The Lost Child by Suzanne McCourt Read Free Book Online Page A

along the edge of the inlet, poking about, not finding anything. On the corner where the track disappears into the tea-tree, two cars are parked in the shadows. One is Dad’s jeep.
    When the jungle sleeps, the Phantom wakes. The jeep smells of dead soldiers and garage grease. On the back seat, there’s a girl with big boobies smiling a faded smile from the cover of the Post . There’s a green army blanket and a glass lobster pot with broken rope webbing, and on the floor in the front, a squashed packet of Camel ciggies. The other car is new and blue.
    Where are Dad and Dunc? On cat’s paws, the Phantom moves through the Deep Woods, taking care not to rustle the reeds. She creeps under hangings of Old Man’s Beard. Suddenly, a low grunt behind a whiskered curtain and she folds into the trunk of a tree. Only a fool crosses the Phantom: she takes a silent step and parts the curtain a slit. A man’s bottom in the air! Two hands with painted nails, pink as salmon fish, are pressed into his skin. They’re doing the same as the dogs at Bindilla. The lady lifts her head and I see it’s Mrs Bullfrog Fraser without her Sunday-school clothes! But who is the man? A bull ant climbs up his leg. ‘Shit!’ he says, bucking up, slapping his knee.
    It’s Mr Sweet the butcher, Kenny’s dad! But who’s minding the shop? Mr Sweet has the stick thing between his legs and two hairy eggs either side that bounce on the ground as he scratches. Mrs Bullfrog props on her elbows and her boobies drop down to her belly. Then a car starts up.
    Dad’s jeep! I can tell by the way it revs and roars. Mrs Bullfrog and Mr Sweet look at each other like rabbits with heads cocked to the side. And I’m off like a rabbit too, hopping over dead branches, leaping through reeds, twisting around trees. I creep along the bank. I am The Ghost Who Walks.
    Of course Faye sees me coming. ‘Where were you? We’ve caught two flatties. You’re s’posed to stay with us till your mother gets home.’
    I think of telling her about Mrs Bullfrog and Mr Sweet but a whisper can go around the earth so I don’t say a word. She is lobbing her sinker into the middle of the inlet when the train whistles out near Big Tree turnoff. The cold words of the Phantom can chill a tiger’s blood. ‘My mother is home,’ I tell her.
    The train noses out of the scrub and slows on the bridge. Sometimes the Phantom has to leave the jungle and walk the streets of the town like an ordinary girl. As I run along the bank, Faye calls after me. ‘The toffee was an accident! Tell your mother it wasn’t my fault!’
    Uncle Ticker is parked at our gate in the Bindilla truck, which means Grannie is visiting. Because Uncle Ticker is not a brother’s backside, he is waiting in the truck. His ciggie flies out the window. ‘What’ve you done to your hand?’
    â€˜Hot toffee,’ I tell him, jumping on his butt to stop it smoking.
    He winces. ‘Sore?’
    â€˜Not as bad as before.’
    He looks up the drive. ‘They’ve been at it for half an hour. Give her a hurry-up, will you?’
    At the back door, I hear Grannie’s voice, loud and bossy like she gets when she’s ruling the roost with Uncle Ticker. ‘Divorce?! You’re not the King of England with that Wallis woman. You can’t just make your own rules and cast your wife off like an old shoe. I have to live in this town too. Have another kid. That’ll get things back on track.’
    Then a crash like a falling chair. ‘That ponce at the gate might like you running his life but I don’t. Why don’t you piss off back to Bindilla and mind your own business?’
    Grannie barrels out the back door in her bunion shoes, blackbird hat, spotty dress. She beckons me down the drive and leans into my face. Her breath smells of scones, mulberry jam, milky tea.
    â€˜Was that you I saw out near