Read Online The Lost Child by Suzanne McCourt - Free Book Online Page A

whistle and bop all around his cage.
    â€˜I have to take a present,’ I tell Mum when she shakes out her dusters at the back door.
    â€˜But you don’t even like her, do you?’
    â€˜That doesn’t matter.’ I follow her inside. ‘Everyone’s invited.’
    â€˜Who’s everyone?’
    Doesn’t she know anything? ‘The whole class. Everyone.’
    She smells of Wunderwax and Turf cigarettes. ‘I’m starting work at Trotter’s Cafe next week. Wednesdays and Fridays. It’ll be a bit of a change. After school, Mrs Daley will look after you. Understand?’
    â€˜What about the present?’
    â€˜I’ll think of something.’
    Something is a pair of nylon knickers, beige, with a bit of lace. ‘They’re too big,’ I tell her on the day of the party. ‘They’re yours. I saw them in the drawer.’
    Mum wraps them in tissue paper and knots them with a blue ribbon. ‘She’s a big girl. They’ve never been worn.’
    Lizzie’s present is smaller. She won’t tell me what’s inside. ‘Wait and see,’ she says as her mother drives us to the party.
    Colleen lives at the end of Bog Lane, past the soldier-settler farms and the marshy bit that drains into Lake Grey. For miles the wattles are blooming sugary gold. Over the cattle ramp, the driveway to Colleen’s house is lined with Christmas-tree pines. As soon as the car stops, Colleen comes running, followed by half the kids in our class. ‘Welcome to my party,’ she says like a parrot before grabbing my present, then Lizzie’s. ‘Come and see what I’ve got.’
    Colleen has her own room. She has a bed with iron ends, frilly curtains at the window, even curtains covering the dressing-table legs. Her presents are spread on the bed. A yellow petal bathing cap and a pink plastic manicure set. The new Secret Seven book. The new Archie, Superman and Phantom comics, tied together with a red ribbon. I hope she wants to swap them with Lizzie or me because I now buy my own comics with money from collecting bottles. There’s also a velvet headband and gold Jiffy slippers, a new hairbrush with a ballerina on the back, a set of hairgrips with coloured ends, a Violet Crumble that’s probably from Chicken.
    Colleen holds up Mum’s kickers. ‘They’re…nice.’
    Chicken snorts and pokes Roy Kearney. I catch Colleen giving her best friend, Shirley Fry, a raised eyebrow look. While Colleen opens Lizzie’s present—Mickey Mouse swap cards—I slide the knickers under her pillow.
    We play Pin the Tail, Brandy, Tag and Apple Dip, and then stuff ourselves with fairy bread and lamingtons. We sing ‘Happy Birthday’ to Colleen who turns pink and can’t blow out the candles in one breath. When she cuts the cake, Chicken says the knife has to come out clean or she has to kiss a pig. Mrs Mulligan says it’s not pigs, it’s a boy, so it will have to be Chicken. Everyone laughs and Chicken’s freckles turn red. The knife comes out clean and Colleen looks pleased but Chicken says Phew so many times that everyone knows he really wants to kiss Colleen.
    Mrs Mulligan hands out slices of cake wrapped in paper serviettes and the cars arrive to take us home. As Lizzie and I are leaving, Colleen comes running, waving Mum’s gussies above her head.
    â€˜These are too big. I’ll have to change them for another size. Can you ask your mother where she got them?’
    â€˜I told you,’ I say as soon as I walk in. ‘I told you they were too big. Now what are we going to do?’
    â€˜She might forget,’ says Mum.
    She doesn’t.
    â€˜My mother wants to know,’ says Colleen next day at school. I take a Phantom leap from the bench under the cypress pine but miss and feel my shin crunch against the timber edge. Looking down, I’m pleased to see a lot of blood.
    â€˜She’s