Read Online Touching Earth Lightly by Margo Lanagan - Free Book Online Page B

hasn’t got any friends, have you, Janey?’
    ‘Nope. You’re it.’
    ‘Those lads. Three or four of them. Came by last night. Said they’d check at your mum and dad’s place.’
    ‘Ho, they won’t get out alive.’ Janey grinned. She opened the door and stood there, pawing inside the door frame for the light switch. A powerful sour smell began to taint the hallway.
    ‘Don’t look, don’t look,’ said Chloe. She tried to pull Janey back, but Janey stood solid, examining everything—the clothes and bed-linen piled and peed on, the arcs of splashed beer across the wallpaper, the books thrown, splayed, trampled, torn to pieces, torn to confetti, some of them.
    ‘Gee, I didn’t … didn’t realise you had so much
stuff
,’ Chloe tried to joke. Bette stood behind her, peering pastthem, her hands to her cheeks. The skin on her fingers was glossy like the cloth of a worn suit.
    Janey strode to the bedside table. ‘Oh God, they’ve gone! They’ve taken them!’
    ‘What?’
    ‘My Eddies! My pho—ah!’ She snatched an envelope from the floor and several photographs slid out. ‘Oh, thank—’ She sat on the edge of the bared blue mattress and sorted through the photos. Her hands shook. ‘They’re all here. Phew. Oh.’ She held them to her chest and struggled to smile at Chloe, her face still ragged with leftover fear.
    ‘But how can this’ve happened?’ Bette leaned in the doorway, nearly in tears herself. ‘Oh, love, I must be getting old, not to’ve heard anything.’
    Chloe opened the curtains, found the French windows loose, a reddish wood splintering out of the many layers of paint. ‘A crowbar,’ said Chloe, pointing out the marks to Bette.
    ‘Some people,’ said Bette. ‘Some people. All your things. How could I not’ve heard, with a crowbar?’
    ‘Oh, look, they’ve left the teeve.’ Janey sounded a trifle hysterical. ‘They must be going to come back for the big game today.’
    ‘What game’s that, love?’
    ‘I don’t know. Isn’t there always some kind of big game, match of the day …?’ She got up and ran her hand across a beer stain. ‘This is almost dry. They must have come back pretty well straight away.’
    ‘Bass, you reckon?’
    Janey shook her head. ‘I don’t have a clue, really. Could’ve been anyone. Could’ve been someone I don’t even know, couldn’t it? If they’d really wanted to hurt me they’d’ve ripped these up.’ She waved the photos.
    ‘Oh, love,’ said Bette.
    Janey seemed to notice her for the first time. She laughed and crossed the room to her. ‘Don’t get all upset, Bette. It’sonly a few things, a few bits and pieces. What does Nick call them, Cole?’ She put her arms around Bette’s shoulders.
    ‘
Objets
.’
    ‘There. Objays. Nothing to cry about.’
    ‘But, coming in … and putting
filth
!
Someone
here should’ve heard. If that useless Ken was in, I’d tell him off all right. I’d make him come and clean up. Right next door—he must have heard something, he
must’ve
.’
    Chloe was gathering intact books. There were only ten or so; Janey would only need one shelf now. She stepped over the wreckage and piled them on the bedside table. Then she fetched a garbage bag and started piling in torn pages, covers that swung pageless, beer-sogged wads of text.
    ‘Well,
they
didn’t enjoy
Lady Chatterley
,’ she said, plopping half of it into the bag. She looked up, and Janey was smiling wryly back at her, and Bette looking bewildered.

    ‘Rachel, it’s lovely to meet you. Come in.’
    Up in her room, Chloe paused in her hair-brushing.
    Rachel said, ‘How do you do?’
    ‘Come through,’ said Joy.
    Chloe had been about to go down. Instead she went to her window and peered down through the glass roof of the dining room. She saw Joy naming them around the table, saw Maurice and Jube and Carl smile and the others nod and Rachel’s dark frizzy hair, a longer version of Isaac’s, nod back. Isaac and Rachel sat down at the