Read Online Six Bedrooms by Tegan Bennett Daylight - Free Book Online

for me, if he were here. I stroked Oliver’s hair and said again to Alfred, ‘What’s your father like?’
    â€˜He’s a bastard,’ said Alfred. ‘He thinks I’m – he says I’m a poof.’
    â€˜But you’re not.’
    â€˜No.’
    â€˜You love Judy.’
    â€˜Well,’ said Alfred. There was a high polish to the sky, boats on fire, a spill of light on the water. Oliver slid down into my lap.
    â€˜She’s all right,’ said Alfred.
    â€˜She’s my best friend,’ I said.
    â€˜She’s fat,’ said Alfred.
    I was pleased, and outraged, mostly because I had been tricked into taking this seriously, tricked into being cruel to Judy because she was leaving me. She wasn’t leaving me. As soon as Alfred could find someone better he would be gone. Some other idiot girl with long hair would be impressed by his manly ways, his deep, commanding voice. Some skinnier girl. I put my face into Oliver’s neck, and took a deep breath of him.
    â€˜I’m going to spew,’ he whispered, and I sprang up, and he managed to get himself to the railing, from where he vomited copiously.
    It was twilight when James came to find me at the bottom of our street, where it gave into an empty reserve of long grass. I heard his motorbike but didn’t look up. I had managed to get my mother’s lighter open by stamping on it till it broke, and I was scattering a little trail of lighter fluid from a pile of gum leaves I had made. There was a slight breeze, which might be enough to get things moving.
    â€˜Firebug,’ said James. That was what our father had shouted at us the day we made the fire in the driveway. Bloody firebugs. That was why he banned James from his house, and that was why my own visits had become so sporadic, designed to inconvenience and irritate. He would never know how he had offended us that day, shouting that word at us. It had made us think he did not love us, even though we loved him because he was so handsome and strong, and because he had chosen others instead of us.
    James got down from his bike and came over to me. We stood over my little pile of leaves. He felt in his pocket for matches, and handed them to me, then gave me a cigarette. I lit it, dragged on it, and then knelt down, and applied the burning end to a browned gum leaf. The leaves around it caught, and then the fire found the lighter fluid. It raced in a bright crackling stream across the grass and then it stopped. It smouldered briefly, reaching fortwigs and leaves nearby, and then went out. I dropped my cigarette on the ground and stamped it out too.
    James put his arm around me and I turned my face into his chest. He smelt of leather and smoke. I could hear our mother reversing out of our driveway. She must have run out of wine.

TROUBLE
    E MMA and I were walking home from school together. It was September, spring, with a cheerful breeze running along with us, new leaves lit and flickering, the houses hung with wisteria and jasmine. We were walking with Peter, who had been troublesomely in love with Emma for several years. If she’d been alone he might not have dared to follow her but her younger, noisier sister made it easy. I was, without knowing it, combative; sparring with me had relieved the nerves of more than one of Emma’s boyfriends.
    Emma walked silently beside us, a spray of jasmine dangling from one hand. A truck, uncommon in our quiet, moneyed suburb, screamed past us. When it had gone, Peter said, ‘A truck drove into my house once.’
    â€˜No, really?’ I was balancing on the low stone wall that ran beside the road. ‘Tell us about it,’ I said, hopping off the wall to land next to him.
    He glanced at Emma, who continued to watch the pavement in front of her, which was lumpy with tree roots. ‘We lived on a corner,’ said Peter. ‘It came too fast on the way round, and its brakes failed. It went straight