11. Chapter Nine

Chapter Nine

“Hey,” said Sadie, pausing to wipe her sweaty brow as she banged in the corner post. “Did you see Ollie Gabrielli at the school today? I didn’t know she was back in town.”

Lara sighed, her own hammer dangling from her hand. She was sweaty too as the sun beat down mercilessly. They’d waited to start this bit of the job thinking the heat would dissipate but it really didn’t feel like it now.

Eva looked up from where she was struggling to unpick the end of a roll of wire. It had been Sadie’s idea to set her up with a chicken coop to help keep her food bills low and to kickstart a real vegetable patch, but honestly right now Lara would rather just give the woman a lifetime of overpriced eggs and silverbeet from the store and be done with it.

“Huh. I wonder what she’s like these days.” Eva tucked a lock of sandy hair behind her ear. “She was always so smart and funny.”

Lara scoffed. Both women looked her way.

“First of all, she’s not back, she’s just passing through like the tourist she is,” she said shortly. “And she’s exactly the damn same, only worse. Still thinks she’s better than everyone else, whole life on a silver platter.”

Eva and Sadie exchanged a glance.

“That’s right,” Sadie remembered, “you two always hated each other.”

“I didn’t hate her,” Lara defended herself. “I barely thought about her.”

“Mmhm,” Sadie agreed. “Clearly.”

Lara ignored her, picking up her hammer again and thudding it against the post.

“You’ve spoken to her,” Eva observed, “since she’s back. ”

Lara nodded. She found she didn’t want to elaborate. Each interaction had felt slightly more complicated than the last and Lara felt no urge to process any of them, thank you very much. The sooner Ollie jumped back on a flight to Sydney or Melbourne or wherever it was she belonged, the happier Lara would be. Up until this week she hadn’t seen her old tormentor since high school and that, quite frankly, was fine with her. What the hell was Ollie doing back in Ribbonwood anyway? She had big city written all over her.

She certainly couldn’t imagine Ollie out here in the bush, sweating. Especially not now she was a goddamned doctor. Lara would bet her last dollar that Ollie had her own cleaner. And a dog walker. And a guy who mowed her neat little city lawn for her and probably cleaned her pool too. Meanwhile Eva couldn’t buy food to eat while her erstwhile partner worked FIFO in the mines, leaving her and her child stranded out here with no supports, no car and apparently, no access to his pay-check. They’d hatched a decent enough plan around the bonfire last week but it made her crazy thinking how easy some women had it compared with others, by pure accident of who they were born to and what unfair talents they were gifted.

It was only the thought of Ollie’s face falling when Lara blew off her pick-up-disguised-as-reconciliation attempt that kept her warm at night. She wondered how often women turned Ollie down these days. Probably not many now she was rich and successful and looked the way she looked. It was intensely satisfying to know that Ollie Gabrielli couldn’t get everything she wanted. Even after all these years Lara wasn’t going to give her a damn thing.

“Come on kid, we gotta go,” Lara called to her daughter .

“Mum, no! It’s early,” Tilly protested. She and Frankie were playing some kind of complicated game in the corner of Eva’s yard involving a lot of whispering and then shrieking. Lara had been up since five and her head was starting to ache. The coop was almost finished and all three women had prepared a meal together, Lara quietly slipping more ingredients than necessary into Eva’s fridge just to tide her over another day.

“It’s seven o’clock. The mosquitoes are biting and it’s a school night. You’ll see each other tomorrow,” she reminded her daughter as she and Frankie clung to each other like they were about to be swept apart at sea.

“Frankie’s going home to bed anyway.” Sadie appeared next to her in the blessed coolness of the dark night. Both girls groaned, trading scathing glances and rolling their eyes at the unreasonableness of their inane mothers. Lara tried not to smile. Sometimes ten-year-olds were like toddlers, other times like world-weary forty-year-olds, exasperated by the pitiful ways of the world.

“ Now ,” she told Tilly, who sighed and wandered up the grass towards her. She slung an arm around her daughter, squeezing her narrow shoulders and a hum of warmth hit her chest when Tilly hugged her back. That wasn’t always a given anymore, now that her baby girl was practically a pre-teen. They walked up to the car together, calling out their goodnights to their friends. This, at least, was something she could give her daughter: community and chosen family. She always wanted Tilly to know that belonging was a thing she could create for herself .

She drove home, the car winding around the dark track, Lara taking every bend cautiously. There were roos everywhere and all kinds of small wildlife scattering before their tyres, not to mention the grubby-kneed creature in the seat beside her.

The whole way home she experienced that feeling - the one she labelled motherhood - where she would have died a thousand deaths for the small girl in the passenger seat, but she also couldn’t wait for her child to please please fall asleep so she’d finally stop chatting and just give her a moment of peace. And yet an hour later, when Tilly was tucked up reading in bed, barely registering her mother’s goodnight kiss, Lara started to miss her. Ridiculous.

She moved around her house in steps that were so rehearsed it was like an endlessly repeating dance, rescuing stray cups, wiping up dinner preparations, throwing clothes in the washing machine. It was all so mundane and mind-numbing that it took a good half an hour for her to shake herself out of the mood she was falling into.

Yes, her life was filled with predictable drudgery sometimes, but that was precisely the gift she’d longed for. This was the privilege of comfort, of safety, of having the power to choose exactly who she did and did not let through her front door and into the sanctuary of her home. Even this, she thought, as she scooped up Tilly’s damp towel from the bathroom floor, this little moment of peace was a gift.

She let herself out the back door, an almost full moon lighting up her garden, glinting off the leaves of the macadamia trees. She shoved her feet into boots - doing a quick check for stray wildlife inside them first - then wandered out over the soft dark grass, making sure the automatic coop door had closed and her own flock of chooks were secure. They were. She heard a little bristle of clucks from inside as the girls shuffled on their perches. She soothed them with a goodnight.

She leaned on one of the fence posts, gazing out at the moonlight reflecting off the dam. An owl shrieked and swooped and she could hear the flying foxes chattering to each other in the trees. Her phone buzzed in her back pocket, making her jump, disturbing the peaceful night.

It was Eva, her voice shaking but strong. As she listened to the woman speak, Lara knew the plan they’d made was going to have to change.

It was time for another bonfire.