Sunday Roast
Aria walked up the dusty road. Cars and buses whizzed past her as she went. She hadn't visited her grandmother, Nedra, for quite a long time, and was glad to be staying with her again. She couldn't visit often, because Nedra now lived in Taihape. She remembered when she was little and Nedra would walk her to the nearby dairy and buy them both icecreams, and then they would go to the playground. That was when Nedra lived in Paraparaumu.
Aria had a small green backpack slung over her shoulders. It was full of clothes, toiletries and other things she might need. She blew her fringe of brown hair out of her eyes and looked around her. According to the directions her mother had given her, Nedra lived at 66 Hunapo Street. She could already see the sign that had the street name written on it.
After a short walk, she arrived at the little shell-coloured house with the blue roof. It was more a cottage than a house, with only two bedrooms, and a small weed infested front lawn. The sun was getting lower now. It was almost touching the mountains that marked the horizon. She opened the rusty gate, and it creaked as she did so. After closing it behind her, she walked up the front steps of the miniscule house and pushed the little button to ring the bell.
"Look how much you've grown!" her grandmother exclaimed as Aria stepped through the door. "You're almost as tall as I am now!"
Aria smiled, took her backpack off and put it on the floor. Nedra led her through to the messy kitchen, where she could see a chicken roasting in the oven. Her tummy growled, as if there was something living inside.
Nedra took the bird out, and served some onto two plates. She put one in front of Aria, and sat down.
"I always love a good roast," said Nedra, picking a bone from her piece of chest meat. "It fills me up so well. Look, here's the wishbone."
She took the V shaped bone up to the windowsill to dry, and sat down again, picking up her fork.
"So how's the family these days? It's too long since I've come to visit you in Paraparaumu."
"They're fine," Aria answered after swallowing a mouthful of pumpkin.
"That's good … do you think your mother will have any more children?"
Aria shrugged. "Maybe."
The gravy dripped off the overcooked vegetables on Aria's plate like glue. It was grey and gelatinous; Nedra had never been the best cook.
After dinner they watched the news on television while eating their way through a bar of dark chocolate. The reporter gravely informed them of several disappearances of children around Taihape. Clips were shown of the children's weepy parents describing how they had awoken one morning to find their child gone.
After the news and the chocolate were finished, Aria went upstairs and lay in a bed in the spare room. The mattress was thin and hard; it felt like she was lying on bare planks. The room was cold. Aria pulled the thin duvet tightly around her. She lay there for almost an hour, thinking about the children that had disappeared, and wondering if anything could happen to her. She quietly scolded herself for thinking that. In the hands of Nedra, she was safe.
She realised that she was not going to be able to sleep, so she clicked on the lamp that was on an upturned bucket beside the bed. The only book she could find in the room was entitled Tales of Horror and the Supernatural, but she read it anyway, to keep her mind off things.
She woke up to the sound of her grandmother's footsteps the next morning. The book had fallen to the floor; the lamp beside her still alight. She turned it off and wrapped a dressing gown around her as she walked downstairs. There was a box of rice bubbles on the table, and a bottle of milk. Nedra had some in her bowl, and was crunching noisily.
"Good morning Aria," she said warmly.
"Good morning," Aria returned, pouring herself some rice bubbles and milk, and taking a large mouthful. She ignored the sour taste of the milk.
"Finish up," Nedra said, "and come with me."
Aria wolfed the rest of her breakfast down, stood up and followed Nedra into a back room and down some steps. They were now in a cellar that smelled distinctly like an over-ripe carcass. Nedra shut the door behind them, plunging them into soot black darkness. She lit a lamp.
"My, you're getting plump," she said. Aria was puzzled by this remark.
"Don't you just love a good roast?"
The tyres of the grubby beige Nissan screeched as they pulled into a car park. Dana took a small mirror from her handbag, went over her lips with maroon lipstick and positioned her hair. She unbuckled Tilleigh's car seat and carried her to a wooden bench beside the tracks. Doodling on the back of a supermarket receipt, she waited for the loud clacking of the train's wheels against the rails. Tilleigh, Aria's sister, gazed longingly at the brightly coloured smarties in a nearby vending machine.
The clacking sound came five minutes later. People spilled out of the carriages like swarming bees, covering the platform with their bags and suitcases. Dana stood up and scanned the place for Aria. She was nowhere to be seen in the massive crowd, but Dana suspected that her eldest daughter was still aboard the train, so she waited a little longer.
Minutes later, Aria had still not left the train, and Dana started to get worried. She grasped Tilleigh by the hand and they pushed through the crowd, searching for Aria and and calling her name.
The train drew slowly away from the station.