Change the Locks Read online

  “I was on the way back,” she mumbled, and glanced at the house she sat in front of. It had no windows or door, and I could see bare rooms inside.

  “Why are you here?” I asked.

  She held up the newspaper page. “Where …”

  There was room on the step to sit down as well, but I didn’t. Instead, I kneeled next to Dylan’s stroller and tried to think of what to say. The tiny front yard was a mess of paper and garbage and there was the remains of a steel mesh fence, but that was all trampled and broken down.

  She tried again.

  “Where did you find this, Steven?”

  I took a deep breath and told her about the Hetherington’s kitchen.

  She didn’t say anything for a moment, but shook her head and brushed a hand across her face. “Why didn’t you show me?”

  Squatters unseated. I tried to concentrate on the headline. “I was going to,” I finally replied, but it sounded like a fib.

  “And you know what?” she suddenly replied, and I couldn’t tell whether she was angry or upset, “I was going to show you, too. Show you where we used to live, because you’ve been asking all this time.” She brushed a hand across her face again, flicked her hair back and added, “So this is it. This used to be our home.” She spoke quietly this time, watching me as I stared at the house.

  Dylan had spotted the food and began to complain loudly. Mum rustled a hand into the plastic bag and pulled out an orange juice and a warm bread roll. “Have some breakfast,” she told me. “Share some with Dylan.”

  I allowed myself to sit down next to her then and she watched as I held the juice bottle to Dylan’s mouth for him to drink, as I handed him chunks of bread to chew on.

  “Did you sleep okay?” she asked.

  “I kept hearing traffic and stuff. Then I heard you open the door to go to the shop. We went looking for you.”

  She nodded. The newspaper page was still in her hand and she ran a finger over the photograph, shaking her head. “I can’t believe you found this,” she almost whispered and then added, “I was going to tell you next time you asked. Katrina thought it was a good idea and maybe she was right.”

  “Why did you get arrested?” I asked.

  She shrugged. “Trespassing. We’d made it our home and they arrested us. It seemed really unfair.”

  I sighed. “But what were we doing here, anyway?”

  “I had to leave school. Then I had to leave home as well.”

  “How come?”

  “I had a baby, didn’t I?” She smiled a bit. “Baby Steven. But nowhere to go. So me and a couple of friends came up here to the city to live and maybe find work. Except that there was nowhere to live. Everything expensive and no houses available for a bunch of teenagers with no references and no jobs. And we heard about this house. Empty, but not for rent. No rent, but a roof over our heads. So we … took it over. There was no power connected either, but we got by. This whole row of houses was full of people – kids – like us.”

  “But what did you do? I mean, all the time you were here?”

  “A couple of us managed to get unemployment benefits. I had a job down at the markets, unloading fruit and vegies. When we couldn’t afford to eat, we all fronted up at the Salvation Army kitchen …”

  She went quiet for a few moments. There was no food or drink left in the plastic bag and I realised she had hardly eaten anything herself.

  “Everybody in the household,” she continued, “took turns looking after you. It was like …”

  “Like what?”

  “Like being in a family. That was the really good part. And this house, we really looked after it. Fixed things up and all, but the construction company that owned it wanted us out.”

  “And the police came.”

  She nodded and looked away. “When they broke down the door, I grabbed you and made a run for it out the back. But they got me anyway, walked me out to the paddy wagon past all these people and TV news cameras. It was …” she paused. “It was awful. And yesterday, when we went to collect the car – that was the very same police station we were taken to. I thought someone there would recognise me.”

  “That’s what I thought, too,” I admitted.

  She glanced at me. “Always wondered if you’d remember any of it. Always hoped you wouldn’t.”

  “Just bits and pieces.” I jabbed a finger at the piece of newspaper. “It says ‘protective care’. What happened to me?”

  Mum shook her head. “All that happened was they kept you in one part of the police station and me in another. They asked me heaps of questions, but let us both go at the end of the day. And when we got back here, there was this dirty great fence around all the houses. Security guards, too.”

  She stood up and waved a finger up and down the row of empty houses. “And this is their World Tower development. I wonder what happened to that?”

  “Did you have to go to jail?”

  “No. Court was bad enough. I got fined.”

  “What happened to us then?”

  “We had nowhere to go. Everybody sort of went their separate ways. I said I wanted to find a house in the country. And one of the household owned a car, and he gave it to me. Just like that.”

  An idea suddenly came to me. “Was it my dad?”

  “No, just this crazy guy from New Zealand. He was always giving things away to people. I got his car.” She paused. “His name was Dylan.”

  I had to stop and think about all of that. My baby brother’s name suddenly had a whole new meaning. Then I stood up as well, scooped Dylan out of his stroller and said, I want to see inside.”

  “There’s nothing to see. Just empty rooms.”

  I still want to see it.”

  “Okay,” she answered at last.

  The mess of glass and paper was worse inside. Every downstairs room was strewn with garbage and there were holes in the walls and floor. One room had no floor at all.

  “Upstairs,” I said to her after we’d silently walked around the ground floor rooms, “upstairs was where our room was.”

  Mum looked surprised. “You remember that?”

  I nodded. “And the little gas stove and the mosquito net over my bed.”

  She folded her arms and began to climb the stairs. Slowly, testing every creaky step, I followed. The back of the house had holes knocked into the outside walls, and part of the roof was gone. The city was there beyond it, jagged views of skyscrapers and harbour. In the top room, our room, I expected to see the same mess as downstairs. But it was almost okay, bare floorboards, glass in the front windows and lots of writing and scribble across the walls.

  “What a waste,” I heard Mum say.

  I looked around at the room that had once been our home, walked over to the front window and looked outside at the footpath where a newspaper photo had been taken a long time ago. Police. Everybody out. Now!

  And as I gazed outside at Victoria Street, it seemed to blur and become a country road, far away. Get out of the car! Elise.

  “There’s something else I remember.” I said to Mum without turning.

  I heard her feet scuff on the floorboards behind me. “Oh?” she said, in a voice that told me she knew what I was going to say next.

  I turned around and set Dylan carefully onto the floor. “I remember driving. When we left the city, we drove. For hours.”

  Where are we going?

  “And I kept asking you, but you wouldn’t tell me what you were doing.”

  Where are we going? Tell me!

  I watched her close her eyes, as though she was trying to work out what to say. “We had nowhere to go,” she said at last. “A car, but no home. Even my own mother wouldn’t have us. And I didn’t know what I was doing. I just drove, as far away from here as I could.”

  Get out! I’ve had enough!

  “You left me behind.” With an effort, I finally managed to say it. Worse than swearing at her, my voice strangling and croaking.

  Her face looked the w
ay it had when Darryl had left us. “I was nineteen years old, a kid with a kid. And I was scared. You were scared too. And even though you couldn’t help it, you made me so … angry. I just couldn’t think straight.”

  And the car swung off the road in a windstorm of dust and flying stones.

  Get out! I’ve had enough!

  The car had stopped beside me as I walked.

  Open the door, Elise. Two blond children stared and stared.

  Where’s your mum? Well. Let’s find her. We didn’t drive for long. Around the next curve in the road was where we found the car. I could see Mum still sitting behind the steering wheel, staring across at me as though she didn’t know me at all. And I struggled to open the door of the four-wheel drive, to run back to my own car before Mum could drive away again. Safe in my own seat, I clicked the belt into its lock and clung on to it so tightly my knuckles turned white. The woman had followed me, but she had walked to Mum’s side of the car. She kneeled next to the open window to talk and little by little Mum began to reply. They had talked a long time.

  Will you be okay now? the woman had asked and put one hand on Mum’s shoulder.

  “I’m sorry, Steven,” I heard Mum say.

  “The lady who stopped to help us,” I said quietly, “she was nice. We never saw her again.”

  Mum shook her head. “No, we didn’t. Steven …”

  “It’s okay, Mum,” I interrupted. “It doesn’t matter any more. I just wanted to know, that’s all.” I leaned over to pick Dylan up.

  She walked over and stood at the window next to me.

  “At least we found our house in the country,” I added.

  She nodded at that and almost smiled. “Yes, we did.” Then she held out the newspaper page. It had crumpled in her hand. “Here, take this, put it in a safe place.”

  Dylan arched away from me then, reaching out for Mum to hold him. She looked thoughtfully into his face for a moment before lifting him up and letting him settle himself against her shoulder.

  I folded the newspaper and slipped it into the pocket of my backpack.

  “This is where Steven and I used to live,” I heard her murmur to him. “This was our first real home. What d’you think about that?”

  As I watched her holding Dylan up to look at Victoria Street and the city beyond, all the fragments and voices in my head came to a gentle standstill, and the picture I had wanted to understand was completed. At least for now. It seemed a long time since Mum had hugged me the way she was now hugging Dylan, but I didn’t feel jealous, just quiet and somehow pleased.

  “Let’s go,” I heard myself say.

  CHAPTER 11

  They were the last coins I had, and I tumbled them one by one into the payphone slot. There was no more pocket money now until Mum’s next pension day. I dialled Patrick’s number.

  It was his mum who answered. “Steven! Hello, how are you?” Without waiting for an answer, I heard her hold the telephone away and call out to Patrick. In the background, I could hear an electric saw which screeched into timber before stopping.

  “Hey, Steven,” Patrick’s voice crackled. “Where are you?”

  I looked through the glass windows of the service station and saw Mum near the pumps putting petrol into the car, Dylan asleep in his seat, semitrailers rattling past on the highway and a small clutter of shops nearby.

  “Dunno,” I replied. “Some little place. We’re about halfway home, I think.”

  “You got your car back okay?”

  “Yeah. Still blows smoke, but it’s okay. Darryl nicked Mum’s sound system.” How long was it since Darryl had left? I’d lost count of the days and weeks, and suddenly, it didn’t seem important any more.

  “What else did you do?”

  I took a breath. “Lots. Lots and lots. Tell you when I get back. “

  “Steven.”

  “Yeah?”

  “I told my parents about the newspaper story.”

  “You’re great at keeping secrets, Pat.”

  “Sorry. They knew something was up that day; they kept asking me questions.”

  “What’d they say?”

  “It made sense of a few things, Mum said.”

  “Like what?”

  “Dunno.”

  I sighed. “It’s okay, I guess. My mum knows about it too, now.”

  “What’d she say?”

  “Tell you later. My money’s running out.”

  “Hey, guess what?”

  “What?”

  “My parents have nearly finished doing up the kitchen. They’re gonna do the laundry next. The laundry lino has to be ripped up. Wanna help?”

  It sounded funny and I grinned. “Huh! Sure.”

  “Ride over when you get back.”

  “Okay …”

  The last coin clicked through the payphone’s insides and the line went dead. “See you,” I added, too late.

  Mum came in and walked over to the counter to pay for the petrol.

  “I’m starving,” I told her.

  She showed me the empty insides of her wallet.

  “Sorry, that’s it for the money. Have to ask Katrina for a loan to get us by until my cheque arrives.”

  We set off again. My stomach growled and I fidgeted and felt tired. Everything that had happened that morning and the night before felt like a dream, distant and not quite real. But the hole in the dashboard kept distracting me. It’s boring without any music,” I said. “Darryl was a rat to steal our things.”

  “Steven.” It was the kind of voice that told me a lecture was on its way. “I don’t really want to talk about Darryl any more. He’s gone.”

  “But he’s Dylan’s dad,” I pointed out.

  “Darryl’s plaything. Darryl’s trophy,” Mum replied in a quiet voice. “Dylan doesn’t need his father. He needs you and me.” She looked at me as she changed gear. “We don’t need Darryl. So no more talk about him.”

  “What about Neal?” I asked, because I’d wondered about that all weekend.

  “I don’t know about that. Not yet.”

  Where the road curved ahead, there was a picnic area with trees and pathways. She let the car slow down and turned off the highway.

  “What are we doing?” I asked.

  Mum sighed, “I’m tired, I can feel myself falling asleep. We won’t stop long.”

  “But I’m hungry. And Dylan prob’ly is too. And he’s run out of nappies …”

  The car came to a stop beside benches and a picnic table. “Look, give me a break, Steven. I’ve had quite a weekend, I didn’t sleep much last night either. I want fifteen or twenty minutes for a nap. Then we go home.”

  I sighed loudly and pulled a face.

  “Take Dylan for a walk in the stroller,” she suggested.

  After I realised it was an argument I wasn’t going to win, I got the stroller out of the car and bundled Dylan into it. Mum stretched herself out on the front seats for a nap.

  I pushed the stroller a long way down a path that curved across grass, past trees and other picnic tables, a rubbish bin that smelled of food and soft drink. We reached the very edge of the picnic area. Here was where the bush began, sticks and bark on the ground and our car small in the distance. I lifted Dylan out of the stroller, set him on the ground and then sat myself down as well. For a while, he crawled in circles around me, stopping to hand over bits of leaves and sticks. I stretched myself out on the ground then and gazed up at the sky and clouds the way I had when I’d been in infants school.

  Dylan crawled over and half-collapsed onto my arm. He pressed his nose against mine and started giggling.

  “Learn to talk,” I told him. “Say something to me.”

  Instead, he arched his legs up straight and slowly lifted his hands away from me until he was standing. It was only for a moment, because his legs wobbled and he sat down again.

  “Hey,” I said, “you stood up! First time!”

  I kneeled and let him curl his fingers around mine, gently standing him
up and then pulling my fingers away from his grasp. He wobbled like jelly but he stood a bit longer this time. When he tried again, I watched one little foot take a step across the grass.

  It was the sound of our car that suddenly distracted me. When I turned around, I saw it reverse and then head towards the road.

  And I couldn’t move.

  Where’s your mum?

  “She’s leaving,” I whispered to Dylan and thin air. I blinked my eyes to make sure it was real, that the car was really moving. And I moved too, struggling to my feet, picking Dylan up, grabbing the stroller with my free hand. Running.

  The car was at the roadside now, driving along on the gravel beside the bitumen. Dylan thought it was a game, and was laughing and shrieking, but I was puffing too much to even talk to him. I was running as fast as I could, trying to keep sight of the car as it drove along the roadside to where I was headed.

  Are you all right?

  My feet were tired, my legs were tired, my stomach cramping. I ran and ran.

  This is the middle of nowhere. Where do you come from?

  I reached the roadside, Dylan still giggling and the stroller clattering and bouncing behind me. The tyres gritted over the gravel and the car came to a stop.

  Mum leaned across and opened both doors for me. “Thought I’d save you the walk back,” she said.

  I stared at her through the open doorway. My forehead was sweaty and Dylan had stopped giggling.

  “Well, come on,” she said. “Let’s go home.”

  For a moment I couldn’t move, couldn’t believe what had just happened.

  “What was the big rush?” she asked.

  Still catching my breath I sat Dylan in his car seat, folded the stroller and slid it across the back floor. I climbed into my own seat and shut both doors.

  “Are you all right?” Mum asked.

  “I thought,” I began, and pushed my hair back off my face. “I thought …”

  She looked at me for a moment. “You thought I’d left you behind?” Her voice joked when she said that, but then her eyes flickered as though she had suddenly remembered something. “Well, I wouldn’t. Not again.”

  She watched me turn around to buckle Dylan into his seat. My eyes were still shiny from the rush of air against my face.