chapter 24
"So that's the condemned block? You ever get the local teens in there of an evening? You know, making out, doing drugs?"
Kathy Murray turned round, shocked at the implication. "No! Of course not!"
"You don't have any security round your school, sweetheart, and it happens." The representative from Sydney-based newspaper, Daily Review, Stella Nolan commented dryly.
"Not here it doesn't." Kathy was almost breathless with fury.
"So they're all Stepford teens in Summer Bay?" Stella's gravelly smoker's voice was coated in sarcasm.
Kathy's Murray's eyes flashed angrily. "No. Just nice, normal kids."
"Trust me, Katy. Teens who don't get up to that kind of stuff ain't normal kids."
"Kathy." Kathy corrected, gritting her teeth.
The journalist's visit wasn't going well. In fact, it was going downright badly. Stella Nolan had barely glanced at the flower garden that Kathy Murray, the reception class children and press-ganged "volunteers" had put so much effort and love into. Although she was very interested in Summer Bay Primary's gym and drama block. For all the wrong reasons.
"Yeh, yeh. Kathy, Katy, whatever. Apologies." Stella Nolan lit a cigarette from the stub of the previous one and blew out a plume of blue smoke.
Kathy's dreams of a sympathetic public launching a fund-raising campaign after reading the Daily Review's heartwarming story ebbed away. Stella obviously had no intention of bringing lumps to throats or twangs to hearts by writing of how the kids had no choice on bad-weather days, but to sit inside stuffy classrooms and watch the rain lash the windows, because the indoor gym and drama block was too dangerous to be used and there was no cash in the coffers to build a new block. Or of how the Summer Bay residents had rallied round to create their very own talent show to raise what little money they could.
But all wasn't lost. She glanced at her watch. Maybe Stella would find something nice to write about this afternoon's talent show.
"Am I boring you?"
Kathy flushed. "Sorry. I said I'd help out with the talent show ticket sales if it got busy. And my boyfriend's one of the first acts so I wanted to get there extra early."
Stella rolled her eyes. Oh, for Christ's sake, it got better and better! Her bloody boyfriend was in the talent show? Didn't the bloke have any kind of life? Didn't any of these people have lives?
God Almighty, she could think of far better things to do with her time than accompany a prissy school teacher, who looked barely old enough to be out of school herself, round a primary school in a small backwoods town, where the highlight of the day, for Crissakes, was a bloody talent show!
Take time off to have a bub because your relationship was on the rocks and you were two years off pushing forty so the biological clock was ticking and see where it got you with your career when you returned to work. Stella was still fuming at being sent out on a story that rookie journos, straight out of TAFE, could have cut their teeth on.
To add insult to injury, the bub hadn't cemented their crumbling relationship as they'd hoped but had had the opposite effect. She and Richard had split up soon after Dominic was born and, though he sent regular maintenance payments, he didn't want any part in the kid's life. Neither did Stella as it turned out. Thank God for the nanny agency.
Hannah and Dominic adored each other from the first and the arrangement worked like a charm. Whenever Stella felt in need of some amusement, she took Dominic out and showed him off. The little boy cut a cute figure in his designer gear, designer stroller and old-fashioned thick, curly hair and gained many an admirer on their way to visit friends and relatives or out shopping. But it was a relief that Hannah was always in the background to do the distasteful stuff like change nappies and take him off her hands if he started whingeing or being sick. Stella often thought that Dominic was one very lucky kid. After all, he had everything he needed, no expense spared, and a trust account that would make him a very rich boy indeed when he reached eighteen.
The Kathy Murrays of the world, who imagined kids were even vaguely interesting, were beyond her comprehension. But those flashes of anger that Julie Andrews here was displaying, now they were promising. Wind her up, get her riled. With any luck, she'd spit the dummy, shoot her mouth off about everything that was wrong with this town and Stella would have a lovely controversial story to be splashed over the pages, even if she did have to sit through an incredibly boring small town talent show to get it.
And then suddenly things looked up a thousandfold for Stella "no punches pulled; tells it how it is" Nolan.
"Hi, Kath!"
From the school gates, Jenny Murray waved and flicked her long red hair back like a shawl in a mannerism that alerted Kathy at once. Jenny always flicked her hair back that way when something was bothering her.
"Jen!" Kathy waved back. "This is Stella Nolan, who's covering the Summer Bay story like I told you. Stella, my sister, Jenny."
"Hey." Jenny grinned warmly, but her mind was someplace else.
Stella nodded briefly, uninterested. Obviously another Stepford clone, even if the two sisters did look unalike.
"I thought you were meeting Frank at the Diner?" Kathy slipped her arm into her younger sister's.
"Yeh. I am. Just thought I'd come along and warn you - the queue for ticket sales is right round the Town Hall!"
"Wow! Sounds like I'm needed!" Kathy smiled at the cynical newspaperwoman, fervently hoping that Stella was at least impressed enough to write about the Summer Bay community spirit.
"Yeh, well, who'd miss it? Everybody's there, kids, teenagers, wrinklies, even the lamppost look-a-likes who have that posh gift shop in Yabbie Creek. Oh, and the dysfunctional Fletcher family will all be coming...Carly the ex-alcoholic, Sally and her imaginary friend Milko, Lynn the religious nut, Steven and his genius IQ, Frank and his rock star temper..."
Jenny bit her lip, little realising how much weight her humorous remark had just carried. Like Tom Fletcher, humour was her way of dealing with things that worried her and she was very worried about Frank's hot temper right now. He had promised Jenny he wouldn't bash Steven and she had said she'd finish with him if he ruined the show that Kathy had poured her heart and soul into, but...
"It'll be okay, Jen," Kathy said reassuringly, squeezing her arm.
"Sure it will!" Stella predicted brightly, surprising Kathy with her sudden compassion.
Oh, better than okay, Stella thought, congratulating herself. Forget the plans to rile the naive schoolma'am, looked like she was about to get her sensational story after all without even trying. She couldn't wait to meet the dysfunctional Fletcher family!
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"No sign of him." Tom said. "We'll have to go."
"But we can't!" Sally protested.
"Sorry, sweetie," Pippa said, ruffling Sally's hair. "We'll miss the show and we might even miss Lance singing too if we don't leave right now. Steven will find the note we've left him."
Sally sighed and shoved up to make room for Milko, who'd been helping Tom look, and who shrugged and shook his head at Sally as he got inside the car.
Frank and Carly had gone on ahead to meet Zammo and Jenny at the Diner. Tom, Pippa, Sally, Lynn and old Lizzie were all ready, carefully carrying the cakes they'd baked. Tom and Milko had looked everywhere and asked around the caravan park but it was no use.
With a swiftness that Milko must have envied, Steven had disappeared into thin air.
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Janice Drummond, music teacher at Summer Bay Primary, clicked her tongue impatiently. Janice played piano whenever and wherever it was required and the Summer Bay talent show was no exception.
"Mr Smart, if Guitar can't be bothered turning up for his show, then I can't be bothered with Guitar. (Janice had a habit of demoting the people behind the musical instrument in favour of the musical instrument itself) Piano will be perfectly adequate on her own."
Lance sighed, coughed in a desperate attempt to clear his dry throat, and wiped beads of sweat from his forehead. He suffered badly from stage fright and Steven's unexplained absence wasn't helping matters. The audience were filing in now, the contest was due to start in less than half an hour and still no sign of Steven, who was meant to be providing guitar accompaniment to Lance's singing and Janice's piano.
But Janice Drummond, busy setting up music sheets ready for the first act, an over-ambitious troupe of gymnasts, refused to listen to Lance's pleas that they postpone his performance.
"Coo-eeee! Lanceeeee!" A shrill voice cut the air like a knife, making Janice shudder. Her ears were finely tuned to even the slightest hint of off-key and sensitive to any disharmony of tone.
Lance grinned and raised a hand in greeting as his mother, in her best purple hat, purple coat and purple dress, teamed with every item of jewellery she could find, entered the hall with her great friend Madge Wilkins and espied him on stage. As Madge Wilkins had been the one who phoned both the ambulance and Colleen's husband when Colleen had gone into early labour with Lance some twenty years ago and, as the friends saw each other and each other's grown-up children quite regularly, there was no need for Colleen to draw her attention to him now, but Colleen and Madge apparently thought otherwise.
"There he is, Madge! That's my Lancey!"
Madge, in her own best outfit of red-and-white horizontal-striped twin-set and red pillarbox hat with bright red lipstick to match her attire, held up the line behind her while she put on her glasses to stare.
Behind them, Stella Nolan was furious to be jolted to a sudden halt. She grimaced and shielded her eyes in a reflex action as she saw the two garishly-dressed, barrel-shaped, women. With its grotesque inhabitants and small town mentality (Kathy had told her proudly that there was always tea, coffee, soft drinks, cakes and snacks but strictly never any alcohol served at the Town Hall bar) she was going to have a wonderful time caricaturing the Summer Bay residents.
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"You look as fed up as I am," Steven remarked.
The scruffy ginger cat, who was basking on the rock in the sun, stretched and swished the tip of his tail in vague acknowledgement.
"Yaaaw," he responded lazily, without troubling to open his eyes.
"See, Frank wants payback for me taking the guitar and he's got one hell of a temper."
"Yeee-owww!" The cat replied, as if it knew of Frank's violent temper and sympathised.
Steven turned his attention away from the turquoise sea and scudding clouds and back towards his companion. He had meant to make his way to his private beach, to sit in the cave and think things through, but it wouldn't have been the same without the guitar to play the music that could soothe his troubled heart and, coming across the ginger cat, he had stopped where he was instead, sensing from the creature an overwhelming loneliness that matched his own.
"So...what's the deal with cutting school then, Tobs?"
After all the times he'd teased Sally, Steven couldn't believe he was sitting here having a conversation with a cat! Yet it was strangely relaxing. Maybe little Sal had a point about Milko.
Of course, the cat himself had been instantly recognisable. No other in Summer Bay looked half as war-weary as old Toby, with his horrific battle scars and one ear torn off by the young upstart tabby who took over his territory in a notorious long-ago fight that had led to Toby's desperate life on the run till Billy Jackson, janitor of Summer Bay Primary, took him in.
Toby apparently chose not to answer awkward questions. He opened one green-yellow eye to look at Steven, then closed it again as though even the effort of opening his eye had proved too great.
And that was when Steven sat bolt upright in sudden realisation.
The beach was so close to Summer Bay Primary that it was almost on its doorstep, but Toby was too old and weak now to wander far from the school grounds. It would have required a valiant effort for him to make it.
"Hey, mate, what you doing out here anyway?" Steven asked gently. "You crook or somethin'?"
He had his answer soon enough. The cat screeched in pain the moment Steven touched his badly broken hind leg.
Toby had curled up on the rock to die.
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"Ya shoulda tracked it down and killed it," Scott said. "What was the point of chasin' it from the school if ya didn't finish the job? A crackshot should always finish the job."
"But it was Toby," Kane protested.
"So what, drongo? You chickenin' out on me on somethin'?"
Kane looked down at their collection of large pebbles and small rocks, carefully chosen for their weight, sharpness and potential to inflict maximum damage and wiped a tear from his eye with a grubby fist.
"No," he gulped.
"Good. 'Cos this is the way it is and this is the way it's gotta be."
Kane nodded miserably. He wished he could stop being sooky over stuff. Fred and Deefa were never coming back. Milko had decided to go back to the freak. It was just him and Scotty to take on the world. A rough, tough world of Dad's bashings and Ma's fruitcakiness. A world where you got hurt over and over and over again. Where hurting anything or anyone else was the only thing that took the pain away from yourself.
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Steven yelled round for the janitor in vain. Like everybody else, Billy Jackson had gone to watch the talent show.
"No one around," Steven told the seriously ill cat nestled in his arms, wondering what to do now. He knew Billy Jackson would want to be with his beloved cat if he was hurt but the nearest vet was based in Settler Point, quite some way away, and in the opposite direction to Summer Bay Town Hall.
And the school itself was eerily empty and silent. As if no one had set foot inside the building for many years and never would call again. As if ghosts had left behind their echoes and shadows and nothing more.
But all that day had not been still.
Breezes had chased the clouds, stirred the blades of grass and caused the flowers in the children's flower garden to bob their heads like old-fashioned villagers in a busy village market dancing and curtseying in old-fashioned greeting to their neighbours.
One such breeze uncovered Stella Nolan's carelessly discarded smouldering cigarette and rolled it out on to the path.
Mistaking it for food, a sharp-eyed bird had swooped and carried it high into the air. Discovering its error, dropped it out of its beak and down on to the fragile wooden roof that housed the small library annex (the school had intended to, but never found the money to replace the wood) where a stray wind, wilder than the rest, gathering strength from the sea and seeking to make mischief, caught a sudden spark.
Grey smoke curled ominously into the air. A familiar orange glow shot into life with a gleeful crackling.
"Steven, the fire..."
The fire that had murdered his Mum and Dad and swallowed everything in its path...
Frozen with terror, Steven stood and watched...
AUTHOR'S NOTE: For anyone's who's never seen any of the movies (Stepford Wives; Stepford Husbands and - never seen the last one so not sure about the title - Stepford Children) Stepford was a supposedly "perfect" town. I think the people were robots, but it was never really made clear.
