Sally Called!

[I love music]

[center]***chapter 11***[/center]

FRANK'S STORY

Frank Morgan dropped the car keys into Donald “Flathead” Fisher’s outstretched palm and spoke with considerable importance.

“And if you’d just like to check out your car and sign for me, please, Mr Fisher...” He narrowly stopped himself from saying Donald. That’d be pushing his luck. But still it felt good to be giving instructions.

Frank rarely got a chance to be someone. He had made himself out to be, especially to Steven, such a skilled mechanic that the staff at Dawson’s Garage must have breathed a collective sigh of relief the moment he set foot in the door. Well, it was true he got on well with the guys who worked there and was well liked. But he had also earned himself the nickname of Trigger (a pun on Frank not being very quick off the mark) on his very first day, when one of the mechanics thought it would be funny to send him out for a “tub of elbow grease” and Frank had fallen for the joke hook, line and sinker.

A typical Saturday, he made tea for the other blokes, was sent out for their pies and sangers, did sweeping up or other menial jobs as and when required and was occasionally asked to do filing in the cramped, airless “office”. Since its expansion of a few years ago, Dawson’s had gained a newly-built annex which enclosed a state-of-the-art modern office, but this was used exclusively by bosses and administrative staff and, unless he happened to be delivering post or running an errand, the only office that Frank was ever allowed to grace was a tiny room, hidden away at the very back of the original garage, with a phone, chair, cluttered desk, and window that overlooked indoors.

Steven would have been very surprised too had he known that Frank’s main duty was car washing. Although these days there was of course a mechanical car wash, Tommy, Bruce and Ray Dawson had started up Dawson’s Garages as a car valeting service many years ago and they prided themselves on still providing hand car washes for any old-fashioned customers who believed a mechanical car wash never did get a car quite as gleaming.

Dawson's - Where the Customer Matters was the slogan advertised on posters and coasters and the end of the TV commercial when a very annoying TV family finally drove off with their bratty-turned-angelic kids. Yeh, well, fine, bully for the customer. Weekends, it was Frank who got the task of cleaning their bloody cars!

Okay, now and again he got to do some very basic tinkering on a car engine and a few times, when there was no one else, he’d been asked to ring a customer. Never having been through college themselves and belonging to a far earlier generation, the Dawsons fondly believed all college students would have excellent telephone manners and so they never got to hear Frank’s laid back conversations like “G’day, mate! If you wanna get your butt down here, your car’s waiting.” as he swung back on his chair, feet on the desk, twirling a pencil round his fingers.

A couple of times he had swung so far back that he actually fell off the chair but, fortunately, had just finished each call before crashing ignobly to the ground and, perhaps even more fortunately, because the Dawson brothers were constantly stressing to their employees the importance of “professionalism”, no customer had yet thought his very informal phone calls worth commenting on.

Because Frank would crash and die if he lost his Saturday job. Apart from a dream, it was all he had left now to hold his head up high.

He hadn’t found the courage to tell anyone yet, but he was hanging by a thread to life as a student. It had even been tactfully suggested that he try a less academic career. Jeez, though, he couldn’t let Pip and Tom down! Knowing their eldest kid lacked the old grey matter, his foster parents were proud as punch the day he’d got the letter telling him his application for a place at TAFE had been successful. Even Steven had punched him on the arm and said, “Congrats, mate!” It was one helluva moment for Frank. The first time he’d felt he was going to be someone since...

Eight. It was old enough to know what to do. Frank’s Dad was downstairs making out with a new chick. Jeez, he was gonna be stoked when he found out what Frank had done!

Frank grinned to himself as he pulled open the bottom drawer of the chest, sucking in a breath when he saw the rolls of banknotes. They never went without, him and Dad. There was always plenty of cash in the Morgan home. Once they’d even played a mad game of “catch the bankroll” - it had to touch the ceiling to count - and one of Dad’s girlfriends had found two rolls, $2000 dollars in each, that they hadn’t even missed, under the bed a week or so later.

Tanya, Dad’s girlfriend, had been real impressed and had been hugging Dad and saying over and over in a silly sing-song voice “Frankie, Frankie, Frankie, I can’t believe you didn’t even notice it was gone, gone, gone” which got on Frank’s nerves after a bit, but she’d been drinking and anyway Frank thought it was heaps cool, the way his Dad just smiled like it was no big deal and disentangled her arms from his lipstick-stained neck.

Dad always had his pick of chicks. That was something else money did for you, Frank thought, as he rummaged his way past banknotes, under neatly-folded towels, face flannels and sachets of shampoo and shower gel - Dad’s new girlfriend liked to keep things tidy - until his fingers touched the cold steel he’d been searching for.

He drew out the sawn-off shotgun, his heart pumping nineteen to the dozen, and an electric shock of anticipation running through his whole body. Yessir, he was gonna be just like his Dad Frankie Morgan and get folks’ respect! No b***s***! All he had to do now was pull this bank job. Frank put the gun in his school sports bag and fastened it up.

You know, some days will stay in your memory forever. And yet, strangely, not the whole of the day, not even all the most important parts, but often random moments that don’t even matter.

So Frank remembered getting the gun. Even what was running through his mind when he was looking for it. But not crashing into Mrs Marshall, an elderly neighbour. Years later, when he was reading about the case, he learnt he’d been running and had winded her and she’d said, “Hey, where’s the fire?” and he’d replied, “My Dad gave me money to buy lollies.”

He remembered seeing his shadow cast on the wall as he turned into the High Street and he remembered a woman wearing a green jacket and black trousers sighing with impatience as she waited to cross at the lights. He remembered a cop car pulling up just before he reached the bank and how he was convinced he’d been rumbled but it turned out one of the cops was only jumping out to buy a couple of burgers. He could even recollect that the cop who bought the burgers called his mate Tony and said something about fries and tomato relish.

But try as he might Frank had no recollection of going into the bank and yelling, as apparently he’d yelled, “Everyone freeze!”

Though he could still recall, and describe in minute detail if it were ever required of him to do so, a forgotten black brolly leaning against the bank counter.

Maybe because the brolly was what he fixed on when first there was someone laughing, then a bang and blinding flash of light and screaming, and he wouldn’t look, he couldn’t look, sick with fear because the gun he hadn’t expected to go off might have killed someone.

God, he was so scared. The gun had dropped by his foot and he was frightened it might go off again and his hand was hot and the pit of his stomach was churning and he was sure he was gonna be sick and he didn’t wanna chuck up in front of all these people he knew were staring down at him. Worst of all, he began to cry. Not even a little bit either, but great shuddering sobs and tears that ran with snot down his nose.

“I want my Dad,” he sobbed. “You gotta get my Dad.”

But nobody did. Oh, they were real nice to him at the cop station. They asked him his favourite milkshake and when he said strawberry they got him one and even some chocolate biscuits, though he was too sick to eat them. They kept saying it wasn’t his fault and he wasn’t in trouble but Frank knew he was or his Dad would’ve been there by now.

Frank told them firmly, when they started asking about her, that he DIDN’T want his Mum there. His Dad was the greatest, but his Mum was an alko who had walked out on his Dad, for another guy she met at a drying out clinic, when Frank was just a bub.

She was always going to drying out clinics and then having parties and drinking herself stupid soon as she got out, Frank said disdainfully. She visited now and again, always with the alko boyfriend, but each time she was blotto and it scared him because she always yelled and sometimes, when Dad wasn’t looking, she smacked him. Last time she’d gone to make them all a cup of tea but the water splashed, nearly scalding him, and Frank’s Dad, Frank told them proudly, threw her out in the street and punched and kicked Mum’s drunken boyfriend because he tried to argue. But Frank’s Dad, now he could hold his liquor, Frank said. He never worried when Dad came home blotto.

The people asking the questions sure must have been impressed because they looked at each other without saying anything, the cop who’d ordered the milkshake and the nice lady with the curly blonde hair and red lipstick, who sat in the chair opposite drinking coffee out of a paper cup. The lady put the cup down on the little coffee table, leaned forward and said, “Does your Dad go out drinking a lot, Francis?”

He pulled a face because nobody but nobody ever called him Francis and answered, “Yeh, heaps. But I don’t ever get scared ‘cos he makes sure everywhere’s locked up and the alarm’s on and I know I’m never to answer the door. When’s my Dad gonna get here?”

But it was very, very late before Frank’s Dad arrived. Just before they pulled down the blinds in the little office where they took him to after a middle-aged woman in a nurse’s uniform gently woke him from a deep sleep, he could see that the moon and stars had begun to glimmer in a pool-black sky.

Frank’s head was fuzzy from a disjointed dream and he was trying to figure where he was. Then he remembered. It wasn’t the cop station anymore. He had been driven a long, long way, stopping only for lunch and breaks, to a red-brick building with nursery rhyme characters on frosted windows, where he was given sandwiches and a hot milky drink and told it might be best if he tried to sleep for a while.

Although the sun was shining brightly and he could hear very young kids playing a noisy game in a nearby room, he was exhausted from the long journey and long day and had fallen asleep the moment he crawled between the crisp white sheets, waking in what seemed like a hospital ward to the hushed tones of night.

Seeing his father standing there flanked by two cops he flung himself at him. “I didn’t tell ‘em, Dad, I didn’t tell ‘em, I swear!”

“I know, mate, I know. It’s okay.” Frankie Morgan’s voice cracked as he ruffled Frank’s hair. Frankie knew he was going down for a long, long time and, for all his faults, he did, in his own way, love the son who hero-worshipped him so much that he’d even kept newspaper clippings of his criminal activities pasted in a large red scrapbook.

Frankie (named Franco after his Italian immigrant grandfather by his half-Italian mother, but preferring Frankie and, in turn, choosing the English version of the name for his son) wasn’t at heart an evil man, but he was quick-tempered and workshy and had slipped into crime after the deaths of his hard-working parents and subsequent failure of the family business.

Dark and handsome, he had never had any problems getting the girls, but a ready supply of cash and element of danger had made him even more attractive. Frank had been the result of one of those liaisons and, despite Paula’s heavy drinking, the only good thing to ever come out of his life. And in just a few hours Frank would be taken to the foster home that had been arranged for him and Frankie to await serious charges on a series of armed robberies. These last few minutes together were precious.

“Look, son, fair and square, I done the crime, I gotta do the time. They’re gonna take you somewhere you’ll be looked after, fostered it’s called, by some nice people...”

Frank clung desperately to his father. “Nooo!!! I’m not leavin’ you, Dad, and the pigs can’t make me! I’ll kill ‘em first!” Frank backed up his claim by viciously kicking the nearest police officer’s ankle.

Frankie gave an apologetic smile. These two cops had hearts and families of their own and had pulled strings they should never have pulled to make this unscheduled fleeting visit. If it ever came out, their careers would be in tatters and the media would chew them up and spit them out.

“Frank. Son, listen to what I say. That’s loser talk and I don’t want you being no loser. I want you to do me proud like you always done. I want folk to say “Yeh, Frank Morgan, he was never a loser, never a crim like his old man.” You stay outta trouble and you do what these foster people say. Can you promise you’ll do that for me?”

Frank nodded, tears raining down his cheeks. Over his head, one of the cops coughed and tapped his watch.

“I gotta go,” Frankie said, his voice thick with his own tears. “You make sure you always remember, Frank, you walk tall ‘cos I’m proud of you. Love you, son.” He gave him a last tight hug and kissed the top of his head and the cuffs were clicked back into place.

Frank clenched his small fists with helpless rage, sobbing as his father was led away, but not caring who saw him cry now. He’d do his Dad proud like he promised, he would, he would.

It wasn’t easy. Frank had come a long, long way since his first night under the Fletcher’s roof when he’d smashed every single plate he could lay his hands on. Dad had told him to do what the foster people said and, okay, they hadn’t told him to smash the plates. But, he justified his actions to himself, they hadn’t told him he couldn't smash the plates either. He sat in the middle of the broken crockery and spoilt food, confused and angry and missing his Dad so much, and waited for them to do their block. But nothing happened.

The mess was cleared up, supper was dished out again, and when Frank, realising how hungry he was, got up and sat back in his chair, Pippa served up some more casserole. It was like they understood it was nothing ‘gainst them, but sometimes a guy had so many mixed-up feelings and no words to explain.

It took Frank quite a while longer to learn that when he behaved badly he’d be totally ignored and when he didn’t he got their undivided attention, but, by the time Steven, Carly, Lynn and Sally had joined the family, he was considered the most responsible of the Fletcher kids. He never shared with his foster brother and sisters that in the early days he’d done stuff like thrown bricks at the windows or that he once put a fish down the back of the couch to stink the place out or that some days he’d argued with Tom and Pippa almost non-stop or that he’d called his foster parents names he didn’t even want to remember now. Nope, he was Frank, the eldest, the one everyone looked up to. Sure, he was no A-student but no one minded and Frank was Tom’s right-hand man whenever there was any practical work to be done.

The day he received the TAFE letter was long before Lynn and Sally joined the Fletcher clan so there was only Pippa, Tom, Steven and Carly to wait with baited breath for Frank to tear open the envelope.

“I’m in,” he whispered, his hands shaking as held the letter and feeling choked when he saw everyone’s obvious delight. Steven punched his arm and Carly yelled “Whooo-hooo!” and then, remembering she and Frank were still in the middle of an who-drank-all-the-OJ argument, tried to pretend she just happened to be singing.

But sadly for Frank the grades he’d hoped for in vain in his school days didn’t suddenly dust themselves down and lean comfortably against his college work. The lectures went so far over his head that in the end he stopped listening and then he stopped bothering to turn up for them. His books were covered in notes that didn’t make sense and then idle doodles and finally blank sheets of paper. Frank knew his college days were numbered; it was just a matter of who was going to crack first, him or the education authorities.

But TAFE wasn’t all bad. He’d made some good mates there, the chicks liked him and the social scene rocked. And his dream of being a rock star had been born at TAFE too.

Frank had been chilling in the bar when a band a few of the guys had recently started up announced one of their guitarists had had to drop out for personal reasons and asked could anyone help out. A huge music fan, he stepped up without thinking too much about it. Although he played as though he’d been jamming with the group all his life, nobody was more stunned than Frank at the enthusiastic reception and by the audience yelling his name for an encore.

“Jeez, mate, you can ******* play!” Dez, the lead singer, said, the mic picking up his comment and echoing it round the crowded bar to join the whistling and roaring that greeted the end of Frank’s guitar solo. It was a Friday, the bar’s most popular night, and many of the students had been up on their feet and singing the chorus along with him.

Frank grinned, high on the adrenaline of applause, breathless with exhaustion, sweeping back his black hair to wipe beads of sweat off his forehead. Layla may have been an ambitious choice for a guitar solo but Frank had played it often enough before; it was one of his Dad’s favourites. While other kids were reciting nursery rhymes, he had grown up listening to solid rock and could have told you the entire words to songs by Queen or Meatloaf.

But though he’d always enjoyed music, ever since when he was two or three and his Dad had pulled him on his lap to show him how to strum guitar, he hadn’t realised exactly how good he was. The only success Frank had ever known in his life before was, thanks to Tom’s patient tutoring, passing his driving test, but now Frank “Trigger” Morgan, failed TAFE student, failed bank robber, failed mechanic intended to be somebody. Somebody who’d make his Dad and Pippa and Tom proud.

His first wages from Dawson’s Garage had immediately gone on paying a deposit to secure his own guitar, which he was still paying for in instalments. Steven knew exactly how much Frank’s dreams meant to him. He had listened to Frank practising songs in their room often enough. But it still hadn’t stopped him taking the guitar. Well, it should have. It really should have.

Frank’s thoughts were grim as he entered Summer Bay Town Hall. He noticed the curvy, pretty girl talking to Kathy Murray looking across at him and he was flattered. Yup, Frank was definitely interested and he was a free agent now Lisa had dumped him. But he had other things on his mind. Things that needed sorting first.

Tommy Dawson had asked him - there being no one else available - to deliver Fisher’s car and Frank had been stoked when some very impressed mates stopped him for a chat. Until one of them mentioned he’d seen Steven heading for the beach. Carrying a guitar.

And a love of good music wasn’t the only thing that Frank had inherited from Frankie Morgan. He’d also inherited his father’s violent temper.

[I love music]

Thank you! The ideas (eg Frank collecting newspaper cuttings of his father's criminal activities, Lynn being very religious etc) have come from what I read on the characters' biographies and from what people on here have told me, but the actual way they happened have come from my imagination.

I'm damned if I know where the fic is going half the time, I just write and hope for the best - tho I do know how it's going to end. I have a pretty busy weekend ahead but I'm hoping to get some editing done and have an update ready by Sunday.

Thanks once again for your lovely comments.

[I love music]

***chapter 12***

CARLY'S STORY

Golden glints of sunlight sparkled in the dregs of red wine left in the bottle. Carly spluttered with drunken laughter as through the bottom of the glass she viewed the blurred image of Lynn vainly trying to walk straight until she finally slipped backwards, where she remained for a long, long time, sprawled and helpless, in the sand. Carly carried on laughing, hardly aware of where she was or what was going on anymore, only aware of such an overwhelming sadness sweeping over her that she knew if she didn’t laugh, she’d cry.

After a while Lynn managed to elbow herself upwards and, half sitting, half leaning, looking like she was imitating some puppet doll, she rocked unsteadily back and forth, smiling a broad smile at Carly, her eyes blank. And then she turned her head and was promptly sick.

“Oh, yuck!” Carly said in disgust. Lynn retched, heaved and was sick again.

Carly’s head was spinning in the heat of the sun. Didn’t matter. Her life was spinning anyway. Always had been.

“Carly...” A scared little voice on the verge of tears came from somewhere far, far away.

Perhaps it was Carly’s voice from long ago.

*****

The door burst open with brute force and her father gripped both her arms and shook her violently, his angry face so close to hers that the breath of his voice seared with red-hot hate against her skin. “Where did we go wrong? Why can’t you be like Sammy?”

This was the man who was meant to love her. This was the man who, when she was very young, was meant to bathe her cuts when she fell, to comfort her when she was afraid, to scoop her up in his arms and point out the birds in the trees and the funny shapes in the clouds. Like he had done with Sam.

Sam, slim, delicate pretty Sam, who was standing outside the room, with her hands pressed against her ears, with tiny tears raining down her beautiful flawless face, begging, “Oh, make her stop, Daddy, please, please, Daddy, can’t you make her stop? It’s scaring me!”

This was the family that was meant to love her. This was the family that was meant to nurture her, be proud of her triumphs, console her when she failed, who were meant to laugh with her and cry with her. Can't you see? Can’t you see how easy it is? Tell me you care. Just once, and I’ll never, ever ask either of you to say it again. Please tell me, just once, and I promise, I swear, I’ll never, ever ask you to say it again, I promise, I swear...

Wny can’t she find these words, words almost without substance, words that are little more than vague feelings she can’t reach, yet that are churning deep inside her soul? Why can’t she say what she wants to say?

“Murderer!” Carly screams hoarsely instead, struggling to free herself, kicking and biting, but he’s so much stronger. “Murderer, murderer, murderer!”

“You’re every bit as insane as your mother was!” He rasps, pushing her back, and Sam, delicate, pretty Sam, is still screaming, small sobbing screams, soft and polite and almost ladylike, not clumsy and rough like her twin’s furious, emotion-charged outbursts.

No! No, please, don’t do this again, don’t...Tell me you care, just once, and I’ll never...I promise, I swear... But he grabs her by her hair and he roughly tilts her head back, cricking her neck so that she shudders with the sudden pain; and his hand presses hard against her mouth until, finally, the tablet is forced off her tongue and slides down her throat though she gags and coughs and bites and kicks, angry and helpless, humiliated and lost. And as she falls, weakened now with the overpowering urge to sleep, the last thing she sees is the contempt and disgust in her father’s eyes.

This is the man who is meant to love her.

“Carly, I’m scared...” says the small, tearful voice.

It wasn’t the first time George Morris had dealt with his daughter’s “psychosis” by sedating her with her mother’s prescription tranquillisers. But this time it was how the police and social worker, alerted by a passer-by’s concerns on overhearing the screams, found her, and they who arranged for Carly to be fostered. Another family, another town, another time, another life.

“Carly, oh, Carly...” says the faraway voice.

*****

“No need. We trust you.” Pippa said calmly. “You’re fifteen and old enough to be trusted.”

Carly looked from Pippa to Tom and then at the mahogany pendulum clock on the wall as though the mahogany pendulum clock on the wall were the fourth person involved in this conversation and its opinion was now anticipated. She had psyched herself up for a row. She had drawn breath to scream I’m not a ******* kid so stop treating me like one! and been prepared for their shocked, disgusted, middle-class expressions when she called them a couple of do-gooding jerks and their foster home a bloody hovel. And who, when she got some weed tonight, she would take a perverse pleasure in shocking even more next time by rolling a joint in front of them. See what you do then, see how far I can push you. See how you’ll never know me and see if I care.

“So...you don’t wanna ring Adele’s Mum to check I’ll be there and her olds’ll be there too?”

Tom, unaware there was a large zig-zag of white paint on his nose, looked down from the step ladder where he’d been busily stroking the roller brush across the ceiling. “This isn’t a prison, Carl, and you’re not out on parole. Just make sure you’re back for the time we said or we'll worry. Any probs with calling a cab, ring me and I’ll pick you up. And, by the way, you look a million dollars.”

“Have a good time, sis!” Steven grinned, a little sheepishly, as he held the old, rickety wooden ladder steady, because he and Carly had had a minor blue earlier over Steven’s channel hopping with the remote.

“Yeh, knock ‘em dead!” Frank added, tearing himself away for a precious moment from gazing with justifiable pride at his handiwork of the smoothly-painted pale blue door, and watching out warily in case Pippa came close to accidentally kicking over the paint tin again.

“Watch you don’t get paint on yourself, sweetheart. Enjoy the party and take care,” Pippa said, leaning carefully forward to give her a quick peck on the cheek, keeping her elbows pressed against her chest because her hands and arms and face and hair were splattered with pale blue paint, Pippa being one of these people, like Frank said cheekily but making them all laugh, who could never decorate anywhere without feeling the need to decorate themselves as well.

The night air hit Carly like a cold kiss and yellow lamplight streaked through the lullaby music of gently falling rain. She hadn’t had had a drink and she wasn’t high, yet, strangely, the ground was rocking and blurry and Carly, yes, Carly Louisa Morris, who’d made up her mind never to cry again, realised in shock that her own tears were responsible.

She didn’t know why she cried. And she couldn’t understand why when, although at Adele’s birthday party some of the partygoers sneaked off into the garden to smoke pot, while Adele’s parents, who, despite the giveaway sickly sweet scent, still naively believed they were keeping an eye on things, ensured Adele would cringe with embarrassment for a year or more by policing the drinks and turning down the music, she refused an invitation to join them. Nor did she go with her original plan to leave Adele’s birthday party early and seek out Jason, a dealer she knew slightly who she’d heard liked her, to sell her body for whatever he had. For some reason she never fathomed, she rang for a cab to get her home on time, even early, and she lay awake for hours, staring into the darkness, wondering who she really was.

“Carly, please, Carly, I’m so scared...” pleaded the small, lost voice.

*****

Pete and Spence weren’t going to turn up. And Carly knew perfectly well that they had never intended to, even if Lynn didn’t. She had always known that the small group of uni friends that she and Lynn had lately begun tagging on after saw them as nothing more than kids trying desperately hard to act older. They were a standing joke with the gang, who kept trying to shake them off without hurting their feelings. Pete was twenty, Spencer twenty-one. Nice, normal guys. But what if they hadn’t been? She was playing with fire and if Carly wanted to risk playing with fire, well then fine, that was Carly’s problem.

“But it’s not just about you anymore. You’ve two little sisters to look out for now,” the thought suddenly chided her, whooshing through her head like an ice cold breeze. If only she could cut through this fog of alcohol that clouded everything around her...

Sheltered in the Home, having very few friends and wrapped up in her religious beliefs of archangels and Heavenly messages, Lynn was touchingly innocent. Carly had been both amused and shocked to learn that she truly believed a girl could get pregnant just from sleeping with a guy. Nothing had to happen, Lynn explained gravely to Sally (Lynn, for some unknown reason, had taken it upon herself on this particular day to teach Sally the “facts of life” or, at least, Lynn’s version of them) you could lie at opposite ends of the bed, Lynn said, and not even touch, but if you both fell asleep, then the girl would wake up pregnant.

Carly had of course educated Lynn a great deal since. But the younger girl still often took what people said at face value. It had been obvious to Carly that Pete was joking when he said that he and Spencer (Lynn blushed crimson whenever Spencer spoke to her) and Carly and Lynn should all meet up. He’d laughed and flicked back Carly’s hair like he might have teased his kid sister about freckles or a poster of some heartthrob, and his girlfriend had smiled too. He’d told Carly all about his fourteen-year-old sister, Claire. How she wanted to grow up fast but what was the rush? Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, they were funny ages, Pete said. One day Claire might think she was madly in love with someone and the next day she might hate him. Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, they were funny ages for boys too. That was why it was good to be with friends your own age. Carly knew that, very, very gently, Pete was telling her they were far too young to hang round with them.

But Lynn had talked about nothing else but their “dates” when they got back home. And Carly, being Carly, thought it would be funny if she let her go on believing it. Anyway, if they got all done up and distracted Sally with toys who knew what guys they might meet on the beach today? But, oh, Carly, being Carly, she had to get drunk, didn’t she? And not content with getting drunk herself, she had to get Lynn drunk too!

Lynn, who now gave a strange little moan then flopped and lay deathly still.

“Carly...Carly, I’m scared...” The small faraway voice whimpered again.

*****

“See?” Scotty said.

Kane nodded grimly. He glanced at Milko, Deefa and Fred. They looked as unhappy about the idea as he was. “Yeh, I got it,” he sighed. “But the guys think maybe we...”

“**** the bloody hallucinations, loon! Jeez, you oughta be locked up!” Scott said, kicking him over, but, still wary of the hallucinations, without as much violence as he normally used.

Kane was used to such treatment. He picked himself up and dusted off the gritty sand without comment.

“Give it your best shot,” Scotty continued, as if nothing had interrupted them.

Kane cocked his head to one side and poked sand out of his ear, looking at the world, and in particular his intended target, sky west and crooked. “I don’t think I’ll hit ‘em, Scotty. I reckon they’re gonna be heaps too fast.”

“Well, ******* well try, drongo!”

There was no help for it. When Scotty spoke, you did what he said or you got a bashing and then, after the bashing, you had to do what he said in the first place. With a deep sigh, Kane slowly took the pebbles Scott had told him to collect out of his pocket, and then hesitated. With a flapping and noisy fluttering of wings, a fourth sea bird had landed on the small rock isolated in the sea. Except this one didn’t choose to stare out in the same direction as its three companions who stood silently watching something only they three saw out on the distant horizon. Instead it perched on the very edge of the rock and, cawing mournfully, stared back at Kane through beady, soulful eyes.

“Quick! Get the b****r!” Scott hissed in his kid brother’s ear.

Jeez, it was alright for Scotty, but it actually sounded like the b****r out on the rock was crying! Reluctantly, Kane hurled the stone, making sure that it splashed harmlessly into the water and scattered the flock.

“You missed on purpose!” Scotty admonished, swiping him across the head.

“I did ****! Deefa barked and put me off!” Kane lied. But his heart was thudding, half with fear, half with excitement at a new discovery. Throwing the stones had made him feel better. Like he could unleash all his anger at the world and his father if he took the hurt out on someone or something else.

“Ssh!” Scotty ordered suddenly, with a warning thump. “Look!” He added, grinning, as a figure appeared walking towards them.

Her throat was parched but Sally thought it best if she kept on talking to reassure Mrs Martha. Not to reassure her too much of course because, as she’d already explained to the rag doll, she wouldn’t be able to stay with her forever. So Sally walked along, silver tears streaming down her cheeks and falling off the end of her chin, head down, watching her feet trudge along so that she didn’t have to look at the terrible sea, keeping up her muttered commentary - or she might have had to count to a million so they’d feel safe and that, Sally estimated, would take about a hundred years and they’d both be very, very tired by the end of it.

“Now I know it was very, very frightening for you when Lynn passed out and when Carly still didn’t hear me though I’d said her name heaps of times before but it’s really no use feeling sorry for ourselves just because we’re all alone in the world. (Sally gave a small hiccupy sob). It’s the way it is, Mrs Martha, and if you don’t like it, my dear, well I’m afraid tears aren’t going to help either of us so I think you’d better stop them at once. (This was a little unfair as Mrs Martha wasn’t the one crying.) Lots of people run away, you know, and we - I mean, I - have been meaning to for a long time so...”

With the oddest feeling that someone was watching her, Sally looked up and, to her horror, saw that just ahead the Phillips brothers were waiting for her, grinning ominously, each of them clutching a handful of stones...

Oh, but someone else was there too! Milko! It really was Milko, gazing out to sea, with his hands in his pockets and wearing his very best red hat! Little Sally felt as though her heart were about to burst with joy.

“Milko! Milko!” She shouted breathlessly.

And then something terrible happened. Something so heartbreaking that I wish I didn’t have to tell you but this is Sally’s story and not mine. Milko turned and he looked straight at Sally.

“Rack off!” He spat at her, his face contorted with hate.

[I love music]

***chapter 13***

TOM AND PIPPA

Now if I tell you that Pippa and Tom Fletcher weren’t perfect I imagine you may be shocked. It might even seem as though I’m breaking some golden rule and whispering words I should never dare whisper. But Tom and Pippa weren't perfect. They were human and, like all of us, they had doubts and fears and made mistakes. And, you know, I think perhaps that’s what made them so loved as foster parents. I’ll let you into a little secret now and take you to a scene you will rarely see.

It was the day Carly and Lynn took Sally with them to the beach. Frank had already gone to work and the girls had left too, setting off early, weighed down with bags and sun creams. Steven was the last to leave, running downstairs and barely popping his head round the corner to yell a quick "Catch ya later!" before the door banged shut.

“I swear he’s got Frank’s guitar, Pip!” Tom said, hastily whipping the tea towel off his shoulder - Tom had been drying off a couple of dishes that Carly and Lynn had been in too much of a hurry to finish but had become distracted by a slightly leaking pipe under the sink - and racing after him.

But it was too late. Steven hadn’t been awarded sportsman of the year at his previous school for nothing and he had no intention of waiting around to be challenged.

Tom sighed. It had caused a huge row last time Steven had used Frank’s guitar without permission - though at least last time Steven hadn’t decided it had been cooped up in their bedroom long enough and needed fresh air. But Tom could sympathise with both his foster sons. Steven was very much in the wrong to take the guitar without asking Frank but Steven enjoyed music too and Frank was so fiercely protective of the guitar that Carly teased him he thought it was a real person. He could call it Milky, seeing as Sally had Milko, Carly added, and Milky, Milko, Frank and Sally could be all be bezzie mates...seeing Frank’s face, Carly wisely decided to call a halt to her teasing and picked up a magazine to flick through instead.

Though he tried hard to control it, Frank had a hot temper and, although he was always genuinely sorry afterwards, the damage was already done. Usually it was Steven or Carly who got the tongue lashing or were the reason for Frank smashing his fist against the wall - one time Carly had deliberately riled Frank so much that he’d shaken her, bringing back such terrible memories of her father that Carly had raided the Fletcher’s drinks cabinet and downed three large cans of lager before Tom found her and brought her, shouting and swearing, back home. But none of the Fletchers had been spared Frank’s fury. Even little Sally, to her terror, had once been yelled at to get out of the way as Frank stormed past her up the stairs and crashed his bedroom door behind him.

But, after that, Frank really did make a superhuman effort to keep his anger in check and, taking Pippa’s advice, would often walk away and count slowly to twenty whenever he felt the red mist of rage descending on him. Never again did he want to live with the guilt of seeing Sally scuttle off in fear whenever she saw him. It had only been very recently that the kid had come to trust him once more and Frank was determined to never lose that trust again.

One thing that did always have a calming effect on Frank however was music and he poured his heart and soul into his dream of being a rock star.

Proud of being good at something for once in his life, he’d tried to teach the rest of the family to play guitar, but Carly had been too impatient, Lynn too nervous and Sally had just blushed and whispered she had to go see Milko and it was very important when Frank, worried she might feel left out - Frank’s red hot temper was softened by a very kind heart - offered to show her some basic notes. But Steven, although he lacked Frank’s natural talent, picked it up quickly like Steven did with everything he learnt.

There had even been a few evenings when Frank had managed to get everyone singing - well, everyone except Sally who was far too shy. (Presumably Milko was singing along too as Sally had been seen, when she thought no one was looking, nodding her head, tapping her foot and whispering to someone invisible.) Tom joked that maybe he should get a fiddle and they could all dance a jig every night but, as only Pippa was old enough to remember the Litttle House on the Prairie TV series from their childhood, only Pippa smiled and then, catching Tom’s eye, they had fallen into helpless fits of laughter as they tried to picture the Fletcher family of Summer Bay dancing a jig á la the Ingles of Walnut Grove. Their four eldest kids stared at them in baffled amusement and Sally shrugged her shoulders at Milko. But what pleased Tom and Pippa most was the rare sight of Frank and Steven grinning at each other.

Frank and Steven were chalk and cheese but their shared love of music could be what would finally brought them together. But, if Frank let his temper get the better of him when he learnt Steven had taken his precious guitar, music might be what drove them apart forever.

Tom sighed again at the empty driveway that led down to the caravan site and was startled when he heard a small sob behind him. He turned to see his wife standing by the kitchen table, her shoulders hunched and obviously crying.

“Pippa...?” Tom Fletcher was a man of few words when it came to emotions and his natural reticence had driven away many a girlfriend in his younger days. He drew the only woman he had ever truly loved into a hug and stroked her hair, waiting till Pippa herself was ready to talk.

At last Pippa drew breath and wiped the corners of her eyes. “It’s silly...”

She sniffed and gave a watery smile, but didn’t elaborate so, guessing correctly that this was about one of the kids, Tom winked and kissed her, flicked on the kettle and busied himself rattling cups and spoons and plates.

Mugs of strong tea and the old brown teapot that had once belonged to Pippa’s grandmother and the tartan-patterned biscuit tin that had once belonged to Pippa’s grandmother too, filled with assorted biscuits and plenty of them. Talk Time, Pippa and Tom always called it. A rare quiet time when all the kids were out, when they could brainstorm each other on how everyone was doing or simply let off steam. Because, although there was back-up from social workers if needed, like all parents, they were very much on their own in making decisions and judging what was right or wrong for their kids. No child ever breezed through this world yet, fostered or otherwise, packaged and perfect, but the kids who came to the Fletchers had suffered more trauma than most.

Guiding them through their problems was far from easy and I’d be lying if I led you to believe that tea was the only ever drink that soothed Tom and Pippa’s frayed nerves. There were a few times when something far stronger was poured, when fostering was an exhausting and thankless task, when they wept openly in each other’s arms. But the downtime, as people would call it today, was a much needed break that gave both the strength to go on and this, together with a sense of humour, probably the only way they were able to keep their sanity.

“It’s everything. It’s nothing. It’s me being over-dramatic. Frank’s so responsible nowadays, but his temper, I still worry it’s going to get the better of him and he’ll really hurt someone. And I KNOW Steven had something to do with trashing Sally’s room, don’t ask me how, I just do by the way he’s acting, but how much longer is he going to hold out on us? Carly and Lynn, I’m sure they’re up to something, and Sally, I hope so much she can love Mrs Martha as much as I did...”

Pippa fiercely broke a digestive in half because the tears she’d so recently wiped away were threatening again.

“Oh, Tom, I want so much to reach that little girl, but she’s so far away. Have I sent her even further away today, by sending her out with Carly and Lynn? What if she thinks nobody wants her? Milko seems to have gone, nobody knows where, and Milko was all Sally had in the world. Was it something I said or did? Did I hurt Sally in some way, break her heart with some stupid, careless remark that made her tell him to leave? I keep having this mental picture of a suitcase floating through the air on its way to the station...oh, I told you it was silly!”

“It’s not silly. It’s Sally,” Tom grinned, and received a sharp slap on the arm from a half laughing, half crying Pippa for his bad joke. I should add that Tom’s terrible jokes were probably another reason that all the girls, till Pippa who saw the beautiful, kind human being behind the awkwardness, had loved him and left him.

“If Milko’s gone, Sal has to love Mrs Martha, she has to,” Pippa said, because Tom, knowing the whole story, understood...

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Sorry it was a bit short today. The original chapter was waaay too long so I split it.

[I love music]

chapter 14

PIPPA'S STORY

A lot of love went into the stitches that knitted the rag doll.

Five-year-old Pippa King was the youngest of her family by several years and was much loved, cosseted and protected by three older brothers and two older sisters. But a time comes for each of us when we must stand alone and for little Pippa that terrible moment arrived the day she started school.

Even now she could still recall, as vividly as though it had happened only yesterday, her terror as her mother’s hand slipped out of her own and how she had gritted her teeth and tried to concentrate on something, anything to stop the ready tears.

Frightened and alone among the crowd of noisy, bustling children, she was gazing up at a bronze plaque above the door, wondering what the words there said (the school was a very old one, built in the days when boys and girls were educated separately, and much later Pippa discovered that the mysterious words read ‘Boys’ Entrance’) when a tall, gangly boy with a shock of red hair, who was fighting with an equally tall, gangly boy with exactly the same shock of red hair pushed into her and the other yelled, “Outta the way, doofus!”

Pippa never did find out whether it was Joey or Jimmy who pushed her over and whether it was Jimmy or Joey who yelled at her; she was far too busy trying to stop herself from falling to the cold, hard ground and scraping her knees and the heels of her hands in the process. And trying, oh, so hard not to cry like she’d promised.

The weeks leading up to Pippa starting school seemed to have coincided with some crisis in her normally happy family and, sensing something was amiss but not knowing what, Pippa, despite her qualms, had made up her mind she was going to be very, very brave. But fifteen-year-old Danny, the eldest and her favourite brother, was the only one she told and Danny smiled, a little sadly, Pippa thought, and said she was a good kid.

“But I won’t leave home to join the Army as soon as I start school,” Pippa added earnestly, thinking perhaps it was this that was worrying Danny.

Danny was always talking of joining the Army as soon as he was old enough, and he loved to watch war movies where soldiers were always being hailed as brave heroes by the grateful civilians who’s lives and towns they’d inevitably saved from death and destruction. Army and brave were words that were irretrievably linked in five-year-old Pippa’s mind.

It would be a great many years before Pippa learnt that her mother Coral had suffered from kleptomania.

Back in the Fifties depression was an illness that was little understood and poor Coral, having recently lost an old schoolfriend to cancer, beginning to develop arthritis in her knees, and trying to eke out enough money to feed and clothe a family of eight when her husband Bert was made redundant and had to take on a much lower paid job, found that pocketing a bottle of nail varnish or walking out of a shop with unpaid-for groceries gave her a temporary lift that nothing else could.

But, while depression was little understood, kleptomania, one of its symptoms, was rarely even acknowledged as an illness.

It was nothing more than a great curtain-twitching scandal when the police finally knocked on Coral King’s door and found two stolen skirts, a cheap dragonfly brooch, eight fountain pens and six pairs of gloves in her shopping bag, and tongues wagged unabated about the sight of the quiet, churchgoing mother-of-six being taken away, head down, shoulders sagging, the picture of guilt. Imaginations overflowed and theories ranged from Mrs King’s many years’ non-payment of fines for overdue library books to her being the mastermind behind a spate of post office robberies to her having put rat poison in her husband’s tea.

Of course little Pippa, asleep in bed, knew nothing of these things.

Pippa’s father, shocked and dismayed - and, well, I’m going to be honest here, secretly rather pleased; they were a very poor family - to keep discovering stolen goods in their cupboards and at a loss how to handle the situation, had decided the best course of action was to hush it all up and say nothing at all and only Danny had been taken into his confidence.

But now, with the arrival of the police to arrest Coral, the beans were spilled (and literally too, one of the kids had knocked over a dinner plate) and the whole family except for Pippa knew some crime had been committed.

The King household was in total shock and confusion. Danny was instructed to “run like the clappers” and fetch his grandmother, who lived six blocks away, and thirteen-year-old Shirley, to be helped by twelve-year-old Heather, was tasked with keeping an eye on Pippa, who was still fast asleep, and Ronnie and Peter, the ten-year-old twins, who were screaming hysterically for their mother, while Bert accompanied his sobbing wife to the station. His wife needed him and so did his children, and Bert was tearing out what little hair he had left, wondering what on earth to do next.

And that was when some much-needed support arrived.

Brenda King was a sprightly woman of seventy-five with lots of common sense. Her first husband had turned out to be a wife-beating drunken bully and her second husband, although a kind, gentle man, was an invalid and unable to work due to tuberculosis and she had brought up eleven children almost single-handedly. The closest she had ever come to a holiday was an occasional day trip to the seaside or, in her later years, staying with one of her grown-up children, but nothing seemed to get her down.

“Knit two, pearl two” was always her smiling answer when people asked how on earth she managed to cope over the years. When Danny breathlessly told her what had happened, Brenda’s latest knitting was immediately packed into her bag too.

Granny Brenda, never one to splash out on unnecessary luxuries, decided the seriousness of the situation merited extravagant action and so she and Danny screeched round the corner in their cab only moments before the police were to take Coral away for questioning. Within minutes she had calmed everyone down, within hours arrangements had been made, via the pay-phone at the end of the Kings’ street and the large black phone that had pride of place on top of a doily and a small, polished table in a neat white house next to the sea in the lovely little town of Settlers Point, for Coral and Bert to stay with Maureen and Eric, Bert’s sister and brother-in-law, who had no children and who were considered quite wealthy by the rest of the family, both to give Coral a much-needed break and while events blew over.

Poor Pippa meanwhile had cried herself to sleep. Her first day at school had been terrible, but she didn’t know how to tell anyone.

Determined not to cry and realising that there was no one now to help her up like there always had been before, she struggled to her feet, her bottom lip beginning to quiver when she looked down and saw blood. For a moment there was silence.

And then somebody laughed!

Pippa had never been laughed at in her life before. Laughed with and called cute heaps of times, but never laughed at. She had been so brave but now her resolve crumpled and hot tears splashed down her cheeks.

Miss Pettigrew, her teacher, pushed her way through the crowd to check Pippa’s hands and knees.

“Now don’t be silly, there’s hardly a scratch,” she said briskly. “A couple of band aids and you’ll be right as rain.”

“But I...I have to have lollies or a present too!” Pippa gasped in disbelief. It always happened. Whenever Pippa hurt herself, something nice was bought for her by her family to make up for it.

“I see," said Miss Pettigrew in a tone that clearly said “a spoilt brat”. “Well, you’re a big girl now, Pippa, and that certainly won’t be happening here. Miss Denver,” she called to one of her helpers. “Could you kindly attend to this child and then bring her along to my class?”

The day had got worse and worse. Jimmy and Joey sat in the desk behind Pippa and kept sniggering and whispering “cry baby” and because they were so fierce none of the other kids got involved. Pippa’s first day at school, that she’d looked forward to so much, she hadn’t made a single friend.

When she grew up, she was going to fix it so no kid would ever be as sad and alone as she felt tonight, Pippa thought, crying herself to sleep. She didn’t know how but she would and...

Pippa started awake and listened, puzzled, to the commotion that had so suddenly woken her from a strange dream that she had been wandering all alone in the school and every door she opened simply led to another door to open. And then she heard a familiar voice - a much loved voice!

She scrambled out of bed and ran downstairs, flinging herself into her grandmother’s lap to tearfully tell her story and sobbing her heart out when she realised Mum and Dad had abandoned her to go off on a very sudden holiday. But Granny Brenda kissed the tears better, tucked Pippa up in bed and told her in the morning someone would be there who would make everything alright.

And when she went down to breakfast next day there was Mrs Martha sitting in the chair.

“Mrs Martha wasn’t meant to be here till your birthday but she couldn’t wait to meet you,” Brenda said, folding up the knitting pattern and smiling at the rapt look on her small granddaughter’s face. It was hard to pick a favourite when she had so many grandchildren, but Pippa, although a trifle spoilt, was sensitive and sweet-natured and very, very special to her. It had been worth staying up all night to ensure the gift was finished in time.

From that moment on, Pippa and the doll were inseparable and she would whisper to Mrs Martha all her hopes and fears and dreams. Mrs Martha even helped her make friends at school because the other kids were curious about who had knitted her, and curious to know too why she was knitted with such fine clothes and a wide, floppy hat (Mrs Martha had been invited to a wedding, Pippa explained, quoting the story Granny Brenda had told her from the knitting pattern).

When her grandmother died the year after her marriage to Tom, Pippa had taken the rag doll down from the dusty shelf and wept inconsolably into its yellow wool hair. Even now, when something was troubling her, she would still pick up the doll and, smiling, remember how Granny Brenda had managed to cope with everything life threw at her. Tom teased her unmercifully but he knew what a great sacrifice it was when Pippa gave Mrs Martha to Sally.

“You have to have someone to love when everyone else lets you down,” Pippa explained, placing Mrs Martha on the dressing table in Sally’s room so that the rag doll would be the first thing Sally saw when she came to stay.

“You have to have someone to love when everyone else lets you down,” Tom gently reminded her, echoing Pippa’s words. “And I guess all we can do, Pip, is love them.”

Pippa smiled and snuggled against his chest. “I love you, Tom Fletcher,” she said, wishing that fate hadn’t been so cruel and that they’d been able to have children of their own too. But they couldn’t and all Pippa could do instead was keep her promise that no kid would ever be as sad and alone as she had felt when she’d cried herself to sleep on the loneliest night of her childhood.

*****

Sally looked back. It wasn’t fair! She hadn’t told anyone Milko had been kidnapped in case the Phillips brothers killed him and now even Milko was chasing her and throwing the stones too. A sharp pain stung her cheek and as she swiftly turned again another stone pelted her in the back. Blinded with tears and terror, she could only keep on running...

AUTHOR’S NOTE: Don’t believe Granny Brenda’s hype about the knitting. I tried to knit once. Never again, it’s too stressful!

ps Thanks to Sunny Girl and Ryan for the information about Coral's kleptomania and Pippa's brother Danny.

[I love music]

Just a couple of points about this chapter. I’m not sure if “cold calling” or “cowboys” are general terms in Oz, but, for any Aussie readers, in the UK "cold calling" means approaching would-be customers - instead of waiting for the customer to approach the firm - and “cowboys” is an expression used for anyone who isn’t entirely honest with a customer eg charging much more than a job is worth; doing a botched job etc. “Safe as Houses” is a name I invented for the building firm so apologies if a real one does happen to exist out there - and, BTW, I doubt any building firm would still be in business if it carried on like this fictitious one does!

***chapter 15***

TOM'S STORY

As the last note trickled away Steven wiped away the last of the tears and drew a shaky breath. Reluctantly, he placed the guitar back in its case and snapped it shut. Time to go home. Whatever, wherever that was.

It wasn’t Mum and Dad and his friends Gazza, Andy and Jonno anymore - his parents had perished in the flames and his mates belonged to a rapidly fading past like some movie he thought, but wasn't sure, he vaguely recalled watching a long time ago. It wasn’t the Fletchers: they had Frank, Carly, Lynn and Sally - and even Milko, he thought wryly - why did they need another person to worry about, another mouth to feed? It wasn’t even the Home because nothing was the same when he’d insisted on going back...

“I could go back to the Home if you wanted me to. It’d save you heaps of money.”

Tom and Pippa jumped. They hadn’t known Steven was there. Believing all the kids to still be out, they were sitting on the couch, with bills, bank statements, insurance policies, and cups of coffee long gone cold laid out on the small oval table before them, their conversation going round and round in circles about how they could maybe, just maybe, save a dollar here or there.

“Mate, our finances aren’t your problem,” Tom replied, guiltily stuffing the paperwork he and Pippa had been worriedly discussing back into the alphabet-linked manilla folder and wondering just how much had Steven heard.

Enough to know that Tom and Pippa had agreed from now on they would forgo their only ever extravagance, a meal out with one bottle of red wine between them, in their favourite Chinese restaurant on the fourth Saturday of every month? That he and Pippa had decided they would start to buy the cheapest supermarket brand of coffee from the cheapest supermarket though it tasted disgusting? “We can get used to it. And we can drink more tea too. None of the kids drink coffee anyway so they’ll never know.”

Enough to know that the expensive leather suite which Pippa had so loved and which had been proudly displayed in the Fletcher home for only a few short months was destined to be sold back, at a massive discount, while they retrieved from the shed the faded and torn ten-year-old couch and matching faded and torn ten-year-old arm-chairs?

Pippa had sighed sadly as she ran a hand along the top of the couch when she came off the phone to Dream Homes Ltd and looked round at the badly scraped furniture and the four long scratches down the side of the wall unit (dating from the time when animal-lover Lynn, claiming it was harmless, had brought home a semi-feral cat, which had immediately run amok) and said, well, at least it would put some much-needed cash back in the coffers, if only for a little while.

Everyone knew that, having grown up with second-hand furniture and hand-me-downs, Pip dreamt of surrounding herself with luxury “when she won the Lotto”. And everyone knew, with overwhelming certainty, that if Pip ever did win the Lotto every single cent would be spent on her kids and she’d still be saying things like “This dress will last me a bit longer yet” and still be making do with the old and worn out furniture for herself.

They’d all gathered round, on the day the suite was finally delivered, just to see Pippa’s face and smile at her excitement, and Tom had popped open a couple of bottles of fizzy lemonade and poured everyone a glass. The two deliverymen, each gladly accepting a cold drink on what proved to be the hottest day of the year, had gulped back their lemmo and grinned politely, baffled by the fact that the whole family, for some strange reason, were all pretending to sip champagne and seemed to regard the arrival of the not-even-top-of-the-range soft leather three piece suite as a major celebration. Oh, but if they only knew, it was so much more than that!

Three times the Fletchers had almost saved enough to buy the leather suite and three times the money had gone on something else. Once it funded Frank’s school trip skiing in Italy; the second time Pippa decided everybody should have complete new wardrobes, not just the usual clothes that the grant they were given for fostering barely covered, but fashionable stuff like their friends got to wear (and, though no one would have minded, Frank insisted it was only fair he opted out of that one); the third time it purchased the wide screen LCD TV that the Fletcher kids had been dropping hints about for ages. Funny, you know, but it never occurred to either Pippa or Tom, seeing as neither of them got much time to watch it, they could have returned the wide screen TV to Dream Homes Ltd instead. I never figured that one.

“Makes sense,” Steven insisted, leaning on the back of the famous couch. “After all, I’ve only been here a few weeks.” Somewhere between “here” and “a few” he was furious with himself when he heard an involuntary tremor in his voice. But he looked steadily at his foster parents as he leaned casually behind them, like it was no big deal, like he was just talking about how he might or might not go for a stroll along the beach later. “It’s not like I’ve been here years or anything.”

“Steven...” Pippa sounded emotional. She stood up slowly, walked over to the mantelshelf and picked up the silver-plated photo frame to hand to him.

“This photo,” she said quietly. “Know why you’re in it? You’re in it because it’s a family photo.”

He shrugged, keeping his dark head down looking at the picture so she wouldn’t see how close he was to tears.

“You’re part of the family concept,” Pippa said in the same quiet, choked voice. “We keep that photo on the mantlepiece because we’re your family and this is your home.”

“Home is where the hearth is.” Tom made yet another of the nervous bad jokes that dogged him whenever he was anxious and he was real anxious right now, worried that his foster son was trying to take far too much responsibility on his young shoulders.

It wasn’t Steven’s fault that Tom had lost his job. It was entirely his own doing. The scene played out again in Tom’s head..

*****

“Actually, Miss Dixon,” Tom suddenly interrupted his workmate Eddie Brookes' flow of words. “The roof is fine.”

“But I thought you said...” The eccentric elderly woman with the air of refinement and falling fortunes, her black dress neat but worn, and the silver lizard brooch on the lapel of the matching short-sleeved linen jacket obviously paste, rested against her eagle's head walking stick, catching her breath and looking both puzzled and relieved. Then something else captured her attention for a moment. “Flossie! Flossie, come here! Bad girl!”

Tom grinned at the small black dog nosing in his work bag - no doubt having caught the scent of the now sadly gone ham sangers - and bent down to scratch her floppy ears. Flossie looked gratefully up at him through age-weakened brown eyes, her tail thumping. Much of her fur was peppered with white now. She and her elderly owner were everything to each other. All that they had. Both old ladies set in their ways and growing old together.

His colleague hid his fury and did his utmost best to retrieve the job.

“Bloody hell, Tom, you saw it for yourself! My friend means well, but his expertise isn’t roofing - fortunately, eh, Tom?” Brookes smiled matily though neither man had ever liked the other. “Look, Miss Dixon, I don’t want to frighten you but I’m going to give it to you straight here. I’ve been a roofer forty years and I’ve never seen a roof so badly storm-damaged. You’re just lucky we happened to be passing. Okay, I’ll admit, it’s a major job, we’ll need to replace every tile and check out the roof beams haven’t rotted too, but if it isn’t sorted and fast, come the next storm you won’t even have a roof to complain about. And we offer good rates, unlike some - I’d hate to think of a nice lady like yourself getting ripped off by cowboys. Don’t call ourselves Safe as Houses Conglomerate for nothing.”

“Cold calling”, the practice of knocking on doors and suggesting repairs to the householder, had started out innocuously enough. Safe as Houses Conglomerate (SHC had the monopoly on the building trade in the city, having bought up many small businesses) had suggested it when the Australian economy nosedived and, homeowners being hit particularly hard, work began drying up. No employee was pressurized into it, but it was actively encouraged and there was a huge incentive: the introduction of big fat bonuses for those who managed to secure the most contracts.

And then, while SHC deliberately turned a blind eye, some people, like Eddie Brookes, got greedy.

Tom wasn’t a roof-tiler; his trade was carpentry, but, like many of the blokes, he had picked up a working knowledge of other skills through years on construction sites and it had been obvious to him that the roof needed nothing more than a few tiles replacing here and there. Basic renovation work really, hardly the “major job” Eddie was claiming it to be.

“No.” the grey-haired old lady suddenly looked very determined. “No, I’m sorry, Mr Brookes, but I’ve changed my mind about the work. I get...an inkling...about people. Things. Woman’s intuition, I suppose you might call it. And I think your friend is being the honest one here.”

Fiona Dixon grasped her imitation pearl necklace and pressed her lips together and Flossie shook herself and licked Tom’s hand, giving up the joy of having her ears scratched to stand beside her mistress, and Tom smiled to himself despite his problems. Clearly a united front.

“Ed was far too much of a coward to deck me - though he wanted to.” Tom grinned, when he and Pippa were mulling over events some weeks later. Being small and slight, Tom had taken up Judo as a kid to protect himself from school bullies and, though he wasn’t a violent man, he was still well able to take care of himself in a fight.

“I dunno though, Pip,” he added, sighing wearily. “It’s all very well taking a high moral stance, but this is the real world and we’ve got five kids to think about. Then to find out later that Miss Dixon secretly had a fortune to come from an inheritance and could well have afforded the work, even if it wasn’t needed...Maybe I should have just kept my mouth shut.”

“You know you’d never have been able to live with yourself if you had, Tom Fletcher,” his wife replied.

They sat on the soft leather couch, their arms around each other’s shoulders, cheek to cheek, only half listening to the Bruce Springsteen CD playing quietly in the background, and Pippa turned and gently blew on his ear to make him smile again.

“Pity the kids are due home any minute...” Tom grinned.

Pippa laughed. “Wouldn’t be without any of them though. Or you. No matter what.”

“Me neither, Pip. And we’re not in dire straits - yet. We’ve got a nice home. Nice furniture. Especially our much-longed-for leather suite.”

They sat for a while without speaking, knowing that, whatever happened, they were in it together.

Tom’s actions had had far reaching consequences that no one could have foreseen. Heiress Fiona Dixon hd not only contracted an out-of-town firm to repair the roof, she had signed them up to work on the new holiday chalets she’d decided to have built. And she had mentioned to a distant relative, who was, as it turned out, Terence Moorcroft-Dixon, owner of the world famous De Luxe Australian chain of hotels that, due to their malpractice, it would be advisable to cancel any proposed building work with SHC. But lastly, and most damaging of all, she had gone to the newspapers...

Safe as Houses Conglomerate’s shining reputation was in shreds. Tom’s moral high ground cost millions in lost revenue and, as SHC had already had to tell many of his colleagues, they “reluctantly had to let him go”. Despite the high unemployment, a handful of men managed to get other jobs, but Tom was on the wrong side of forty and nobody was prepared to employ him. Ironically enough, not even Fiona Dixon.

Miss Dixon, though she was unaware of it as yet, was beginning to experience the early onset of dementia and there were sudden confusing gaps in her memory. The way she recalled and told the event, both Eddie and Tom had tried to persuade her to get the roof done unnecessarily. Only Flossie could have told the truth and she wasn’t talking.

At last Pippa broke the silence that had been punctuated only by the steady ticking of the pendulum clock and Bruce Springsteen’s gravelly voice.

“We could always sell our much-longed-for leather suite,” she said.

*****

Steven glanced up fleetingly to acknowledge his foster Dad’s weak joke before his face clouded over again.

“I’ve made up my mind. I want to go back to the Home. Let me try it for a week or two. See what suits us all.” He smiled the Steven smile that years ago a neighbour had told his proud mother would always ensure Steven Matheson got his own way.

And he wasn’t budging on this one.

[I love music]

***chapter 16***[/

BROTHERS AND SISTERS

“What the hell d’ya think ya doin’?”

Kane steeled himself. Scott, inevitably noticing the lessening of the hail of missiles and the absence of his second in command running alongside him and, having established that his younger brother had not suddenly carked it, broken a leg, been carried off by a giant seagull or found himself abducted by aliens, sought immediate answers.

“I ain’t throwin’ no more, Scotty,” Kane replied, blowing up a long slow breath like he was suddenly hot, and gazing evenly back though he was trembling inside, aware it was never a good idea to cross Scotty.

It was the stone that cut into the freak’s cheek that did it. At first it had been an overwhelming relief to feel all the anger and fear of what happened at home leaving him when he hurled the pebbles. But then one of the stones, one that he threw, hit its target so perfectly that Scotty breathlessly roared “Ripper!” and punched the air. It had struck her square on the face, and a crooked red line appeared as though somebody had suddenly painted it across her cheek, and she was looking back at them both with the same frightened look in her eyes like he’d seen his Ma look at his Dad heaps of times. And when he stopped dead, Milko, Deefa and Fred, they’d all already stopped dead too, and they were staring at him like they didn’t like him very much.

“Oh, so you ain’t, ain’cha?”

He shook his head, backing away, half glad, half sad, that the weirdo was escaping. If she got away, good on her, but if she got away that meant Kane got Scott’s undivided attention.

“We had a deal, Scotty. We drowned Milko if she lagged...” Milko shot him a filthy look. “Well, it was what we said, mate.” He shrugged to Milko. “But she didn’t lag, Scotty and...I’m goin’ home!” He added abruptly, seizing his chance, as did Milko, Deefa and Fred.

But, to his amazement, Scotty didn’t follow. Even more strangely, when, panting from running over the sand dunes - though it was a longer route home it was a safer one because Scott, having lately taken up smoking, got out of breath running uphill - Kane chanced looking downwards, he could’ve sworn Scotty was grinning. In fact, Scott raised one arm and, after first making a rude gesture, leisurely waved as though in brotherly love.

“He’s weird,” Milko remarked, busy swapping hats just as Sally the freak had told the other kids he liked to do. Fred the dragon was now sporting a green hat that matched his colouring while Deefa the dog was wearing Milko’s recently abandoned red hat and Milko himself was pulling a fetching blue number down on his head.

“Ye-eh,” Kane agreed, vaguely wondering where Milko had got all the hats from. Alarm bells were ringing in his head at Scotty’s strange behaviour. But he shut them out. He was tired. Hungry and thirsty. All he wanted was to get home and curl up and rest.

“Drongo!” Scott muttered.

Well, he’d done his bit. He’d got his sooky bro out the house where Dad was tanked up and in a bashing mood and if Kane insisted on going back there, well, **** him, let him get bashed. And something else had taken his interest anyway. The loony freak may have gotten away, but in her rush she’d dropped the freaky-looking doll that she’d been talking to. Scott grinned. She was bound to come back looking for the ugly thing. And she was going to find it, he decided, torn limb from limb and scattered far and wide across the beach...

*****

“Lynn! Lynn, wake up! Sally’s gone! We have to go look for her!” Carly gulped back a sob as she desperately shook the limp, white figure and yet again tried to get her to stand. She was hoarse from shouting for Sally and her hair, so carefully styled that morning, had tumbled all over her face as she ran frantically back and forth. “Oh, God, Lynn, I need someone! How do I do this praying business? God, Buddha, Muhammad, are any of you ******* bigwig guys listening? Do you ever ******* listen?”

She knew she was rambling drunkenly as she shouted up at the cloud-streaked skies, but she couldn’t help it. It was all God’s fault anyway for allowing Lynn to lead the sheltered existence she had. If Lynn hadn’t been into all that stupid God stuff, Carly wouldn’t have had to wind her up about it and Lynn wouldn’t have been so upset she drank so much when, all because of God and going to church, she had never done any of the normal teenage stuff like trying out alcohol.

“Hey, it’ll be okay.” A shadow suddenly fell across the sand.

The guy who stooped down beside her was vaguely familiar and seriously hot. Floppy fair hair, beautiful grey eyes, a voice that sent tingles down Carly’s spine when it brushed against her ear. But for once she had more important things on her mind than making good impressions with seriously hot guys.

“It’s not God’s fault. It’s my fault,” she said, falling drunkenly against his chest, staining his shirt with lipstick, mascara and tears, but not caring. “And it’s worse. It’s heaps, heaps worse. Sally’s run off and that’s my fault too.”

“Sally...?”

“My kid sister. I yelled at her and she ran off.” Carly clung to him and wept uncontrollably now.

The strangely familiar guy with the beautiful eyes and the voice that sent tingles down her spine gently disentangled her hands from his neck so that he could better push the unconscious Lynn on to her side. “Look, I’ve done first aid. Don’t try and walk her round. It’s the wrong thing to do. You have to keep her in the recovery position in case she’s sick again so’s she doesn’t choke, okay? I’m going for help. And, don’t worry, Carly,” he added as he scrambled up. “It’ll all be okay, I promise. I’ll tell them about Sally too.”

Carly jumped. “How come you know my name?”

“I asked someone first time I saw you!” He was already on his way and he had to shout back over the sea breezes so she could hear. “Don’t you remember? I’m Zammo!”

“But I don’t know any Zammo,” Carly hiccuped to herself and Lynn, the tears steadily trickling down her face and falling off the end of her chin. “And I want Sally back. Please, God, Buddha, Mohammed, I don’t care which of you guys does the magic spell, I promise I’ll never drink again if you make Lynn better and bring little Sally back.”

*****

“No way! You for real? What a...!” Marcus grinned. “No, I ain’t gonna say it again, man. Jerk, maybe. But I ain’t gonna say drongo!”

Like he’d told Steven, he couldn’t get his head round how anyone could give up a ready-made family to come back to the Home. Having lived in three different continents, Marcus yearned to belong somewhere, anywhere. His folks had emigrated from the UK to the States when he was six and a few months ago his Dad’s high-powered job brought the family to Australia. Then tragedy had struck with a double whammy when his father died of unexpected complications during a routine operation and weeks later his mother suffered a massive stroke that had left her semi-paralysed. She was making good progress in therapy, learning to walk and talk again, but the insurance money was being eaten up by medical bills and it would be a while yet before she was ready to come out of hospital.

Steven laughed at his friend’s comment, unoffended. Marcus had said drongo in disbelief at least three times already, in the peculiar mix of Northern English slang he’d picked up from his parents, and the American and Australian idioms he’d picked up himself. The same age as Steven, he was however broader and a good head taller.

Feeling the heat, he’d tied his sweatshirt around his waist while they took a break from the random footie game they and a few mates had begun on the beach and, whether he realised it or not, his black skin was glistening in the evening sunlight. But the chicks they were chatting with had definitely noticed and they looked suitably impressed. And a pang of jealousy suddenly shot through Steven.

In the old days, it had been Steven who captained footie and rugby teams, Steven who everyone wanted to hang with, Steven who got all the chicks’ attention. But things had changed. Moved on. Okay, yeh, he was still a good looking, popular enough guy and the chicks were still interested, but...

He searched for how things were now and suddenly the words rushed at him. Second best. He’d never been second best in his life before. Second best was a whole new experience for Steven Matheson.

And, though there were still often times when he could lose himself with a gang of mates like he always used to, there were equally times now too when he would go off into a world of his own. When he looked in the mirror these days, a stranger stared back at him. Haunted eyes that had seen, and cheered, the fire that burnt his parents to death. The image of those leaping flames rarely left his mind. And, even when it did, there was always something to pull him back. Like now.

Out across the sea the red globe of the sun was bedding down for the night and the echoes of his and his mates’ drunken cheers and the sparks that lit the sky like fireworks filtered mockingly back into his memory.

“You okay?” A frown creased Marcus’s brow as he picked up the football again. “I was just goofing around, man. Ya know?”

“Yeh, yeh, I know. I’m cool.” Steven shook himself and untwisted the top off the plastic bottle to take a swig of apple-and-blackberry flavoured mineral water.

“Sound!” Marcus thumped Steven’s arm and grinned again. “Megan has the hots for you, mate!”

“You reckon?” Steven grinned back and glanced hopefully across at the pretty red-head, who immediately blushed and giggled at her friends.

But, try as he might, Steven didn’t fit in at the Home anymore either. Only ten days later, to Tom and Pippa’s delight, he returned to the Fletchers. Where everyone belonged but Steven.

Frank, the eldest and most responsible. With his mind for intricate detail, Steven could understand complicated DIY leaflets and follow them slowly, step by step, but Frank, though he could barely even spell some of the words, would simply ignore instructions, throw the papers in the garbo and have things assembled in minutes. Frank was Tom’s right hand man, sharing the same love of joinery as his foster father and each was never happier than when building or repairing something or other, whistling away while surrounded by wood chippings, dust-sheets, hammers and nails.

Then there was Carly. Strikingly beautiful, dramatic and impulsive, eldest sister, boy mad, bang up to date with the latest fashions and music, adored by Lynn and Sally, especially Lynn, who was always borrowing Carly’s clothes and make-up; Pippa’s confidant when she needed advice about the two younger girls. And Lynn, middle sister, Sally’s protector, known for always coming up with mad ideas she really thought could happen (Frank, it says here Kylie Minogue can’t make The Saturday Night Show. You could write and tell them your band’ll sing on it instead!/ Pippa, you know we need more money? Why don’t we keep sheep?) often getting in everyone’s way (Well, it’s raining so why can’t I practice my dance steps in the kitchen?) and often teased about her terrible singing and incredible naivety, but taking it all in her good-natured stride.

And Sally. Youngest and most timid, the one everybody wanted to spoil and look after and who, as the youngest and most spoilt, should have been staking her claim too as the bossiest and generally making a nuisance of herself like, in any family, the youngest was traditionally supposed to do. Except Sally was far, far too lost in Sally’s world of Milko and counting and hand-washing rituals. But still the youngest for all that. Her place in the family secured.

And then Steven. Expected to blitz his way through exams, destined for Uni and a glittering career as a doctor or scientist or lawyer. Nobody else, occasionally not even his maths tutor, could understand some of the mathematical theories that Steven found so easy. But nobody understood Steven. Not even Steven himself.

Nobody knew the guilt he carried over the death of his Mum and Dad, nobody knew of his terror of fire. Because he smiled and everyone believed Steven was fine and Steven couldn’t let anyone see him cry. In many ways he was as distant as little Sally.

The tune that had been playing in his heart for so long, not content till it transferred itself to guitar and set itself free on the summer air...he’d never know what that came from. All he knew was that it reached some deep, hidden part of himself, scalded his heart and stole away his tears.

He swung the strap of the guitar case over his shoulder and jumped back over the rock-pool, kicking up a cloud of sand and hail of pebbles, scattering the gulls, who squawked in noisy protest. Suddenly realising he’d been gone much longer than he intended and was meant to have met Lance at Summer Bay Town Hall half an hour ago, he picked up speed across the rough terrain and down through a large mass of slippery stones. Regaining his balance, he stopped dead in his tracks when he saw someone was standing there waiting there for him.

“I gave you enough warnings about taking my guitar, Einstein...” Frank’s hostility was so fierce that it almost crackled with heat.

Like his Dad Frankie, when red hot anger burned through Frank it clouded all reason. He clenched a fist and hit his palm hard. Ready to kill...

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Just in case anyone was wondering why Zammo didn't have a mobile phone to call for help, this is set in 1988 when H&A began and, as far as I can remember, when mobiles weren't generally around.

[I love music]

***chapter 17***

LANCE

Poor Sally sank down on to a large rock, wiped her eyes with her knuckles and decided it was high time she gave herself a stern talking-to. So she took a deep breath. “Now if I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a thousand times tears won’t help...”

Oh, but it was no use. Milko had deserted her. Mrs Martha was lost. There was nobody left in the world and the tears would keep on raining down her face. The cut from the stone wasn’t bleeding now but it was stinging and the salty tears made it hurt all the more.

“A thousand times,” Sally wept, wringing her hands, and beginning to count. “One...two...three...four...five...”

“Once a jolly swagman...”

Sally jumped. But she knew it had to be her imagination. There was no way someone would be out here singing to themselves. And she often saw and heard things that weren’t there, didn’t she? People had told her so heaps of times. And you know something? She wasn’t going to listen to things like Milko anymore. Not now, not after the way he'd turned against her.

“Six...seven...eight...”

“...camped by a billabong, under the shade...”

“...nine, ten, eleven...” Sally said, then picked up speed with her counting. It was a long way to a thousand. “Twelvethirteenfourteenfifteensixteen...”

“....of a cooooliiibaaah tree...”

Sally closed her eyes determinedly. “Seventeeneighteennineteen...”

“..and he sang as he sat and waited by the billabong...”

“Twenty...twenty-one...” Sally began to falter. She had been trying not to listen to the singing, but, oh, what if...? Kane Phillips had asked her if Milko had a twin. Milko had never said he had, but she was sure she recognised the voice! What if he did have a twin brother?

...you’ll come a waltzing matilda with me...”

Sally couldn’t hold back her curiosity any longer. She crept over the rocks and saw the funniest sight since Milko had gone surfing for the very first time, come back soaking wet from falling in the sea and put his very best red hat on only for a silvery fish to slither out and for sea water and seaweed to drip all down his face.

Lance - she’d have recognised Lance Smart anywhere, even though he had his back to her - sat fishing and singing at the top of his voice. He had a large cotton hankie tied on top of his head to keep off the sun, his trousers were rolled up to his knees and he was kicking the water so fiercely that it was splashing back up all over him. Sally had meant to be quiet as a mouse but she couldn’t help an involuntary giggle as she slid into a small gap between the rocks.

“Hey, Sal!” Lance began, grinning when he saw her.

Then he stopped suddenly. He was a great mountain of a man who blundered his way through life and every situation but he knew when a kid was upset. Once, invited to a wedding reception, he had tripped over his own shoelace and fallen face down in the buffet, another time when decorating he had picked up what he thought was an empty tin of paint and swung it into the bin only for half a tin of white paint to fly back at him. If there was anything waiting to be knocked over or smashed, you could almost guarantee Lance would do both.

You’ve no doubt noticed when you've visited Yabbie Creek that the extremely expensive cards-and-china shop in its main Shopping Centre, owned by that tall, willowy couple who walk as though their heads might drop off at any minute, still, even after all these years, has a gilt-edged card in its window, saying Children are NOT allowed...? And you’ll have seen that underneath is angrily scrawled And neither is Lance Smart...? I hear this hasty addition caused a great deal of gossip when it first made its appearance and that his mother Colleen went storming down when she heard about it.

But the tall, willowy couple said it had all been done in fun, and that Lance had seen the joke, and so had they, when he’d accidentally smashed their central display, an exquisite eighteenth century china teapot, while browsing for a gift for his girlfriend. There is a rumour that Colleen was only sweetened by being made a member of their very exclusive and snobbish Yabbie Creek Fellowship Club (members endorsed by personal recommendation of other members only), which is why the sign has been allowed to remain to this day. To attract potential customers’ attention, the tall, willowy couple claim.

Whatever the truth of the matter, it’s quite likely it was Lance who poured oil on the troubled waters. Despite his ferocious appearance, he hated blues of any kind and was a very gentle man who - perhaps because he understood only too well himself how they didn’t mean to do things like eat a large bar of chocolate just before dinner or drop fistfuls of coins into shop freezers when choosing an ice popsicle - had an affinity with children.

Although Sally was giggling, he saw the nasty cut streaked across her face and the tears still shining fresh in her eyes. And he sensed he had to tread very, very carefully. Whatever was troubling the little girl, it was something that ran much deeper than a simple tumble. And why was she here all by herself? There was no way Pippa and Tom Fletcher would have agreed to little Sally going for a walk on her own on the beach.

But he didn’t scare her off with questions. With a sensitivity that would have shamed those with greater minds than he, who laughed at Lance because he was far from being Smart, he allowed Sally to talk first instead.

And she did, still giggling. She felt comfortable with Lance. He wasn’t like most grown ups. He was just like another kid.

“Lance, do you know you’re frightening off the fish with all your singing and splashing?” Sally asked in her grave little voice.

“Sure I do. Mum and Alf reckoned I should go fishing but I don’t want to hurt any fish.”

Sally nodded. It made perfect sense to both of them. That Lance could have said thanks but no thanks didn’t enter either of their heads.

She looked at him curiously. She wouldn’t have dreamed of asking any other grown-up the question but Lance was different. “How come you’re out here singing?”

Lance grinned. “I’m practising for the talent competition, Sal, though that ain’t the song I’m gonna sing, of course. Don’t tell anyone but there’s a girl I like heaps and she’ll be there. Tuna and mayo or cheese and onion?” He took a sandwich and offered the box to Sally, lowering his voice to a whisper although there was nobody else around to hear. “Her name’s Kathy Murray. Think you might know her better as Miss Murray.”

“Miss Murray!” Sally cried in delight. “You can’t eat that! ” She added, startling Lance into dropping the sandwich. “Miss Murray won’t like your singing when you’ve been eating tuna and mayo and cheese and onion!”

Lance sighed. He loved his food. But little Sally was right. His breath smelling of tuna, cheese and onions was NOT going to impress Kathy Murray!

“My turn,” he said, trying to ignore the rumbling in his stomach. “And seeing as you’ve been so helpful with my problem, maybe I can help with yours - if you tell me what it is.”

“I can’t,” Sally said sadly. “ I can’t tell anyone or something dreadful will happen to someone.”

“Well, now. That IS a tough cookie.” Lance stroked an imaginary beard. “But maybe I got a solution. Supposing you happened to be thinking aloud? And supposing a body happened to overhear? Wouldn’t exactly be lagging now, would it?”

He waited, not knowing if his idea would work or not. Sally looked up, her face grim.

[I love music]

***chapter 18***

ZAMMO

There are moments in our lives when Fate seems to take a hand albeit the hand is somebody else’s. The moment Frank clenched his fist, ready to kill Steve for taking away the precious guitar, chanced to be the very moment that Scott Phillips chose to raise his hand as though he too wished to be counted in amongst the movers and shakers of Fate. Just so’s Mrs Martha got the general idea of what was going to happen to her before she was torn limb from limb and drowned in the sea, Scotty decided a little roughening up wouldn’t go amiss so, taking careful aim, he hurled her as far as he could throw over a random heap of rocks.

And so it was that a long-legged, long-armed, yellow-haired rag doll wearing a wide-brimmed wedding hat and beautiful going-to-a-wedding outfit (rather impractical attire considering her new hobby) suddenly sailed through the sky and landed nearby, followed soon afterwards by Scott himself, who looked round in bafflement at what should have been Mrs Martha’s designated landing area - until he saw two guys he knew vaguely as the Fletcher brothers.

And brothers is exactly what Steven and Frank were at that moment. The guitar dispute could wait till a more convenient time. For now, they were united in a common bond. Sally.

“Where is she?” Frank demanded.

“Who?” Scott asked innocently, knowing they couldn’t touch him. He was a kid.

“You know perfectly well who,” Steven said.

“Nope!” Scott smirked. “Now, if you’re talkin’ ‘bout the Queen of England, I reckon she’ll be in Buck Palace, sittin’ on the throne, with her lackeys waitin’ outside with the dunny paper, if you’re talkin’ ‘bout Colleen Smartie-Wet-Her-Pants, I figure she’s...”

“Where is she, you little psycho?” Frank yelled, losing his temper and grabbing Scotty by the shirt collar, raising him off the ground. “Sally wouldn’t have dropped that doll unless she was in one helluva hurry!”

“I dunno, I dunno!” Scotty yelled, truly scared now. “She ran off.”

“Why?”

“I dunno!”

“Mate, calm down. He’s a kid. Just a kid. Like Sally.”

Steven’s calm voice and his hand on his arm brought Frank to his senses. This wasn’t the way to deal with things. For all his reputation and despite the fact he was grinning at him like the devil incarnate, knowing he was safe now from a bashing, Scott Phillips was just a kid. And Frank wasn’t a bully. Being a bully was no way to make his Dad Frankie Morgan proud like he’d promised when just a kid himself. Reluctantly he let Scott go and Scotty ran like a bat out of hell, pausing at a safe distance before he screamed a torrent of abuse.

Steven slapped Frank on the back. He didn’t have to say anything. He knew what a huge effort it always was for Frank to keep his temper in check.

“Doesn’t help us though,” Frank sighed, understanding the silent message.

“We’ll find Sal,” Steven said, with more conviction than he felt. “She can’t be far. Anyway, she’s with Carl and Lynn, isn’t she?”

But he had a bad feeling about this. A really bad feeling. And they might have called a truce for now, but Frank was madly in love with that guitar. He wasn’t going to forgive or forget easily that Steve had taken it.

*****

Mike Langford created a stir the moment he pushed open the arch-shaped doors of Summer Bay Town Hall. Mike, known as Zammo to his friends, had acquired his nickname the day he’d hit the top peg of “Sampson” to triumphantly sound the bell at a fairground test-your-strength machine in a bid to impress Jenny Murray, younger sister of Kathy Murray who taught at Summer Bay Primary. Except he sprained his wrist in the process and then discovered pretty Jenny Murray had missed the moment anyway because she’d been far too busy winning a pink panther on the nearby shooting range to the admiration of the guys clustered round her.

At first Mike’s mates had begun calling him Sampson, which he’d hated, but gradually it had become Sammo and finally Zammo. Which, like the test of strength machine, had a nice ring to it.

Zammo was exceptionally tall and this fact often made him rather accident prone. And he had chosen to visit Summer Bay Town Hall, not just because it would have a phone, but also because it was the nearest building from the beach. Two hundred years ago the eccentric architect of Summer Bay Town Hall had chosen to build it because he had more money and time on his hands than he knew what to do with. And, unfortunately, very little talent for architecture. It proved to be a deadly combination.

Zammo immediately banged his head on the far-too-low, crookedly semi-arched-shaped doorway, which caused him to trip and fall flat on his face. The portrait of Zachariah McDonald, painted in ceremonial robes and carrying a bell, commemorating the day he had appointed himself town crier, stared down at him from the wall opposite as though wondering if seconds should be counted down and the bell rung for round two.

“Never mind me! She needs help!” Zammo yelled, scrambling to his feet and impatiently shaking off those who had run to his aid. Time was all important. The girl on stage who’d just belted out Memory from the musical CATS and thought it wasn’t a bad effort, even if her friends had strongly advised against it, and some of the audience watching the dress rehearsal for tomorrow’s talent show had looked rather alarmed throughout the whole song, scowled darkly at him.

“Who does?” Don “Flathead” Fisher had just returned from taking his recently delivered car for a spin and was bewildered by the fact a crowd had apparently felt the need to gather round the door in his absence as though eagerly anticipating his return.

“One of the Fletcher girls. Carly. She’s drunk. Really drunk. But her sister Lynn’s in an even worse state. And she needs an ambo fast.” Zammo exchanged a look with Jenny. They were still good mates even though they were no longer an item.

Jenny had been the one who’d introduced him to Carly, at the end-of-term party in Yabbie Creek for a group of Kathy’s friends, student teachers who had passed their final exams, and she had been stoked when Zammo seemed smitten. Because his parents insisted on sending him to an expensive private school in Mango River, Zammo often missed out on what was happening in Summer Bay, but Jenny herself knew heaps of people through Kathy.

Jenny, by virtue of her being Kathy’s sister, had been invited on the night out and allowed to bring a mate (naturally she chose Zammo) on the understanding neither of them were to have more than a couple of lagers. Nobody ever figured out how Carly had got her invite. Where there was alcohol on offer, somehow Carly always somehow managed to be there. She’d been drinking heavily then too.

It had broken Zammo's heart to see Carly later leaning over the sea wall and throwing up into the sea. Not just because she couldn’t even remember his name when he’d gone to help but because he couldn’t understand why someone so pretty, so popular, was doing that to herself. Although their own group were pacing themselves, aware that newly fledged teachers couldn’t afford bad publicity, few others around them had any qualms about it; it was Saturday night, it was the city, it was expected.

But with Carly it wasn’t just drink drinking. It was wild, out-of-control drinking. It was dicing with death, running along the sea wall and announcing she was going for a swim (till half a dozen of them managed to pull her down).

Zammo and Jenny stood together later, shivering in the night air, as they waited in the long queue at the taxi rank. They knew that Kathy, even though she hadn’t invited Carly (it turned out Carly somehow knew a couple of the guys from the college and, like Carly always did whenever booze was on offer, had simply turned up, knowing full well no one could send her back on her own) felt responsible for her, even though Carly had ruined her night. Kathy, Zammo and Carly had gone home far earlier than they’d intended and Kathy had phoned Pippa and Tom the next day and, without exactly dobbing her in, had explained Carly had a real problem with alcohol. She looked pale now.

“Just like Kathy to worry about everyone,” Jenny whispered to Zammo as the emergency services were contacted. “I wish she had someone to worry about her for a change.”

“You do a pretty good job,” Zammo smiled, squeezing her hand.

“Thanks, mate! But Kathy’s too soft-hearted for her own good and I’m not here all the time. I mean like a guy. Robert was gorgeous but he was only in love with himself and Kathy’s better off without him, but he was the last guy on the scene and there’s nobody else around...” Jenny shook her head sadly. “I wish she had someone.”

“Wish we all did,” Zammo sighed, thinking of Carly.

*****

“You got us in this ******* mess,” Milko said. “You can ******* well get us out of it.”

Funny thing was, even though he was dressed as usual all in white except for the black hat (somehow that had changed colour on the way home) Milko reminded Kane of Scotty when he said it. It was the first time he’d heard Milko swear. But he’d changed heaps lately. No more Mr Nice Guy, Milko had said angrily as he’d thrust himself down on one of the old wooden crates that had once contained bottles of beer while Kane picked up the almost skeletal frame of an arm-chair, burnt out from the day Dad had nodded off in it whilst smoking, and, trying to ignore the combined musty smells of damp, dust and charred furniture, made himself as comfortable as he possibly could under the circumstances.

Fred the dragon bub was pretending to be engrossed in blowing smoke rings and Deefa the puppy, who hadn’t barked for ages as if wary of drawing attention to himself, was watching the fire-breathing act as though he’d never seen anything half as fascinating in his entire life before. Truth was, they were both a bit scared of him. Milko wasn’t the Milko who sat drawing cutesy pictures in school anymore.

“Yeh, well, like how’s it my fault?” Kane demanded to know.

He clenched his fists and gritted his teeth as they heard heard his father’s fist thudding against something - probably his mother - again. The bashing had gone on for some time now. It was the reason all four of them were sitting in the garden shed, afraid to go indoors.

“You ate the bacon,” Milko said accusingly, glaring at him. “You and Scotty. Not me or Deefa or Fred. You and Scotty.”

Tears stung Kane’s eyes but he fought them back. Milko was right. It was Kane’s fault. He’d got home just in time to see and hear it. The back was always the safest way to go in because the kitchen window was easiest to slip in and out of so he and Scotty always returned via the back way. And Kane had witnessed everything through the grimy glass.

There was a smashed bottle (Mum’s medicine, with the funny name of vodka, she told Kane the doctor prescribed it and she had to drink it regularly) on the floor and Dad was in the act of flinging two dirty plates out of the cupboard with the door that hung off its hinges and throwing them at Mum like he was discus throwing.

“No wonder there was hardly any ******* decent bacon left! Gave it to the ******* brats, didn’t ya?”

And then he’d grabbed her by the hair and...Kane hadn’t the stomach to watch anymore.

And now Milko was glaring at him exactly like Scotty looked in a bad mood before he bashed someone.

“Do something, drongo!” Milko ordered.

But Kane didn’t know what he should do. He wasn’t even five yet, for Crissakes. Maybe when he was a year older, a whole five-and-a-half, he’d know what to do then. He closed his eyes and, wrapping his arms around himself, rocked himself to and fro, listening helplessly as the fight escalated, knowing that, even if they heard, nobody would intervene. Fighting, inevitably fuelled by drink and drugs, was the norm in the Hell Houses of Summerhill and police were not welcome in the tough little seaside town. Anyone foolish enough to dob someone in to the cops risked being bashed themselves or worse.

A solitary tear ran down his cheek and he was glad Scotty wasn’t there to see it. Milko would give him heaps as it was. But at least he had his mates here for company, he thought. At least he wasn’t sitting here all alone.

[I love music]

***chapter 19***

***HOME***

“I can’t,” Sally said grimly. “I just can’t tell you what’s worrying me. Don’t you see, Lance? Thinking aloud so that you can hear is EXACTLY the same as lagging.”

Sally and Lance sighed together. In perfect synchronisation, without either of them being aware of it, each put their elbows on their knees and their chin in their hands, Sally sitting on the rocks and keeping a wary distance from the water, Lance sitting on the banks of the river surrounded by his fishing gear.

Sally could see no way round the problem. The Phillips brothers had warned her that they’d drown Milko if she lagged about them kidnapping him. She was a very honest little girl and it never crossed her mind that they had no way of finding out. She owed Milko. Even though he’d turned against her, he’d been her best friend when there’d been nobody else.

She sighed again. There was so much to worry about that she wasn’t quite sure where to stop worrying about one problem and start worrying about the next. She’d dropped Mrs Martha running away from the Phillips brothers and poor Mrs Martha would be so frightened all by herself and poor Pippa frantic with worry when she learnt Mrs Martha was lost. And Colleen, Lance’s Mum, would be so worried when she saw Lance hadn’t eaten all his sandwiches. And what if Lance began to worry about everything he ate making his breath smell, like Sally had warned him that cheese and onion would, so stopped eating altogether and wasted away and became as thin as Milko? Everybody would be so worried about him.

Funnily enough, it didn’t occur to Sally for a second that anyone might be worried about Sally herself.

Lance racked his brains and wished he had more of ‘em. Then he might be able to piece it together. He was sure Sally’s problem had something to do with Milko. Sally had been pretty cagey about Milko when he’d asked her how he was these days. She had only primly replied As well as can be expected under the circumstances, thank you when normally she loved talking about him.

The sunlight glistened on Lance’s watch, to his horror showing exactly the same time that it had done last time he looked at it. The watch battery he still hadn’t got round to replacing must have finally given up the ghost.

“Sweet Jee...” He jumped up, dropping the fishing rod in his haste, about to swear, but stopping himself. Serious little Sally would be shocked.

“Jumpin’ jellybeans!” He amended. He was meant to be meeting Steven - and impressing Kathy Murray - at Summer Bay Town Hall for the dress rehearsal for the talent contest.

“Why did you say that?” Sally asked curiously.

“My watch stopped. Ages ago,” Lance explained, sitting back down again, deciding a few more minutes wouldn’t matter. Sally was more important and Steven would understand.

“No, I mean about the jelly beans. Jelly beans don’t jump. Do they?” Sally liked facts to be correct, everything in the place it should be. “Pippa took me to Mrs Parker’s Ye Olde Summer Bay Lolly Shoppe and I saw some jelly beans in the jar there. They weren’t jumping. Were they supposed to?” She frowned anxiously.

“No, Sal. It’s only an expression.”

“Oh!” The little girl sounded very disappointed. “I was hoping they did. And that maybe people had to jump too if they saw them jumping. Like you did just now. You know, for luck or something.”

Lance was a strong man who didn’t cry easily, who laughed at the slushiest moments in tear-jerking movies and mercilessly teased those who would weep over nothing at the drop of a hat. But he felt tears prick the back of his eyes. She was eight years old and so much tragedy had blighted her young life. She needed to be eight. To laugh at nonsense like other eight-years-old could.

“Well, you know, Sal, who’s to say jumpin’ jelly beans don’t exist?” He said gently. “After all, somebody must have said it first for a reason. So I think somewhere in the world there MUST be jumpin’ jelly beans and there MUST be folk jumpin’ for luck when they see them.”

It did the trick. A smile lit up Sally’s face.

Lance looked at the angry red scar and the dried-out tear streaks on her dirt-smudged face. Poor little mite. She needed to laugh more. Well, he was going to make darn sure she did.

“Anyhows, I better get on with practising my singing. First though need to clear my throat...” Lance twirled his ears with his fingers as though winding up an engine and began making strange noises that might have been an engine in trouble or a lion with a sore throat.

Sally giggled. Childish giggles, filled with fun and mischief. Probably the first time she’d truly laughed since before her parents drowned.

“More! More!” She pleaded, as, spluttering with coughs, Lance finally had to pause to catch his breath.

Lance grinned and obligingly launched into a peculiar gargling not unlike a water pipe about to burst, while rolling his eyes exaggeratedly and pumping his ears. Sally laughed heartily and knelt up on the rock, silver tears rolling down her cheeks. Happy tears. She wiped them away only for yet more to take their place.

And then a shadow suddenly crossed the little girl’s face and she stopped laughing and sank down in dejection.

“Frank! Sally’s over here!” Steven roared from the top of the rock face, the strange gargling noises having alerted him to where to look. He turned back, grinning. “Found you at last!”

*****

“Pippa, I’m sorry,” Carly gulped, as they stood in the waiting area, having left Lynn sleeping.

The words were so inadequate. She might have meant them but what did that do to make things any better? Poor Pippa was white as a sheet and still running her fingers frantically through her hair. It was only thanks to the skills of the medical staff at the Northern District Hospital that Lynn hadn’t died. And Sally was still missing. Anything could have happened to her.

Carly and Lynn had been located easily enough thanks to Zammo’s directions, but Sally seemed to have vanished into thin air. The SES helicopter was searching the beach area and Tom was up there with them, helping to look. There wasn’t room for anyone else and Tom had trained with the SES so Pippa had gone with Lynn and Carly to the hospital because somebody needed to be with Lynn too.

Pippa worked part-time as a nurse at the same hospital and some of her friends and colleagues were gathered round her. Carly stood on the fringe of the group. Even though nobody actually said anything, she could feel their disapproval. It was all a terrible, terrible mess and she wanted to break down and weep. But she couldn’t. She had to be strong because she was on her own now. Forever and ever and ever. She’d thrown away her last chance. It was going to be so lonely, not having anyone again, but it was her own fault. All she’d cared about was the drinking.

Carly suddenly felt the need to retch again. She’d never felt so crook. Hangovers were awful but this was one was worse than ever. A nurse had given her one of the standard hospital cardboard containers in which to be sick, but she couldn’t bear to be here with Pippa anymore, not after she’d broken her heart.

She pushed open the double doors and fled outside, to where a handful of cigarette addicts were getting their nicotine fixes, puffing clouds of blue smoke into the sea-cooled air. Carly heard someone click their tongue loudly as she threw up noisily and unprettily all over the grass and knew everyone would be staring at her in disgust. It was obvious that she’d been drinking. She could hardly stand straight and her breath reeked of alcohol.

Determined not to see the contempt in their eyes, she blinked back the tears as she looked up at the familiar sign “Northern District Hospital Caring for people from the Bay to the Breakers”.

Sometimes Carly had caught the Yabbie Creek bus and met Pippa here as her foster mother came off her nursing shift. On beautiful days like this, filled with sunshine and breezes, they would have taken the short cut across the beach to Summer Bay, enjoying the sun’s gentle warmth and the sweet kisses of the breeze, talking about anything and everything.

Carly would feel so proud when Pippa sought her advice about the younger girls, even when it was just little things such as whether Lynn and Sally might prefer jelly and ice cream or lemon meringue with dinner. Her own family had always dismissed her as too stupid to have ideas and opinions about anything. Well, Pippa asking her advice would never happen again. Drunks didn’t know anything, did they? Drunks couldn’t even look after their two younger sisters without putting both their lives in danger.

Carly turned away, blinded by the tears she was trying so desperately hard not to cry. She needed to be on her own for a while. Didn’t matter where she went. Somewhere she couldn’t hurt anyone anymore. Maybe she would just sit on a bench in the hospital grounds till it was night and the moon was high, till it was time for the social workers to come and collect her. Pippa and Tom would have her bags ready packed by then and be only too glad to know she was gone out of their lives forever.

*****

Sally took a deep breath. Steven hadn’t been the Steven she was used to. He hadn’t teased her once. Well, not yet. In fact, if Sally hadn’t known better, she’d have thought he even seemed glad when he said he was glad she was okay. He seemed like the Steven she thought she’d seen for a moment before she’d lit the match, the day she'd been trying to make him go away. Almost like...well, almost like they could be friends.

A helicopter, probably checking out the weather conditions, was circling over the sea and Steven was looking up at it. And Lance and Frank were busy talking. So Sally took a deep breath. It had been on her mind a while. But she wouldn’t have dared say it to the old Steven.

“Steven, we could swap,” Sally said, as they walked along.

“What?”

“I don’t know if it would work or not. I don’t know if it would make it go away. But I’m not scared of fire and you’re not scared of the sea so if I pretended to be scared of fire and you pretended to be scared of the sea, maybe...maybe...It’s a stupid idea,” she finished lamely, wishing she hadn’t said anything now.

Steven was just looking at her without saying anything. He was probably going to start calling her silly Sally again and sing that cruel song about her living in an alley to make her cry. And the terrible sea was thundering closer and closer. She could hear it rushing through her ears and there was no Milko to tell her everything would be alright. She closed her eyes as the ground began to rock beneath her...

“No, it’s not,” Steven said huskily, when at last he found his voice. There was a lump so large in his throat that he’d begun to wonder if he’d ever be able to speak again. Nobody else knew his greatest fear but little Sally, whom he’d bullied constantly simply because she could cry and he couldn’t, had seen right through him. And even wanted to help.

It was just a little kid idea. Based on magic and superstition and everything else that anklebiters believed in as much as they believed in the myth of Father Xmas. But Sally wasn’t so far wrong, Steven realised. If they supported each other instead of being enemies, they could help each other overcome their fears.

“You know, it just might work,” he said gently. “We could give it a go anyway. It’s a great idea!”

He squeezed Sally’s shoulder as he spoke and, without thinking, Sally opened her eyes. There was no water coming inland to sweep her away. No sound of the terrible sea rushing through her ears. No ground rocking beneath her. As though just talking to Steven had made it all go away.

“Is it?” She smiled uncertainly.

“Dead set!”

Sally’s smile became a little more sure. It was the first time she and Steven had ever had a proper conversation and she didn’t know if at any moment he was going to turn into the old Steven again.

Frank began strumming a tune and she glanced curiously back, wondering why Steven had been carrying the guitar when they’d first found she and Lance. Frank never let anyone take the guitar normally.

“Are you...are you going to play guitar?” She asked, still slightly wary of him. “And be in a band? Like Frank?”

“I can’t play even half as well as Frank, Sal. Wish I could!”

“I bet you can!” Sally said loyally, and giggled when Steven flicked her hair and said “No, I can’t, doofus!” But in a nice way, a way that made her laugh.

Steven grinned down at her. Sally was funny. It was cool having a kid sister. Someone who thought you could do anything. It was like...he didn’t know how to tell it. All he knew was that it was somewhere in the music that had come from nowhere into his heart.

*****

Tears misting her vision, Carly turned abruptly - and immediately collided with someone coming up the path.

“Hey! I love it when chicks fall for me in a big way! Jen’s sister just dropped us off so’s we could come to see how you and Lynn were,” Zammo grinned, steadying her. Then he saw how upset she was. “Hey! You okay?” he asked.

“Fine,” Carly croaked. “Just feeling a bit crook with the drink, s’all.”

“Your Mum’s shouting you.” Jenny indicated to where Pippa waited by the double doors.

“Pippa’s not my Mum. Not my real Mum,” Carly corrected sadly, wiping a hasty hand across her eyes. “I wish she could be. I wish a lot of things hadn’t happened.”

“It’ll be okay, Carl. It will,” Zammo said, his brown eyes full of concern. He didn’t know what else to say.

“Sure it will,” Jenny promised. “You’ve got your mates, haven’t you? You’ve got us.”

Carly swallowed. That was another thing she’d miss. Without realising it, she’d made some good friends in Summer Bay. When she wasn’t drinking, she could actually be a nice person. Even Carly hadn’t known that Carly existed.

“Carly, what’s wrong? Where are you going?” Pippa had caught up with her and looked baffled.

“I don’t know.” Carly’s voice was a strange, tearful squeak. “Wherever the social workers place me next. Because you...you and Tom...I know you can’t have me stay now...Not after everything...”

“Pippa! Pippa!”

Like one of her own small pupils might do, Kathy Murray threw her car keys in the air, clapped her hands twice and caught them again, so stoked she hardly knew where she was or what she was doing. She didn’t know how, when or where she’d put the car in the parking lot, let alone whether or not she’d locked the doors. In fact, if you’d asked Kathy what her own name was at that moment, I very much doubt she’d have been able to tell you.

“I just heard it on the car radio! Sally’s been found! They said Tom radioed back to HQ and said she’s with her two older brothers and a friend and she’s absolutely fine!”

“Oh, thank God!” Pippa said, flinging her arms round Carly, while Zammo and Jenny high-fived each other in delight.

Carly drew a great shuddering breath.

“Yeh. Thank God. I was hoping and hoping and hoping I’d hear Sal was alright before I went back into Care,” she muttered into Pippa’s shoulder.

And then the tears finally fell. The tears Carly had sworn she’d never let anyone see her cry, they soaked through, drenching Pippa’s left shoulder. If only she hadn’t ruined everything and had been able to stay, she’d have let Sally have as many invisible Milkos as she wanted and Lynn go to church as often as she liked. She wouldn’t have teased them about it anymore. Well, no more than older sisters did. With slightly exasperated humour and heaps of love and without the cruelty and acid-tongued put-downs.

The drink must have still been befuddling her brain. Carly suddenly had a peculiar picture in her mind of hundreds of Milkos - Lynn had told her what he looked like, based on a description Sally had given her once so her image of Milko, it has to be said, was pretty accurate - gathered, like a flock of birds, on the Fletcher house roof. Why they were on the roof, Carly had no idea, but one by one they were jumping down, half to follow Lynn and Sally who were walking to a church, the other half protesting and trying to start fights with their saintly brothers. The image made Carly want to both laugh and cry at the same time.

Of all the Fletcher kids, most people would have thought stunningly beautiful Carly the most confident. But Pippa had seen the flashes of vulnerability behind the always-carefully-made-up eyes and knew that Carly needed as much reassurance as eight-year-old Sally did. Outwardly self-assured, inside she still trembled like a leaf, remembering the harrowing memories of her childhood. Small wonder she had turned to drink to blot out the pain. Pippa held her eldest daughter as tightly as she would have held her youngest.

“Carly, tell me where it says that family just give up on one another. Because I never read it anywhere.” Pippa spoke to her as tenderly as though she were talking to little Sally. “Sweetheart, family is about having a home and a place where you belong.”

*****

The guitar playing suddenly picked up speed.

“Nobody loves me, everybody hates me, guess I’ll go eat worms! Long, thin, slimy ones, big, fat, juicy ones...” Frank and Lance began the singing, their voices blended in perfect harmony even though it was a nonsense song.

“I know it! I know it!” Sally cried excitedly, innocently unaware that Lance and Frank had just hatched the plot between them, knowing perfectly well it was one of Sally’s school songs. It was one of several songs that Summer Bay Primary liked to blast out at every end-of-term show while proud parents dabbed their eyes and gave standing ovations, oblivious to the fact no one had sung in tune.

Like Steven, Lance and Frank had noticed the helicopter with SES emblazoned across its side and realised they must be looking for little Sally. But they realised too that there would only be room for one small girl inside the helicopter and how timid Sally was. The nonsense songs had been Lance’s idea.

“We better make it into a game for her,” Lance had said, “or Sal will think she’s being arrested for running away. Fortunately, it don’t take a genius to figure out she’s running away from something ‘cos I ain’t no genius,” he added wryly.

“You know about kids though,” Frank said, half enviously. Sally was his little sister, but it hadn’t occurred to him to tread softly. He’d been all set to yell out “She’s here!” and probably terrify poor little Sally into the bargain till Lance made his suggestion.

“Not everything,” Lance sighed.

He still hadn’t discovered what was troubling Sally though he was convinced Milko had something to do with it. And that the Phillips brothers had something to do with it too. Frank had told him that Scott Phillips had been throwing Sally’s doll around when they came across him. Sometimes Lance wished he did have the mind of a professor. Like Steven. Who’d glanced at Lance and Frank for a moment and taken only a second to work out their plan.

“Down goes the first one, down goes the second one, oh, how they wriggle and squirm! Up comes the first one, up comes the second one, oh, how they wriggle and squirm!”

Steven and Sally joined in, losing the tune and words often because they both kept looking at each other and laughing.

Unbeknown to Sally, while Steven was keeping her occupied with the singing, Lance and Frank were signalling to the helicopter. But the SES pilot indicated back that there was nowhere yet to land. They needed to move further away from the rocky, half hidden fishing area - the reason it had taken so long to locate Sally - and get on to the beach, where there would be plenty of space.

They reached the end of the first nonsense song and Frank immediately led them into another, one that he had often sung with the Fletcher family when he’d been trying to teach them some basic guitar notes.

“Where have you been all day, ‘En’ery, my son? Where have you been all day, my beloved one?”

Laughing, the others quickly picked up the words.

“Woods, dear mother, woods, dear mother, oh, mother, come quick cos I feel very sick and I wanna lay down and die...”

People on the beach stopped and stared. Surfers abandoned surf boards and perfect waves and came out of the water to stand and watch the strange sight of the motley band of singers and the helicopter that tailed them.

“What did you do there, ‘En’ery, my son? What did you do there, my beloved one? Ate, dear mother, ate, dear mother, oh, mother, come quick cos I feel very sick and I wanna lay down and die...”

Suddenly realising they were the centre of attention, Sally blushed and buried her face in Mrs Martha’s yellow woollen hair.

“Don’t stop, Sal, don’t stop!” Lance said, wrapping his arm round her and propelling her forwards with him. “I just heard someone say we must be making a commercial or a movie so let’s have a lend of them and pretend we are! It’ll be funny!” Lance’s voice boomed back into the song.

“Ate, dear mother, ate ,dear mother, oh, mother come quick, cos I feel very sick and I wanna lay down and die!"

Lance was right. It was funny that all these people thought they were making a movie. Funny like folk jumping when they saw jumping jelly beans. And she was quite safe with Steven, Lance and Frank. Even the terrible sea couldn’t hurt her.

Feeling more confident as Lance took her hand, Sally grinned up at him and began singing again.

Steven suddenly felt a cold draught as Frank fell into step beside him.

“This is for the benefit of Sal,” Frank said in a low menacing voice, his eyes blazing with fury. “But you still owe me for taking my guitar. And, trust me, Einstein, there’s gonna be payback.”

AUTHOR'S NOTE: No worms were injured in the writing of this chapter!