Everything We Keep, Di Walker [best pdf reader for ebooks txt] 📗

her head. ‘No. I mean yes, a thousand times. But no.’ She stepped forward, closer to Tully. ‘I just . . . ’

‘What?’

‘I just . . . doesn’t matter. Whatever happens, happens.’

‘Come on.’ Tully smiled and threaded her arm through Agatha’s. ‘Whatever it is, it will be fine. Really.’

‘That’s easy for you to say.’

‘Exactly. Easy.’

A few blocks along, a left turn then a right. Agatha stopped at the end of her street.

‘Pendula Place. Is this it?’ Tully asked.

Agatha nodded. ‘Number 17.’

Somewhere along their walk their arms had dropped from being entwined. Tully rethreaded her arm. ‘Okay. Nearly there. That side?’ She pointed to the other side, at house number one.

‘That side.’

Arm in arm they stepped onto the street and crossed. As they walked along the narrow footpath, lined with cars, Tully noticed that the houses all looked very similar. Some had small gardens, some with different coloured stones covering the space the lawn would have been. Apart from the odd slanting mailbox and bins that seemed to live permanently by the front gate, the houses looked neat and tidy.

‘9, 11, 13, 15 . . . 17. Is this it?’ Tully and Agatha stood at the front gate.

‘Yep. This is where I live, when I’m not with Katherine, I mean.’

Tully looked up and down the street. ‘It looks the same as the others.’

‘On the outside.’

Agatha stepped through the gate and along the short path to the veranda. It was when she reached the front door that she remembered that she didn’t have her key. She turned to Tully. ‘I don’t have my key. Wait here. I’ll go around the back and let you in.’

‘I’ll come with you.’

‘No, wait here.’

Agatha hopped off the veranda and disappeared around the side of the house. Tully was left all on her own. She looked around to see if there was anyone else there. It was then that she saw a woman, in the house across the street, looking straight at her, from her front window.

‘Come on Agatha,’ she whispered to herself. She looked back at the house and the woman had gone. Tully let out a sigh of relief.

The sound of the locks on the front door clicking, gave Tully a fright. She jumped a little and sucked in a deep breath of warm air. When Agatha’s face appeared in the small opening of the door, Tully smiled. ‘What took you so long?’ Tully said, seemingly pleased to see her friend.

‘You’ll see.’ Agatha stepped back and opened the door halfway, which was as wide as it would go. Tully turned back and looked at the house across the street again. The woman was back and this time she was shaking her head, her face covered with worry. Tully thought she saw her mouth the word ‘No’.

Tully paused, then turning her body sideways, stepped in through the door.

31

Agatha had never seen her house through anyone else’s eyes, only her own. She could only imagine what Tully was thinking although she tried hard not to. The more time Agatha spent with Katherine, or at Rita’s, the more she could see that, what was before her now was far from normal. She lowered her head as Tully took a couple of steps in. Thankfully, Agatha thought to herself, Tully wasn’t saying anything.

‘Follow me,’ Agatha said in a soft voice, as if speaking loudly would cause an avalanche of years of newspapers and junk mail to cascade over them. They both inched their way, sideways, along the hall until Agatha reached her bedroom. ‘This is my room.’

The door opened, nearly fully, and it was immediately apparent that in the week that Agatha had been away, her room no longer belonged solely to her.

The plastic containers that had been neatly organised by the last clean-up crew had been opened, and the contents strewn across the floor and onto her bed. Agatha knew that this was the result of her mother finding out she was not returning. She stepped over a plastic shopping bag filled with children’s DVDs that her mother must have found at the op shop a block away. Tully stood in the doorway.

‘This is your room?’

‘Uh huh.’

‘Where are all your . . . ’ Tully stopped as if overwhelmed by what she was seeing.

‘It was a bit cleaner before I left; but after that, well my mum . . . she doesn’t like it when I go away, when someone takes me away.’ Agatha looked at the bags of clothes that had begun a new pile at the foot of her bed. ‘Come on,’ she said.

Agatha moved past Tully and again, turning sideways, inched her way down the hall. Tully was close behind. ‘This is the sitting room,’ Agatha announced, stepping carefully from one bare patch of worn carpet to the next. She looked at the sofa. Her little spot for watching tv was now under a pile of more shopping bags, filled with brightly coloured clothes that she didn’t recognise. ‘I used to have a spot at that end.’

‘What’s with all the kid’s clothes and toys?’ Tully remarked, as she scanned the entire room. ‘And the plates and . . . ’ Her voice trailed away. There were simply too many things to list.

Agatha moved to the sofa, picked up one of the plastic bags, turned it around in her hand then dropped it back onto the pile. ‘I’ll show you the kitchen,’ she said, not answering Tully’s question. Again, stepping carefully into empty spots on the floor, Agatha moved further into the house. She was aware that Tully had stopped speaking.

The smell of the kitchen reached them before they reached it. The clean kitchen the crew had left was hardly recognisable. There were several shopping bags of food on the kitchen bench, in amongst cardboard boxes of odd shoes, some broken plastic kids’ toys and general rubbish.

The heat of the summer, combined with no air conditioning had started to decay the food, and a stench was brewing.

‘I can’t stay in here,’ Tully said, through