Thanks for your lovely reviews, greatly appreciated. :o) Sorry for the long delay, I work full time and I'm a very slow writer plus I've been away on holiday.

chapter 7

yesterday

The torch needed two 9v batteries and he could only find one. Steven impatiently pulled the drawer out, turned it upside down and tumbled its contents to the floor but still no sign of its companion. Damn! The torch had an exceptionally powerful beam and he'd been looking forward to impressing his mates tonight at the sleepover.

Though none of their parents knew it yet, Steven, Gazza, Jonno and Andy had made a pact to camp out in the Bush in exactly twelve months' time and Gazza's back garden was to be the trial run. Okay, they weren't exactly taking the trial run too seriously - they intended to order pizza, for instance - but, hey, you had to start somewhere. And Steven wanted to try out the torch tonight; they'd need it when they finally did get to camp in the middle of nowhere.

Damn, why the hell had he left packing his overnight bag till ten minutes before he was due to be picked up by Jonno's Dad? There wasn't even time now to dash out to the store. And that was when he had the brainwave. Steven had always been agile. Without giving it a second thought, he scaled the banister, and, with one hand pressed against the ceiling to keep his balance, deftly removed the battery from the smoke alarm, and quietly replaced the cover. No worries! He'd re-insert the battery when he got back and they'd never know.

"Stevie! Jonno's here!"

"Okay, Mum!"

Steven was still breathless when he poked his head round the door. Just in time! He glanced at the scattered jumble of clothes, the result of his last-minute packing. Mum would probably make her usual sarcastic comment about his room having been burgled, but then tidy it all as usual. He grinned. He was spoilt rotten and knew it. But people couldn't help liking Steven Matheson. Long ago when he'd been a little kid of four or five a neighbour had remarked to his mother - prophetically as it turned out - that all that Steven would ever have to do to get his own way was smile. Good looks, a lazy, laid back charm, everything in life came easy to Steven and nothing ever ruffled him.

He picked up his hastily packed rucksack and ran downstairs, yelling to Jonno about the big footie game last night. And all the while the faulty wire was slowly burning through, preparing to strike in the dead of the night, and the very last, the only chance, his Mum and Dad would ever have of getting out of the fire alive had been taken away.

"Steven, the fire..."

The fire he had stood cheering with his best mates, slightly drunk, like they all were, on four large cans of lager and two large bottles of strong cider, unaware the electrical sparks flying into the air came from his own home where his parents were being burnt to death.

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today

Sally trembled. The flame wavered. The look on Steven's face was frightening her. Why didn't he move, shout at her, call her a sook or something as usual? Why was he sitting so still?

"One, two, three..." she began to count in a frightened, warning whisper, her heart pounding.

The match was wearing down and she didn't want to burn anyone and there was no Milko and Sally didn't know what to do. And then the decision was made for her. The yellow flame flared up abruptly and Sally screamed in pain and quickly dropped the match, where it burnt a tiny black hole in the carpet before a random draught caught it in its breath and its brief life and moment of glory gone forever.

But not so Sally's screaming. The ground began to rock, to sway beneath her feet just as it had that long-ago day of the terrible sea...

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The door was wide open, just as they had left it the previous night. In Summerhill, the rough coastal town where the Phillips lived, leaving open doors was not generally considered a wise thing to do but, fortunately, no one would dare steal from Richie "Gus" Phillips. Kane and Scott staggered in, tired, thirsty, exhausted and bedraggled, trailing wet, muddy footprints from the pool of last night's rain, and their mother looked up calmly from frying bacon as though they had merely been gone ten minutes on some innocent errand.

"Your Dad's sleeping it off so get changed and yas can have some brekkie," she said, a fresh purple bruise stretching from her eye to her mouth, holding an arm across her stomach and moving awkwardly.

So they crept slowly, shoeless, up the stairs, avoiding with expert ease the stairs they knew to creak, and, warily listening out for Dad's snores, silently changed into the old but clean clothes she had laid out on their beds, and crept back down just as quietly.

"The freak's gonna nick heaps for us and make us rich and then one day we're gonna shoot through away from Dad," Scotty predicted with grim determination, sick and tired of having to sleep outdoors.

"Wow! All of us?" Kane asked hopefully, in the same hushed tones that they all always used when Richie Phillips was sleeping.

"Maybe." Scott glanced at his mother, who was busy forking the bacon rashers from the pan. He wasn't going to tell Kane that Mum didn't figure in his plans. Kane was too much of a sook. It wasn't that Scotty was totally without sympathy for her, he had a thimbleful, but, you had to look out for yourself and wherever Mum went Dad would follow so, tough, but she was out the circle.

"Wow!" Kane said again, in awe. Now probably wasn't a good time to tell Scotty that he also planned to bring along the invisible Milko, Fred the invisible dragon and Deefa, the invisible dopey-looking dog who had latched on to them shortly after Fred's arrival.

"There yas go!" Diane Phillips whispered, smiling as she laid down plates and a bottle of tomato sauce, proud to have provided a cooked breakfast for her sons for once though she knew she risked a bashing from her husband if he found out.

Diane didn't dare take any bacon for herself. Richie would notice if more than six rashers were gone. She cupped her hands around a mug of steaming tea. She would have given her boys anything. If only she didn't have to get by through a fog of alcohol most days but drink was the only way to dull the pain.

The three of them finished off their feast with toast and jam, hardly daring breathe in case Richie woke, and the clock ticked loudly through the quiet of their dreams.

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Frank's good mood had long since evaporated. Lisa hadn't been too happy when they'd got caught in the storm last night and had blamed Frank for her hair getting ruined. In fact, she'd blamed Frank for everything - because the restaurant hadn't come up to her (impossible) standards - "flashy and trashy" she'd called it. (Hell, he had saved and saved for that meal, out of the pittance he earned from his Saturday job at the Yabbie Creek garage.)

Pippa had sounded a bit strained when he'd phoned to say he'd be spending the night at Lisa's. On the couch. Sheesh! He was over seventeen, for Crissake, and responsible. He had a mate at TAFE who'd got his girlfriend pregnant when they were both only sixteen and, though Craig loved his three-month-old daughter and had split with his girlfriend so was single again, he walked around with the whole world on his shoulders, spent every weekend playing happy families and lived in terror of failing his exams and not being able to support little Katie. Worse, in Frank's eyes at least, soon as any interested chick discovered Craig was a father she dropped him like a hot potato.

Well, Frank wasn't so stupid. He'd been prepared just in case. Not that he was ever likely to get the opportunity. Lisa's Dad hated him on the spot (Frank half expected him to pull a shotgun) and Lisa's Mum glared pointedly at the black bits of mud that had fallen off his trainers on to their luxury carpet (jeez, never mind that one of the Bay's sudden storms had hit and he was drenched, having sacrificed his jacket for their precious only child to put over her head, or that out at sea ships were being thrown around like matchsticks!)

Mr Davies gave (no, threw) him a towel and Mrs Davies reluctantly pointed him in the general direction of the guest bathroom and when he returned they had grudgingly agreed that there was no way (without incurring manslaughter charges, unfortunately) that they could send him out to catch pneumonia in Summer Bay's worst storm for a decade so he would have to stay the night. On the couch, Mr Davies stressed.

So Frank had spent a miserable evening, having to account for his non-existent career prospects, being made to feel thick as a plank (Harry Davies had quickly cottoned on to the fact Frank was far from academic and deliberately steered the conversation towards politics and the stock market), become acutely aware, for the first time in his life, that he slurped rather than, like the Davies family, gently sipped, his tea, and feeling gawky, awkward and uncharacteristically shy although he towered over Lisa's Dad.

And exactly how many times in one night did anyone need to come down for a glass of water? Did Mr Davies really reckon he was going to sneak up to Lisa's bedroom the moment his back was turned? Anyway they didn't know their daughter at all. Not one iota. The only-strictly-necessary conversation with him over brekkie, the frosty looks and exasperated little sighs. Lisa had dumped him. Big time.

Animal cruelty had never figured on Frank's list of to-dos, but he was sure if there'd been a cat around he'd have been half inclined to kick it right now. As it was, kicking the door and stubbing his toe before unlocking it (as the eldest, Frank had the privilege of his own key) and then childishly kicking the door again in revenge had to suffice.

"Frank!" Tom reprimanded, looking up from the pile of mail he'd just collected.

"Sorry," Frank mumbled automatically.

"Want to talk about it, mate?" Tom curtailed his line of thought, after reading the astronomically high electricity bill, that maybe they'd been providing lighting and heating for every household in Oz .

"Nah. Ta." He added as an afterthought, following Tom into the kitchen and not knowing whether to be glad or sad that everyone looked as glum as he felt.

"G'day!" He muttered generally before Pippa got on to him about manners, and then "Thanks, Einstein!" as he sank into his usual seat, taking advantage of Pippa's distraction, and though he'd already eaten brekkie at Lisa's and wasn't hungry, by snatching up the last piece of toast as Steven reached for it.

Serve the wimp right. The guy shouldn't ace school and pass all his exams with flying colours, causing Frank to ponder on the possibility of him being another Harry-Davies-in-the-making.

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And, you know, it was all Sally's fault. She knew it was though nobody actually said so. She watched and listened and silently drank in the atmosphere as though it was a scene from the TV.

Frank, who'd been so happy last night and had ruffled Sally's hair, looked cross now he was back, probably because everyone else was, and Sally had made them cross.

"Gives a whole new meaning to the phrase electric shock, doesn't it?" Tom had placed the bill on the kitchen unit and, resuming his task that collecting the post had interrupted, put four fresh slices of bread in the family size toaster. Pippa yawned from lack of sleep and sighed deeply as she read the amount and poured scalding water into the giant teapot.

Lynn, who felt the cold keenly and loved the sun, picked unenthusiastically at the cooked breakfast she normally relished. It had been Lynn's idea to put the little three-barred electric fire on for hours in their bedroom every night, which she and Carly had been doing for the past three or four weeks, sneaking it back downstairs early every morning, until they'd been unexpectedly caught out last night.

Sally's fault.

Her screaming had broken through the thunder and alerted the whole house so that everyone came running to see what awful tragedy had befallen and all it was...all it turned out to be...was Sally thinking the terrible sea was seeping in. Again.

"She does it heaps," Lynn shrugged helpfully, her arm round the younger girl's shoulder because Sally refused to let Pippa near her and couldn't tell Pippa why.

Carly frowned, realising that in their swift exit they had left open the bedroom door to reveal the electric fire in full glow, and she was about to run back but Tom had already seen it and was busy pulling the plug from the socket.

"Don't tell me you ever went to sleep with this thing on!" He exclaimed in disbelief.

"Only sometimes," Carly admitted petulantly, aware that she should have had more sense, but it had been sooo nice, when the temperatures dipped, to feel the warmth at night like the warmth of the sun by day.

"For God's sake, Carly, you could've set the house on fire!" Tom shook his head in despair, and Sally knew he was talking about the matches as well. She had stayed tight-lipped when her foster parents asked where she'd got them from. If she dobbed in the Phillips, Pippa and Tom would find out about Milko and Scott Phillips would carry out his threat to kill him.

And now everyone was unhappy because of Sally. When Sally couldn't sleep after the sea scare, Pippa had sat in the room with her and she was still yawning now because she hadn't left her till three o'clock and still had to be up by seven while Sally could lie in much later. Tom was mad over the electric fire and even madder when he saw how high the electric bill was. Carly and Lynn had been upset at the severe telling-off they'd both been given last night and still had red rings under their eyes.

And Steven...well, Steven had been funny. Scary. Just sitting there, staring, whiter even than Milko had looked on the day he and Sally had had the vanilla ice-cream fight, and not moving, not moving at all, though he'd jumped when Tom mentioned setting the house on fire. Steven had barely said a word since and Pippa and Tom thought he was upset because Sally was and didn't ask him anymore.

Sally's fault.

She ate her food from the outside in, concentrating hard because sometimes the cornflakes swirled round in the milk and she couldn't tell which should be next.

And she remembered with a deep pang of sadness the time that she and Lynn had first come to visit the Fletchers, on a day out from the Home to get to know everyone, before the papers were signed and they could stay over. Milko had run everywhere, despite Sally telling him not to though she would have loved to run round herself. Of course, Milko being Milko, he fell over running upstairs but Pippa didn't mind when Sally told her; she smiled and said he was probably just excited, like they all were.

Tom had borrowed a people carrier from a friend specially (it only held seven people so Milko sat on the roof) and he drove them all on a tour of the Bay, then down to the Diner to meet Ailsa and Alf Stewart and have ice cold drinks, and on the way back they had sung silly songs and stopped to look for Milko's hat because it blew off as they turned a corner. And Sally and Milko had helped Pippa bake shortbread biscuits and shouted everyone to try them when they were done. Sally, Lynn and Milko had had a wonderful day and Milko fell asleep before they got back to the Home. But it all seemed a long time ago now. That was a time before Milko was kidnapped.

Sally's fault.

Before Milko was kidnapped, a couple of kids in her class warned her about the Phillips brothers and Sally said she'd have to be careful they didn't bully her invisible friend Milko. But then she wished she hadn't told them because they told the whole class and everyone laughed and teased her and said only babies had invisible friends. So Sally had no one but Milko and then she'd let Milko be kidnapped.

She gave a quiet little sigh that nobody heard and stared sadly into her glass of orange juice. It was sad but there was no help for it. It was all her own fault after all. Sally didn't mean to, but she made everybody unhappy. She would have to leave. She had called long enough.