While I Live by John Marsden Read Free Book Online

fast, holding his hands to his crotch. We all laughed then. Once again I had no idea how he followed such a long speech. Lip-reading is seriously hard! But he sure had understood that last sentence.
    At least he’d broken the mood. We started talking more sensibly. And I began to realise just how serious the problems were. Fi spelt it out. ‘Look,’ she said, ‘I don’t know anything about farming. But if I’ve got it right, you’re planning to keep going with school, keep running the property on your own, and somehow keep yourself and Gavin safe from guerillas who might come roaming through the countryside. And as if all that’s not enough, you’ve got to try to cope with the death of your parents and Mrs Mac. It’s a pretty tough order, Ellie. I mean, I can stay a while, like I said, because we’ve only got a week of term left, and then two weeks holidays, but after that my parents’ll probably want me back. And I don’t know how much use I’m going to be to you anyway. I can hardly tell the difference between a cow and a sheep.’
    ‘You’d soon find out if you tried to castrate a calf with your teeth,’ I said.

C HAPTER 4
    I WANDERED LONELY as a cloud along the escarpment overlooking the house. I’d wanted to bury my parents up here, but the priest said it would break twenty-seven different laws and then some. So now they were in the old cemetery behind St Matthew’s. I thought of their cold damaged bodies lying in that cold ground and shuddered. I’d been there a few times and put flowers on the grave and done all that stuff. I’d hoped I’d have some mystical experience when I was there, feel their spirits, hear them talking to me, get a bit of advice about the price I should ask for the twenty steers, or at least get a sense of peace, whatever, but so far I’d been sadly disappointed. I didn’t feel anything. Just devastated and depressed, and I could feel that anywhere. Didn’t need to go to the cemetery for it.
    Gavin hated going there. The first time he’d come as far as the gate and the other times he wouldn’t even get out of the car.
    I wondered how long it would take Gavin to realise that I’d snuck out the back door and come up this hill. He was more than ever my little shadow these days. I understood why. I was his last link to security, his last hope of a relatively normal life. I understood that but it didn’t necessarily make it easier to bear. A lot of the time it didn’t bother me, but sometimes it was just too much, too relentless, too suffocating, every sentence starting with the words ‘I want’, and I’d turn on him and, snap, ‘Leave me alone! Give me a break! Go find something else to do.’
    Then sooner or later – usually sooner – I’d be racked by guilt and start imagining Gavin scarred for life and how it was all my fault. Sometimes even that wasn’t enough to send me looking for him to make it up to him though. And I think he was pretty scarred anyway.
    I sat on a rock with my arms around my knees and gazed at the farm. I could see Fi’s window, with the curtain drawn. She’d still be in bed. Talk about slack. She’d never make a farmer, even if she did eventually learn the difference between a sheep and a cow.
    I was actually up on the escarpment because I was trying to come to terms with the idea that I wouldn’t be a farmer for long myself. Yesterday I’d had an interview with Mr Sayle. He was a lawyer in Wirrawee. I didn’t know him very well. Fi’s mother used to do our legal work but when she moved to the city Dad had to find someone new, and he chose Mr Sayle.
    I’d had a message asking me to see him, so off I’d gone, like a good Ellie. I left Gavin in the Wirrawee Library, which to his disgust was so crowded that they’d closed the waiting list for the computers, and I’d gone into Mr Sayle’s office, across the road.
    My first shock was to find that his receptionist was Mrs Samuels, who used to deliver the mail to our place and