Golden Boys Read Free Page B

girly mouth, a small chiselled chin. Both have their father’s amber eyes and olive skin. They are well-dressed but the sense of quality goes deep, as if they are burnished right to the bone. Dorrie’s revelation has brought a smile to Colt’s face – Freya’s heart is just starting to be stirrable, and it stirs now. He’s smiling to
her
, and no one else in the world knows it. It sets her cheeks on fire, makes her head feel as if it’s not reliably where it used to be. She looks for help to the last cars moving past on slow-turning wheels, to the priest standing at the church doors with the remnants of the flock, his altar boys nowhere to be seen. There is nothing to do except flee. ‘I’m going home,’ she tells her mother. ‘Do you want me to take Peter?’
    â€˜I’ll come!’ says Marigold.
    Elizabeth says, ‘We’re all coming, we’re leaving now —’
    â€˜I’m leaving
now
,’ says Freya.
    â€˜Nice to meet you, Freya,’ says the man, the dentist, Rex Jenson. ‘Hopefully we’ll see you again soon.’
    â€˜Uh,’ says Freya. And almost runs.
    The church isn’t far from their home, which is the only good thing about it. Marigold skips to keep up with her sister, and the street streams past them as lines in the footpath, gates in fences, telephone poles planted in naturestrips. Jogging along, the girl tells Freya, ‘I liked that lady with a name like a cat.’
    â€˜
Tabby
.’
    â€˜Tabby.’ Marigold meows.
    They pass a pole and a pole and another pole before Freya slows down. She wrinkles her nose, shakes her hair. ‘Those people were strange.’
    â€˜How come?’
    â€˜Well. He talked and talked, but the lady hardly said anything, and those boys just . . . stood there.’
    â€˜Rude?’
    â€˜Not rude,’ Freya judges. ‘Just strange.’
    Marigold flies her palm above the peaked top of a brick fence, thinking about this. She’s young, but she is clever. ‘They were like those people in Mum’s knitting magazines.’
    â€˜Exactly!’
    â€˜Robots.’
    They have reached Freya’s favourite house, which has a population of repellent concrete gnomes arranged in its front yard. Normally they’d slow or even stop, but Freya marches on. ‘Not robots. More like . . . aliens. Aliens trying to be humans.’
    â€˜Creatures from the black lagoon,’ says Marigold, a movie fan.
    â€˜They wear skin to look like people, but they don’t know how to
be
like people. They’re learning it.’
    â€˜Strange!’ agrees Marigold. ‘Spooky.’
    â€˜They
are
spooky. I mean, how did they know we live around the corner from them?’
    â€˜They saw us walking to church. That’s what the man said, that they were walking behind us.’
    This is plausible, which is disappointing, but Freya’s mind catches on the thought of Colt walking behind her, seeing her without her seeing him. She wishes she could go back in time to hover over that oblivious girl, tweak her hair, do something. She’d given Dorrie a cuff: knowing he must have seen it makes her feel harassed. ‘Well, why did they come here?’ she asks hotly. ‘Dentists are rich. They make lots of money. So why are they here?’
    Her sister is too young to have much concept of the wider world – Freya knows for sure that she thinks the starving Africans live near enough to have her leftovers delivered to them on a plate – and asks, ‘Where should they be?’
    â€˜Somewhere fancy! Where rich people live. Not here.’
    Marigold ponders. ‘Maybe they don’t want to be fancy?’
    â€˜Everyone wants to be fancy.’
    â€˜Maybe they’re hiding.’
    Freya smiles, pleased by the idea of aliens hiding in a nondescript suburb, laying out their plans on a speckle-topped kitchen bench. In