphoneless because they’re too tall and just listen to the Gunners full-on, but Mum’s been too miserable to notice.

I bring them into the kitchen and show her.

‘Look.’

Mum gazes at them and sighs.

‘Probably growing higher to get away from that awful noise you call music,’ she goes.

First joke she’s made in weeks. She was hoping that Leanne’s lobbed in to see Dad in Noosa but the cops have tracked him down and he reckons he hasn’t spotted her. We just have to wait.

‘Hey,’ she says, ‘I forgot to tell you there was this bit in the paper about lupins. When they’re fed to rams their testicles grow bigger. Wonder if it works with humans?’

I shrug and leave for school. Just outside the gate I stop. Lupins and big balls? Well … I break off the tops of a couple of the plants and chew them. They taste GROSS. Forget it. I’m a Stud human already.

I get on the bus and cop all this flak about ‘me beans’ and ‘Bush Tucker Man’ and ‘Jack and the Beanstalk and where’s me golden goose?’ etc.

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