“Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you…” as the singing trailed off, she blew the candles on the strawberry and cream covered continental cake, wishing for only one thing. She wished that everyday in their home could be like this one. 12 years old. She wasn’t quite a child anymore, but also not wisened to the things she’d overheard older kids talk about, or the things her older half brother got up to, like the time their father discovered a half dozen bottles of beer stashed in his school duffle bag and got one better, replacing the bottles with some broken bricks that weighed about the same. Would I do that when I’m a teenager? She wondered.
They lived at Number 23, on a quiet street, in a quiet suburb, in the inner western part of Sydney. It was a cul-de-sac, one half of a street that was spliced by a main road passing through its two halves. Since they’d moved in, there was a looming threat of the roads authority buying up their house, and demolishing it to widen that busy thoroughfare. By the time she was 12, the house that was closest to the main road, at the curved, dead-end of the cul-de-sac, was already gone. There were just two houses between theirs and the empty lot. They were sitting ducks, house sitting. The roads authority didn’t issue empty threats. So there was that, but a more imminent threat to their home, she realised, was what went on within its walls. Continue reading
Work in Progress 