Read Online Digging to Australia by Lesley Glaister - Free Book Online

urged. I ran my finger over the smooth wood. The inside was padded and lined with red velveteen. ‘Press,’ Mama said.
    â€˜Press where?’ I pressed my fingers methodically on the spongy interior until I felt a little space in the padding, and then the inside of the box slid gently forward revealing another shallow drawer in which there was another present.
    â€˜Cunning, what?’ said Bob proudly.
    â€˜Open it then,’ Mama said. I unwrapped a gold charm bracelet with one charm, a golden wishbone, attached to it. ‘Every birthday and Christmas from now on we’ll add to that,’ she said. ‘And by the time you’re twenty-one …’ She sighed pleasurably at the thought; and then her eyes anxiously sought mine for an answering sign of pleasure or gratitude. I closed the box, putting an end to the music, and the dizziness of the dancer.
    I fastened the bracelet on my wrist.
    â€˜Thank you,’ I said. ‘I’ll look after it.’
    â€˜I should jolly well hope so,’ Bob remarked. ‘Eighteen karat that is.’
    â€˜There,’ Mama said. ‘Now we’d better eat our tea.’ She had baked my favourite food, bacon-and-egg flan and a marble cake, each slice a swirl of brown and yellow and pink. Everything was all right. I was careful and controlled. Everything was all right as long as I could keep edges around what I was feeling. If I thought of this day as just a day and not as part of a year that had been turned upside down, then it would be all right. Sense of identity, I thought as I chewed. The afternoon with Johnny was hard to credit in the hard-edged electric light with the fat cake in the middle of the table. The golden wishbone tickled my wrist. Mama lit the thirteen candles on the cake and they sang to me, Bob’s voice a low grumble beneath Mama’s tremulous piping.
    â€˜By the way,’ Mama said, as I got up to leave the table, ‘a girl called round this afternoon.’ She spoke as if this was the most natural thing in the world, as if girls called round every day.
    â€˜A girl?’
    â€˜I think it must have been Bronwyn. A big girl.’
    â€˜Oh.’
    â€˜Yes. She called to see if you were all right, since you weren’t at school today.’
    â€˜Oh.’ I steadied myself on the back of the chair.
    â€˜Ask her where she was, then,’ Bob said.
    All at once I felt the careful edges dissolving. ‘You may well ask,’ I said and my voice was cold. I left the room, walking carefully as if the floor was unsafe.
    â€˜Jennifer!’ Mama said, ‘wait. We’re not angry. I’m sure you can explain …’
    I stopped half-way up the stairs. ‘Explain!’ I shouted. ‘Explain! You still haven’t explained about my birthday.’ There was a silence. ‘Well?’ I felt something now. I felt what I should have felt in the morning when I read Jacqueline’s letter, I felt rage. It gripped me by the scruff of my neck and shook me so that my voice came out in jagged pieces. ‘Tell me why? Why did you lie?’
    Mama came out of the dining room and looked up the stairs at me. Her hair was quite grey. She was an old woman. I hated her for her age and her wrinkles and the snaky veins on the backs of her hands. Suddenly they seemed deliberate, as if to prove how old she was, that she couldn’t possibly have been my mother, lying old grandmother that she was.
    When she spoke, she did so quietly. ‘Jacqueline’s birthday is in June,’ she said. ‘Midsummer’s day.’
    â€˜But that’s mine.’
    â€˜No. It’s Jacqueline’s. When she went we decided to keep the occasion. We thought it would be easier.’
    â€˜Easier!’ I gasped. ‘Easier? Easier for who?’
    â€˜Stupid,’ she said, ‘we can see that now but …’ But I ran upstairs and slammed the door so hard that the whole house