The Lost Child by Suzanne McCourt Page B

sleeping blanket. Then a tink-clink-clanking in the street.
    Footsteps. Outside the bedroom window, running softly on the path. Could it be my mother? Could it be a robber? I crawl across the bed and look beneath the curtain. The moon is fat and yellow; it sparkles on the leaves of the shiny-leaf tree but I cannot see my mother, or a robber.
    Where is Dunc? I slide out of bed and pat my way along the wall, through the kitchen and the lounge to the sunroom door. The moonlight through the louvres shows me Dunc is missing too. To be extra sure, I touch all around in his empty bed. ‘Dunc?’ My voice squeaks like a baby bird. I say it again. ‘Dunc?’
    He is not there. Now there’s more tink-clink-clanking in the street, more running feet. My spit becomes a lump I cannot swallow. I feel my way along the hall to the back door. And Dunc is there! Standing very still. Like he stands in the bushes when he sets his rabbit traps, waiting to see if a rabbit runs right in.
    â€˜What’s happening?’
    High above Shorty’s pines, the moon is bright. The gravel shines white; the daisy bush has eyes. Then I see her coming from the shadow of the shed, on fast feather feet. She is wearing her pink satin nightie, the one she chose from the catalogue when she bought my Christmas dress. Her hands are full of paint pots, a garden spade, the old hessian water bag; a roll of rusted wire is under her arm. She hurries down the path next to the Scotts’ fence. Then tink-clink-clank from the street.
    â€˜What’s she doing?’
    â€˜Cleaning out the shed.’
    â€˜It’s night,’ I say, ‘it’s Christmas.’
    â€˜I’m going back to bed.’
    I grab his hand. ‘You can’t.’
    He shrugs me off. ‘I can.’
    I look out of the window to the street. Our car is a shadow by the kerb with a black pile next to it. Now Mum brings Dad’s broken dartboard, a gerry can, a mop bucket, the rubber boots she uses in the garden. She throws them on the pile and is gone again. Then she’s back, pushing my old trike, the one she said Mrs Hammet’s little girl could have. Perhaps she has forgotten. I hurry outside and follow her down the path; branches from the trees along the Scotts’ fence reach out to touch me as I pass. At the gate, I watch her drag something from the garden, through the fence into the street, something long and sleek that glitters like a snake. The garden hose! She flings it over the car, pulls it down the other side, lies flat on the ground to poke it under, pulls it up again, runs around, pulls it down. Soon the hose is wrapped around our car like a rubber worm.
    Now she disappears. Where is she? There. On the lagoon side of the road, a white shape running at the tea-tree. Branches crack and break. She is back, dragging huge limbs and lifting them onto the car, running back, and back again. Why won’t she stop? Now the car is covered in a green tree disguise and she hurries past so close that she must see me standing there. But she doesn’t. When I follow around the back, I find her dragging the mower. I call out to tell her that she mowed yesterday but she doesn’t hear.
    From the sunroom steps, I watch her mow the grass up and down, up and down. When will she stop? Mrs Scott’s house is all lit up. Should I go in there? Should I go up to Mrs Winkie’s? Before I can, a car stops outside our house and someone treads softly through the garden.
    â€˜That you, Nella?’
    It is Constable Bill Morgan. I cannot see his face behind the dazzle of his torch but I recognise his voice from his talk at school. He shines the light onto Mum but she just keeps on mowing, up and down, up and down. Her nightie is torn and dirty now; her hair looks like a bird’s nest spiked with sticks from the tea-tree. I don’t want to see: I don’t want him to see.
    â€˜Now, Nella,’ says Bill Morgan, ‘I think you’ve done