While I Live by John Marsden Read Free Book Online Page A

various other farms. More importantly, she was the one who’d recognised me in a prison camp during the war. As a result she had caused me huge problems. I’d been in Camp 23 under a false name, knowing that if the guards found out my true identity, I’d be tied to the front of a missile launcher while enemy soldiers queued up to press the ‘Fire’ button.
    Mrs Samuels hadn’t meant any harm but she’d nearly cost me my life, by accidentally yelling out my real name. Since the war she’d been embarrassed every time she saw me so our conversations tended to be short and sweet. It was the same with this one.
    ‘Hi, Mrs Samuels.’
    ‘Oh, Ellie! Hi. Hi. Lovely to see you. Mr Sayle won’t be long.’
    Red-faced she went back to her desk, hunching over a knitting pattern book like it was the Dead Sea Scrolls.
    ‘OK, thanks.’
    I was relieved to be able to sit down and pick up a very old
Bulletin
magazine, from before the war, and start reading that.
    Mr Sayle didn’t look like a solicitor, more like a bulldozer driver. He was big, filling the doorway, and dressed in clothes that could have been made by King Gee, even if he did wear a tie. He was balding, with a few strands of hair carefully plastered across the big bald area. He didn’t even look at me.
    ‘Mrs Samuels, call the Council, will you, and see what’s happening about the planning application. You’re Ellie. Come in, Ellie.’
    I was glad he’d told me who I was. It’s always a relief to know who you are.
    Three minutes after I’d started the conversation with him the door opened a few centimetres and Gavin slipped in. That’s what I mean about having a shadow.
    Mr Sayle just ignored him and within the next few minutes I pretty much forgot he was there. Mr Sayle seemed like a nice enough guy, but he didn’t muck around. First he explained that he was the executor for my parents’ estate, then he explained what that meant, and then he told me that under my parents’ wills I was the sole heir.
    Then he told me I was bankrupt. Broke. No money. He wasn’t quite that tactless, but he was blunt.
    ‘Ellie, I’ve been through the books, and talked to the bank, and I’m afraid your financial position is very poor indeed. Beyond recovery, I have to say. As you know, a lot of savings were lost during the war, and the government is still negotiating to get some of that money back, but I think it would be unrealistic to put much faith in that. So once the war finished, your father had to start from a position of virtually no funds, and in the meantime he entered into a number of financial obligations that assumed there would be a long-term improvement in his situation.’
    Gavin yawned and stretched and pressed against me. Mr Sayle riffled through the papers in his folder.
    ‘Those obligations included a loan from the bank, to establish a poultry business. That loan was secured by a mortgage on the property. Then there was a second loan, secured by mortgaging various goods and chattels, to purchase cattle, and as well as those commitments to the bank, he entered into three leases totalling a thousand dollars a week with parties whom I gather had been granted pieces of land from your original property.’
    He glanced at me from over the top of his reading glasses. ‘Yeah, that’s right,’ I said, feeling a little dizzy. I hadn’t realised the rents Dad agreed to pay those people were so high. No wonder he’d seemed stressed. No wonder he was always complaining about money. ‘What’s a mortgage?’ I asked. I’d heard the word often enough but I’d never bothered to find out what it meant.
    ‘It means that if you can’t pay back a loan, you hand over some property instead,’ he said. ‘In your case the agreement was that the farm, the part of it you still own, would be given to the bank if the money could not be repaid.’
    My head seemed to ring as though I had concussion. I sat there gaping at him. ‘You’re saying I might lose the land and