Thornwood House by Anna Romer Read Free Book Online Page B

pictured myself waking in the darkest hour of the night, listening to the old house creak and sigh around me. I remembered the taste of rainwater from the kitchen tap, surprisingly cold and sweet. The giant bathtub, the jasmine poking through the broken window. The sun-drenched rooms with their elegant hand-carved furniture, the stillness that lay over the place like a gently held breath . . . and – dreamlike in its intensity – the image of a dark-haired man smiling from an old black and white photograph.
    A powerful yearning gripped me.
    I looked at my daughter. ‘The old house might take ages to sell,’ I reasoned. ‘It needs painting and heaps of repairs. If we moved in we could clean it up ourselves, make it exactly how we want. We do need a home, after all . . . and think of all that country air – no more traffic fumes or nosy neighbours, no more peak-hour holdups. We’d have room to breathe here, it’d be like a fresh start, a whole new life . . .’
    Bronwyn stared at me wide-eyed. ‘Really, Mum? You want us to live here?’
    Tingles went up my spine. I nodded.
    Bronwyn let out a shriek of unrestrained joy. Suddenly she was in my arms, all pointy elbows and skinny shoulders and giggles, hugging me tighter than she had in years.
    ‘You’d have to go to a new school,’ I warned.
    She pulled away and buckled back into her seat, laughing happily. ‘Whatever.’
    ‘You’d be leaving behind all your friends.’
    ‘I’ll make new ones.’
    ‘What about netball?’
    She gave me a quizzical look. ‘They’ll have netball up here.’
    ‘What about – ?’
    She dazzled me with a two-thousand-watt smile and rapped her knuckles on the dashboard. ‘Come on, Mum. Let’s go. The sooner we’re back in Melbourne packing our things, the sooner we can get back here.’

3
    B y early December, we’d wound up our life in Melbourne: cancelled subscriptions and utilities, packed a cargo of boxes and organised the removals, filled out Bronwyn’s emancipation papers from one school and enrolled her in another for the new year, attended our going-away parties, and eaten farewell lunches in all our favourite cafes.
    I’d expected to be overwhelmed with regret over leaving Albert Park, but as we crammed the last of our belongings into the old Celica and backed out of the drive, all I felt was relief . . . and a thrill of anticipation that rivalled my daughter’s.
    For three days we drove. The Newell Highway ran mostly straight, like a tattered black ribbon with no beginning and no end. Summer heat billowed through the windows; the atmosphere seemed ablaze, but we barely noticed. As we sped northwards, the landscape morphed from lush farms and sparse bushland to desiccated flat wastelands, and then to rolling haze-blue hills and thickly treed eucalypt forests. We navigated through dusty towns, bunking down at night in caravan park cabins, then setting out again at dawn.
    When we finally crossed the Queensland border, Bronwyn let out a whoop of joy. At Goondiwindi we joined the Cunningham Highway and veered north-east across the Great Dividing Range. Soon we were surrounded by thick forests where tropicalpalm trees swayed among the red gums and ironbarks, and huge bracken ferns ran amok in the understorey. The road climbed one dizzying hairpin bend after another. When we passed through the Main Range National Park we wound down the windows, delighting in the chiming song of a million bellbirds.
    We arrived at Thornwood hot and dusty and wilted, but the sight of our new home was like a blood transfusion. We screamed, we danced, we cavorted through the airy rooms like a pair of mad things. It was simply too good to be true. After a lifetime of squats and rentals and wishful daydreaming, we were finally home.
    We spent the following weeks restoring the old house to its former glory, vacuuming dust, swirling up cobwebs, washing the floorboards, scouring bathroom tiles, buffing the lovely old brass taps back to a