The Year It All Ended by Kirsty Murray Read Free Book Online

trenches, did you, Paul? You spent the war in comfort.’
    ‘Comfort? Have you already forgotten what happened on Torrens Island?’
    Paul rolled up his right trouser leg. The older girls turned away, averting their gaze, but Tiney stared hard. Purple scars covered the back of Paul’s calves, like strange, dried sea slugs, dark against his white flesh.
    ‘Look at it,’ he said. ‘That’s the sort of comfort they showed us with their bayonets.’
    ‘Please,’ said Mama. ‘Cover it up, Paul.’
    It felt like the longest afternoon of Tiney’s life. Everyone was relieved when the doorbell rang and Papa opened the door to Onkel Ludwig, who had driven down from the Barossa to collect his son. Tiney heard their deep voices murmuring from underneath the portico and then Papa let out a low moan. Tiney ran to the door. Onkel Ludwig and Papa were embracing, as if they were holding each other up.
    ‘Papa, Onkel,’ said Tiney, afraid.
    Papa kept one arm around Onkel Ludwig, supporting him. As he turned to Tiney, she saw his face was streaked with tears.
    ‘Your uncle has just had news from the Red Cross,’ said Papa. ‘Your cousin Will died at Ypres in April. Both our wolf cubs are lost to us.’

The McCaffreys return
    The floorboards in the front hallway of Larksrest had a hard, glossy black finish. When no one was around to see her, Tiney still liked to make a running leap in her stockinged feet and glide along the slippery boards. When the doorbell rang on a January afternoon, she slid down the last few metres of hall and opened the door to the youngest McCaffrey brother. It was three years since she’d seen Frank and it took a moment for her to recognise him. He was dressed in civvies: a clean-cut, pin-striped suit, a grey fedora hat and shiny black shoes.
    He took off his hat and made a little bow. ‘Hello, Tiney Flynn,’ he said. He glanced down at her stockinged feet. ‘I hope you and your sisters are at home to visitors?’
    Tiney remembered Minna once saying, ‘No girl could say no to a McCaffrey,’ and she smiled shyly.
    Before the war there had been a McCaffrey brother for three of the Flynn sisters. Tiney used to count them off on her fingers. Percy for Nette, George for Minna, and Frank for Thea. Mrs McCaffrey had fretted that the Flynn girls would steal all her sons. In the end, it wasn’t the Flynn girls who stole her boys away from her but the war.
    ‘When did you get home?’ asked Tiney. ‘Me and Nette, we’ve been watching out for you and George at the Cheer-Up Hut.’
    ‘We’re here for you to cheer us up right now,’ said Frank. ‘Got home three days ago. Me and George both.’
    That’s when Tiney realised Frank wasn’t alone. Standing at the bottom of the front steps was Frank’s older brother, George. How had she not noticed him? He was still in uniform, as if he had come straight from the barracks, as if he would always be a soldier.
    ‘Hello there, Bubs,’ he said, climbing the steps. ‘I’d like to say you’ve grown since I saw you last but you’re still a little squirt, aren’t you?’
    ‘Actually, I’m seventeen,’ she said.
    George simply stared at her. Tiney wished she’d kept her shoes on. She felt twelve years old again, looking up into George McCaffrey’s blue, blue eyes. They seemed bigger and glassier than she remembered. There was something hypnotic about George.
    ‘Any of your sisters at home?’ he asked, at last.
    ‘A couple,’ she said, unable to look away from George’s face. ‘Minna! Thea! Guess who’s here?’
    Minna came up behind her, shielding her eyes against the light.
    ‘George and Frank,’ said Minna, almost as though she were disappointed.
    ‘Don’t leave our guests standing on the doorstep like a pair of travelling salesmen,’ said Thea, hurrying up the hallway. ‘It’s good to see you home.’
    They led the McCaffreys into the parlour where Mama was sitting on the sofa. She laid her embroidery hoop to one side and stood to greet