Yellow Read Free Page B

old man a hug.’
    He smells like salt and warmth and of
before
. It would never occur to him to ask me why I’m not at school at one-thirty on a Thursday afternoon.
    â€˜The surf was all choppy, bloody southerlies, so I’m working on me music career.’ He punctuates this last statement with a dramatic strum of the chords. Lark’s on the Johnny Howard–sponsored surfing team as he calls it, which basically means he’s on the dole and surfs all day. He’s tried working a couple of times but it wasn’t for him. You’d think this would make him a drop kick, but it doesn’t. Everyone loves him. He’s only young, like my mum, they were just nineteen when they had me, and he’s all hulking and brown and smelling of surf wax, with shoulders as wide as an anchor and sun-bleached hair just long enough for him to suck the salt from.
    He starts playing the guitar again, and sings to me, ‘Yellow came over to say hellooooo.’ He uses the wood as a bongo again and throws me a cheeky grin.
    I laugh.
    â€˜â€™Cos I’m her favourite relloooooo.’
    I laugh harder.
    In this moment I almost forget everything else: The Circle, Mum, and the fact that Lark’s here, three blocks from where he should be. It feels like old times. My whole life he’s made up songs about me, just to make me laugh. I never call him Dad and he never calls me Kirra. As soon as I was born and I opened my eyes, I’ve been nothing but Yellow to him, which is funny, because he’s the one who came up with my real name in the first place – he named me after a famous surf beach near where we live. ‘What I loved the most in the whole world, until you were born,’ he tells me. And I wonder why he left if he loves me that much.
    Desiree steps out from behind the flyscreened front door and when she sees me she pulls her lips away from her teeth in what I think is supposed to be a smile but her eyes tell me differently. She wears a full face of make-up and she always has lipstick on her teeth. I think of it as blood. Lark’s briny blood from when she’s bitten into his shoulder like an apple . . .
    Kirra, stop! I don’t want to think about her biting his flesh. I try to be nice to her and pull the end of my own lips upwards into a tight, closed-mouth smile.
    â€˜How nice of you to visit us, Kirra.’
    I reply with a further upward pull of my lips. I try not to focus on the small bump growing out from under her tight white blouse.
    She’s four months pregnant.
    Lark only left us three months ago.
    Do the maths.
    â€˜Aren’t you supposed to be at school now?’ Her voice is sickly sweet.
    â€˜Ummm . . . free period.’
    I focus on my chipped nails – I can’t ever look anyone in the eye when I lie. My own eyes give me away every time; there’s too much of them to keep anything hidden. She smiles at me again like she doesn’t believe me, but decides to hold her tongue anyway.
    â€˜Well, I’m making sandwiches for lunch. You’re welcome to join us.’
    And with that she disappears inside, leaving behind a cloud of talcum powder and cheap perfume. Lark winks at me.
    â€˜In we go, Yellow.’
    Mitzy tries to jump up on my lap as I’m eating my ham and lettuce sandwich, but Desiree grabs him and coos, letting the small dog lick her face. Mitzy is exactly the kind of dog favoured by women who wear too much make-up. He’s a small, white fluff-ball with a nervous disposition, probably caused by being crammed into Desiree’s handbag for much of his life as she knocked door-to-door selling clumpy mascara.
    â€˜Top feed!’ says Lark.
    My sandwich almost gets stuck in my throat. It’s now or never, I tell myself. I keep my eyes focused on my glass as I speak.
    â€˜Mum got so drunk last week that she passed out while she was cooking, and when I got home the stove had been on for a couple