Read Online Rocking Horse Road by Carl Nixon - Free Book Online Page B

we hoped to
learn by going there. Perhaps we went because it was
all in such stark contrast to the way the shop had been
when Lucy was alive. The very differences served as
reminders and moored us to the recent past. Lucy had
served in the shop most days after school as well as on
Saturday afternoons after she had played netball or
hockey. Back then, the door was always jammed open
with a small triangle of wood. There had been light
and Lucy's music played quietly from a tape deck that
she kept high up on a shelf behind the counter. When
her parents weren't home she would turn the music
up loud. Lucy was often talking to her friends on the
phone as she served, cupping the receiver under her
chin and still talking and laughing as she gave change.
She was always friendly, even to us younger boys.
    Perhaps the truth is that we went to the dairy in
the weeks following the funeral because we wanted
to share our grief with Mrs Asher. We had neither the
courage or the vocabulary to put how we felt into
words. Maybe our daily purchases of unwanted ice-cream
and milk and sweets were the only form of
consolation we knew how to offer.
    By mid-January we had started hearing things about
Carolyn Asher. They were just vague rumours at
first, ripples from a distant splash. And then Matt
Templeton saw her on a Friday night, standing outside
the fish 'n' chip shop up on Estuary Road. According
to Matt she was with an older guy, a local, who had
been flanker in the first XV at school but who now
played for University. 'The guy was all over her' was
Matt's comment.
    Tug saw her as well, a couple of weeks later. She
was in the back of a car parked outside the reserve, in
the pool of shadow between the street-lights. She was
with a guy as well, but not the rugby player. It was a
surfer this time. She was sitting up in the back seat,
smoking. The surfer was back there with her. As Tug
passed Carolyn turned her head and looked at him
without any expression.
    By the end of the month we had heard other, more
specific things, told third and fourth hand. By then
they were stories told with a wink and a sneer.
    The guys Carolyn Asher was seeing were always
older and always lived in New Brighton. Because she
was Lucy's sister we tried to find out more. We thought
our best bet was to approach the guys directly.
    'Whatareya, her brother?' was a fairly typical
comment. That from a guy who later threatened to beat
up Jase Harbidge if he didn't stop hanging around his
flat. Really, we couldn't blame the guy for being edgy.
Carolyn Asher was underage by more than a year.
    Years later we were able to strike up conversations
with these old boyfriends in pubs. We would arrange
a chance meeting and then simply drop her name into
the conversation. 'She was up for it any time,' one
guy told us. Another said with a sneer that 'She was a
weird little chick, but she did love to fuck!'
    Her pattern was always the same — none of the
guys lasted very long. Several of them already had
girlfriends but, as far as we know, once she set her
sights on a guy she never got turned down. After
seeing a guy for a couple of weeks she simply stopped
coming around. Most seemed to shrug and accept it;
they didn't take it personally. They were grateful for
the easy sex while it lasted and philosophical when it
dried up.
    A few, though, seemed to fall for Carolyn. They
made the mistake of trying to see her again once she
had made it clear it was over. If they called her on
the phone or stopped her on the street she acted as
though she didn't know them from Adam. One of the
persistent ones told us, only a couple of years ago, 'I
only went out with her for like a week, but she was an
addiction. Even now, seeing a girl who looks a bit like
her makes me hard as a plank.'
    We were so fixated on Lucy during the days that it was
only natural our sleeping selves also began to focus on
her. We didn't talk about it with each other that much
back then (and didn't later for many years). At the
time,