Henry Hoey Hobson (16 page)

I came home exhausted.

I hadn't eaten since breakfast and had ended up training hard.

‘You showing off for Angelica?' Hero had asked, pointing her out among the squaddies training in the next lane. I didn't bother answering, just rugby-tackled him underwater, nearly drowning us both.

But the truth was I liked to train hard. It de-stressed me, working the tension out of my body and out of my mind.

I gave Hero some kickboard work while I timed my sprints over ten laps and was having a break at the shallow end when Angelica emerged from the girls' change rooms, giggling with one of her posse.

‘Angelica!' An athletic, grey-haired man slapped his newspaper down on a table near the shallow end. ‘This is swim training, not a social outing. For heaven's sake, girl, focus!'

Her friend peeled off, leaving Angelica to face the tirade on her own.

He pushed himself up from the table and jabbed a finger at the pool. ‘That's where champions are made; not in the change rooms, giggling like a giddy girl.'

Her face went white, then splotchy red, like he'd slapped her.

She jerked away from him and hurled herself into the pool just as Hero splashed up beside me on his kickboard.

‘That was harsh,' he said, under his breath on the turn. ‘No wonder she dishes it out at school, if that's what she has to put up with at home.'

No wonder.

She ploughed through the next few laps like she had an outboard motor strapped to her bum. But as soon as her father stalked off to take a phone call, she took a break, hanging off a lane rope at the shallow end, breathing heavily.

I could see she'd been crying. We both looked away and pretended to study the churning lanes beside us.

‘You OK?' I asked after a minute. She nodded, looking more embarrassed than antagonistic. Then she surprised me.

‘Your friend, the vampire writer, came up to the school today with your dad.' She looked over to where her dad was arguing with someone on the phone. ‘They were both really nice and said they'd come back and do a writing and illustrating workshop for the Year Six/Sevens.'

She seemed about to say something else, then zeroed in on Hero splashing back up towards us on his kickboard.

‘See you later,' she said and pushed off from the wall.

Hero was all eyes. ‘Ooh, was that what I think it was? Is A-team lowering her standards, or what?'

I shrugged, the blood running hot in my face.

His eyebrows leapt into his hairline. He ditched the kickboard and spun round, wrapping his arms around his own neck and slurping out loud kissing noises.

I duck-dived under the water to get away from him and swam the next ten metres underwater.

He really was an idiot.

The smell wafting out from the kitchen nearly made me faint when I walked in the door. Mrs Marquez's meal – some sort of yellow fried rice with chicken and seafood – was sizzling in the wok.

‘This recipe or your life,' Manny said, brandishing his most impressive kitchen utensil: a razor-toothed saw used for cutting through bone. ‘Tell your little mate to write it down and bring it to school or risk my wrath.'

‘Uh, OK.' I wasn't ever going back to that school, but Manny didn't need to know that. Not when he was armed with a blade that could flense carcasses down to the bone.

He scooped a generous serve onto a plate and passed it to me. I was halfway through wolfing it down when I noticed that the kitchen bench was set for just the two of us. ‘Isn't anybody else eating?' I asked.

Manny shook his head. ‘Anders has gone home to his loft. He'll be back in the morning to give you a ride to the hospital. Vee and Caleb are at his parents' house tonight–'

He stopped at the look on my face. ‘What?'

‘It's just that Caleb said he was the cuckoo's egg – the changeling that never fitted into his family...' I shrugged. ‘I don't know, it just sounded like he didn't get on with them–'

‘Are you kidding? He loves his family, but man, you should see them. His dad is like sixty and still mountain-bikes and swims every morning. His mum runs half-marathons. They're fit and tanned and blond and they adore him, but talk about the cuckoo's egg ... He took up writing as a teenager to give him something to do on their annual ski trip to the snow.'

I thought about Caleb, the antithesis of athleticism. ‘But he fits in here, with you and Vee–'

‘–and Anders. Sure, he does. We're all the odd pieces of the jigsaw that somehow match up. Join us together and we look just like a happy family.'

I pushed my plate away and thought about that for a minute.

‘I might go phone Mum,' I said.

‘You do that,' he said, gathering together our cutlery and dishes.

I pulled out my mobile and switched it on. As I walked through to my room, a message beeped onto the screen.

Love you. xx

I thumbed a quick reply.

Me too. Xx

And hit Send
.

I lay down in the darkened room. Manny had made my bed again. I could get used to that. And his cooking. But that aside, it had been a rocky day. I missed my mum.

After a dozen or so rings a recorded message clicked in: The mobile phone you are calling is switched off or not in a mobile phone area...

Her battery must be flat. I'd take the recharger in with me when I went to visit her tomorrow.

And that was my last conscious thought for the day.

‘Are you going to come in?'

Anders let out a long breath and nodded.

I looked away. It was his funeral. I just hoped they'd leave me out of it.

The hospital lift stopped on every floor, taking an age to get us up to Mum's floor.

‘I'll wait till you're through,' he said. ‘And talk to your mum then.'

‘What if I want to stay with her all day?'

‘Then I'll wait all day,' he said. The lift doors opened and he walked out, leaving me standing there.

I rushed to catch him up. ‘What if she doesn't want to talk to you?'

He was walking fast, so I had to run every few steps to keep up. ‘She has to talk to me, Henry. At least this once. After today, it will be up to her.'

That stopped me in my tracks. ‘What about me?'

His eyes were puffy and bruised from lack of sleep. ‘That's what Lydia and I need to talk about,' he said.

He'd brought a bag with his sketchbook and pencils, and settled into a chair in the corridor down from Mum's ward.

He was too far away to hear what went on between me and Mum. For that, at least, I was grateful.

‘He didn't want us, Henry. He didn't want you, and he didn't want me–'

‘Then why did he keep trying to find us? Why did you keep running away?'

She bit her lip. This was the bit that I didn't understand.

‘You were such a beautiful baby.' She was trying not to cry; I could hear it in her voice. I kept my eyes on my thongs, on the hangnail on my grubby big toe.

‘I couldn't believe anything could be so perfect. I couldn't believe that I could
love
anyone the way that I loved you–'

She grabbed my hand and squeezed it hard. ‘I had never spent a night away from you.' The fierceness in her voice forced me to look up. ‘When that first letter arrived, I was so angry ... I sent it back unopened:
Not known at this address.
Then just to be safe, I moved house.'

‘Why?'

‘Because I was afraid.'

‘Of
Anders
?'

She hesitated and something broke inside her. ‘Of him wanting
you.
Of him wanting to take you away from me.'

The tears were flowing now. ‘You were all that I had, honey-bun. You'd started school and I was terrified he'd want you for half the holidays ... that there would be weeks on end when I wouldn't be able to see you–'

So she had run. And kept on running.

‘You don't know that,' I said finally. ‘You don't know what he wanted, because you didn't take his calls and you didn't open his letters.'

I gently extracted my hand, stood up and walked out of the room. From the end of the corridor, Anders saw me coming. He closed his sketchbook, stood up and waited for me.

He'd been waiting a long time.

‘You need to talk to Mum,' I said and kept on walking.

I walked out of the hospital, across the road, past the golf course and down to Centenary Pool. The lady on reception let me raid Lost Property.

I don't know how many laps I did or how long I stayed there, but when I came back, Anders was gone.

Mum was sitting quietly in a seat near the window, a large notebook clasped to her chest. I pulled a chair up next to her and waited.

‘I thought he didn't care,' she said finally, her eyes tracking the ceaseless flow of cars and buses down below. ‘But I was wrong.'

She seemed calm, as though the storm had finally passed. She tore her eyes away from the window and fixed them on me.

‘So ... do you like him?'

The question kind of threw me. I shrugged, then nodded.

‘Would you like to keep seeing him?'

I nodded again. ‘If that's all right with you.' I hesitated. ‘Does that mean we can stay where we are for a while?'

She thought about that. ‘Yes, I think so. That's probably a good idea.'

I leaned back in my chair and let out a long rattling breath. She reached across and slipped something large and flat onto my lap.

‘Andy – sorry, Anders – left these for you.'

A small flat booklet in a plastic cover lay on top of an artist's sketchpad. A brand new one with the name ‘Anders Neilson' scratched out and ‘Henry Hoey Hobson' written above it.

I opened the cover of the sketchbook and turned the thick creamy page.

It was a head-on portrait of a butterflier in mid-stroke. Anders had captured the powerful lines, the surge of strength through the shoulders of the swimmer as he reared up out of the water–

I looked closer. It was
me.
My lips were open, gulping air ... and glittering at the corners of my mouth were two sharp canines...

I burst out laughing.

Anders had drawn me with vampire teeth.

A bit of Mum's dazzle crept back into her smile. ‘He did that while he was waiting. He thought you might like to have it.'

I closed the sketchbook and the little flat book slid onto the floor.

‘What's this?' I asked, reaching down.

‘It's a bank book,' she said. ‘I don't think they make them anymore. It's like a savings account without the keycard.'

I opened it up. Inside were columns and dates and amounts. The first entry, dated more than twelve years ago. A deposit. Five dollars. The same as the next one and the one after that. A whole page of five-dollar deposits at more or less regular intervals.

On the next page it jumped up to ten. A page or so later, to twenty. As I leafed through, the amounts grew steadily larger, the intervals, a little longer. The final entry made my eyes pop, a whopping thousand dollars, dated a month ago. The balance, recorded in the far right column, was mind-boggling.

‘I don't get it–' I frowned up at Mum. ‘Why did Anders leave me this? What's he been saving up for?'

‘Read the name on the account.'

I looked down to where she pointed. I'd been so caught up in the columns of figures I hadn't noticed the name typed neatly across the top of the book.

Henry Hoey Hobson.

For more than twelve years, he'd been saving up for me.

I woke up on the day of the swimming carnival with a question looping endlessly through my brain.

Should I stay or should I go?

I rolled over on my mattress and put the day's options through weird Wally's SWOT analysis.

Strengths
: If I stayed home today it would bolster my campaign to find a new school. I had already missed nearly a week of classes and just couldn't see myself ever going back. Missing the only event on the sporting calendar that I gave two hoots about would give extra momentum to my campaign. I'd be on a roll.

Weaknesses
: The obvious one was that I'd miss the only event on the school's sporting calendar that I gave two hoots about. And I'd let Hero down. He said the team was pinning their hopes on me to get them out of a six-year slump. I didn't care that much about the team, but I didn't like to disappoint Hero. My hospitalised, soon-to-be-discharged mother would flip if I skipped the carnival. So would Anders. He'd turned into a bit of a swimming Nazi, dragging both of us out of bed early every morning for training. That was the problem with weaknesses; they really weighed down the old SWOT analysis.

Opportunities
: Mum was coming out of hospital today, so if I ditched the carnival, I could help her get home, up the front stairs, into a chair, and onto the phone to start finding me a new school. A new life even. Though it might be a bit of a big ask with her down to one working leg and arm for the next few months...

Threats
: The only ones that I could foresee–

A gentle knock interrupted my train of thought.

‘Henry, are you up yet?' An eye and half a goatee appeared in the crack in the door. It was Caleb.

I rolled onto my stomach and pushed myself up onto my feet as he swung open the door.

‘Impressive.' It was Anders, standing beside Caleb in the doorway.

‘What?'

‘Jumping from prone to standing position in a single action. If you can do that, you can learn to surf.'

The distant sound of an ambulance wah-oo, wah-oo, wah-ooed into the foreground then faded slowly away. ‘Good to know,' I said finally. ‘Can I get dressed now?'

‘No,' said Anders.

‘Pardon me?'

‘Come on out,' he said. ‘Vee wants to show you something.'

It was the first time I had been inside Vee's room.

It glowed like a black pearl with graceful lamps bouncing light off white walls and soft furnishings. Luxurious swathes of black, gold and silver fabric, held back by thick tasselled cords, framed the block-out blinds covering the window.

Her bed, an ornate four-poster, covered in silvery linen and soft falls of pillows, was draped in transparent hangings, fastened at each corner by twisted clusters of dried roses. Jewelled Venetian masks hung on either side of the bed, their white faces caught in a variety of dramatic expressions, laughing, crying, shocked and terrified.

Heavy wooden bookshelves covered an entire wall, filled with books – aged hardcovers with gold and silver lettering embossed into their spines, slim volumes of poetry, frivolous paperbacks and blockbuster fantasies lined up alphabetically by author.

An oil painting of a mother and child under a moonlit sky sat in a fancy gilt frame above a tidy desk with elegant carved legs and a high-backed leather office chair.

Neatly set out on the desktop were photographs in silver frames, a pewter pitcher and drinking glass on a matching platter, an Oxford dictionary and thesaurus squeezed between bronze dragon bookends and a vase containing a blood-red rose. In the centre of the desk lay a closed Toshiba laptop, the only glimpse of technology in the room.

‘Wow.'

‘Thank you.' Vee shut the door behind us. ‘Please, sit.'

She gestured towards the curved seat at the end of the bed and then held up a shopping bag like a prize.

‘Voila!'

She tossed it into my lap. It weighed next to nothing. I upended it, not expecting much from the contents tumbling out into my lap.

It took a moment to take in what I was seeing: a pair of blue togs so wildly fluorescent you needed sunglasses to look at them, a pair of matching top-of-the-range blue Vortex goggles with mirrored lenses and a new blue swimming cap.

‘They're Funky Trunks,' said Vee unnecessarily. I knew what they were. I'd seen the squaddies training in them for the past couple of seasons. They were forty dollars a pair, way outside my price range.

‘The latest natatorial accessory, according to Anders,' said Caleb. ‘He said you were in dire need for today's carnival. Hence last night's eleventh-hour shopping expedition.'

‘You don't like them?' asked Vee, a tiny frown puckering her brows. ‘I went to great trouble to choose the funkiest Funkys in the stratosphere. Did I do wrong?'

‘No, you did good, Vee–'

I folded the trunks into two, then folded them again. It is impossible to fold a piece of paper seven times and I had now proved it was impossible to fold Funky Trunks more than three.

The crush in my chest barely let me squeeze the words out. ‘It's just that I've decided not to go to the carnival.'

I risked a quick look to gauge their reaction. Caleb and Vee had both turned to Anders, their faces unreadable.

‘Why not?' he asked.

I shrugged. I'd held off telling Mum while she'd been in hospital that I wanted to change schools, so I just couldn't get into any discussion with Anders about ditching Perpetual Suckers before I got into it with Mum.

The silence rippled out across the room.

‘All right,' he said finally. ‘Go tell your principal.'

‘What?'

‘If you're not going to the carnival, you'll have to let Mr Paulson know.' He held Vee's door open for me.

If that's all it took...

‘Fine,' I said, walking past him. ‘I will.'

‘And while you're there, have a look at the school sign they're putting up out the front.' He slammed the door shut behind me.

I took my time getting dressed, but when I came out, Vee's door was still closed.

The kitchen looked empty without Manny flashing knives at the benchtop. For the first time I noticed the flaking varnish, the worn patches that were normally obscured by his beaming presence.

I waited, but no-one came out of Vee's room. So I slammed the front door on my way out. Just to let them know that I had gone.

‘Henwy – where's your bwoo?'

‘My bwoo?'

Sebastian was slathered in enough blue zinc to spur Scotland to a win in the Rugby World Cup.

‘The shops wouldn't sell me any. They said they needed it all for
you
–' I dug a finger into his belly and he ran off gurgling with laughter.

Perpetual Suckers was a seething mass of colour, with half the school sporting yellow streamers, zinc, hairspray and ribbons and the other half wearing blue.

‘Henry!' Hero ran up, blue glittery eyeballs goggling at the end of springs on his head. ‘You came!'

I flicked a finger at one of his eyeballs and watched it bounce crazily around his head. ‘Nah, I just gotta see Mr Paulson. Let him know I'm not coming.'

His face fell. ‘Oh ... OK.' He pointed to the front of the school. ‘He's fixing up the sign. I spelt it wrong. Sorry.'

‘OK–' I backed off before he could try to change my mind. ‘Good luck for today. And remember, keep your legs up and kick hard.'

I waved and ran off, wondering what he had managed to misspell...

I spotted Mr Paulson's bright orange hair on the other side of the adventure playground. He stood at the base of the school sign, his hat in his hand, mopping his brow.

Towering above him was Perpetual Sucker's Thought for the Day, the inspirational message read by tens of thousands of people on their daily commute into the city.

A message that today stopped me dead in my tracks.