Love and Muddy Puddles (14 page)

When I finally couldn’t stand it anymore, I blurted out, “So what actually happened? Did Tessa tell you?”

“I can’t tell you,” said James. He had his back to me, hanging up the tack. “She doesn’t want to talk about it. She doesn’t want anyone to know.” But then, a second later, he turned around. His eyes were burning blue.

“I know you liked him, Coco. But you should stay away from guys like that. I know what they’re like. I’ve lived through the hassles they cause. Really. You should stay away.”

“But why?” I said. “Did he and Tessa have an argument or something? Why were they even in the bushes?”

“Are you really so naive?” said James. He looked at me like he was just seeing me for the first time. “He’s a creep. He was being creepy,” he said, his eyebrows furrowed, but not with anger. It was more like he was trying to kindly explain something to me. “Do you get it?”

“But I don’t understand...” I said. “He looked... I don’t know... nice. He looked cool.”

James made that noise that people make when they’re annoyed and they kind of breathe out through their nose but really sharp. 
Shmhhhhn
.

“Yeah. He 
looked 
cool,” he said. He took a breath and then let it out again, like he’d thought about saying something else but then decided not to keep talking. “You know what? I’m done. I’m going home.”

I saw him shrug his shoulders and shake his head as walked across the driveway and up the path to his house. I looked after him, confused. 
Really? Creepy? That’s so weird.

You’d think by this time I would have had enough changes in my life. You’d think that I would have deserved just a little bit of peace, a little bit of space, a little bit of tranquillity.

You’d think.

Ha.

Something was about to happen that would change everything, all over again. And just like before, I had no idea it was coming.

After the Tessa/Dee incident I decided to again try my tactic of pretending everything was okay between James and me but I didn’t really even have to because I hardly saw him at all. It wasn’t because he was avoiding me, or because we weren’t getting along. The main reason was that our house was actually, finally getting built.

The walls were going up and everyone was getting roped in to help.

It was a messy business. Dad wasn’t kidding around when he’d first mentioned mud brick. He actually meant bricks made out of mud. So we made mud bricks. And then we put them together into walls of mud bricks. And then we covered the whole thing with more mud.

At the same time we covered ourselves with mud.

No one got a break. Every single one of us ended up brown and mucky, head to toe, every single day. It was disgusting. But there was no getting out of it. Dad was a surprisingly hard taskmaster. At first I complained and whinged and was kind of grossed out but honestly, once you’re covered with mud, it really doesn’t matter if you get a bit more on you. Somewhere around the third week it became normal. Plus as the walls got higher I actually got excited. The house was a good design and I liked to walk around on the slab floor and picture where my room would be.

But at the end of the day, every day, I was a mess.

The new solar panels were heating up water which was nice. We didn’t have to boil drums of water for hours like before, but now the length of our showers were strictly policed by Dad who had some kind of outside control built in.

“Coco! One more minute,” he’d yell, “and then I’m turning off the hot water.” A couple of times I stayed in too long and got completely frozen when he got sick of waiting for me. The shower was never long enough for me to really get my hair clean and it was a sad day when I realised that I’d said a permanent goodbye to shiny. Now my hair was pretty much stiff all the time. It looked like it had that really expensive product in it that boys use to get that ‘bed hair’ look. In fact, Josh’s hair looked awesome most of the time. But I’m not big on bed hair and the whole mud-as-a-stylist-product thing wasn’t really doing it for me.

A couple of times Samantha emailed me and suggested we chat on Skype but I put her off. I didn’t want her to see how I was looking. I could hear the criticism in her voice without even talking to her. So I just said that there wasn’t enough reception on our dodgy internet, that the video link didn’t work properly and the audio was scratchy.

But secretly, I was starting to not care so much about how I looked, especially when we were working. I dressed up to go out, of course, like I always had, but I wasn’t that fussed when no one else except family could see me. It kind of felt comfortable. And when we were all muddy, and all working, it was actually pretty fun, even though I didn’t really want to admit it.

The other thing I didn’t want to admit was that I was confused about Dad.

By this time, I hadn’t actually spoken to him for months, not since my birthday. We’d developed a sort of habit of communicating via Mum (although she still didn’t like it) but I think Dad was seeing if he could outlast me. Before, he would have either yelled at me or he would have begged me to talk and offered gifts until I did. Now, it looked like he was determined to do some sort of new parenting thing and wait me out.

So it was up to me.

At the beginning I’d said I wasn’t going to talk to him for a year. But a year was starting to feel kind of long. On the other hand, even though I was feeling happier, I still felt cross that he had moved us. If we hadn’t come here I wouldn’t have been feeling bad to begin with, so it wasn’t as if he had actually done anything good, right? And I was still very much planning to go back to Sydney.

The reason I was even thinking about it was because I nearly forgot the whole thing one day. We were lifting bricks and he said something as simple as, “Watch out Coco. Don’t want to fall backwards,” and up into my mouth came the words, “It’s okay Dad,” and then I suddenly remembered that I wasn’t talking to him and shut my mouth so they didn’t come out but I looked at him and he looked at me and really the words were completely beside the point because we’d communicated anyway. And I couldn’t tell him so but the look we had felt warm and familiar. And I realised I’d missed him. A lot.

And then I didn’t know what to do. But I thought I’d better stick to my word and see the year through, even though I didn’t really want to anymore. I still had to show Dad that he couldn’t push me around because I was still angry about it even though I was a bit happier.

I know. It sounds complicated. My head hurt when I thought about it.

Sometimes when Dad was building he got Mum to go into Kangaroo Valley to the post office or to pick something up from the little hardware-shop-that-was-not-a-hardware-shop. This shop sold everything: hardware, fishing tackle, chickens and, get this, antiques. (Seriously, country businesses make me laugh. Does someone just wake up one morning and say, “I know what I want to do with the rest of my life. I’d like to open a shop that sells building supplies, poultry and vintage goods. Oh, and I’ll cater for the local fisher folk as well”?)

If we decided to go with her, Mum would usually buy us a hot chocolate at a little cafe without a name (the owner turned out to be a woman called Charlie which our Charlie liked a lot, plus she made the milk really fluffy and always added a marshmallow). Other times we’d get to look in the shops which turned out to be kind of cute. I mean, I’m not into rocking horses or wooden bowls but there were some earrings even I would have worn in one of the gift shops. And Charlie can never walk past homemade fudge.

I didn’t realise that it would be in the sleepy little village of Kangaroo Valley that everything would change all over again for me.

The day that it all started turned out to be a normal Spring day. Charlie, Josh and I had been working with Dad on the house all morning and Mum had been working with Ness. Suddenly she came tearing across the paddock. “I’ve got to go get some horse feed and this is the only time I can do it: do you want to come?”

It’s weird how one decision—one tiny little decision that hardly even seems important—can have everything to do with your future. I didn’t know that this trip was going to have bigger consequences than I could imagine. I couldn’t have known that my dreams and hopes were going to be tossed around again without me even being aware of it.

“Yes or no. Right now,” said Mum.

“Yes, okay,” I said, shrugging, and climbed in the car with Charlie.

It was only then that I looked at her and she looked at me and we both said, “Yuck!” Our hair was muddy, our clothes were caked and our gumboots could hardly be seen because of the layer of brown all over them. Even Charlie’s face had brown splatters on it.

But it was such a beautiful day that I was more interested in enjoying the sunshine than looking at myself. Anyway, no one knew me in Kangaroo Valley, so how could it matter if anyone saw me?

We dropped into the hardware shop and put the mortar and the horse stuff in the bag. “Hey Charlie, look,” I giggled. “You could buy eggs 
and
 paint.”

“Yeah,” she said. “Or screwdrivers and a vintage chair.”

“Stop it, you two,” said Mum. “The man will hear you. You’re being rude.” She got out her credit card and went to pay. “I think we should probably go straight home,” she said in-between pressing buttons on the machine. “Dad will be expecting us back and Ness needs the feed this afternoon.”

“Noooo,” whined Charlie, like a five year old. “Can’t we get a drink? Please? Pretty please?”

I added my voice to hers. “Go on Mum. It’s like the first time we’ve seen actual buildings and people for weeks. I think my body is saying that I 
neeed
 a hot chocolate too.”

Mum clicked her tongue against her teeth and gave us a look. “Okay. But just a quick one. We’ve got to get going.”

Later, when I thought about it, I realised that if we’d gone back to the farm, everything would have been different. I never would have been seen and the photo would never have been taken. But how can you know the future? And would you want to, even if you could?

We sat in the cafe waiting for our drinks and watching the tourists go by. For such a little town the place was packed. There were bikie couples in black leather, caravan tourists in shorts and joggers, lovey-dovey weekend-away couples and family groups with kids and teenagers.

With sunshine on my back, fresh air in my nostrils and warm hot chocolate in my mouth I couldn’t help smiling inside, even though I didn’t want to let it be known that I thought Kangaroo Valley was actually one of the cutest places I’d ever seen.

“This is such a gorgeous place,” said Charlie.

“I know,” said Mum. “I love it.”

“It’s pretty good,” I said. “I mean, it’s not Sydney, but there are some cute shops. And it’s pretty.”

Mum looked at me, pleased. “I’m so glad you’re feeling more at home here.”

“A bit. Not completely,” I said, although I knew I was fibbing. “You know I’m going back to Sydney next year still, right?”

“Yes, yes, yes,” she said, still smiling. “Although I wonder how you’ll feel about that after Pony Camp. I have this feeling it’s going to change things for you.”

“Change? Maybe not. But it’ll be an awesome weekend,” I said. “I’m looking forward to it.

The talk about Pony Camp had been building for months. My attitude had gone from don’t-care-a-single-bit to vaguely-but-not-openly-curious to can’t-wait-till-it’s-on
.
 Ness had been running it for years and from everything Tessa and James said about it—the riding, the laughing, the staying up all night telling jokes—I was expecting a very fun weekend. Mum was going to help out with the cooking and looking after equipment but she’d promised to stay in the background so we wouldn’t get embarrassed.

“It’ll be great,” said Mum. She swirled her coffee around in the cup and drank it down in one gulp. “Are you girls ready to go?”

“Do you mind if I just go over to the gift shop and see if they still have those earrings I was looking at last time?” I said. “I’ve got the money in my wallet today. I might buy them. But I’ll be really quick.”

“I’ll come too,” said Charlie but as she stood up she spilt the rest of her drink. “Whoops,” she said, grabbing a napkin and dabbing at her T-shirt. “You go ahead. Don’t worry about me. I’ll be there in a sec.”

So I headed across the road and into the shop. As I went in, I vaguely heard a gasp and the click of a camera but when I turned around to see what it was, the door of the shop swung shut onto my face. I rubbed my nose and blinked a few times and moved away from the door just in time to see Charlie come in, looking puzzled.

“I think someone just took your picture,” she said.

“Who?” I said.

“I don’t know. A girl. I’ve never seen her before. She was sitting in a cafe and I saw her watch you cross the road.”

“Not Tessa?” She was the only girl that I knew here that I could think of.

“No, duh. Of course not Tessa. I think I could recognise her. This one had sunnies on. Kind of trendy. Red hair. A bit snooty maybe?”

“Creepy,” I said. “Maybe it was a stalker.” I made a fake scaredy-cat face. “Or maybe not.” My eyes lit up. “Maybe she’s a model talent scout on holiday in sleepy Kangaroo Valley and she’s just seen me cross the road and suddenly her holidays are over because she thinks I’m super gorgeous and she’s going to call me up and offer me a contract to go to New York and Paris.”
“You think?” Charlie looked towards my mud-spattered outfit. “Maybe in a parallel universe where dirty is clean and clean is dirty.”

“Hmm. You’re right. A shower is probably the first step towards a modelling contract in my case,” I said, looking rueful.

“Yeah, but not with Dad timing you.” Charlie laughed. “You’ve got to actually wash that hair you know.”

The door swung open again, narrowly missing my nose. It was Mum. “Are you girls done yet? We really have to go.”

With the trip home and the new earrings and the talk of Pony Camp, I forgot all about the stalker/model contract photograph thing. It hardly seemed important.

And anyway, something else happened the very next day. I got into an argument. And this one was a big one.