P is for Pearl Read online

  He grunted. ‘Well, if I have the office to myself, I like it.’

  ‘What do you like about it?’

  ‘The quiet.’

  ‘I wouldn’t think being a policeman was very quiet,’ I said.

  ‘It’s not,’ he said, looking pained. ‘You need to scram, kid. I’ve got a ton of paperwork to finish after last night.’

  ‘Do you need help?’

  ‘Go. And take your turnips with you.’

  ‘In a minute.’ I lay back and closed my eyes. ‘I’m just having a moment. I’ll go in a minute, once Loretta gets here.’

  ***

  FROM THE DIARY OF GWENDOLYN P. PEARSON

  I like that in our town people call you in bad weather, to make sure you’re okay. I like that Loretta and I can walk from one side of town to the other in half an hour. I like that sometimes you can see whales out in the sea. I’ve seen them a few times in winter, as they migrate up to the mainland.

  I like being Glenned (although I’d never tell Loretta that).

  I like how people do their best not to bring up my mum, if they can help it. Even if it kind of makes things harder, sometimes. I like that they all do their best.

  I like the sound of the ocean.

  I like that Martin sometimes picks me up and drives me home if I run too far, even if he does spend the whole time grumbling about it.

  I like that our town is tidal. There are new people left behind after each tourist season and sometimes they stay and learn the way of the place and sometimes they wash away quickly to somewhere else.

  I like that our town is famous for this artists’ commune that shut down years and years ago.

  I like that there are places filled with memories and places that aren’t and that I can choose where I go when I run. I like that each Christmas Tyrone, Dad and I sneak into the plantation and steal a tree.

  There’s a lot to like about Clunes.

  ***

  ‘They won’t fit,’ I said, glancing down at Loretta. We were in the cold, windy corridor at school by our open lockers, which were more rust than metal at this stage. Loretta’s was mostly held together by sticky tape and photos of Jeff Buckley, who no one else at school seemed to know, but she was completely obsessed with.

  Loretta ignored me and kept pulling out her class folders. She had the locker below me, which she hated. She said I always dropped stuff all over her.

  ‘Rets?’

  ‘I’m busy,’ she said, squinting down at her timetable.

  ‘The turnips won’t fit.’

  ‘I thought you were giving them to Martin!’

  ‘He’d only take half.’ I peered down at her. ‘And only because I promised not to annoy him for a whole week. Please? I can’t bear to chuck them.’

  Loretta swore under her breath and shoved a hand up for them. I started handing them down and dropped a couple on her head. She made a growling noise, which was drowned out by the bell.

  ‘Sorry, Rets.’ I patted her head and she swatted me away.

  ***

  That day at school people kept looking at us, whispering about the café and the crazy guy. It had been like this back at primary school when everything with my mum had happened. People had whispered things about her being crazy back then, too. But in the years since people had sort of stopped noticing me. Stories couldn’t stay interesting forever, I supposed. Not that you could ever be entirely invisible in a school as small as ours. Sometimes, on television, there’d be schools in American movies bigger than our whole town. We only had around a hundred kids at ours and a lot of them were bussed in from isolated farms further to the east.

  ‘If one more person comes up to me, I’m going to scream,’ Loretta said at recess, after the fourth teacher for the day had checked up on us.

  ‘They’re just being nice,’ I said. ‘You’re such a grump.’

  ‘Hear you guys fought off a violent criminal,’ Gordon said, plonking down next to us with his sketchbook. Gordon was eighteen, but he’d been really sick as a kid and missed two years of school, so he was still in year eleven. He’d moved in next door to my house last year and was obsessed with anything to do with art and history. Everyone had been kind of excited when he started school, but pretty soon he was relegated to the little paperbark tree with Loretta and me. Apart from being a year older than the rest of us, sticking Picasso all over your workbooks is never going to get you into the cool surfer crowd.

  He was always sketching, mostly objects but sometimes people and often us. We’d be mad at him, except he was seriously good. It made me a bit sad, though. It meant he’d get snapped up by a mainland uni. We loved Gordon the way you love a brother or a cousin or something. And I was pretty sure that my mum would’ve adored him, that she would’ve asked for copies of his drawings to plaster all over the fridge.

  Sometimes, not very often, Gordon would show us some of his drawings and I’d always make a big deal out of them and tell him how good they were, but I was always a bit unhappy wondering what my mum would’ve thought. Whether she would’ve loved the shadowing or found it overdone; whether she would’ve loved the colours or thought that they clashed. It made me feel pretty down that they’d never met.

  ‘The guy last night was just sick. People in this town can’t stand anything out of the ordinary,’ I said, thinking of how they’d responded to my mum in pretty much the same way. And she hadn’t been sick. She’d simply been a creative type.

  Gordon raised his eyebrows. They were very bushy, like an old man’s. He was a bit gangly and always wore this tatty old hoodie over his uniform. ‘People are saying he had a machete,’ Gordon said.

  ‘You see, this is why I hate people,’ Loretta said. ‘PS. Have you guys noticed Ruby May’s bikini top? She totally knows it shows through her school dress.’

  ‘Bright orange?’ I suggested.

  ‘I reckon it’s pink,’ Gordon said, not looking up from his sketchbook.

  ‘Oh no,’ groaned Loretta as Ruby May walked over. ‘Pretend we’re not talking about her bikini.’

  Ruby May was short, brown-haired and one of the best surfers on the coast. She stood in front of us, hands on hips. Everyone said she’d get a sponsor soon. You wouldn’t think it, to look at her. She had a sort of ungainly way of walking, but once she was on a board it was a different story.

  ‘Did he, like, try to hit you?’ Ruby May asked Loretta and me, completely ignoring Gordon.

  Loretta just grunted. I shook my head. ‘The guy was just mentally unwell, that’s all.’

  Ruby May blinked at us, clearly unimpressed. ‘I heard there was a cricket bat.’

  ‘There was no cricket bat.’

  ‘And that some lady got beaten up really bad and had to go to hospital.’

  ‘She got a graze!’ I snapped.

  Ruby May heaved a massive sigh and turned to Loretta. ‘Why’s your locker full of turnips?’

  ‘The real question,’ said Loretta, completely deadpan, ‘is why isn’t yours?’

  Ruby May studied her for a moment and then wandered off. We watched her go back over to her gaggle of friends and Loretta made a retching sound. ‘She’s such a stickybeak.’

  ‘She’s alright,’ Gordon said, still not looking up from his sketchbook.

  ‘She’s an idiot.’ Loretta dug moodily into her tabouli salad. She was always on a health kick. Sometimes she wouldn’t let me eat chocolate in front of her.

  The bell went and we all groaned. ‘Please, please, don’t let it be PE.’

  ‘It’s PE,’ I said. I normally quite liked PE. I’d had an awesome teacher in primary school, but the high school PE teacher who’d started last year was a pain.

  Loretta stared at me and I swiped at a bit of tabouli she had stuck to her cheek. ‘It can’t be PE,’ she said.

  ‘It’s PE,’ I repeated. ‘The world’s an unfair place.’

  ‘We’re doing that gymnastic stuff today. I’m going to injure myself!’ She buried her head in her hands.

  �
�We could probably get out of it,’ I said. ‘Plead trauma or shock.’

  Loretta snorted. ‘Mr Hounds would never buy that.’

  ‘Say you jarred your shoulder or something,’ I suggested.

  ‘It’s alright for you! You actually like athletic stuff!’ She rounded on Gordon. ‘And it’s alright for you, too!’

  ‘My ankle’s still sprained,’ he said smugly, tucking his sketchbook into his bag. He’d spent the whole term in PE either sketching on the bench seats or being Mr Hounds’ assistant.

  ‘You are such a liar,’ said Loretta. ‘I hate you. I hate both of you.’

  ‘See? You need chocolate,’ said Gordon, prodding at her tabouli. ‘All this green stuff? Bad for the soul.’

  ‘It’s excellent for the soul, thanks very much.’ Loretta batted him away from her salad and glared across the schoolyard.

  PE was mostly held in the hall during winter. If it wasn’t raining or blowing a gale, the oval tended to be too much of a bog to do anything on, anyway. During PE, Angela Mack came over to me. She was massively into surfing, so she hung out with Ruby May and the other surfer girls. More than once, Loretta had said I would’ve been one of them if Mum hadn’t been so weird about me being near the ocean when I was little. But sometimes I watched Tyrone or some of the other local kids out on the waves in a big swell and I’d feel sick. The waves didn’t exhilarate me the way running did. They just scared me – even from the beach.

  We all stood around, watching Gordon swearing and trying to heave the vaulting horse into place. Sometimes I thought Mr Hounds was pretty clever. Loretta was skulking up the back. She hated PE so deeply that she rarely talked for the whole hour.

  ‘I heard about last night. You okay?’ Angela asked, but not in a stickybeak sort of way. She sounded like she cared. I’d read books where schools were lorded over by a horrible group of superficial girls, but our school wasn’t like that. There was a hierarchy, I guess there always was, but our school’s cool group was all surfers; they talked in serious circles about the best healthy eating plans and sometimes, when I was running, I’d spot them all out doing push-ups and jumping jacks on the beach.

  Angela was tall with beautiful, dark hair that she kept in a thick braid, which I’d always been jealous of.

  ‘Yeah.’ I smiled at her. ‘I’m fine. Thanks.’

  ‘Must’ve been pretty full on.’ She wrapped her arms around herself. ‘All the smashed glass and everything.’

  I shrugged. There’d been all sorts of stuff being smashed when my mum was around. My only problem was that this smashed glass reminded me of all that, and what a big deal everyone had made of it.

  ‘If you ever need to blow off some steam, you can come train with us in the morning, near the pier?’

  ‘Thanks, Ange,’ I said, already knowing I wouldn’t go and would never, ever tell Loretta that I’d been invited. She often said awful things about the surfers, even when they’d done nothing wrong.

  ‘And, guess what?’ Angela leaned in. ‘There’re two new kids starting in year eleven tomorrow!’

  ‘Really?’ New kids at the school were pretty rare. Gordon had been the only newbie in years and most people classified him as a deep disappointment.

  ‘Yeah. Brother and sister. The guy’s really tall and hot, apparently. But Nina’s the one who saw him and she thinks everyone who’s tall is hot.’

  I was glad Loretta was out of earshot. The news of a hot boy arriving at the school for Ruby and Nina to fawn over was probably too much for her to handle in the middle of a PE class, particularly when she’d spent most of last night peeing and also had a locker full of turnips.

  ‘Why are they moving here?’ I asked. There was always a reason. Whether it was work or the surf or the way the town was isolated from everyone and everything. People always had a reason to move to this place at the bottom of the world.

  Angela bit her lip. ‘I dunno! Probably the super-rich kids of celebrities looking for the quiet life.’

  I snorted. ‘Well, that’s one thing we’ve got going for us.’

  Loretta was glaring at us from across the hall. I knew she’d be demanding a full debrief as soon as the lunch bell went.

  Angela was nearly bouncing with excitement. ‘They’ve moved into Songbrooke! With that lady who’s been there for the last year. Must be their mum or something.’

  ‘Nah,’ I said. ‘I don’t know much about her, but she doesn’t have kids. She told Biddy that she didn’t.’

  Angela shrugged.

  I found the idea of more people moving into Songbrooke way more interesting than whether or not this tall guy was actually hot. Songbrooke was this huge, neglected property not very far from where I lived. It had been empty my whole life until last year, when a woman had moved in. We didn’t know anything about her, other than that she was really arty and rode a grey horse up and down the beach most days.

  ‘Okay, Loretta! You’re up,’ said Mr Hounds, eyes glinting. He had a knack for singling Loretta out for everything she sucked at. Angela went back over to Ruby May and Nina.

  Loretta sniffed. ‘Mr Hounds, I hurt my shoulder last night.’

  ‘No, you didn’t. Off you go.’

  Loretta sighed. We were meant to bounce on the springboard and then flip over the vaulting horse onto the landing pad. Through seventeen years of friendship and shared PE classes, I didn’t think I’d ever seen her make it. Ever.

  People were already giggling and nudging each other. Loretta’s gym fails were kind of legendary. Once she’d knocked herself out and had to have two days off school. She’d missed the swimming carnival and said it was totally worth the sore head. Another time we’d had to do PE in a classroom because of a storm and she’d headbutted a hole in a load-bearing wall and the classroom had been shut for weeks. Mr Hounds had competed in pole vaulting at the Commonwealth Games when he was younger, so he was pretty obsessed with gymnastics and athletic stuff, which was really bad news for Loretta. Most of us could sort of muddle through, but it was like Loretta’s arms and legs just wouldn’t listen to her brain. I told her it was because her brain was so impressive, it wouldn’t be fair to the rest of us if she was able to coordinate herself, too.

  ‘I can do this,’ she muttered, although not very convincingly. She glanced at me and I forced a smile and gave her a thumbs-up sign. ‘I can do this!’ she said, a bit more loudly.

  She sprinted towards the springboard, reached out her hands for the vaulting horse and – for a moment – I thought she’d finally done it. Then she kept going, managing to do a superman dive under it and headbutt the side of the landing mat.

  ‘Ouch,’ murmured Gordon, who’d come to stand beside me, his leg cocked out pathetically in front of him, like it was about to fall off. ‘Not as good as when she demolished the classroom, though. Eight out of ten.’

  Loretta got up and dusted herself off, although she must’ve been really hurting. She never did things by halves.

  She turned to Mr Hounds. ‘Look, even if my shoulder didn’t hurt before, it sure does now!’

  Mr Hounds was trying hard not to grin. ‘You can sit out the next round.’

  Loretta went and sat down on the bench, staring straight ahead, ignoring all the giggling and shuffling and everyone calling out scores and fake judge’s comments and things about turnips. You had to hand it to Loretta. She was tough.

  ***

  At lunch, people were staring at us less and talking more and more about the new kids instead. We hadn’t met the new kids or anything yet, but given that they’d distracted the entire school off the subject of the café, I was already half in love with them.

  The three of us sat under our scraggly paperbark and I pulled my phone out of my pocket. We weren’t supposed to have them at school, but everyone did anyway. Although reception was pretty awful in our town, there were a few spots around the school where a couple of reception bars could be coaxed out. Our little paperbark was one of them.

  ‘They’re probably really b
oring,’ Loretta said, straightening the corner of the rug she always brought from home for us to sit on because she hated being damp. Gordon said she was like a lizard and that living her best life would involve sunning herself continuously on a rock in a desert somewhere.

  ‘We haven’t even met them! You’re so judgy,’ said Gordon.

  Loretta swallowed a mouthful of yoghurt. She hadn’t stopped frowning since PE and had made me get her an icepack from the sick bay, which was now tied on top of her head with a skipping rope Gordon had found out the back of the history classroom.

  I read the message on my phone. Max, the manager of the café, had texted me back, accepting my resignation and offering to give me a couple of weeks’ pay. I flipped over to Facebook, where pretty much everyone at school had posted statuses about the café. I cleared my throat. ‘So, it’s official. I’ve quit the café.’

  They both stared at me and Loretta put down her yoghurt.

  ‘Are you crazy? Everyone wants to work at the café!’ Gordon said. His expression brightened. ‘Actually, can you call Max? Wrangle me a trial shift?’

  ‘Are you sure, Gwen?’ Loretta asked, her voice unusually quiet.

  ‘Yeah,’ I said, trying really hard not to think of the shattering glass and red-and-blue lights; of those moments behind the counter when we didn’t know that everything was going to be alright. Of how I felt different, now. On edge again, like I had as a little kid. ‘I’m sure.’

  ***

  Later that afternoon, Tyrone, Gordon, Evie and I snuck down to Songbrooke. Loretta had been in a foul mood since headbutting the landing mat and had gone straight home after school, telling us we were nothing but a pack of creepy stalkers and that she was not going to involve herself in our despicable spying.

  If the new kids were big news in our little town, it was nothing compared to how excited we were about having them as neighbours. We didn’t have many. Our little beachside street was mostly full of holiday homes that were crowded with raucous pink people from the mainland for the two weeks over Christmas and New Year and then empty the rest of the time. Nobody wanted to be in our town over winter. Or spring or autumn, for that matter. Not that I really blamed them. It felt pretty wild and sad here, sometimes.