Chapter 4
Fiona
I wake slowly to the sounds of the birds in the trees outside of my hotel window. For just a brief moment as I hover between
sleep and consciousness, the warbling of magpies and the screeching of cockatoos and the laughter of the kookaburras makes
me homesick for Wurimbirra, but then I remember: today is the day I move in.
The thought leaves me restless with a combination of anxiety and excitement and I am soon crawling out of my skin—it’s not
quite dawn, but I just can’t wait another minute to start moving. I pack what little I removed from my suitcase, check out
in anticipation of the electricity reconnection today and hit the road.
The sun is rising over the wide main street, casting the old buildings in a red-gold glow.
Like the birdsong with the dawn, there are some things I have always associated with home, and the unique streetscape of Forbes is one of them.
Until last year there was a three-story pub on this street which had been here since the 1860s—150 years of history, dating back to the days when that pub was a stagecoach rest stop and tunnels were built between it and a nearby bank after a spate of bushranger attacks.
A freak fire took the pub down last year, and I’m still not used to the empty space.
Everything else is much as I remember it.
Change is, usually, reassuringly slow out here.
I turn down a side street and park beside a small group of people waiting on the footpath. They’re in an orderly line that
leads to the cafe nestled within Turn the Page. Some customers are chatting quietly, some looking down at their phones. I
don’t recognize any of the faces as I join the line at the back and wait my turn, but I wonder if that will be different this
time next year.
I’m expecting to see the owner of the store, Marilyn Owens, working at the coffee machine. As I get closer I see there’s a
younger woman working this morning. She’s probably in her late twenties or early thirties, with long, wavy red hair and a
delicate stud in her nose.
“Oh hi, Fiona!” she says, giving me a surprised smile when I reach the front of the line. “I heard you’re moving back to Wurimbirra.”
She does look vaguely familiar, but when I glance at her name tag, the name Aurelia does not ring a single bell.
“I am,” I say, unsurprised that this complete stranger knows who I am and what my business is. This is just how it goes in
a small place like Forbes. If you dig deep enough, you’ll find that everyone has some link to just about everyone else, and I have one obvious, important connection to this very store—I worked here for a few
years in the ’70s, before I moved away for university. Tad was determined to pay for my education, just as he has done and
is still doing for my girls, courtesy of the trust fund he set up for them. But Mum was adamant I should learn how to balance
study and work, and how to successfully manage a budget. When I was fifteen, she told me I had to get a job.
“I know plenty of people who want babysitters,” she suggested, and I heard that as a menacing threat, so that afternoon I rode my bike to the bookstore and begged Marilyn Owens for work.
This was long before the store expanded to include a cafe, and most of the time I was shelving or stickering books, but I loved every minute I spent working here.
Maybe Marilyn has mentioned me to Aurelia or maybe she’s the daughter of someone I grew up with or maybe she knows my mother.
Maybe she’s a complete stranger who heard through the grapevine that Taddeus Winslow’s niece was going to brave the ghosts
and try to restore the house. It doesn’t really matter how she recognizes me or what she knows of my story. Out here in the
country, people notice things. It’s not always idle gossip—there’s a collective wisdom shared in small towns, a web of observation
and concern that strengthens a community so that no one is truly alone and no one gets left behind.
Sometimes I wonder if this was why Uncle Tad went to such lengths to make sure people in this town thought he had a whole
army of spirits living with him in Wurimbirra. Without some way to keep the community at arm’s length, they’d have marched
right into his sanctuary. My uncle loved people—but he loved them best when he could observe them on his own terms, often
from afar. I understand that better right now than I did when I was a kid. I want privacy and space at the moment, but I know
there are plenty of people in this town who will want to embrace me, especially once they hear why I’m back. I’m still in
touch with some school friends, and I haven’t even told them I’m coming home because I know the minute they find out, they’ll
suffocate me with well-intentioned efforts to help.
“Tell Marilyn I said hi,” I say to Aurelia when I collect my coffee a few minutes later.
“She works the afternoon shift now because we run a lot of evening book clubs.” Aurelia smiles. “Call past one day—I know
she’ll be glad to see you.”
“I will,” I promise, and I walk slowly back to my car, sipping the coffee, the sun on my skin and a smile on my face.
I’m at the grocery store when it opens at 7:00 a.m., and I fill a trolley with still more cleaning products and a few dozen energy efficient light bulbs and enough shelf-stable food to keep me going until I have the fridge set up.
Soon I’m driving again. I pass Victoria Park, and smile at the sight of the immense old town hall, the library, the beautiful
old courthouse. I take the bridge over the lake, and just a few minutes later I am through town and turning down Flint Street,
where Jon and Aunt Daph used to live, and then I’m onto Reymond Street and over the Iron Bridge. Uncle Tad used to drive me
to school sometimes and every time we crossed this bridge, he had a different tale to tell about the trolls who lived beneath
it. Like the ghosts he invented in Wurimbirra, those bridge trolls were friendly and silly and often hilarious.
The sheer relief I feel to be back on these familiar streets, passing these landmarks I know as well as I know myself, is almost indescribable.
There’s something about the place you grow up. It imprints on you. Gets into your bones.
I’ve spent a lot of time feeling lost this year. So much time distracting myself whenever I thought of Lucas and Keira and
all of the unexpected changes they forced upon my life, because it hurt too much to think it through and to face the way they
hurt me.
Maybe now that I’m home, I can process all of that properly, feel the full force of my anger and frustration, and maybe eventually
lay it to bed.
There’s an empty dumpster just beside the driveway at Wurimbirra by the time I arrive, and the pest controller is already busy spraying the spiders.
He gives me a wave from beneath his protective gear and I wave back, then let myself inside.
The first thing I notice in the entryway is that the lamps are on, which means the power is already connected.
The water from the hot tap is lukewarm, which means the unit is working, and by tonight I’ll be able to take a shower.
The rental equipment arrives next. The young delivery driver is jumpy as he looks at the house and is exceedingly unconvincing
when he tells me it’s “company policy” that he can’t carry the equipment inside, but he does place the three air filters and
the vacuum right at the front door, so I let him get away with it.
The next few hours pass in a blur of whirring air filters and the hum of the commercial vacuum. I’m replacing the most essential
light globes with the energy efficient variety, and making hurried trips outside to dump the obvious rubbish into the bin,
then making just as many trips to the laundry to refresh the mop water. But by the time the movers’ truck pulls in the driveway,
the pest controller is done, I’ve cleaned out most of my old bedroom and have scrubbed a great big patch of the floor in the
ballroom.
The house is every bit as dusty as it seemed to be yesterday. I’m realizing I will probably need to bring in some help to
tackle the cleaning at some point, but for now, I’ll break the job up into the most essential tasks, and the frenetic energy
feels good.
By 5:00 p.m., the crew of three movers has unloaded the whole truck—most of it into that semiclean part of the ballroom, where
boxes are stacked high beside furniture I’m not entirely sure I need given I have all of Tad’s, but that I loved too much to leave for Lucas.
The movers have shifted Tad’s ancient fridge, washing machine and my old bed frame and mattress into the dumpster, and they’ve installed the modern replacements I’ve brought with me from Waverly.
While they worked, I’ve unpacked the first few boxes of my clothes into my old chest of drawers and wardrobe in my bedroom.
I’m now standing on the front veranda, watching as the movers stow their trolleys and packing blankets back into the truck.
An unfamiliar white truck pulls in the drive, headlights on, as the sun is low on the horizon and it’s starting to get dark.
The truck parks behind the movers and I squint, trying to identify the tall man who steps out. He offers a friendly wave as
he approaches me and my stomach drops as I recognize him. It couldn’t be—
But no, it is.
That’s Jakób Krzy?anowski, or as he was more commonly known back in high school, Jack K, because Forbes in the 1960s and ’70s
wasn’t exactly the kind of place where people made the effort to learn how to pronounce unfamiliar names.
Jack grew up on one of the two three-hundred-acre farms which adjoin this property. His family’s land was originally part
of Wurimbirra’s parcel—Charles Fowler subdivided it into three plots as he grew older, carving off this one-acre block for
himself, and giving his two eldest sons three hundred acres each. Jack’s childhood home is at the western edge of their property,
so it’s not exactly close, but just within bicycling distance for us as kids.