Read Online The Life of Houses by Lisa Gorton - Free Book Online

shoulder.
    Kit followed her out, over the concrete of the petrol station onto the footpath around the corner where a shop’s awning made some shade. At once they stopped. ‘Well,’ said Treen, and looked at her watch.
    They had stopped outside a hair salon. ‘Passer’s by welcome’ read a sign taped to the inside glass. The salon was deserted: a row of chairs facing a wall of mirrors. The linoleum gleamed. Somewhere nearby, somebody was mowing grass. Next to the beauty salon,weatherboard houses had signboards by their gates. Chinese medicine acupuncture massage had a cobwebby wind chime by the door. In the window of Tax Accountant Conveyancing and Wills a cat, lying in the sun between the curtain and the glass, raised its head and fixed on them its green affronted stare. Kit thought: a morning here, with Treen. Everything vacant, shut up in itself: mornings in those front rooms. A few blocks down she saw tables on the street, umbrellas. Beyond that, where the other side of the hill should have been, was the sea. From where they stood, it appeared to be stacked up, the colour of crushed tinfoil, and dazzling.
    â€˜We should have a look at the bay,’ said Treen, and then, as they started downhill, ‘Your mother knows you got here alright?’
    â€˜I left a message.’
    â€˜How is Anna?’ Treen asked and then sighed, moved her hands. ‘All this about our parents never coming to see her. You’ve seen how they are. They’re too old. What can I do?’
    â€˜She’s got the opening,’ said Kit.
    After that they walked without speaking. The fruit store’s box of cheap bananas filled the air with sweet repellent smell. A feeling of estrangement took hold of Kit. The footpath set down on sand, the gift store windows crowded with porcelain figurines, candlestick holders, hand-creams, decorative tea-towels: there seemed no reason for any of it to be here and not in another place, somewhere entirely different. They crossed by the post office, a high brick building with a turret above a wall of post-office boxes. A woman in a beige suit, fine blonde hair rolled up on her head, was opening one of the little brass doors with a key. The woman darted a look at Kit, her shrunken facetight with suspicion, colourless eyebrows pulled down under arches she’d drawn with a dark pencil.
    â€˜There’s Scott,’ said Treen.
    She had caught sight of a man seated on his own at the outdoor table of a café, staring at a woman reading the paper. He held the top part of his body still while his hand darted back and forth over a sketchbook hidden on his lap.
    â€˜A great friend of your mother’s,’ said Treen. She stopped by him.
    He pushed his chair back and stood up. Not much taller than Kit, his long arms and barrel chest belonged to a taller person. He clasped Treen’s hands. With ceremonial slowness he kissed her on both cheeks.
    â€˜You heard?’ His voice started unexpectedly low in his chest.
    â€˜I saw the paper.’
    â€˜Sickening. I can’t—’ He wiped the back of his hand across his mouth and turned to Kit. She saw wet lower lids, watery pale eyes.
    â€˜This is Anna’s daughter,’ said Treen.
    â€˜Anna’s daughter,’ he repeated, as if to himself. He stood so close Kit could smell the aftershave he wore: a greenish smell not really like pine. A wide face: the short nose, the mouth with its bulging lower lip, looked carved from a single piece of wood. Bald on top, he shaved the rest, leaving a transparent fuzz. He had the thick tough skin of a perpetual sunbaker: even the top of his head was tanned and showed pinkish-brown blotches unevenly edged like continents on a globe. A jade amulet nestled among the sand-coloured tight curls of hair on his chest. His eyes slid over Kit, making her aware in turn of her forehead, the scab on her cheek where she’d scratcheda pimple, the skin above her singlet, the