Flying the Coop (15 page)

‘Yes. And now we're off to help upstairs.' Garth ushered a still beaming Cynthia up the kitchen stairs before Chris could take advantage of her earlier offer and ask them to do something that actually
needed
doing. She grabbed her daughter by the arm to prevent her, also, making an escape.

‘So you're happy? About the name?'

‘Yes,' said Grace/Zoe shortly. She shook her mother's hand off and then frowned down at the spot as if something contagious had been passed over.

‘Oh, for god's sake,' snapped Chris.

‘I
do
like it,' said Grace/Zoe, in a rather more friendly tone. ‘So . . .'

‘So?' prompted her mother, raising her eyebrows questioningly.

‘So . . . can I go now?'

‘Far be it from
me
to hold you up,' said Chris sarcastically, turning back to her kitchen appliances and reflecting, with annoyance, that the girl still had another four years of teenagehood ahead of her. Could the moodiness actually get any worse? She didn't really want to know the answer. As Grace/Zoe made her escape up the kitchen stairs, Dot made her entrance down them. Once in the kitchen, she put her hand on her chest and took a couple of deep breaths.

‘Oh, oh – those stairs will be the death of me!'

Chris refrained from commenting. She was beginning to get an unpleasant suspicion as to why the woman had been banned from this house fourteen and a half years ago. Maybe she would have to ask Mac just how he'd accomplished it.

‘I've left Michael sorting out his toy-box.' Dot picked up a large carry-bag filled with the breakfast implements from beside the table and started heading towards the door. ‘So I'll just get my things out of your way. Then I'll come back and make us all a cuppa. Yes, that'll hit the spot.'

‘You really don't have –'

‘No, no, don't bother seeing me out.' Dot turned to Chris, who had followed her into the office. ‘Goodness, if I don't know the way, who does?'

Chris, who couldn't really think of an answer to this, opened the screen door for Dot and then watched her uninvited but seemingly permanent guest negotiate the back steps one at a time, the unwieldy bag slapping against her shins with each step.

‘Here, Dot, let me take it.'

‘No, no – all right.' Dot passed the bag over with a grunt of relief and together they walked across the garden and up to the side fence. As they approached Dot's yard, about four or five hens – looking identical to the farm ones – came running up to greet them.

‘Hello, Howard, hello, Beazley, hello, Bracks.' Dot smiled genially at the cluster of chooks and then turned to Chris. ‘These are my lot.'

‘
What
are their names?'

‘Well, that's Howard there.' Dot pointed to an anorexic-looking chook. ‘Then there's Bracks, and Gough, and that one's Beazley. And over there's Costello – she's a bit shy.'

‘No Democrats?' asked Chris curiously.

‘I used t'have Meg Lees, but when that GST came in – well . . .' Dot paused and looked darkly at the assorted poultry, ‘I ate her.'

‘Good god!' Chris stared at Dot for a moment, trying to work out if she was joking, but Dot just smiled evenly back. Finally, Chris broke the eye contact and glanced back at the hens. ‘Um, what's Howard doing to Costello?'

‘Howard! Stop that!' Dot waved her hand sternly over the fence at the chooks, who took absolutely no notice. Then, tut-tutting with annoyance, she reached a hand into an overhang of rhododendrons and, to Chris's astonishment, released a latch that allowed a gate to suddenly swing open with a rusty sigh. Dot quickly passed through and then directed a swift kick in Howard's direction.

Chris stared at the gate, open-mouthed. ‘Oh my god!'

‘Here, pass us the bag, love.'

Chris handed the bag over, her eyes still on the gate. ‘Where did . . .? How did . . .?'

‘You like our gate? It's been there for years. Needs oil though.' Dot swung the gate closed and the rhododendrons settled back into place, a few leaves floating down to the ground. ‘Good idea, isn't it? Makes it much easier for me t'visit.'

‘Oh, yes. Much easier.' Chris dragged her eyes away from the gate and stared at Dot. Something suddenly occurred to her. ‘Listen, I've got a question, Dot. Look, you're such a, um,
friendly
neighbour . . . with your own gate and all – so how come we never saw you when we were here before? I mean, when we first saw the place, and then later when we were here for a whole afternoon measuring and stuff . . . we never saw you at all.'

‘Oh,
that
.' Dot waved her free hand dismissively. ‘You'd have t'ask that fool of a real estate agent. He had some bee in his bonnet about people who were interested in this place wanting peace and quiet and all. Thought having neighbours so close might put them off. Made me promise t'make myself scarce whenever he was showing people through.'

‘Oh.'

‘Young fool.' Dot adjusted her carry-bag. ‘Now I'll be back in a tick, love. You can put the kettle on if you like.'

‘Okay.' Chris watched her new neighbour walk across her tiny yard and up towards her back door, with Howard, Gough
and Co following close behind. So this was what Frank called practically a hermit. As she opened the door, Dot saw Chris still watching and waved cheerfully. Chris waved back – and made a mental note to find Frank and throttle him, if it was the last thing she did.

From:
Christin Beggs

Date:
Sunday, 22nd October 2006. 9.23PM

To:
Jenny Parker

Subject:
From me

If I say that I may have made a mistake, will you say I told you so? Please don't. I keep telling myself that it's only because I'm so tired with the move and all, and a bit frightened by how much I have to learn – but I'm feeling really down at the moment. I mean, the house is great and the kids love it. And the area's beautiful, it gives me a buzz every time I walk outside. But . . . what was I thinking? Chris.

PS Just ignore me, I'm sure I'll feel better about everything tomorrow.

PPS Grace has changed her name to Zoe. Which is really fitting because not only is it a nice name but the farm is on Zoello Road, so it's like her own special road.

PPPS Haven't met him yet but I have it on good authority that Mac is tall, dark and handsome – and a real ladies' man. So when are you coming for a visit?

PPPPS Have you had that talk with Stuart yet?

C
hris was wrenched from deep sleep into instant wakefulness, bringing with her the certain knowledge that
something
had woken her, but no real memory of what it had been. Whatever, it had been loud enough to instantaneously catapult her from unconsciousness into a state of wide-eyed, rigid expectation. After a few long minutes passed, accompanied only by the loud ticking of the clock and the even louder beating of her heart, Chris started to slowly un-tense. She told herself firmly that it was either the residue of an unpleasant dream, or a reaction to the fact that she was not yet used to this room, or this house, or this area. She leant over to look at the time – 3.52 am.

Chris groaned and, pulling the doona up so that only a few tufts of red hair were exposed to the night air, curled up into the foetal position and tried to get back to sleep. And then came a sudden and ear-splittingly loud
thud
from outside her window. Instantly petrified, Chris jolted upright and, with her heart pounding painfully against her chest, stared at the window in the semi-darkness, half expecting some
thing
to come smashing through. But instead, the
thud
was followed by steady footsteps on top of the veranda going away from the window area towards the back of the house.

Chris leapt up and stood, shaking uncontrollably, next to her bed. What was it?
Who
was it? As the footsteps faded away, she made herself count to ten to try to regain some semblance of control. She had to
do
something. The problem was that she had no idea what that something could be. One thing was certain, she wasn't going out there – in the darkness – to confront whoever it was. Instead, she pulled on her dressing-gown and, barefooted, forced herself to walk as quietly as possible out of her bedroom. At the foot of the stairs she hesitated, staring up into the dark well of the staircase curve, and with extremely bad timing suddenly recalled a horror movie she had seen in her early teens. The one in which the babysitter had her evening continually disrupted by telephone calls asking:
have you checked the children
? And did not realise that the caller, a psychopathic killer, was actually upstairs, with the children, the entire time.

Could whoever it was
here
have accessed the second floor from the roof of the veranda? This thought, right on top of the movie recollection, sent her pulse thumping in her eardrums and her feet racing up the passage and into the darkened kitchen. There she paused, staring at the faint moonlight that seeped through the lace-curtained window. Anyone could be looking in at her
right now
and she wouldn't have a clue. And she knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that if whoever it was said anything –
have you checked the children?
– her heart would burst through her chest and she would quite literally die of fright. But nobody said a thing. So, without taking her eyes off the window, she walked stiffly over to the cutlery drawer, opened it and took out a large knife. Then, with this clenched firmly in her hand, she took the kitchen stairs two at a time and, within a second or two, had reached the narrow upstairs passage.

Once there, she flicked on the switch that lit the passage light, flooding even the corners with light. There was nothing
there. With her heart throbbing in her mouth, she ran straight down the passage to push open Michael's door – and was rewarded by the sight of his small, pyjama-clad body stretched atop his doona and breathing rhythmically. Quickly taking this in, she turned and ran to Zoe's door, opening it as well. In this room, a fringed night-light burned on the desk, sending striped shadows across the girl's sleeping face. And Chris was washed with a relief that made her legs feel weak.

Leaving the passage light on, she walked slowly down the front stairs, still grasping the knife tightly in her right hand. When she reached the foyer, she hesitated – and heard another noise, an even
stranger
noise, coming not from upstairs, but from the direction of her bedroom. She stopped dead, still petrified but made braver by the knowledge that the children were safe. After a couple of seconds, she made herself walk steadily towards the bedroom doorway.

TUT
, tut, tut,
tut, tut, tut, tut, tut, tut, tut, tut, tut, tut, tut, tut, tut – tut – tut – tut – tut – tut . . .

With fear quivering along the nerve-ends of her body, Chris readied the knife and then reached forward and, in one rapid movement, flicked on the light switch. Instantly the entire room was illuminated – the unmade bed, the messy dressing-table, the closed wardrobe. Made courageous by the light, Chris crossed the room and flung open the wardrobe doors. Nothing.

TUT
, tut, tut,
tut, tut, tut, tut, tut, tut, tut, tut, tut, tut, tut, tut, tut – tut – tut – tut – tut – tut . . .

It was coming from outside. Somewhere near the veranda. And, what's more, now that she was closer to the source of the strange sound, Chris realised that she had heard it before. Somewhere. Walking over to the bed and sitting down nervously on the edge, she wracked her mind for the answer.
What
was it?

TUT
, tut, tut,
tut, tut, tut, tut, tut, tut, tut, tut, tut, tut, tut, tut, tut – tut – tut – tut – tut – tut . . .

And suddenly it came to her. It was a spinning jenny, the kind you saw at fairs, and festivals, and school fetes – a large circular contraption with numbers all around the rim that were separated from each other by a little metal bar. Like an upright roulette wheel but, instead of a ball bouncing onto the chosen number, it had a short leather strap to do the job. And a volunteer to stand by spruiking tickets, beside a stand full of donated prizes. Bottles of wine, and ugly teddy-bears, and vouchers for free car services. Then, when all the numbers were sold, the volunteer stepped forward and, with a forceful downward thrust, would turn the spinning jenny. Round and round it'd go, with the leather strap flicking against each of the little metal bars one by one.

TUT
, tut, tut,
tut, tut, tut, tut, tut, tut, tut, tut, tut, tut, tut, tut, tut – tut – tut – tut – tut – tut . . .

Exactly like that. Even down to the gradual easing off as the spinning jenny slowed until it settled on just one number and you had a winner. Chris stared at the window. It was all very well identifying the sound, but what was she to do with this information now? Go out and buy a ticket? It
couldn't
be a spinning jenny. How many psychopathic killers commenced proceedings by setting up a game of chance in their victim's yard? Surely such an unusual MO would have attracted the attention of the media?
Cruel psychopath forces terrified woman to play spinning jenny before disembowelment
. Yes, she would have remembered that.

TUT
, tut, tut,
tut, tut, tut, tut, tut, tut, tut, tut, tut, tut, tut, tut, tut – tut – tut – tut – tut – tut . . .

All of which meant there was a strong likelihood that there was not a spinning jenny in operation next to her veranda. And it then followed that the noise itself was probably being
made by something non-human. With this thought, Chris clutched the knife even tighter, bringing it up to chest-height in readiness. Which is when she registered that she was not clutching a knife at all, but a shiny silver meat tenderiser. Chris stared at it in disbelief. All this time running around the house thinking herself armed, she had actually been brandishing a meat tenderiser. Hold still, maniac, while I tenderise you! Might take a while, but please be patient. Bloody hell.

TUT
, tut, tut,
tut, tut, tut, tut, tut, tut, tut, tut, tut, tut, tut, tut, tut – tut – tut – tut – tut – tut . . .

Definitely non-human. But probably not non-human in a werewolf or demon or vampire type of way, but in an
animal
type of way. A kangaroo, or a fox, or maybe even a wombat. She thought back to the Healesville Sanctuary excursion months ago, and tried to recall what sorts of sounds the inhabitants made. And then decided that it didn't matter. What mattered was that whatever it was that had jumped on top of the veranda, and then walked across it, and then set up its strange spinning jenny sound by her window, wasn't any threat to her – or hers. Somewhat calmed by this knowledge, Chris laid the meat tenderiser on the bedside table and then settled herself a little more comfortably on the bed. Maybe she could still get some sleep . . .

TUT
, tut, tut,
tut, tut, tut, tut, tut, tut, tut, tut, tut, tut, tut, tut, tut – tut – tut – tut – tut – tut . . .

Or then again, maybe not.