3. Scarlett
CHAPTER 3
Scarlett
‘ O h, love, what are you doing up there on top of the ladder?’ Mum’s voice is full of concern as she leans against the shed door. ‘You’re not looking for more Christmas decorations, are you? The house and yard already look like Santa’s workshop.’
Sliding a cardboard box across the metal shelf, I can’t help but chuckle, but in the process, I inadvertently score a mouthful of dirt. ‘I know you secretly love it, Mum.’
‘I do, but … your father will be back soon; let him get up there.’
‘Mum, it will be safer for me to do it.’ A trail of dried mice droppings sits between the next boxes. A shiver snakes across my shoulders at the memory of the mouse plague and the time when the rodents were in my bedroom. ‘Do you know where my glory box is?’
‘Would that be this one on the end of the shelf that says “glory box”?’ Mum lifts onto her tiptoes and taps the edge of the box.
‘Smarty pants.’ I carefully descend the ladder and move it along.
‘Dare I ask why?’ Mum shuffles over and holds the sides of the ladder as I step up.
‘I’m trying to solve a mystery.’ About a guy who said the strangest thing before hightailing to his car and racing off after the ambulance, leaving me no chance to ask him what the heck he was on about. ‘And sorry about my bum in your face.’
‘And what a nice bum it is.’ She gives it a cheeky pinch.
I miss this fun banter we have. The infrequent FaceTime calls aren’t the same. ‘In fact, you would know. Who is the male nurse at the hospital?’
‘Oh, um, he’s not been here long. Just a few months, and I’ve not had the pleasure of meeting him, but Marge and Greta in the café said he’s very good-looking and a lovely man.’
I steal a quick glance down at Mum. There’s something in her voice … ‘Are you blushing? I can’t believe the three of you. Do you know his name by chance?’
‘Ooh, let me think. Raymond or Robert. Starts with an R.’
‘Well, you’re no help at all. Maybe next time you can jot this type of important information down so you don’t forget.’
‘Yes, ma’am.’ Mum lets out a light-hearted laugh. ‘I’ll throw a notepad and pen into my handbag and take them wherever I go.’
‘Please do!’
While I’m grinning at Mum’s retort, my brain flicks through all the people I knew with names starting with R and come up blank. I set the box on the concrete floor, shoving a rusted tin of nails to the side to make room. After folding a dirty hessian sack in half, I place it on the floor and kneel. When I pull off the box’s lid and give it a shake, a cloud of dust and a few dead flies and millipedes scatter onto the floor.
The sudden rush of memories takes me by surprise, hitting me in the chest with a bittersweet intensity.
Sitting on top is a patchwork quilt of faded yellows, creams and florals, made gaudy by the mission brown spacer squares. A couple of moth balls fall to the floor as I gently unfold it. The whirr of the sewing machines in the school home economics room plays in my mind. The teacher’s name … no idea. Why did I keep this quilt? Also, no idea.
‘Oh, I remember that.’ Mum peers over my shoulder. ‘Actually, I remember the hissy fit you threw when the haberdashery shop didn’t have the “rust” colour you wanted, and you had to settle for “poo” brown.’
A little laugh slips out. ‘Trust you to remember that and not the nurse’s name.’
However, the mission brown sparks a nostalgic memory. Of warm summer days, a boy, a kissing session in the back of Dad’s old Sandman (What happened to that car?), that nearly led to something else. Then didn’t. Then he went home to the city like all the holidaymakers did every summer.
Under the quilt is my Point Perry Area School year twelve jacket. Red with the black school emblem—wheat and fish—and all our names printed on the back. All fourteen names. The name I’m looking for doesn’t jump out, but a gazillion other things do. Ah, the good ol’ school days.
I remove three Barbie dolls (and their associated outfits and furniture), a pair of sheep shears, a hand fishing reel still with a squid jig attached but the barbs rusted, and a tissue box cover I lovingly crafted with floral fabric, pink ribbon and copious amounts of craft glue.
There are six Sweet Valley High books and two diaries (locked and with no key), and last—and what I’m looking for—is a bundle of letters. The faint smell of Impulse body spray is so familiar when I press the letters to my nose.
‘Aha. Found them.’
‘Found what, love?’ Mum returns from the shelves, a knot of fairy lights in her hand and a deep frown on her face.
‘These.’ I hold up a wad of browned envelopes tied together with a white ribbon that’s stamped with red love hearts. ‘I have a hunch the good nurse’s name is in these.’
Mum looks at me like I’ve grown another head.
‘He said he knew me from fifteen years ago. That’s the year I finished school, and that Christmas holiday, I remember we had a lot of bonfires on the beach by the caravan park. I had my Ps and was driving the Sandman.’
‘Scarlett, dear, your cheeks have turned the same colour as your name.’
I press the back of my hand to my cheek, and yes, it’s warm. It’s stifling in the shed. Mum’s eyebrows raise.
My mouth is suddenly as dry as the northerly. ‘Well, it’s a bit embarrassing telling you what I got up to those summers when I was a teen.’
‘You think I don’t know?’ She’s grinning like the cat that caught the mouse. ‘Word always got back to me, and us mums were keeping tabs on you. Small town and all.’
‘Muuummm. And all this time I thought you had no idea.’ Because my knees are killing me, I scoot back and settle on my bum. The somewhat cool of the concrete is a relief in the stuffy shed.
Mum pulls over an old drink bottle crate, turns it upside down and sits. ‘Hurry up and just yank the ribbon, will you.’ Mum does a ‘chop-chop’ motion with her hands. ‘We have a mystery to solve.’
Doing as I’m told—which I’m never very good at, and it’s why I’m back home after five years—I untie the ribbon, open the top envelope, pull the letter out and … ‘Ryan Black’.
The boy I thought I fell in love with during the summer of 2008.