The Scent of Apples Read Free

used to keep in our backyard. She was fine until the rooster died, and then she took over. She plucked feathers from the other birds, leaving some of them with big wounds. She took control of the food bowl and got plumper by the day. In the end Poppa chopped her head off, because the other birds were so frightened they stopped giving us eggs.
    I don’t know how Mum got to be the boss in our house. When I grow up and become a mum, everyone in my family will get a turn. We’ll have a roster system stuck on the fridge so it’ll be fair on everybody.
    I don’t think that Poppa loves his son’s choice of bride, but he won’t let me say anything mean about her. The other day when I was helping him place the pea straw that would keep the moisture in the ground around our roses, I called her the bee lady.
    Poppa straightened up and fixed me with a stern look. ‘Libby, that’s not very nice, calling your mum names.’
    â€˜She’s always counting things,’ I whined. ‘She reminds me of the bees that get drunk on the rotting apples and then fly around making that annoying noise. She counts the buttons on my clothes, the pegs on the clothes line – it’s like a never-ending drone of numbers.’
    â€˜Maybe so,’ he said, bending down and pulling a thorny branch out of my way with his bare hands, ‘but that’s no excuse for you to be unkind. You get one mother and father in this life, and while they may not be perfect, they love you, and you should be grateful for them.’ He raises his eyebrows to get his point across, like an exclamation mark at the end of the sentence.
    I know he’s right, but sometimes I get so mad that adults get to do what they want and make all the decisions. Like when I started school and it was decided that my hair had to be braided. Now I wake up every school morning dreading the seven o’clock torture. The sleep dust is still resting in the pockets of my eyes as I trudge downstairs into the kitchen. I’m propped up on a barstool and my hair gets one hundred lashes with the hairbrush before my eyes are fully open.
    â€˜If your hair wasn’t so thick and curly, we wouldn’t need to tame it.’ Mum smoothes down the bits of hair that spring free from my braids. She uses her special mixture of coconut oil for the frizz and tea tree oil to scare off any nits that might be foolish enough to come near me. ‘If you had nice straight hair like Michaela’s, we could get it cut into a bob.’
    Michaela is a girl who Mum’s desperate for me to have as a friend. I think she’s boring, and her hair looks like someone sat a bowl on her head and cut around it. Her fringe is always clipped to the side with either a pink or a yellow miniature bow. She looks like a poodle in a dog show.
    Every weekend Mum invites over someone who she wants me to be friends with. Today I have stupid Lucy. Her dad has just been elected Mayor of Molesworth district. I get a sinking feeling in my stomach when I hear the crunch of gravel on our driveway.
    â€˜Quick, Elizabeth.’ Mum takes me by the hand and drags me outside to stand on the porch. She pulls lint from my jersey and rearranges the pearls around her neck.
    Lucy steps out of the car, wearing a tartan skirt and matching ribbons in her pony tails. My groan only gets halfway out when I am distracted by the sight of her mother. Lady Mayor must have got her appointments mixed up. She looks like she’s meeting the Queen. Having me standing outside, looking like a guard from Buckingham Palace, plays right into her hands. Not only does her hideous fuchsia pink floral dress have a matching belt, but her handbag is also made from the same fabric. The clingy material shows little rolls of fat, bunched up all the way from her armpits to her stomach. Her beehive hairstyle, piled high on her head, is about fifty years out of date. Luckily for Mum, Poppa is out in the orchard