‘Piss off,’ Cassie said. He shoved Ian’s shoulder, even though he was smiling. Ian was prodding Mango’s middle with his feet as she was trying to pounce on his shoelaces. ‘Dad’s just the one that feeds her. It’s an animal. They don’t think anything.’
‘She likes him because she thinks he’s her mother,’ I said. ‘That’s what Dad said.’
‘I used to have a cat,’ Ian said. ‘It was my job to feed him but I always forgot. He was a little shit. Used to piss all over my room. Marking his territory or some shit.’
‘What happened to him?’ I asked.
‘Died.’
‘How’d he die?’
‘Mum found him,’ Ian said, smirking at Cassie. ‘Said there were birds pecking his eyes, ants crawling into his gums.’
‘How’d he die though?’ I said again. I didn’t know anything about cat diseases. Didn’t know if there were animals that could swoop from the sky, stalk out of the paddock and snatch Mango away from me.
‘Cassie saw it,’ Ian said. ‘Didn’t you, Cass?’
Cassie shrugged, brought his smoke to his mouth. Ian pressed his feet onto Mango’s tiny paws, which were white, as though she was wearing socks. When Ian raised his feet Mango wriggled free. I scooped her up as she tried to run inside, pressed her close to my chest.
Mango didn’t like me all that much. She never followed me around, never slunk around my feet looking for scratches like she did with Dad. He said I had to be more gentle with her, but I knew cats dragged their kittens around by the scruffs of their neck with their teeth, so I was just trying to make her feel as though she hadn’t suddenly been taken away from her mother and dumped with a house full of humans she didn’t know.
Wally didn’t care about Mango. He only cared about his clay animals. He’d only had the clay for a week but had made dozens of them now and spent over an hour on each, making sure they were perfect.
‘What are you going to do with them all?’ I asked him.
Wally shrugged and ripped off a hunk of clay from the stick.
‘Are you going to sell them?’
‘Dunno.’
‘Can I make one?’
Wally ignored me at first, and then moved the box of clay to the edge of the bed. ‘Fine,’ he said. ‘Don’t waste any, though. It’s expensive.’
I decided to make a fox, like the ones that had started skulking around the paddock more and more. Dad said foxes were pests, that they ate birds and possums and baby cows, and that they should be culled, but I knew if we had a pet fox it would love me the most out of all of us.
My hands didn’t seem to work properly, not like Wally’s. I couldn’t shape the fiddly bits. When I was finished it didn’t look anything like a fox or any kind of animal. The skin wasn’t smooth and the head was too big. The tail fell off when I put it on the windowsill.
Wally looked up from the green, half-formed thing in his hands. A frog. Even before it was finished it looked one hundred times better than mine. He took the fox from the windowsill, picked off the yellow clay that I’d used for the eyes and the ears.
‘You didn’t even try,’ he said, rolling up the fox’s body. ‘This is too dry now.’ He held up the ball. ‘It’s ruined.’
‘Sorry,’ I said, even though I wasn’t.
It was hot and I was bored, but I was sick of swimming by myself. Cassie didn’t get home until after two the night before and was still asleep. I’d stayed awake until he got back, and my eyeballs felt dry from being open for so long, staring at the ceiling, out the window. Every time Cassie was with Ian I got that wriggly feeling deep inside me, even though I tried to block it out. Cassie was an adult; he could do what he liked. I was sick of being the one to worry, but I couldn’t help it. No matter how many times I told myself that Ian and Cassie could do what they wanted I still felt like the walls were getting smaller when Cassie and Ian were alone together. But at least they weren’t going to the knackery anymore.
I stood on the verandah, looked over to the yellow house. It was drizzling, and the air smelled like charcoal. I knew Helena was at work; Tilly would be all alone.
I went back to our room. ‘Let’s go next door,’ I said to Wally.
‘I’m busy,’ Wally said.
‘You’re so boring.’
Wally didn’t look up from the clay, rolled a blob of green between his fingers.
‘And your animals are rubbish,’ I said. ‘They don’t even look like animals.’
I was bored, but I also wanted to see how angry Tilly was. I wanted to snoop around her house, look at her things.
I bundled Mango into a jumper, held her head close to my chest as I walked next door. ‘We’re going on an adventure,’ I said to Mango. I blew into her pink ear and then nibbled it just a bit. It was so thin that if I pressed down any harder my teeth would have sliced right through, like I was biting a dried apricot. She wriggled but I held her tighter so she couldn’t get away.
When I got to the yellow house I looked through the kitchen window before I knocked on the door. I was nervous, but glad I had Mango with me, like I wasn’t so alone. When Tilly heard me knock she peered at me through the kitchen window, the same way I’d looked in. She opened the door. She was wearing togs with pink and yellow hibiscuses on them. There were clusters of orange freckles on the tops of her shoulders. I wanted to lean forward and see if I could blow them away.
She looked at Mango burrowed under my chin and then looked over my shoulder. I checked her face for signs of hate, but I couldn’t tell either way. I thought about saying sorry. ‘I brought Mango over,’ I said instead. ‘Thought you might miss her.’
Tilly stroked Mango’s head and Mango sniffed Tilly’s skin with her lolly nose. Tilly picked up Mango’s front paw. ‘Let me hold her,’ she said.
I unwrapped Mango from the jumper and passed her to Tilly. She flipped her on her back like she was cradling a baby. ‘Hi, Mango,’ she said. Tilly smiled, just a bit, as though she was trying to hide it from me.
‘Have you been swimming?’ I said.
‘Just in the bath,’ Tilly said.
‘You smell like a flower.’
Tilly gave me a look. ‘You shouldn’t say stuff like that to people,’ she said. ‘They’ll think you’re weird.’ She leaned her face forward so that Mango’s whiskers were brushing against her cheek and her nose. ‘Do you want to come inside?’ she asked. I knew she was only asking me in so she could play with Mango but I didn’t care.
I tried hard not to look at anything too closely in case she noticed and thought I was having a stickybeak and told me to go home.
‘Your room’s cool,’ I said. I tried to make my eyes look wide, as though I was seeing everything for the first time, as though I hadn’t already lain in her bed, tried on all her nice things.
‘Thanks,’ Tilly said.
‘Where’s your mum?’ I asked, though I already knew the answer.
‘At work.’ She rolled her eyes. ‘Duh.’
Tilly put Mango on the floor. I sat in the inflatable chair that hadn’t been there the last time. It must have been a Christmas present. Tilly went into the kitchen and got a slice of ham from the fridge. We ripped the ham into pieces and fed them to Mango one by one, trying to make her do tricks. But she ate all the ham without learning anything and then licked both of our fingers clean.
‘She’s so cute,’ Tilly said. ‘I wish I had one.’
‘You should ask your mum,’ I said. ‘Then they could play together. They could be brother and sister.’
‘She’d say no. She says we can’t get a pet if we’re not staying here much longer.’
I pretended she hadn’t said that. ‘You could get one and hide her in here. Or we could keep her at our house. My dad wouldn’t mind. He loves Mango.’