Sometimes a tilt of Anna’s head or a half-smile would pierce Eloise’s memory like the swift jab of a needle and she would be positive that Anna was her mother. At these moments, Eloise would long to grab Anna and squeeze her, to hold on to her and keep her safe forever. But then Anna would stamp and grumble about something, or she’d say a word differently from how Eloise’s mum used to say it, and Eloise was not so sure.
Anna gave Eloise back her sketchbook. Eloise took it with a quick skip of the heart, because she never showed her pictures to anyone. But all Anna said was, ‘You’re a pretty good drawer. You’re not as good as my mumma, but you’re pretty good.’
Eloise felt her face grow hot as she shoved the book into her backpack. But after that she didn’t mind if Anna saw her sketching. They’d often sit together outside the summerhouse, Eloise busy drawing, and Anna chatting or reading or sorting pebbles or eating apples. Anna never seemed to notice or mind that Eloise didn’t talk; Anna chattered enough for both of them.
Nearly always, the first thing Eloise did when she arrived was to dive into the silvery water of the pool. She’d swim while Anna watched, but Anna never swam. Eloise couldn’t understand why; if
she
owned a glorious pool like this, she’d swim every day. She held out her hand to Anna, but Anna shook her head.
‘I can’t. It’s too deep, I can’t touch the bottom.’
So Eloise would haul herself out, dripping, and wrap herself in her sun-warmed towel.
Once or twice the girls had to hide in the summerhouse because ‘the guests’ wanted to use the swimming pool. They ducked out of sight, listening to the splashes and shrieks of the adults, while Anna stifled her giggles, and Eloise pulled silly faces to make it worse, until Anna slid sideways and cried with silent laughter. But the guests mostly used the pool in the evenings and at night, Anna said, because in the daytime they were working.
‘You can’t let anyone see you,’ Anna insisted, and Eloise let herself be hidden; she didn’t want to be seen, anyway.
One afternoon as Eloise rode down Mo’s street, she saw someone in the next-door garden: not Tommy, but a bearded man in shabby clothes, kneeling by a flowerbed. He looked up as she swung round into the driveway, and raised his hand.
‘Ah, you must be Mrs Mo’s granddaughter.’
Eloise stopped the bike and looked at the ground. The bearded man advanced to the low dividing fence; he held out his hand to shake hers, then dusted it on his trousers.
‘Excuse me – gardening. Weeding, to be exact. It is strange, even with no rain, the weeds still flourish. Is it the same for you?’
Eloise stared at the ground.
‘Well, it was a pleasure to meet you, Eloise,’ said Tommy’s dad, just as if they’d had a proper conversation. ‘I am Dr Durrani. I was Professor Durrani, once upon a time. But not any more. That was my job – talking, talking all day, lectures and speeches and meetings.’ He glanced around conspiratorially. ‘May I tell you a secret? I am quite glad to have a rest from all that talk, talk, talk. Sometimes there is nothing to say, you know?’ He grinned suddenly, splitting his neat beard in two, and Eloise found herself smiling back. He nodded. ‘I thought you would agree with me. These days, I am better at listening. You understand?’
Eloise gave a nod.
‘Yes. I think you are good at listening too, and watching. It’s all in here, hmm?’ He gently tapped the side of his head. ‘This is what some people do not understand. They think if nothing comes out of the mouth, there is nothing in the mind. All hollow, like a shell. No one inside.’
Eloise curled her fingers round the handlebars. Did he think there was nothing in
her
mind, because she never spoke? Was that what everyone thought?
‘Some people might think it’s easy to stop talking. You never have to choose, this or that; other people decide for you. The hollow shell floats on the waves, carried where the sea takes it.’ His dark eyes smiled at Eloise, and his voice was kind. ‘But the words are still there, like little fish, hiding inside. One day, when you need them, the fish will swim out.’
He smiled again, then politely stepped backward. ‘Excuse me, Miss Eloise. I must continue with my weeding.’
He knelt again by the flowerbed, moving one leg with his hands as if it were rusted stiff. Eloise watched for a second, then she pushed her bike round the back of the house.
‘So you’ve met Professor Durrani,’ said Mo over their dinner of tinned soup. ‘He’s a clever man, a psychologist. You know what that is?’
Eloise knew. At her last school, when they finally worked out that she was always quiet, they’d sent her into a room with a psychologist, a woman in a blue jacket who’d asked lots of questions in a soothing voice and let them hang in the air while Eloise stared at the carpet.
But term had finished before they could arrange another meeting, and Dad had screwed up the letter from the school, thrown it in the bin and announced they were moving to the country.
Tommy’s father wasn’t like that woman. Everything about her had been fake: her careful voice, her artificial smile, the dye in her hair. But Tommy’s dad seemed real; Eloise liked him. She didn’t want him to think there was nothing in her mind, that she was empty and echoing like a seashell.
She didn’t want Mo to think that either, or Anna, or Tommy.
As she cleaned her teeth that night, she looked at her reflection in the mirror. Was there anyone there? Suddenly she felt frightened. She spat out the toothpaste, banged the toothbrush on the basin, and made as much noise as she could, to prove to herself that she was still real.
Eloise dreamed she was swimming in the ocean, deep beneath the waves, in an emerald-lit landscape of flickering fish and towering coral. Far off in the distance, she saw a castle resting on the ocean floor – like a model in an aquarium. Tiny figures waved to her from the battlements and faint voices reached her through the water.
She began to swim toward them, but as she swam, the water thickened around her. Eloise kicked and pushed with all her strength, but she couldn’t get any nearer to the castle. It wasn’t a castle any more, it was a sunken boat. Though she didn’t seem to get any closer, she could see the little figures more clearly. Their voices were fainter now; they were turning away. She saw Dad and Bree and Mo and Tommy, except Tommy had a beard. And there was Anna, with her hands on her hips and her chin jutting up. Behind Anna was a woman, a grown-up woman, and Eloise knew it was her mother. Her mother was moving away, a blur of red and gold backing into the shadows; she was almost gone, and Eloise swam and kicked so hard she thought her lungs would burst, and she opened her mouth to scream out,
Mum! I’m coming, Mum!
But Anna was gone, Mum was gone, they were all drifting away, and Eloise’s mouth filled with water, and she was choking, drowning, and no one could hear. She jerked awake into the dark, her heart pounding, and she couldn’t get back to sleep.
The next morning was very hot. The radio said there were bushfires in the national park; the smoke gave the sky a bronze sheen. The radio also promised there’d be thunderstorms later, and hoped that rain would put out the fires. But Mo said it wouldn’t rain, it never rained any more.
Even though she’d done it so often now, Eloise still held her breath as she stepped forward across the grass, eyes closed, into the mysterious silence that carried her into Anna’s time. She wondered what it must look like to Anna, or anyone else who might be watching: a girl stepping out of the air, shimmering into being? Or a ghostly image that became solid, hardening into shape, like a trickle of wax?
In Anna’s time, the sky was clouded over, and the air was still. Eloise hurried to the summerhouse, still haunted by her dream. She was half-afraid that Anna wouldn’t be there, that she might have vanished away. But nothing could happen to Anna, she reminded herself; Anna’s future was already decided. She would grow up and marry Stephen McCredie and have one baby girl, and name her Eloise . . .
If only there was some way to let her know how glad Eloise was to have found her, how precious this time was. If only there was some gift Eloise could give her.
Anna came running out of the summerhouse, bouncing like an excited puppy.
‘I’ve had the most
splendufferous
idea!’ Her eyes shone, and she tugged at Eloise’s sleeve. ‘Dad said we could only use white paint on the
outside
of the summerhouse. But he didn’t say anything about the
inside
. Let’s make it
jorgeous
! I’ve got paints, all different colours, and brushes, and everything! Do you want to help?’
Suddenly Eloise realised what her gift could be. She took a deep breath. Then she whispered, ‘Yes.’
H
ooray!’ shouted Anna, though it wasn’t clear whether she was excited about the painting or about Eloise finding a voice; maybe it was both. She dragged Eloise inside the summerhouse and showed her a treasure trove of paint tins, brushes, trays and buckets.
Eloise widened her eyes in a question.
‘My mumma’s,’ said Anna. ‘I snuck into her studio. She won’t mind. We always do painting together. When she’s here . . .’ Anna’s voice trailed off. ‘I told you she was away, didn’t I?’
‘Yes,’ whispered Eloise. Her voice was raspy with disuse.
Anna jammed a knife under a paint lid and prised it up. ‘She’s gone away all summer. It’s a prize or something. She’s in America.’
Eloise cleared her throat. ‘She’s . . . an artist?’ She’d never known her mother’s mother was an artist; that explained where her own love of drawing must come from. It gave Eloise a warm feeling of belonging, as if this unknown grandmother had reached out of the past and wrapped her arms around her.
‘I told you that already,’ said Anna impatiently. ‘Weren’t you listening? What about this colour, what do you think?’
Eloise surveyed the array of paint pots. She whispered hesitantly, ‘Want to . . . paint a picture?’
Anna’s face lit up. ‘Oh, yes! That’d be
mangificent
.’ She snatched up a brush and danced around the summerhouse. ‘Let’s paint something
ginormous
. Let’s paint something
fierce
!’
‘A storm?’ croaked Eloise.
‘Yes, yes, a big black dark thunderstorm!’ cried Anna, brandishing her brush like a weapon. ‘That’ll be fun!’ She lunged for a big tin of black paint and wrestled the lid off so it spun clattering across the floor. She plunged the biggest brush into the dark paint and swept a stripe of black across one of the six blank walls of the summerhouse. She turned triumphantly to Eloise. ‘Come on! You help too. You do the storm clouds.’ She thrust the brush into Eloise’s hand and seized another, smaller one, which she dipped into another paint pot. She streaked dark, bitter yellow down the neighbouring wall. ‘Lightning!’
Eloise hung back as Anna swooped and darted, picking up a second brush and then a third, dragging swirls of brooding green and purple across the pale, blank wall. ‘Come
on
!’ cried Anna. ‘You do some too!’
Eloise daubed some cautious black marks in a corner.
‘More! Bigger! Darker!’ Damp strands of hair clung to Anna’s neck and forehead.
Eloise slapped on the black paint, thicker and darker, spreading black smudges of thundercloud across the walls. She swept her arm in wide arcs, bolder and bolder, slapping it over Anna’s flickers of yellow and purple and green, blotting out the bright streaks with grim darkness.
‘Your turn for yellow.’ Anna thrust a dripping brush into Eloise’s hand and seized the black brush from her. Now Eloise was painting over the black cloud-shapes with yellow, jumping to spread the paint in jagged strokes as high as the ceiling, shooting up onto the underside of the roof. Eloise had never painted like this before, outside the lines, wild and fierce and reckless. Anna danced about, laughing and sweating, and Eloise felt the sweat slide down her own back as she stretched and swished.
When they’d covered every bit of the two walls with paint, they stood back, panting for breath.
Anna slowly tilted her head, gazing up. Her forehead crinkled. ‘It’s horrible!’ she wailed. ‘It’s dark, it’s ugly! I hate it!’
She crumpled to the ground and buried her head in her arms. Awkwardly Eloise patted her shoulder. Then she put her arm around Anna and squeezed the small shaking figure.
I’m hugging my mum
, she told herself, and the black walls blurred as her own eyes filled with tears.
‘I hate it. I hate it,’ Anna sobbed. ‘We’ve ruined everything!’
Eloise let out a hiccup of laughter.
‘Don’t
laugh
!’ Anna pulled fiercely away. ‘Don’t laugh at me. It’s not
funny
.’
Eloise sobered. ‘We can fix it,’ she whispered.
‘How, how can we fix it? It’s a
catstrophe
.’
‘Paint . . . over it.’
Anna sat up. She sniffed, and wiped her face on her arm, considering. ‘You think we can? Really?’
Eloise lifted her shoulders and let them fall.
And then all at once she was sitting among the dead leaves on the floor of the empty summerhouse. The sun was going down, and she was alone. She could smell smoke from the bushfires, and when she came out of the summerhouse, a smoky haze lay over the garden.
There had been no rain; the concrete around the empty pool was dry. But as Eloise pedalled home she heard the distant rumble of thunder over the hills, and lightning flashed, a thin metallic thread between earth and sky.
That’s how we should have painted it
, thought Eloise, and she watched the horizon so intently that she almost wobbled off the road.
‘Those Durranis have left us dinner again. Rice and chicken something.’ Mo gave Eloise a sharp look. ‘Are you all right? Not sunstruck? Maybe you should stay home tomorrow. You shouldn’t be out exploring in all that smoke, anyway.’
Eloise made an effort to straighten up, and she shook her head vigorously.
‘You are all right, aren’t you?’ said Mo. ‘Made some friends? Got things to do?’
Eloise nodded firmly. The last thing she wanted was for Mo to forbid her to go out. And she
did
have a friend; she
did
have things to do.