Girl Next Door - Alyssa Brugman [15]
To tell you the truth it actually took me a few days to realise that Dad had left. When you live in a monster house and everyone has their own space with their own stuff in it, and you eat when you want to instead of eating together, you can go for a few days without seeing each other. Also, when I asked 'where's Dad?', Mum responded with something cagey and distracted, but she had been cagey and distracted for months, so that was nothing new. She stopped going to yoga. She hadn't seen or even mentioned any of her friends for ages. Then I overheard Will asking too, and she said the 'gone to the country' thing.
Then Will got shirty. 'Where in the country? Why didn't he ask me? I love the country. I could have gone too. Why wasn't I allowed to go?'
Will has a friend at school whose parents have a macadamia plantation and sometimes Will and his friend go there to play soldiers.
'You don't like the country, you just like shooting stuff,' I said.
Will's face went red, mostly because he told me in confidence about them shooting bunnies, and he knew Mum would be horrified. 'I do not! Shut your face, Jenna-Belle. Were you there? No, you weren't, so what would you know?'
Will had every right to be mad because he does love the country, and he genuinely would have wanted to go there with Dad. I was just being a pest, because it's my job as a younger sibling to prepare him for the rigours of the real world. And by the time we'd finished arguing Mum had left the room.
Bryce Cole watches the television for a while. 'I had a house when interest rates were seventeen per cent.'
'Is that why you lost it? Because of Labor?'
Bryce Cole turns to me. 'I paid forty-five thousand for my house. How much did your parents pay for yours?'
I shrug.
'You're the maths whiz,' he says. 'What's seventeen per cent on forty-five thousand compared to seven per cent on a million and whatever?'
I've reached the bottom of my glass, so I tip the ice into my mouth and wonder why he thinks I'm a maths whiz.
Today is the first day we've actually talked about anything and Bryce Cole seems kind of shitty. I won't ask him anything again.
I wonder if it's because I've mentioned my dad. Usually Bryce Cole watches the screens and places his bets, and we don't talk about anything at all. I like that. Most adults think they need to fill any silences by giving you advice.
I stopped going to my dad for advice when I was about three, because he has a scientific brain and he does this thing where he tries to find a solution even before you've finished telling him what the problem is. It drives me mental. Most of the time you just want someone to listen to the whole thing, because after you have said it out loud, you usually know what the solution is. Plus my dad wants me to have made decisions about stuff like my career already so that he can tell me to do something different. Annie from the granny flat is an advice champ too – even better than Dad. She lives in the granny flat to save money so that she can go to Cambodia once a year and build huts for people. That sounds generous and worthy, but really she just likes telling people what to do and the Cambodians have to be polite about it, or they don't get their hut.
Annie's place wasn't always a granny flat. It used to be a cabana next to the pool. It had a sink and a bench around the barbecue, so it really wasn't that difficult to turn it into a proper kitchen. And there was a little bathroom as well. Mum was worried about someone coming in and running up the bills, so it has its own power and phone lines. I think it's probably illegal, but it makes quite a nice granny flat.
When she first arrived I thought Annie and Mum were going to be good friends, but it only took a week of Annie telling Mum how to run her life for Mum to get sick of it, and about the same time for Annie to get tired of feeding us. They don't really like each other, but they cooperate to get things done – kind of like people who've been married for thirty years.
There must be some point