‘What happened?’
‘He had just finished his Year 12 exams and had come up the mountain for a bit of relaxation. He ran into trouble with some poisonous nettle and my mother looked after it. Apparently she looked after a lot more.’
‘D’you think they loved each other?’
Her eyes change, like she’s slipped into the past, visualising her parents as they would have been so long ago, young lovers, meeting in the forest. ‘How would I know? Can two people fall in love so quickly? They only had a couple of days.’
Like an exploding bomb, it hits me. The reason Kate feels this place is special. ‘It was here, wasn’t it?’
Her shoulders lift just a little.
‘This is where your father camped, where your parents …’
She takes the defensive quickly again. ‘Yeah, so what?’
‘Nothing. Look, I didn’t mean …’ She’s glaring at me with daggers for eyes. My words dry up.
‘So why did your family move up here?’ she asks, switching subjects. ‘Even though I love it, it’s not the most pleasant place at times. Especially in winter. It snows you know, and some days the wind has ice in it, rips through everything you’re wearing. The mornings are already chilly. Winter’s coming fast this year.’
I decide she has a right to her privacy – the past obviously hurts. Well, so does mine. We have at least that much in common. ‘Dad had an accident that injured his leg pretty badly. He got so depressed Mum thought he needed the serenity a place like this could offer.’
She nods, accepting that it would. ‘How did it happen? The accident?’
‘He washed his hands in the garage where he’d been working on an old tractor, dropping the soap. A few minutes later he slipped on it, falling against some steel shelving, which came down on top of him.’
‘Ouch.’
‘Smashed his leg, causing permanent tendon and muscle damage.’
Her almond-shaped eyes grow roundish, her mouth opens just a little. ‘Freaky.’
‘That’s what they called it – a freak accident.’
She’s probably remembering now how I fell off my stool this morning in the lab. ‘You don’t have to say it. I know, clumsiness is inherited.’
‘I wasn’t going to say that.’
‘Yeah, sure,’ I say softly.
‘It must happen often then.’
‘What?’
‘Accidents in your family.’
Bad luck follows us like a plague, but I don’t say this. Instead I shrug. ‘We’ve had a few broken bones.’
She looks surprised. ‘Yeah? How many?’
‘Oh, I don’t know. Seven, eight, ten.’
‘What?’
‘There was the car accident. Mum broke two ribs, an arm and chipped her collarbone. Casey, my little brother, he broke his elbow falling off a swing set a couple of years ago. When I was four I fell out of my bunk bed and broke a leg in two places. When I was seven I broke my hip jumping over a bench at the local park. There’s Dad’s leg – though that’s not technically broken.’
She’s staring at me with disbelief. ‘I’ve never broken anything.’
‘You’re just lucky.’
‘Any other incidents worth relating?’
My fingers run through my hair. It’s a habit. I do it a lot when I’m pushed. I’m reluctant to tell Kate about the family business going broke, or the fire at our last school that demolished the entire Art department. I had nothing to do with it – I just happened to be the only student working late on my major art work when a gas leak exploded, taking with it three classrooms. I was lucky, I’d just stepped outside to go to the loo only seconds earlier.
She’s perceptive though. I think she can see straight through me. ‘C’mon, let it out.’ She pushes my shoulder with her palm.
‘All right, all right.’ I grab her wrist to stop her doing it again, but don’t let go of her hand. I like the feel of it. ‘There was a flood that wiped away the house we were renting.’
‘Really? You’re kidding, was anyone hurt?’
‘No, but it was close. The State Emergency Service helped us evacuate. But Mum stubbornly insisted on rescuing a box of photos and nearly got swept away.’
‘A lot of people say they’d do that – rescue photos. Not me. I’d go straight for …’ Her eyes flick briefly to mine, then back to the creek again. ‘Never mind. Were you near a river or something?’
‘Sure, but it was only a stream. It had never flooded before. Took the whole town by surprise.’
She’s shaking her head sympathetically. I’m amazed at the ease with which I’ve been spilling my guts. I’ve never been so open with anyone about my family’s continual run of bad luck. But with Kate it’s just slipping out. No, more like pouring out.