P is for Pearl by Eliza Henry Jones

Author:Eliza Henry Jones
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2017-12-26T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER NINE

I woke up thinking of my mum’s mother. My grandma. Every part of me crawling like I’d just had a nightmare. She died when I was younger, right before Mum became her most chaotic. I didn’t remember her as being very happy, but Dad always said she was. All things considered, I guess.

Loretta shifted next to me and opened her eyes. ‘Nightmare?’

‘Yeah.’ ‘Nightmare’ didn’t feel like the right word, though. It was like everything I’d been ignoring had suddenly welled up, like a cresting wave.

Loretta dozily grabbed my bruised hand and squeezed it. I flinched at the tightness of her fingers. ‘Remember the time we were twelve and saw those ladies on the beach who were dressed as mermaids?’

‘Yeah.’ It had been Clunes Beach, in the middle of summer. It had been packed and in among the crowds there’d been two ladies kitted up as mermaids, rolling around in the shallows. For a moment, just a tiny, little moment, I’d let myself believe that they were Mum and Jamie. Finally. Coming in from the ocean to collect me.

‘I reckon we could make outfits like that,’ Loretta said, her voice thick and sleepy.

I rested my head on her shoulder. I felt myself relaxing. ‘How?’ I asked. ‘Neither of us can sew!’

‘We could learn.’ Her eyes were closed. ‘There’re classes down at the community centre and there’s this shimmery fabric I found at Craigsville.’

‘What colour?’

‘They had blue and green. But the green was an olive sort of green, not bright or anything.’

‘My mum bought all this beautiful fabric,’ I said, really quietly. ‘It’s in the spare room ’cause it didn’t fit in my wardrobe. And she was going to make me a tail for my birthday, a real mermaid’s tail.’

‘Wow,’ said Loretta, her voice slurred and heavy. She yawned. ‘What time is it?’

‘Seven.’

‘Can we nap a bit longer? I’m knackered.’

‘Yeah, alright.’

She drifted off and I thought about it, whether we could cut the fabric into the shape of tails. Whether they would need zips. Loretta was still holding my hand as I slowly nodded off back to sleep.

***

By the time I woke up again, it was nearly eight-thirty and Loretta was drinking tea in the kitchen and flipping through a craft magazine with Biddy. They were murmuring about knitting patterns. Both of them loved to knit. It just made me frustrated. I could never work out how to keep the stitches even, how to stop myself from dropping them.

I sat down at the island bench, which was already chockers with pans and bags.

‘We should head off,’ I said.

Loretta yawned. ‘Yeah, okay.’

We wandered to Loretta’s without talking and I waited on the porch while she got changed and grabbed her bag, inside. We walked to school side by side, smiling when Glen gave us each an armful of mandarins. Once we were out of sight, we put them into my school bag and I said a silent prayer that they wouldn’t leak all over my school books. Before we got to the gate, Loretta grabbed my hand, her fingers sticky with mandarin juice.

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