chapter 23

"Go on!" Milko said. He was sitting beside Sally, watching with her as Carly showed them how to make the sea shell necklace. "Ask her!"

Sally pulled a face, but Milko kept insisting and anyway Sally was curious to know herself. Until Kane Phillips nobody else had ever said they could see Milko. But Carly had claimed she could too. Milko was getting very big-headed about being so popular.

"Carly," the little girl said at last, very gently, remembering this might all be a "figment of her imagination", as the reports at the Home had always written about Sally. Of course Sally knew her Milko wasn't. But Carly's Milko might well be and Sally knew from experience, from the way doctors and psychologists and social workers had spoken to Sally herself about it, that for some reason you had to speak very, very gently when you asked the question, and add the usual term of endearment at the end. "Can you see where Milko is now, dear?"

Carly looked up in amusement from threading string through the pin prick holes she'd made in the shells with a strong, sharp needle and, stricken by guilt that she was checking out her older sister's delicate mental state, Sally had to look away. She gazed outside, at the perfect blue sky, to where Steven was mowing the lawn round the caravan site, the chore he should have done last week, wondering why he looked so sad.

"Sure, Sal!" Carly replied, deciding to humour her. She looked towards where Sally was looking. "There he is! Standing by the window." Without giving it a second thought, she bent her head again to concentrate on the delicate work.

Sally and Milko exchanged knowing glances. Milko was sitting right there at the table, not standing by the window. Carly really was imagining things!

"Best pack up now anyway, kid. I'm meeting Zammo soon. There! How's that?" Carly tied the finished seashell necklace round a delighted Sally's neck. She had to shout for her little sister to hear. The constant whirring of the mower had been drowned out further now by the buzz of a saw to accompany the racket of hammering and intermittent whistling from upstairs.

Pippa was always complaining about a lack of storage space so Tom and Frank, neither of whom ever needed an excuse to fix, paint or build anything, had decided to make some shelving and wall cupboards and put them up the main bedroom.

It seemed everyone was ultra busy today. Carly and Sally had barely finished scooping the seashells back into their plastic bag when Pippa suddenly gave a little scream mixed in with a laugh and they ran into the kitchen to find out what had happened.

Tears of laughter spilled down old Lizzie's wrinkled cheeks while Lynn stood by Pippa, looking down in horror at one of two baking trays newly removed from the oven.

Lizzie, Pippa and Lynn had been busy baking all morning. Pippa, the world's worst cook, had rashly promised a selection of cakes of the highest standard would be baked in time for the buffet to follow that afternoon's talent contest, and had needed to recruit Lizzie and Lynn to help.

"You put too much jam in," Carly told Lynn, surveying both baking trays, one with such perfect jam tarts they could have come straight out of a TV commercial, the other a sorry-looking affair with jam seeped out from under the pastry lids and burnt on to the metal at every angle.

"I know!" Pippa sighed. "Lynn and Lizzie did try to tell me, but I wouldn't listen. I insisted it wasn't enough."

"Pippa! They're yours?" Carly squealed with laughter.

"The good ones are Lynn's. I'm hopeless." Pippa winked and shrugged humorously at Sally.

"Don't be downhearted, Pippa. One can't expect to be excellent at everything one does," Sally said primly, quoting her grandmother the day Sally had been so very disappointed not to have been able to make paper chains from the crepe paper that she'd asked Gran to buy specially and the arthritis in Gran's hands preventing her grandmother from helping out. "And you're very best at being a Mum."

"Why, thank you, sweetheart!" Pippa wiped away a tear, swallowed the lump in her throat and dusted the flour from her hands to hug Sally to her waist.

Unfortunately, Pippa had been concentrating so hard on the baking that she had forgotten all about the flour that was still on her apron and Sally giggled helplessly as she caught sight of her reflection in a shiny ornamental copper pan hanging on the kitchen wall. Her face was covered in so much flour that she looked like a friendly little ghost!

"She's right, you know," Carly whispered, turning from her rifling of the fridge and, before anyone could stop her, snatching one of Lizzie's secret recipe apple cakes, fluffy and still slightly warm after its brief sojourn on the cooling tray, her brown eyes shining with affection. "The very best. But, Pip, I don't think you better try baking anymore! Remember the rock cakes?"

"Cheek!" Pippa laughed, flicking some cake mixture from the wooden spoon at her.

The rock cakes were notorious in Fletcher family history. Nobody ever found out exactly what Pippa had done wrong to make them turn out even harder than they were meant to be, but Tom lost a tooth and Lynn and Sally, who found them too hard to bite into but were too shy to say so, it being their first meal in the Fletcher house before they stayed over, had been discovered, much to their embarrassment and Pippa's amusement, feeding them to the birds in the garden. Except the birds, after pecking ineffectually at the crumbs, couldn't eat them either...

After that, whenever anyone was about to try something new, such as when Lynn agreed to accompany Carly on a particularly fast white-knuckle ride or Frank had the daunting task of returning a hugely expensive car to Dawson's Garages' wealthiest customer, someone would inevitably shout in gleeful warning, "Remember the rock cakes!"

The cake mixture missed. Carly had already made good her escape.

-----

Frank took the stub of a pencil from behind his ear and measured the line drawn on the wall.

"Yup! That should do fine!" He informed his foster father. Tom nodded, raised the newly-sawn wooden shelf and screwed it into place.

Sweating from their labours, they both stood back to admire their handiwork with justifiable pride.

"Grand job, mate!" Tom said, peeling the ring from a can of lager and passing a second can to Frank.

Banned from the kitchen while the baking session took place, they had had to resort to standing the cans in a bowl of cold water in lieu of a fridge and Tom spluttered as the much-longed-for drink slid down his throat and left a tepid taste instead of the anticipated iciness.

"Best forget this stuff, Frank," he added. "I'll shout you a beer after the show instead. Though, if you're seeing your girl, we'll take a rain check. I'm sure you'd rather spend time with Jenny than your olds."

Frank grinned. He had only very recently turned eighteen and enjoyed being treated as an adult. A whole decade spent with the Fletchers! Funny how he'd arrived here a scared little kid.

He remembered sitting under the table, screaming, having just smashed every dish and pelted them with handfuls of food, even trampling bits into the carpet with his heels and thudding his fists down on the floor.

He wanted them to be angry, to banish him forever. In his mixed up mind, he saw himself being thrown into a prison cell, reunited at last with his beloved Dad. His beloved Dad, who'd told him to do everything these foster people said, and he would, he'd do anything for his Dad - but these foster people jerks hadn't told him he COULDN'T smash plates and throw food about and scream, had they?

So he sat on the floor and he screamed, and he clung on to the table leg for dear life so that he'd be ready for when they tried to pull him up in fury. It was hard to believe that only yesterday, the day that had begun like any other, but it had ended with the cops taking away his Dad...

Frankie Morgan stood looking into the mirror of the bathroom cabinet, his chest bare, his chin full of shaving foam, singing Bat Out of Hell. It was one of their favourite rock songs. He turned and grinned as his small son climbed up on the side of the bath and joined in the singing.

Both father and son shared a deep love of music. Frankie Morgan finished shaving, fetched the guitar, pulled down the toilet seat to sit on, and together they sang a whole repertoire of rock.

Eventually Laura, Dad's latest chick, came storming in, wearing nothing more than a flimsy nightie that made Frankie grin as he looked her appreciatively up and down, though little Frank was innocently more interested in the unremoved make-up that had streaked on her face and in wondering why ladies painted their faces.

"For ----'s sake, Frankie!" She snatched a cigarette from the packet nearby and lit up. "I can do without that bloody racket when my head's still banging from last night!"

Frank watched, impressed, as his father wrapped his arms around her neck, smiled into her eyes some kind of secret smile that seemed to work magic because she smiled back and said mysteriously, "Make me brekkie then. Scrambled egg, toast, OJ, coffee. Black. And I might think about it."

Frank never figured grown-ups when he was eight. All he knew was he wanted to be exactly like his father. But it had all gone wrong this terrible day, when all he'd done was take the gun out of the drawer to rob a bank like Dad did, while Dad and Laura had been making out downstairs.

And now here he was, screaming and yelling "I want my Dad! I want my Dad, you ------- b------s!" as he clung on to the table leg, waiting for them to forcibly remove his vice like grip and call the cops to have him thrown unceremoniously into the cell where his father was.

But nothing happened. Nothing at all.

And, after a while, he was hungry and he pulled out the chair and sat back down and Pippa dished out some more casserole and asked if there was any of the veg that he didn't like because, if there was, she'd try and shake if off the ladle. And he felt bad for a minute, that he'd made the foster people jerks sad. But only for a minute. He told himself he had to remember they were the enemy; he had to get back to his Dad as soon as he could.

He woke in the middle of the night, to an unnatural coldness in his bed and a terrible realisation that his pyjama bottoms were soaking wet, and he sobbed to himself in discomfort and embarrassment. He was eight years old, for Crissakes! He hadn't wet the bed since he was a tiny kid. He pictured the mates he'd left behind in his previous life, pictured them laughing if they'd known and sobbed all the more. And, worse, the foster people jerks overheard his sobbing.

Tom changed the bedding and Pippa sat with him though his small fists pummelled her arms and stomach, but she just held him tight in a motherly hug till, finally, overcome by exhaustion, he flopped against her.

Music was the only thing that calmed him. Somehow, though he never told them because he refused to speak unless he absolutely had to, they found out and somehow the music centre was playing far more frequently than it used to be.

Tom had a large collection of CDs and, though his taste veered mainly towards country and western and blues, there was a sprinkling of the good, solid heavy rock that Frank knew and loved.
Strangely, suddenly the likes of Tom's isolated Queen and Rolling Stones CDs, hitherto busy gathering dust at the back of the CD cabinet, were given major air play. Frank said nothing about it and neither did they. He ate their food, watched their TV, disdainfully threw any toys they gave him straight into the bin, and made it clear that he despised them.

One evening Tom gave him an old transistor radio and said, as it was school holidays this week, he could listen to it under his pillow and he'd trust him not to stay awake too late. Frank called him a "------- drongo" and hurled the radio against the wall.

Tom only shrugged, turned on his heel and left the room, leaving Frank alone to stare at the broken radio in confusion and regret as it dawned on him he was the only one who'd suffered.

Next day Tom produced the mended radio and said exactly the same thing. And this time Frank's curiosity got the better of him. His father, though he tried, was hopeless at mending anything. Frankie Morgan even managed to fuse the lights when he changed a blown bulb.

"How d'ya do that? Make it good as new?"

Tom smiled and said he liked fixing things.

"So do I!" Frank revealed, caught off guard, forgetting he had made up his mind never to speak to the foster people jerks.

"So does Pippa, mate," Tom said with a grin.

And Frank allowed himself the smallest of grins back though he wasn't sure why he was grinning. From what he'd seen of her efforts trying to paint a simple undercoat on the under-the-stairs cupboard, Pippa was about as handy as his Dad had been. Anyhow, though he kept the radio, the grin disappeared almost as soon as it hit his face, to be quickly replaced by his usual scowl. Couldn't have these foster people jerks thinking they'd won. They'd never win. Frank was going back to his Dad and that was that.

-----

"You can talk to me and Pip about anything, mate. Never forget that."

"You're not disappointed?" Frank asked Tom anxiously. He'd been living with the Fletchers for five years now. They were no longer "foster people jerks" to him. They were Tom and Pippa. People he looked up to.

"Son, we'll never be disappointed in you. If anything, I'm proud of you for having the guts to 'fess up."

Frank bit his lip. Ironically, wanting to make them proud had been the reason behind his cheating. He constantly struggled with the work at Summer Bay High and it had been too good an opportunity to miss when he was asked to fetch Miss Young's forgotten wristwatch from the classroom.
He'd accidentally knocked over a half-finished bottle of mineral water and had pulled open the desk drawer to look for something to mop up the spill. The exam papers stared back at him.

Drawing a deep breath, Frank ran the paper through the photocopier at the back of the classroom and later painstakingly memorised every question and answer, vaguely thinking how glad he was to have done so. None of the questions seemed to relate to anything they'd covered in history!

But it weighed heavily on his mind and he heaved a sigh of relief after he told Tom what he'd done. Frankie Morgan had always got by on his wits, but it wasn't the way Tom and Pippa did things and more and more he was impressed with Tom and Pippa's way instead of his father's.

As it happened, Frank needn't have worried because the exam papers turned out to be for another class. He got a lecture from Flathead Fisher and the satisfaction of an honest mark. Not a good one, but much higher than he'd expected.

-----

Recalling the incident, Frank opened his mouth, about to tell Tom something, when Carly poked her head round the door. "I'm your angel of mercy!" She announced. "Look what I robbed from the fridge before I had to do a runner!"

"Angel of mercy! Don't think the description fits you somehow, Carl!!" Frank laughed, gratefully accepting the proffered can of ice cold diet coke.

"Okay, I'm psychic," Carly said. "Nah, okay, I'll tell the truth," she added, as though she thought there might actually be a possibility of them believing the psychic claim. "I got them for me but I overheard you moaning about warm beer so I took pity and made the ultimate sacrifice."

"Thanks, Carl! Appreciated," Tom said. It was truly a sacrifice - Carly was a diet coke addict! "But I won't even ask why you had to do a runner!"

"Best not," Carly grinned. "Don't forget, bro, we're meeting Zammo and Jenny at the Diner. And I claim the bathroom as of now!"

"Women!" Tom said, man to man. "Anyway, have a great time this arvo. You deserved a day off from Dawson's after all your hard work there and at college. And it's been real good of you to spend all morning helping me out when you could've been studying!"

Frank looked at the sunlight dancing on the walls, at the freshly-painted cupboards and shelves he'd thoroughly enjoyed creating, and all of a sudden the words came in a rush. "Tom, I wanna quite college. I HATE college. I hate books and writing and reading and learning and exams. And I wanna quit Dawson's Garages. I HATE working at Dawson's Garages. I don't fix engines. I never did. I wash cars, sweep up, make the tea. I hate being cooped up in their office, doing their filing and taking their messages and running out for the blokes' sangers. I just wanna make things. And my music. That's all I need. That's all I'll ever need."

"Free electric band, huh?" Tom muttered.

Frank stared at him in amazement. He didn't think Tom would even have heard of the song, with his preference for country and western and Johnny Cash. Even the Bruce Springsteen music was Pippa's.

Oddly enough, it had been one of the repertoire of songs he and his Dad had gone through that day in the bathroom. He could almost hear Frankie Morgan and his younger self singing it again:

My parents and my lecturers could never understand
why I gave it up for music and the free electric band
well, they used to sit and speculate upon their son's career
a lawyer or a doctor or a civil engineer
just give me bread and water, put a guitar in my hand
'cos all I need is music and the free electric band

"Back in my younger days, me and my mates, we formed a band too though we didn't last long," Tom explained. "Frank, mate, all Pip and me want for our kids is that they're happy. Maybe some time in the future you'll want to go to college, maybe not. Maybe some time in the future you won't mind taking a job you hate just to get some cash, maybe not. You're not a kid anymore. You're old enough to make your own decisions. Go for the dream of the rock band if it's what you want."

"You wouldn't mind?" Frank looked at him hopefully.

Tom smiled wryly, lost in memories of his days at Uni. "We thought our band was gonna shake the world. We didn't. But you've got something we never had - you've got talent. Real talent. Maybe you'll hack it. Who knows? All you can do is give it your best shot. And while you're waiting for that big break, if you're interested, I've got a vacancy here for a maintenance man to help out on the caravan site. Pay's not much, in fact it's lousy, but there's heaps of job satisfaction."

"I'll take it, boss!" Frank said at once, shaking Tom's hand.

To think, he never dreamed, when he'd been that scared little kid who sat under the table screaming, that ten years on he'd be standing here, talking about beer and girls and rock bands, seeking his foster father's advice!

And pretty soon Frank would have to make another major decision. Frankie Morgan was due to be released later that year and had asked Frank if he'd consider moving in with him when he eventually found a place. But Frank already knew the answer. His Dad would always be part of his life, but the Fletchers were his home.

-----
"Hey!" Steven said, clicking off the mower. "Cool necklace!"

Sally smiled shyly as she plucked flour out of a wet tendril of fringe. Pippa had tenderly washed the flour off her face with a damp cloth, but Sally had somehow managed to add to it again while sampling Lizzie's delicious chocolate cake.

Milko was back and the little girl was happier than she could ever remember. She hadn't even needed to count from twenty backwards before she got up out of bed today like she usually did. And she had confided in Pippa about Carly's imaginary Milko and Pippa had promised to sort things out so Sally wasn't worried about Carly anymore either. But something else was worrying her.

"How's Milko?" Steven asked, wondering at her silence. Sally was a funny little kid.

Sally glanced at Milko for an answer.

"Fine," he said curtly, folding his arms and pointedly turning his back . He still didn't entirely trust Steven. Sally couldn't blame him. It hadn't been very nice to be told every single day, three or four times a day, that you didn't exist and even have a nasty song made up about you.

Milko's dead
he fell on his head
now he can't make a sound
cos he's deep in the ground

"He's okay," she said, ignoring Milko's bad mood and sitting herself down under the spreading branches of the magnolia tree, on the bench that Tom and Frank had made for the caravanners last summer.

She rested her chin on Mrs Martha's head, pink blossom falling down on her hair and mixing itself in with the white patches of flour, and frowned, deep in thought. Gran had always said you should say what was on your mind. Well, there was flour and pink blossom on her forehead, which was where her mind was. But surely Steven didn't want to talk about self-raising flour and magnolia petals? And neither did Sally. It was perplexing.

"So talk about what you want to talk about," Milko advised, unable to resist not minding his own business.

"Okay," Sally nodded agreement. "Steven, we're mates now, aren't we?"

"'Course we are, Sal!" Steven was busy emptying grass cuttings into a container for later transferral to the compost bin.

"And mates talk."

"Sure they do." He looked up in concern. "What's up then, Sal?"

"You. I don't know why you're so sad."
Steven laughed, stunned by her acute perception. "I'm okay, Sal. Just a bit worried about Lance, that's all. You know how nervous he gets just before he goes on stage."

"Honest? That's all you're worried about?"

"Honest," Steven lied, not batting an eyelid.

"He'll win," Sally said confidently.

"Yeh. I know." Steven had no doubt about it. The prize was a hundred dollars, which Lance had already agreed to donate to the Summer Bay Primary school fund. The big question was not who'd win, but who'd be runner-up. After all, the only competition in the Bay would have been Frank and Frank wasn't entering.

A smile of relief lit up Sally's face. "Well, as long as you're okay..."

"No worries, Sal. Swear."

Sally's smile grew broader. She'd been worrying about nothing! She ran off happily with Milko, glad that she didn't have to worry about Steven anymore either. She hadn't realised how many people the youngest in the family had to look after!

Steven sighed as he turned back to the mower. Jeez, he was good at acting! Maybe they should put him up for the next Logie award!

He was meant to have met Lance, who had no idea that Steven had been taking the guitar without asking Frank if he could, for a final rehearsal but he couldn't chance waltzing off with the guitar again and no way was Frank going to agree to him borrowing it. Frank was still furious. Blazing, in fact.

He'd told Steven to meet him later at the talent show and warned him he'd better show up or his life wouldn't be worth living.

"'Cos, guess what, Einstein? It's payback time..." Frank had promised grimly.

© Free Electric Band (Albert Hammond)