And Dad said, ‘Does everything you come into contact with, these days, suffer some kind of injury?’ Mum gave him a look and he muttered something about repairs, then said he’d go and get her bag, and Tanzie let out a big breath and ran into Mum’s arms because although she’d had a nice time at Linzie’s house, she’d missed Norman and she wanted to be with Mum and she was suddenly really, really tired.
The cabin that Mr Nicholls had rented was like something out of an advertisement for what old people want to do when they retire, or maybe pills for urine problems. It was on a lake and there were a few other houses but they were mostly set back behind trees or at angles so that no single window looked directly at any other house. There were fifty-six ducks and twenty geese on the water and all but three were still there by the time they’d had tea. Tanzie thought Norman might chase them but he just flopped down on the grass and watched.
‘Awesome,’ said Nicky, even though he didn’t really like the outdoors at all. He inhaled deeply. She realized he hadn’t smoked a cigarette for four days.
‘Isn’t it?’ said Mum. She gazed out at the lake and didn’t say anything for a while. She started to say something about paying their share, and Mr Nicholls held up his hands and made this ‘no-no-no-no’ noise like he didn’t even want to hear it, and Mum went a bit pink and stopped.
They had dinner on a barbecue outside, even though it was not really barbecue weather, because Mum said it would be a fun end to the trip, and when did she ever get time to do a barbecue, anyway? She seemed determined to make everyone happy and just chatted away about twice as much as anyone else, and she said she’d blown the budget because sometimes you had to count your blessings and live a little. It seemed like it was her way of saying thank you. So they had sausages and chicken thighs in spicy sauce and fresh rolls and salad, and Mum had bought two tubs of the good ice cream, not the cheap stuff that came in the white plastic cartons. She didn’t ask anything about Dad’s new house, but she did hug Tanzie a lot and said that she’d missed her and wasn’t that silly because it was only one night after all.
They each told jokes, and even though Tanzie could only remember the one about a stick being brown and sticky, everyone laughed, and they played the game where you put a broom to your forehead and run around it in circles until you fall over, which always made everyone laugh. Mum did it once, even though she could barely walk with her foot all strapped up, and kept saying, ‘Ow ow ow,’ as she went round in a circle. And that made Tanzie laugh because it was just nice to see Mum being silly for a change. And Mr Nicholls kept saying, no, no, not for him thanks, he would just watch. And then Mum limped over to him and said something really quiet in his ear and he raised his eyebrows and said, ‘Really?’ And she nodded. And he said, ‘Well, all right, then.’ And when he crashed over he actually made the ground vibrate a little. And even Nicky, who never did anything, did it, his legs sticking out like a daddy-long-legs’s, and when he laughed his laugh was really strange like this huh huh huh sound and then Tanzie decided she hadn’t heard him laugh like that for ages. Maybe ever.
And she did it about six times until the world bucked and rolled beneath her and she collapsed on her back on the grass and watched the sky spin slowly around her and thought that was a bit like life for their family. Never quite the way up it was meant to be.
They ate the food, and Mum and Mr Nicholls had some wine, and Tanzie took all the scraps off the bones and gave them to Norman because dogs die if you give them chicken bones. And then they put their coats on and just sat out on the nice wicker chairs that went with the cabin, all lined up in a row in front of the lake, and watched the birds on the water until it got dark. ‘I love this place,’ said Mum, into the silence. Tanzie wasn’t sure anyone was meant to see it, but Mr Nicholls reached over and gave Mum’s hand a squeeze.
Mr Nicholls seemed a bit sad most of the evening. Tanzie wasn’t sure why. She wondered if it was because they’d reached the end of the little trip. But she heard the geese and ducks quacking and splashing on the far side of the lake, and then just the water lapping against the shore and it was really calm and peaceful and then she must have fallen asleep because she sort of remembered Mr Nicholls carrying her upstairs and Mum tucking her in and telling her she loved her, but what she mostly remembered about that whole evening was that nobody talked about the Olympiad and she was just really, really glad.
Because here’s the thing. While Mum was getting the barbecue set up Tanzie asked to borrow Mr Nicholls’s computer and looked up the statistics for children of low-income families at private schools. And she saw within a few minutes that the probability of her actually going to St Anne’s had always been in single-figure percentages. And she understood that it didn’t matter how well she had done in that entrance test, she should have checked this figure before they had even left home because you only ever went wrong in life when you didn’t pay attention to the numbers. Nicky came upstairs, and when he saw what she was doing he stood there without saying anything for a minute, then patted her arm and said he would speak to a couple of people he knew in the year below him at McArthur’s to make sure they looked out for her.
When they were at Linzie’s, Dad had told her that private school was no guarantee of success. He’d said it three times. ‘Success is all about what’s inside you,’ he’d said. ‘Determination.’ And then he said Tanzie should get Suze to show her how she did her hair because maybe hers would look nice like that too.
Mum said she would sleep on the sofa that night so that Tanzie and Nicky could have the second bedroom but Tanzie didn’t think she did because she woke up really thirsty in the middle of the night because of Mum’s cooking and she went downstairs and Mum wasn’t there. And in the morning Mum was wearing Mr Nicholls’s grey T-shirt that he wore every single day and Tanzie waited twenty minutes watching his door because she was curious to know what he was going to come down in.
A faint mist hung across the lake in the morning. It rose off the water like a magician’s trick as everyone packed up the car. Norman sniffed around the grass, his tail wagging slowly. ‘Rabbits,’ said Mr Nicholls (he was wearing another grey T-shirt). The morning was chill and grey and the wood pigeons cooed softly in the trees and Tanzie had that sad feeling like you’ve been somewhere really nice and it’s all come to an end.