John Marsden - While I live

Jeremy was tall and skinny and seemed like a nice guy: and he had a sense of humour. He immediately handed me this plastic bag. ‘Chocolate and avocados,’ he said as I opened it to peer inside. ‘My dad said that’d really impress you. And sorry, but they don’t make Iced Vo-Vos anymore.’

I blushed a bit, with pleasure. General Finley had surprised me again. It was many months since I’d yelled into a radio to tell him how desperate I was for chocolate and avocados and Iced Vo-Vos. We’d been at the top of Tailor’s Stitch, near our hiding place during the war, trying to get in touch with New Zealand, and General Finley had asked if we wanted anything. I couldn’t believe he’d remembered my list of requests. Maybe he had it programmed into his computer, in the Ellie file.

‘They don’t make Iced Vo-Vos anymore?’ I asked Jeremy.

‘Yeah, I think the Vo-Vo trees got blown up in a guerilla raid,’ he said.

‘That’s terrible.’

‘Yep,’ Homer said. ‘War sure is hell.’

He introduced me to Bronte, who had one of those thoughtful looking, attractive faces. I like people with eyes like oceans, where you know straight away that even if you talk to them for a thousand years they’ll still have secrets from you.

I already knew Jess, who was dark-skinned, with lively eyes that were forever scanning the room. She seemed like she noticed everything. Jess used to live in Stratton but they’d moved to Wirrawee. Their house had been bombed so they arrived in Wirrawee with whatever they had in their pockets, which wasn’t much. At first Jess often wore a black top to school, a black top with silver edging. One day Bridget Allen, who can be a real bitch when she wants to be, and most days she definitely wants to be, told Jess how it was my top, which I’d put into one of the charity bins that we all gave heaps of stuff to, and funny about that, Jess never wore the top again.

Jess’s father was an IT teacher and her mother had gone off to America with another woman, which by the standards of the old Wirrawee was spectacular gossip. These days people didn’t take a lot of notice.

I did start to warm up a bit. I got three coffees, a tea, a cordial and a water, and we sat around the kitchen table. Bronte and Jess were at Wirrawee High. At the start of the year Homer and I had enrolled in a special accelerated course, but we couldn’t do the workload, so we’d both gone back into normal streams. We were still a year above Bronte. There was a time when that wouldn’t have mattered, I’d have known her anyway, but since the war Wirrawee High had suddenly grown to nearly twice its previous size, and there were heaps of people I didn’t know.

Jeremy was from Stratton. I had the feeling that he and Jess might be an item, or were on the verge of becoming an item. Or they would become an item eventually but didn’t know it themselves yet.

Bronte was pretty quiet. Jess and Jeremy did most of the talking, with Homer contributing an occasional grunt. Fi and I were both too tired, even with the caffeine hits. We probably needed a litre of caffeine intravenously.

Jess started asking me about the guys who’d killed my parents. Gradually she probed deeper and deeper.

‘I think they just pick places at random,’ I said, although I know I always went a bit white-faced when I thought about the alternatives.

‘What do you think they wanted?’

‘To steal stuff I guess.’

‘Yes, I suppose. Did they steal anything?’

‘Well, no. But with four of them killed, I imagine the others panicked and took off.’

‘How many do you think there were?’

‘I don’t know. The police looked at the tracks. But I haven’t heard anything from them for nearly a week. So I’m not sure if they came up with much evidence. I get the feeling that there’s so much happening with border fights and everything, and so many new people moving into the district… I think they’re just overwhelmed. And face it, what chance do they have of finding these guys?’

‘Not much I guess. But there are a few rumours going around.’

‘Like what?’

‘Oh, you know, camps of renegade soldiers, right near the border. People say they’re responsible for a lot of the raids.’

‘Oh, I hadn’t heard about that.’

She shrugged. ‘It’s just a rumour.’

‘Jess is the Rumour Queen,’ Jeremy said. ‘You want to know who you’re with? She knows it before you do.’

I blushed a bit, thinking of how a few minutes earlier I’d been thinking that maybe he was with Jess.

Jess came back to the murders again.

‘Does it make you mad?’ she asked me.

I nodded. Our eyes locked together. It was weird, like I was being interrogated almost. She asked me a series of quick questions.

‘What do you think should happen about it?’

‘It has to be stopped of course. How can we live like this?’

‘Stopped by who?’

‘I don’t know. The Army. The police.’

‘What if they can’t? Or won’t?’

‘If they really won’t, I suppose people have to protect themselves.’

‘The law of the jungle?’

‘I don’t know. I know that’s not the best way. But we can’t let them just wander around killing anyone they want.’

‘So people have to defend themselves?’

‘Maybe. Seems like it.’

‘How far do you reckon they should go to defend themselves? Across the border, for example?’

I leaned back and sighed and pushed my hair out of my face.

‘I’m sorry. It’s too early for me to think about all this.’

Jess immediately switched off. ‘Oh yes, sorry. I didn’t mean to throw so many questions at you. You’re in such a horrible situation.’

‘What are you going to do, Ellie?’ Jeremy asked.

‘Depends on which day you ask me. A couple of days ago I would have said sell up and move out. Today it looks like I’m going to try to make the place work.’

Homer rolled his eyes. ‘Make up your mind,’ he said. ‘I thought you were broke?’

‘I am. But, I don’t know, I don’t want to give up without a fight.’ I was too embarrassed to admit that Gavin had talked me into staying.

‘Fair enough,’ Homer said. ‘Shame in one way. My old man was all fired up to buy your place and expand his empire. But he’ll cope with the disappointment. Count on me for any help you want.’

‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘If things go like I’m expecting, you’ll probably hear our pathetic fingernails scratching on your door one night, and our pathetic voices crying out for a crust of bread.’

Gavin came swinging into the kitchen, went to the fridge and got himself some Linton’s cordial. I tried to introduce him to the three visitors as he poured the cordial into the glass, but he deliberately wouldn’t look up. Somehow though he managed to spill half the drink onto the bench. I sighed and went for a Chux.

That night I lay in bed staring up into the darkness. I couldn’t sleep a wink. It wasn’t just the worry of how we were going to make two thousand bucks a week, although God knows, that was enough to keep anyone awake. I couldn’t understand how my father had ever managed to get a peaceful night’s sleep in his life. But it was also Jess’s questions. I knew what she was getting at of course, but up until then I’d managed to avoid thinking about it.

I put a lot of energy into avoiding thinking about things these days. Since the murders I hadn’t slept much. It wasn’t only that the vastness of night gave room for dark and sad and awful thoughts. It was also that a lot of memories of my parents were associated with night-time. Lying in bed as a little kid I would hear the sound of their voices washing down the corridor and over me, my father’s chuckles, my mother’s dry laugh, my father reading articles from the latest issue of Inland Outback and my mother commenting from time to time. I’d hear my father going outside to check the dogs and I’d hear his footsteps on the gravel, then on the dust, then echoing along the verandah as he circumnavigated the house, just a habit he had before he went to bed, making sure everything was ‘shipshape and Bristol fashion’, as he called it.