Chapter One

One Whole and Perfect Day

Judith Clarke

‘Consider:’ wrote Lily, copying down Mr Skerrit’s Friday discussion topic from the board, ‘if Hamlet was a teenager, how would this affect your view of Shakespeare’s play?’

A lot, thought Lily, imagining Hamlet with her brother’s melancholy face, and that low, tragic voice she’d heard from her room those nights long ago when she’d been in Year 6 and Lonnie had been studying for the HSC. Lonnie muttering quotations and statistics as he paced up and down the hall, Lonnie telling Mum he was convinced he was going to fail; Mum crying, ‘No, no! Of course you won’t!’ which should have been encouraging, except for that fearful little quiver in her voice which meant she was as scared as him.

Lonnie’s HSC was long behind him. He’d passed it – by the skin of his teeth, as Pop had said. He’d gone on to TAFE and then university, dropping out of courses, and dropping in again. He was twenty-two now, no longer a teenager, and yet his habits were teenage; and Lily could easily imagine a modern day Hamlet having such habits: lying in bed all weekend brooding about himself, using three towels to take a shower, abandoning them in a wet clump on the bathroom floor for someone else to pick up. Leaving the electric heater on all night, instead of switching it off when he went to bed…

Switching it off – all at once a disturbing thought struck Lily: had she turned off the electric jug before she left home this morning? She pictured the dark little kitchen at 22 Roslyn Avenue; the wooden bench beside the sink and the big electric jug which sat square in the middle of it – a jug so ancient that it didn’t switch off automatically and you had to turn it off at the wall. And Lily couldn’t remember if she’d done that this morning. She remembered putting the jug on after Mum had left for work, thinking she’d have a second cup of tea, and then realising she simply didn’t have the time.

But had she turned it off then?

Lily screwed her eyes shut, trying to remember.

‘Something wrong , Lily?’ asked Mr Skerrit jovially. ‘Sight of a bit of homework too much for you?’

‘Oh no,’ said Lily. ‘lt wasn’t that.’ Jolted so abruptly from her anxious reverie she almost added, ‘l can’t remember if l turned the jug off,’ but stopped herself just in time. How ridiculous she would have sounded! How stodgy, how middle-aged! A warm tide of colour flooded her cheeks as she imagined the giggles and whispers rippling round the class.

Lily took up her pen again and tried industriously to make notes. ‘Can a person always be a teenager?’ she scribbled. ‘Or always middle-aged? (Like me?) lf Hamlet…’

But it was no good; the dark little kitchen came sliding into her mind again. What would happen if she’d left the jug turned on?

First it would boil dry. Then what? The coils inside the jug would grow red hot, and then the jug itself; the old wooden bench would blacken, begin to smoke, to flare; the curtains at the window would catch, and then the wall…Their poor old house would burn down to the ground. How pleased Pop would be! How triumphant! ‘Now you can buy a place that’s fit for human habitation!’ he’d roar at them delightedly.

The bell rang for the end of first period. Second period was Library, easy to skip because Ms Esterhazy hardly ever bothered with the roll. Lily’s house (if it was still there) was three short streets away; she could be home and back before anyone had noticed she had gone.

The jug sat on the bench, stone cold. She’d run home for nothing, and now she felt a fool. She felt stupid and – middle-aged.

Sitting with Tracy Gilman and the other girls at lunch and recess, Lily could take part in their conversations; she could sound like them, she knew the words – goss and glam and fave and juicy – yet inside, where it mattered, Lily felt a fraud. When Tracy went on about some boy she fancied, or poor Lizzie Banks wondered aloud if that dimply skin on her thighs could possibly be cellulite, what Lily really felt like saying was: ‘Tsk,’ the little sound her nan made when the milk boiled over or Pop left a trail of muddy footprints on the newly polished floor. And ‘tsk!’ was worse than middle-aged, it was old. Even her mother never said it.

What’s happening to me? panicked Lily, her stricken gaze travelling round the kitchen, over the grotty old bench and down the cupboard doors, and then very slowly across the ancient linoleum, as if the answer to her question might lie inscribed in those mysteriously faded patterns she and Lonnie had never been able to work out. Were they leaves and flowers? Baskets? Clouds and unicorns?

Oh! Lily gave a small startled jump. ln the dark corner by the sink, beneath that big hole in the skirting board, she saw something small and pale and lifeless, something pudgy, huddled…

‘Seely?’ she whispered.

Seely was the name of a hamster Lonnie had owned, way back when he was in Year 6 and Lily had just been starting school. Seely had disappeared and Lonnie had claimed, (still claimed, even now) that those mysterious scuttlings in their walls at night were made by his lost pet, an old, old Seely, perhaps with a wife and children, grandchildren…

Lily took a cautious step towards the hole in the skirting board. Could Lonnie have actually been right? Could this huddled shape be Seely then? Perhaps come out to die? Seely had been that exact shade of dirty, brownish grey. Seal-grey. How long did hamsters live?

‘Seely?’ Lily whispered again, prodding the small still shape gently with her shoe. How creepily it sort of gave. Changed shape, became long and limp and raggy, so she saw at once it was nothing more than the wet dishcloth which Mum, in a hurry to get to work must have lobbed at the sink, missed, and then, fecklessly (like Lonnie and possibly Hamlet) couldn’t be bothered to pick up. Lily snatched it from the floor and hung it where it should be, on the hook above the sink. The tap was dripping sullenly, it needed a new washer; she’d have to remember to buy one from the hardware store.

‘Tsk,’ she muttered irritably.

Tsk? Just like Nan.

Lily scowled. lt was being the sensible one of the family which made her act in this way, filling her mind with cooking and shopping and electric jugs, making her old before her time. Something had to be done before it was too late; something totally impractical and non-sensible, the kind of action no one would expect from Lily Samson.

Like what?

Stop helping Mum with the housework? Lily pictured her mother’s tired face and knew that couldn’t be done. Run off like Lonnie? Fat chance!

Outside the sun came out. A gleam pierced through the ivy at the window and made a pool of light upon the floor. The old fridge hummed and spluttered, and mercifully began to hum again. Fall in love, thought Lily suddenly, astoundingly.

Why not? Tracy and Lizzie and Lara were always in love with someone, or about to be, or falling out of love; hopeful and eager, then radiant and happy, then crying, then hopeful all over again. What could be less sensible than that?

Fall in love, then. 

But with who?

An image of Daniel Steadman glided into Lily’s mind: straight black hair brushed back from his forehead, eyes so deeply blue they made you shiver.

Why had she thought of him? She didn’t know Daniel Steadman, and he most certainly didn’t know her.

Distantly she heard the school bell sound for recess. With one last disgusted glance around the kitchen, Lily headed for the door. 

The sun in the streets lifted her spirits, the gloom that had descended on her back in the house began to seep away. She hadn’t had enough sleep last night, that was all. She’d had dreams, the disturbing kind you couldn’t remember when you woke but which left a kind of feeling over the day. Of course she wasn’t middle-aged! And there was nothing wrong with being sensible. Fall in love? Start thinking about some boy you didn’t even know? ldiotic, thought Lily. Ridiculous!

Just what she needed then.

Wasn’t it?

No, decided Lily. As if she didn’t have enough troubles.

But ten minutes later, hurrying down the corridor towards the science lab, she saw Daniel Steadman turning into the senior common room. As she passed, their eyes caught – it was only for a second, but the tiny encounter gave Lily a strange light woozy feeling inside her head. lt made her brain feel funny, like a – like a tablet fizzing, dissolving away inside a water glass.

She wasn’t sure she liked the sensation.