Henry’s Daughter Read Online Free PDF Page A

which is on the west wall, not far from the stove, where she grabs a fork before reaching into thecupboard up top for Henry’s jar of Vicks VapoRub. The investigators, before they examined that dead body in Silence of the Lambs , dabbed a smear of something strong into each nostril, and it works too. Lori smears Vicks up her nostrils and the stink of dead feet and diseased sneakers disappears like magic while she forks up mushy potatoes, silverbeet and stew, which tastes like all of Henry’sstews – pretty rotten.
    Mavis is feeding the baby and Henry’s scissors are snip-snip-snipping at Jamesy’s hair. Neither of them look at Lori, and if Jamesy had dobbed on her about wagging it, Mavis would be yelling and Henry would be looking disappointed. He’s just cutting carefully around Jamesy’s ears.
    Jamesy turned eight in July and he’s the image of Lori, so everyone says. He’s one of thedark-curly-haired ones with the brown eyes and suntanned skin and no freckles. His nose is pointy and his chin is pointy and he spends a lot of time grinning with one side of his mouth, even when there is nothing much to grin about.
    Henry cuts a lot of hair. Lori runs her fingers through her crewcut. Last week she nagged and nagged Henry to keep cutting it shorter, for swimming, she said, buthalf of the wanting it shorter came from wanting to be close to him. While he’s cutting and combing, his gentle hands touch her head and her face, and she gets huge jolts of his life force running through her.
    Her fingers creep to the new swellings on her chest. She first noticed them yesterday and she hoped she’d wake up this morning and find they’d gone away. They haven’t gone. She doesn’twant to turn into a girl and be stuck in the middle of all of these brothers. Different.
    If that new baby had been a girl . . . If .
    â€˜Big eff ,’ she whispers.
    â€˜What did you say, Lorraine?’ Mavis sort of yells and the baby jumps and loses his grip, starts his bellowing again.
    â€˜If. Big if is all I said.’
    â€˜I’ll give you big if . I know what you were thinking, and where have you been to this hour?’
    â€˜Wendy Johnson and her mother took me to McDonald’s and shouted me some chips and an ice-cream for my birthday,’ Lori says, and wishes it was true, and wishes that her hair would grow faster so Henry could cut it more often.
    The mention of her birthday shuts everyone up, though. They all look at her, like, oh my God, what’s the date today?
    â€˜Pass me the paper,’ Mavis says. She wants proof oftoday’s date.
    The paper always gets put on top of the fridge. Lori reaches for it, passes it to Donny, who swaps it with Mavis for Matty, who is refusing to drink any more. He probably got full in the first two gulps, anyway. Donny puts him in the pram and stands rocking it while Mavis buttons the shoulder of her tent.
    Lori stares at her, allowing her eyes to slip out of focus, until all shecan see is the round face and the cloud of red hair, which Henry cuts so all the curls stand up tall. She has a pretty face and not one wrinkle, except where the corners of her mouth get dragged down around her nubby little chin.
    â€˜I thought it was tomorrow. We’ll have a cake tomorrow,’ Mavis says, glancing at the top of the paper.
    Everyone looks sort of relieved and goes back to whatever theywere doing. Except Martin. He reaches out a hand, brushes Lori’s spiky curls. ‘Sorry, Splint. Blame the new bawler. He went and upset the apple cart.’
    Martin and Donny are pretty much grown up, like they’ve got jobs so they pay for their own haircuts. Martin has got medium dark curly hair and a lot of it; he’s almost getting to be good looking. He’s nineteen and a quarter, and a qualified bricklayer;he’s got an old Ford ute that spends its life driving backwards and forwards to where Karen lives, which is about