The Children by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781741756043
Publisher: Allen & Unwin Pty Ltd

AT ONE o’clock Stephen is still sitting in the plastic chair, one ankle resting across his other knee, and picking at a frayed piece of rubber on his sneaker. ‘I’ll drop you home,’ he says.

Their mother is waiting at the house to serve lunch.

‘Why, where are you going?’ asks Mandy as she gathers up her book and bag.

‘Hardware. For kite stuff,’ he says, still picking at his shoe. Then he looks at her. ‘I’m going to make a kite.’ He stands up and leans over the railings of their father’s bed. Mandy can’t see his face.

‘What for?’ she says. ‘You don’t think he’s going to see it, do you?’

Stephen is holding Geoff’s thick, meaty hand now. Mandy thinks, if he presses too hard on the swollen pad of the palm it might burst, pale and wet as a plum.

‘He won’t, you know,’ she says.

Stephen turns to face her, and he looks as though he would like to hit her with a brick. He turns back to Geoff’s hand, examining it. But his foot begins to jiggle, there at the bedside, and he says in a low voice: ‘I’m not doing it for him.’

They drive back to the house in silence, along the wide, bright main street, past the optometrist and White’s Jeweller, past RLK Enterprises and Sloane’s Footwear with its racks of work boots and dark court shoes, past shady Jubilee Park with its struggling Bicentennial Heritage Rose Garden, past the Retravision and Eagle Boys Pizza and the Aboriginal Housing office, the Bi-Lo supermarket and Target, past Tooheys Newsagent and Abbott’s Amcal chemist. The streets lined with pale Falcons and Commodores and white tray-top utes, all neatly angled with their rears to the kerb.

At the top of Monarch Street they turn right into Fitzroy, pass the fire station. DON’T BE A BUNNY. They turn into Aurora Street, pass the low brick houses with their brick fences, their little squares of dusty grass, their cement-strip driveways.

They arrive at their childhood home, still not speaking, and Leia lollops up to the car from behind the house.

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