1. Moving in. A dance. An embrace.
Things suddenly got bad for us after Dad died. For us, the spoiled Flinders kids, who'd never had it bad in our entire lives. But Dad died, and he left all of his stuff to some floozy we'd never heard of, and all we three had was the parts of Mum's estate that her will had bequeathed specifically to us.
And some inheritance that was. A few bucks, her personal effects, which Dad had never bothered to get rid of, and a shoebox of a house out on a development estate somewhere, which Mum had bought as an investment a few years before she died.
We were served notice: the floozy wanted her house.
Her
house? I would've grabbed that process server and strangled the life out of him if it hadn't been for Elsa. She stopped me, held me back. In that calm way of hers, she took the eviction notice and thanked the man for his time.
I turned and ran for my room. Rage had a hold on me, but I knew that it wouldn't be much longer before it turned to tears. And I didn't want anyone to see.
Then there was a knock at my door. I put a grim choke on the emerging sobs and croaked, "Come in."
It was Elsa, papers still in hand. She walked in, a weary slump to her shoulders that it pained me to see. She sat down on the bed, next to where I lay prone, head on the pillow.
"We have thirty days," she said. "Most of the furniture and fittings have to stay here. We... we get to keep our personal effects -- clothes and that sort of thing -- and anything Dad expressly gave us as gifts..."
"Better start packing then," I choked. "That last bit alone is going to take weeks. Dad, always so generous with his 'darling kids'..."
I felt her hand on my shoulder then. "Don't do this, Ger, please. I need you right now. We've got to put a brave face on this for Marnie. She's going to take it badly, I just know..."
"And you think
I'm
not?" I twisted over, prepared to deliver something biting and scathing, to hurt her. And stopped at the tears running down her face. She didn't need me to hurt her. Dad already had.
"Please, Ger," she whispered. "I can't do this alone."
I sat up, then, and did something I hadn't done in years. I hugged her, hard. Tentatively, her hands came up to pat my back. She laid her head on my shoulder. Her body started shaking, but I didn't hear any crying. She wouldn't let herself slip that far. Big sis Elsa, always looking out for us. But now -- now who was going to look out for
her
?
Arms around her, my cheek nestled against the fabric of her blouse, I cried for her.
* * *
A few weeks later, we left the place we'd called home for so many years. The sum of our belongings barely took up the back of a single moving van: suitcases of clothes; my computer; a couple of mini hi-fis; a pair of bedside tables we were sure Dad's floozy wouldn't miss; random desks and chests of drawers and chairs, parts of our personal décor; and the old trunk of Mum's that had been kept in the basement.
Marnie was quiet and sullen as we climbed into Elsa's sedan and began the long drive to the new
Chez Flinders
. Despite anything and everything Elsa and I had said about having an adventure and leaving bad memories behind us, she knew just as well as we did that we'd been dispossessed. Thrown out. Dumped onto the street.
She'd have to change schools; we couldn't afford the tuition for the private school she used to attend. I'd seen Elsa up late at nights, head in hands, poring over documents and drawing up budgets. I'd seen her crumple and cry -- my big sister Elsa, always so steadfast, always so blightedly cheerful. In the light of the little desk lamp in Dad's study, she sat there and she tried to plan a future for us. I wanted to help her, I wanted to help so much -- but what could I do?
Rent wasn't a problem. Rates... well, if we invested what we had, and got decent returns, we might manage to scrape by for a little while. I was prepared to quit uni and get a full-time job if I had to -- and from what I'd seen of Elsa's oft-revised plans, it seemed likely that was the only way we'd manage to survive.
The drive to our new home was silent, and bleak. In the back seat, Marnie sat and stared out the window as everything familiar passed by, as we entered a new world.
* * *
It took barely an hour for the moving people to get everything into our new home. Elsa seemed to have had everything planned; she'd driven out here a few times in the preceding weeks to take stock of the situation. It turned out she'd also done a little judicious spending of our nest egg, so when the removalists had finished setting everything up where we wanted it, the tiny space looked almost... filled. Almost home.
We sat in the forest of unopened boxes, on mismatched chairs, and tried to acclimatise. This was it; this was going to be home for God only knew how long.
The front door opened onto a fairly generous living space, with a kitchen tucked into the corner. A rented fridge hummed quietly in its nook, next to the gas cooktop and oven, and the sink. Elsa had bought a simple dining room set: a small table and four chairs. The cupboards were well-stocked with basic grocery items; a new crockery set had been unpacked, washed and set out to dry.
We'd put Elsa's TV on a stand in the living room, opposite the squishy but comfortable-looking couch. Marnie's bookcase had been volunteered as the new communal book storage area; its shelves looked a bit bare at the moment, but we had the means to change that, in the boxes we were so zealously guarding.
"Well," Elsa said, after a moment. "Welcome home, guys."
"Thanks," I said, not quite managing to keep the sarcasm out of my voice. Then, in a softer tone, "You've done a real good job getting it ready, sis. It looks a lot better than I thought it would. I mean, I thought we'd be sitting on cardboard boxes and eating out of tins, or something."
"I'm trying to teach myself how to cook," she said, with a little laugh. "I've got a stack of cookbooks somewhere in one of these boxes; and we'll all have to get used to fending for ourselves,
and
looking out for each other, or we're going to starve. I get the feeling life is going to be a little topsy-turvy for a while."
"We'll survive," I told her, with a side glance at Marnie, who still hadn't said anything. "So, what other surprises does this grand old house have for us?"
"Well, the bathroom's in there -- one drawer each for toiletries and stuff; Marnie and I'll keep personal items in our rooms. There's a shower, bath, and a washing machine I rented. Marnie's room is down at the end of the hall. The master bedroom is to the right."
"Fine, so that's where you're sleeping," I said. "What about me?"
She looked a little uncomfortable. "Well, that's the problem. This house isn't that big, really. There's only two bedrooms. You can share the master bedroom with me, if you like; there's room for two beds if we squeeze. Or I'll sleep out here on the couch, if you don't mind me cluttering up your room with a bit of my junk..."
For a second, something hard and painful threatened to grab my heart through the growing aura of resentment. She'd tried so hard, poor Elsie; she'd tried so bloody hard and all I wanted to do was complain.
"It's all right," I heard myself saying. "You're big sis, right? I can rough it out here, if you don't mind sharing some closet space with me."
Her eyes met mine, a profound look of gratitude lurking in their brown depths. Embarrassed, I looked away.
Elsa must have felt my awkwardness, because she abruptly changed the subject. "Come on, Marnie, let's get your stuff into your room, shall we?"
