Desert Fish Read Free Page A

hot from the rock and the sun. I don’t know why, but I unwound the coiled lid and snapped off the key. If I keep this, I will see him again, I thought. And if I see him again, I will follow him. I dropped the key into my pocket and all the way up the steep track I could feel it there, pressed between my thigh and my cotton shorts.
    Â 
    I didn’t really expect to see him again. I just wanted to flirt with the possibility when I put that key in my pocket. But when I got home, he was there, in the kitchen with my dad. I was surprised, because it was my mother who had cleaned out the back room for someone to rent, not my father, and there was no other reason for him to be there. My dad didn’t want another person in our house and he didn’t understand why my mother did. There wasn’t much money, but we were getting by. He liked there to be just the three of us. While my mother was shifting linen and vacating drawers, he’d been reading the paper and leaving his dishes about the house. He was going to make sure his disapproval stung anybody who might look at the room.
    But now he was leaning back in his chair looking like he was primed to have some fun.
    â€˜He’s called Pete,’ he said to me, without telling Pete my name. I felt a prickle of discomfort. My dad crossed his legs and drummed his fingers on the table. He looked over to me. ‘He’s in between jobs .’ I crossed the kitchen and ran the water until it was cool, then poured myself a glass. It seemed cheap to me, the way he could do this with a stranger. I hated the way he drew me into it.
    Pete had already brought his things in. They were beside the fridge – a couple of airline bags and a newspaper. Up close I could see he was younger than my dad. Late twenties, I thought.
    My mother was nowhere to be seen. I shuffled the bags aside with my foot and opened the fridge to get the cool air on me.
    â€˜Don’t do that, Gilly,’ Dad said. ‘Food’ll go off.’ He was folding his arms and focusing on Pete. ‘Make us some tea, will you, love?’ he said.
    I filled the kettle and set the pot and the milk on the bench. Our milk came in a sachet that you had to prop inside a plastic jug. We’d always had bottles until the summer. Now you had to snip the two top corners of the bag and if milk dripped over the lip of the cut and into the jug, it was already sour when it went back in the fridge. The smell became part of the plastic, like a stain. This new packaging had been quite controversial around town. Some people didn’t like the idea of milk sloshing around inside a thin plastic skin. A womancalled Vi Dougal from the Christian Women’s prayer circle had phoned in to a radio talk show to complain about a man she’d seen sucking milk out of the corner of a sachet, as though it was an udder. It just wasn’t right, she kept saying. She had her radio turned right up so she could hear herself back, and her voice echoed into double speak. I wondered what Pete would make of our town.
    He had a shirt on now, short-sleeved with a collar. As I put the things for the tea on the table he looked at me.
    â€˜You seem familiar,’ he said. I imagined I saw the corner of his mouth twitch and I blushed. He looked at my dad. ‘Does she work in town?’ he asked. He wasn’t going to play my dad’s game.
    Dad laughed. ‘Does she hell! She’s dropped out of school. Not doing anything yet. She will be though, won’t you, love.’ He looked at Pete. ‘Between her and her mother, I reckon I’ll be able to retire.’
    My mother worked in a cafe on the main street. She earned only a little bit of money, but her work was regular and it kept us afloat. I’d left school before I was sixteen. I didn’t bother sitting my exams. I couldn’t seem to apply myself, so there didn’t seem to be any point. But a year had passed and I couldn’t find a