Smooch & Rose (4 page)

7. Sold

One night a few weeks later, the kitchen smelt of lamb roast. We hardly ever had roasts. Gran usually saved them for birthdays and super special occasions.

‘Good news,' said Gran when I asked her what we were celebrating.

My heart soared. ‘We're keeping the farm?'

Gran didn't answer.

‘We've paid off all the bills?'

Gran still didn't answer. Instead she asked me to set the table for three while she piled crispy roast potatoes and juicy slices of lamb onto the plates and sloshed gravy over the lot. Why wasn't she talking to me? Was I invisible or something?

‘Gran!' I demanded. ‘
Why
are we having a roast?'

‘I was going to wait for Uncle Malcolm. He'll be here any minute.' She glanced out the dark window.

‘Gran!'

She rubbed her eyes and then clapped her hands together like it was exciting news. But she didn't look excited. ‘Rosie . . . we've sold the farm. I didn't say anything earlier because we've been waiting for the approvals. But I found out today. We've sold. And at a great price. A
fantastic
price.'

I crossed my arms. Her voice was funny and she was talking too quickly. And she didn't look at me when she spoke. ‘Uncle Malcolm will be here shortly,' she continued. ‘He's been negotiating all day.' She smiled, but it wasn't a real smile. Not a crinkly eyes smile.

I wanted to scream. NO! We couldn't sell! NO! NO! NO!

‘We CAN'T move!' I shouted. ‘Not now! What about Carol and Smooch and . . . ?'

Gran wasn't listening. She seemed more interested in poking at the pieces of lamb on our plates.

‘NO!' I shouted. ‘I WON'T leave the farm! I hate the city. I hate Uncle Malcolm. I HATE city kids.' Hot tears welled in my eyes. I ran out of the kitchen and into my room. How could Uncle Malcolm do this to us? Why didn't Gran stand up to him? We would have gotten the money from somewhere.

I lay on my bed, wishing I hadn't left Brownie at Carol's. I missed having someone to cuddle. I waited until I heard Uncle Malcolm's car pull up in the driveway, and made sure he went into the kitchen with Gran before creeping down to Gran's room. I slid open her bedside drawer. Nestled towards the back, among her tubes of hand cream and faded birthday cards, was Mum's old wheat pack. It smelt of lavender and of Mum. She used to heat it for me when I got sick and then cuddle beside me in bed, reading me stories until I fell asleep.

I curled up on Gran's bed and put the wheat pack against my stomach. It weighed about the same as Smooch when he was still in Carol's pouch. Mum wasn't there to read me stories, and the pack wasn't warm like Smooch, or soft and tickly, but it made me feel better. At least Smooch would be okay. He was safe – high up in his tallowwood tree.

Sometime later I heard footsteps at the door. ‘Come on, Rosie love,' said Gran softly. ‘Come and give your old gran a hand.' Something about the way she said it made me swallow my tears. It wasn't her fault we had to sell the farm.

The cold lino floor and the draught from the back door made the kitchen the coldest room in the house. The sink sat below a big window that overlooked the farm. At night our reflections watched eerily over us when we stood at the sink and did the washing up.

‘Gran,' I said when I finally found my voice. ‘What will happen to me in the city? I'm not like city kids. They think I'm weird and . . . I won't have any friends.'

Gran stopped scrubbing the roasting dish. She straightened and looked me in the eye for the first time all night. ‘Rosie dear,' she said, ‘if there's something I've learnt in the last few weeks, it's that everything changes. Just like the wind.'

‘But what if you don't want it to change? What if—?'

‘You can't control the wind, love.' She returned to the dish. ‘You have to be brave and put up your sails. No point in standing firm – you'll only capsize.'

I didn't answer and we finished the washing up in silence.

‘Come on, chin up,' said Gran, pulling out the plug. ‘Tell me about school. What are you working on?'

I swallowed hard and swiped angrily at my nose. ‘We have to do a persuasive PowerPoint,' I mumbled. ‘It's due in two weeks.'

‘You haven't told me about this,' said Gran. ‘A power what?'

‘It's a stupid one-minute presentation. One whole minute – in front of the entire class.'

‘On what?' asked Gran.

‘We have to choose an endangered Australian animal and—'

‘Bah! Rosie Nunn, you could talk about animals till you were blue in the face. What animal have you chosen?'

‘I'm doing a koala. You know, 'cause of Smooch,' I said. ‘I'll need heaps of information and loads of pictures too.'

‘Smooch. Great idea,' she said. ‘Isn't it, Malcolm?'

Uncle Malcolm had come into the kitchen without me hearing. I didn't realise he was still here. Now he peered at me over his reading glasses, like I was a pesky toad.

‘Smooch?' he said, pulling off his glasses and rubbing at his eyes. ‘Who or what is Smooch?'

Gran gave me an encouraging smile and said, ‘Tell him, Rosie.'

I fiddled with the damp tea towel in my hand. ‘It's . . . about a . . . koala. I—'

‘A koala? You haven't got a koala in the house, have you?' Uncle Malcolm looked anxiously over my shoulder. ‘You know how allergic . . .'

‘Oh for goodness sake!' snapped Gran. ‘She's talking about the koala down by the creek.' Her lips were tight. ‘Remember how you and David used to love the creek when you were kids? Rosie saved a koala down there last year. His name is Smooch and she's going to write about him for her science project.'

Uncle Malcolm snorted. ‘Well, good luck with
that,' he said. ‘You'd better hop to it. The contractors
will be here soon. Can't imagine the bulldozers will care two hoots about your Hooch, or Pooch, or whatever its name is.'

‘Smooch,' I mumbled. Then a little more loudly, ‘What do you mean
bulldozers
?'

Uncle Malcolm laughed. ‘Bulldozers. They'll pull down the lot. No trees will be left standing, koala or no koala.'

My mouth fell open. I stared at Uncle Malcolm in disbelief. ‘They can't do that,' I said. ‘Koalas are native Australian animals. We saved Smooch when his mum died. I promised I'd look after him.' I glanced at Gran. She was clutching the back of a kitchen chair. Her eyes were wide and dark.

‘Surely not?' she said, pulling out the chair and sinking into it. ‘All the trees?'

‘It's too late now!' said Uncle Malcolm, his voice rising. ‘The council's given the developers the full go-ahead and believe me, judging from the other developments around here,
all
the trees will go.'

8. Missing

The next morning, I zoomed over to Carol's place as soon as I was dressed. I had to find out the rules for clearing koala trees. Uncle Malcolm couldn't possibly be right.

‘Haven't you got school this morning?' asked Carol after she opened the door. She was holding a red and green lorikeet wrapped in an old towel, so she beckoned me in with her elbows. ‘What's up?'

I followed her into the kitchen. ‘You have to help. They're going to clear all of Smooch's trees!'

‘Wait,' said Carol, putting the lorikeet in a small cage perched on the bench. She latched the door shut and turned to give me her full attention. ‘Who's going to clear all of whose trees?'

‘The developers. The ones who bought our farm. They can't do that, can they? Isn't it against the law?'

Carol sat down on one of the kitchen chairs and nodded gravely to the chair beside her. ‘Here's the thing,' she said. ‘At the moment, koalas are protected, but not their trees. If the trees at your creek haven't been noted as “protected”, then the developers
can
knock them down. It's not against the law.'

‘But what do you mean by “protected”?'

‘It's complicated. If there's a koala in a tree when the council checks on the property, it will be marked “protected”. That means the tree can't be knocked down. But if there is no koala when they come out to do their inspection, the developers can go ahead.'

I breathed a big sigh of relief. ‘Well, that's okay then. They'll see Smooch when they come. The trees will be marked and the developers won't be able to bulldoze them. Huh! Wait till I tell Uncle Malcolm!' I stood up to go.

‘Mmm, well, it's not as simple as that. There's a lot of rules and . . . '

‘What rules?'

‘Too many to remember. Hop on my computer and take a look.'

Carol's computer whizzed and whirred as I typed ‘koala' into the search engine. There was heaps of information, ranging from furry marsupial fact sheets to a rock band called The Rocking Koalas. My eyes darted to Carol's clock. It was nearly 8.15.

I scrolled down one of the pages to a heading that said:
Is There a Koala in Danger Near You?
Three pictures came up across the top of the page. The first showed a bulldozer ramming a tree. A koala clung desperately to a spindly branch as the tree swayed sideways. The second picture showed a block of land totally cleared of trees and bushes. The red soil was jagged with broken branches and roots. The third showed a suburban street not unlike the new streets in our neighbourhood. It was lined with brand-new houses, smart-green lawns and plastic-looking hedges. It was all so neat and tidy. And there was not a gum tree in sight.

Icicles began to shatter inside my ice-cream heart. Was this what Uncle Malcolm meant? Would this be our farm in a few weeks' time? I scanned down the page. Below the pictures was a heading:
What Can You Do?
The suggestions included writing letters to your local councillors, to the newspapers, to your local Member of Parliament and to the Minister for the Environment in your state. There was even a sample letter, which I quickly printed.

‘What do you think?' I asked Carol when I showed it to her.

‘I think you should do it,' she said, wiping her hands on her jeans to take the letter from me. She gave it a quick once over and handed it back. ‘Stand up for what you believe in and write to everybody, I say. Do you need some addresses?'

I began writing straight after school that afternoon. I wrote and wrote and wrote until my fingers cramped. I wrote a letter to our local councillor, one to our local Member of Parliament, to the Queensland Minister for the Environment and, just to be on the safe side, to Australia's Environment Minister in Canberra. Carol had also given me the addresses for two local papers as well as the biggest newspaper in Brisbane. I wrote to them all. I told them about Smooch, explaining that the worst thing we could do was let developers bulldoze his trees. I told them it was no good catching Smooch and taking him somewhere else. He'd only try to get back home and end up being killed by a car or a dog along the way. I finished off the letters asking if they wanted to come and see the creek and Smooch for themselves. I knew they'd understand if they saw him. I ended by saying they'd have to hurry. The developers would be here any day. Then I signed each letter:
Yours sincerely, Rose Nunn
.

I snuck some envelopes and stamps from Gran's writing bureau and raced to the red postbox at the end of our street. I held my letters up to the slot, took a deep breath and then closed my eyes. ‘Please help Smooch,' I begged. Then I opened my eyes and shoved in the letters.

It was getting dark by the time I got back home. I threw off my school dress and tugged on my jeans and blue hoodie before racing down to the creek. I wanted to tell Smooch what I'd done. He had to know I wouldn't let the developers cut down his trees.

My eyes swept the treetops. Smooch wasn't in his favourite tallowwood. Or the paperbark next to it. Or the scribbly gum two trees over. I brushed past the long grasses with their sticky seed heads and swiped a couple of fallen branches out of my way. I craned my neck. Still nothing. It smelt like a deep dark forest down here. Two black crows cawed at me from the flaking paperbark trees. A noisy miner tweeted from high up in the canopy. Dad had known the call of every single bird at our creek. I bet he would've known where Smooch was.

I squinted harder into the canopy. It suddenly seemed eerily quiet. Mysteriously still. My feet squelched in the mud. My breath echoed in my ears.

All the trees were empty.

Smooch wasn't in
any
of them.

There was something else though. Something orange – over on the far bank. I scrambled across the creek on a fallen scribbly log. My heart flipped. An ugly orange stake was wedged like a flagpole in the mud. Another one stood a few metres further along. And another. I counted eighteen orange stakes in all. They stood like an intruding army of silent soldiers in the bush.

What were they for? And where was Smooch?