Iâve ever seen,â he added, before clearing his throat.
My cheeks warmed and I glanced down at the fading torch-sun in the dirt.
âIâve got to go,â I whispered, shuffling back from the fence. I wanted to add âmy friendâ, but didnât because friends donât keep secrets from each other. A real friend would have told Patrick about his dad.
âGoodnight, Lena. Thank you.â His voice faded as darkness swallowed him whole. The sound of my name on his lips made me smile again.
As I turned away, my eyes shot up to Aliceâs star in silent prayer.
Please, by some miracle, let the man Mum shot not be Patrickâs dad. Please, Alice.
I approached the house carefully, as if it werenât my own. The dingos were silent again. Perhaps, intuitively, theyâd understood I hadnât truly left them.
While I crept up the veranda steps, I wrapped my arms around my body in a hug.
I had met a boy. A boy named Patrick, who had used my name and confirmed my existence in the world.
I took one last, longing look at the moonlit night â seeing it for the first time as something other than a nether of danger â before opening the door to the house and entering.
Mum didnât answer when I knocked on her door. I jiggled the doorknob but it was still locked. However, when I pressed my ear up against the door, Mumâs faint ragged snoring put me at ease.
That night, I dreamed again.
In my dream I rested my hand against Patrickâs bare chest, the vibrations of his heartbeat tickling my palm. But seconds later I shrieked in horror and drew my hand away, because his torso was no longer smooth and tan, but instead blanketed in a raised red rash.
Chapter 3
The next day, with Mum still taking refuge in her room, Alice was never more missed. How fun it would have been to sit on the verandaâs love seat with my cousin and giggle about Patrick in the same way the girls in my novels always did about boys. Perhaps I would have introduced her to Patrick. Then together she and I could have snuck out and visited with his family.
To pass the day away I tidied the house, refreshed our water supply, cooked a root vegetable stew and left a bowl outside Mumâs bedroom door, milked Nanny and replenished the dingosâ water. Luckily we didnât need to feed our girls â they were supreme hunters; the only thing they ate of ours was the internal organs and the bones of our catch. Otherwise, they were self-sufficient which was a good thing, because weâd starve if we had to share our food with them all the time.
Finally evening came and it was time to get dressed. For the first time in my life I actually considered myself in front of my bedroom mirror, my eyes lingering over my short hair. I sighed with disgust. Though my hair hadnât been long for years, this was the first time I was really bothered by the fact.
When I was a kid Iâd had hair so long I could sit on it. The colouring was unique to Dad and me; light brown with streaks of red and gold. Fire hair, Mum used to say. But one day, not long after we had lost Alice, while I was playing hopscotch, the squares drawn in the red dirt with a sharp stick, Mum seized me by my hair, wrapped its length around her knuckles and chopped it all off.
I was only seven years old and hated Mum for doing it. My flaming hair was the only pretty thing about me â Alice had said so â and Mum had hacked it off like it was the end of an old, frayed rope.
Iâd refused to eat for days after and wore a hat constantly, but eventually Iâd caved and accepted the loss of my one beauty. I even became used to it. A couple of years later Iâd learnt of Mumâs motive. Make Lena look like a boy and perhaps if those men, Aliceâs men, came roaming again, theyâd take no notice. So in her mind, she was protecting me.
I sighed and ran my fingers through my hair, making the strands neat.
My face was