Alice took great gulps of air, trying to breathe normally. Her whole body hurt.
June opened an arm to her. Without any hesitation Alice stepped forward, into her embrace. June picked her up. Her arms were strong. Alice tucked her head into June’s neck. Her skin smelled salty, laced with the scents of tobacco and peppermint. Fat tears rolled down Alice’s cheeks from a place inside her as deep and frightening as the darkest parts of the sea.
As June carried her up the steps and onto the verandah, Alice glanced back over her shoulder. Leading from the flower field up to the house was a trail of picked flowers, fallen from her pocket.
The Thornfield kitchen was full of cicada song and twilight. Candy Baby stopped washing the dishes and leant towards the window to breathe in the autumn air. It carried the watery scent of moss and reeds from the nearby river. Goosebumps covered her skin. June had explained that it was around this time of year Candy had been born, but where, and to whom, no one knew. The date she celebrated as her birthday was the night June and Twig found her abandoned, swaddled in a blue ball gown, floating in a bassinet on a waterlogged heath of vanilla lilies between the river and the flower field. They’d been in the house putting two-year-old Clem to bed when they heard her cries. When June’s torch beam found her and Twig crouched to pick her up, Clem cooed and clapped his hands. The air was so dense with the scent of vanilla, the women called her Candy Baby. By the time June and Twig became her legal guardians, the name had stuck.
She plunged her hands back into the dishwater as she studied the streaky indigo sky. Within the wood and mortar of Thornfield’s walls the pipes groaned as the shower turned on. Candy emptied the sink and dried her hands on a tea towel. She went to the kitchen door and peeked down into the hall. June sat waiting against the closed bathroom door, her head leant back, her eyes closed, her arms resting on her knees with her fingers interlaced. In the low and pale lamplight, her wet cheeks shone silver. Harry sat at June’s feet, one paw on her foot, as he often did when she was upset.
Candy stepped back into the kitchen. She polished the countertops until they gleamed. While the others tended the flowers outside, the kitchen was her garden, where feasts and banquets bloomed. At twenty-six, she couldn’t imagine ever loving anything as much as cooking. Nothing fancy though; no big white plates and tiny morsels. Candy cooked to feed the soul. Flavour and quantity were of equal importance. She had become Thornfield’s resident cook when she dropped out of high school and convinced June she was safe with knives. It’s in your blood, Twig said after a bite of her first cassava cake, fresh from the oven. These are your gifts, June said when Candy served her first platter of spring rolls with mango chutney, made from homegrown vegetables and herbs. It was true; when she was cooking or baking, it was almost as if a deeper, hidden knowledge took over her hands, her instincts, her tastebuds. She thrived in the kitchen, spurred by the idea that maybe her mother was a chef, or her father a baker. Cooking soothed the incision-like cut she felt inside whenever she thought that she might never know.
The house shuddered as water pipes shut off. Candy stopped polishing. She leant against the counter, listening. There was a shuffling in the hall and, after a moment, the sound of the bathroom door opening.
It was always hard when someone new arrived: another woman needing a safe place to sleep stirred up dust and memories for everyone at Thornfield. But this was different. This was Clem’s child. Who wouldn’t speak. More so, this was June’s family, when the story everyone knew best about June was that she had none. Flowers are my family, she was often heard to say, with a sweep of her arm towards the fields and the women at her table.
But now the myth surrounding June’s family had crumbled. A child had returned.
To Alice’s great relief, June left her alone to shower. She let the water run over her face. She wished for depths she could immerse herself in, water to dive into and under, salty enough to sting her lips and cool enough to soothe her eyes. There was no sea she could run to here. She remembered the river and itched to find it. First chance she got, she decided. Something to look forward to, no matter how small.
Alice waited until her fingers pruned before she turned the shower off. Her towel was fluffy and plump. She put on the pyjamas June gave her and brushed her teeth. Her toothbrush was pink with cartoon princesses on it. The toothpaste was filled with sparkles. They were so pretty that for a moment Alice wasn’t sure if they were playthings or real. She remembered her clear plastic toothbrush with the frayed bristles standing in a Vegemite glass next to her mum’s on the bathroom counter. That deep and dark place swelled again, and down the tears came. The more she cried, the more Alice believed she really did have some of the sea inside her.
After she’d finished in the bathroom, Alice followed June upstairs. Harry pushed past them to gallop ahead.
‘I know he can seem like a bit of a clown, but don’t let Harry fool you.’ June winked at Alice. ‘He’s got a very special magic power. He can smell sadness.’
Alice paused at the door, watching Harry settle at the end of her bed.
‘Everyone works here, and that’s Harry’s job: to look after anyone who’s sad, and help them to feel safe again.’ June’s voice softened. ‘Harry has a secret language too, so that if for whatever reason he’s not aware you need his help, you can tell him you’d like some. Would you like to learn it?’
Alice picked at the skin on the edge of her thumbnail. Nodded.
‘Excellent. That’s your first job, then. To learn how to “speak” Harry. I’ll get Twig or Candy to teach you.’
Alice’s spine straightened the tiniest bit. She had a job.
June walked around her room closing the curtains; they billowed like dancing skirts.
‘Would you like me to tuck you in?’ June asked, gesturing to Alice’s bed. ‘Oh,’ she exclaimed. Alice followed her gaze.
On her pillow sat a small rectangular tray holding a glittering white cupcake, decorated with a pale-blue sugared flower. Dangling from the cupcake was a paper star that read, EAT ME. Next to it sat a cream-coloured envelope bearing Alice’s name.
A smile squeezed through the tangles and hurts inside, warming her cheeks. She ran to her bed.
‘Goodnight, Alice,’ June said, standing at her door.
Alice gave a small wave. Once June was gone, she tore open the envelope. Inside was a handwritten letter on matching cream-coloured paper.
Dear Alice,
Here are three things I know for sure:
1. When I was born, someone — I like to think it was my mother — wrapped me in a blue ball gown.
2. There is a colour in this world that was named after a king’s daughter, who always wore gowns that were made of exactly the same shade of blue. The stories about her make me wish sometimes I could have been friends with her; she smoked in public (at a time when women didn’t), once jumped fully clothed into a swimming pool with the captain of a ship, often wore a boa constrictor around her neck, and another time shot at telegraph poles from a moving train.
3. My favourite story goes like this: once, on an island not far from here, there was a queen who climbed a tree waiting for her husband to return from a battle. She tied herself to a branch and vowed to remain there until he returned. She waited for so long that she slowly transformed into an orchid, which was an exact replica of the pattern on the blue gown she was wearing. Here’s one more thing that I know for sure is true.