The Break Read Online Free PDF Page A

she actually wanted to say. And if ever she gave it a go, expressed her genuine opinion on something, her old man had the habit of making the comment: ‘You never used to think this way.’
    Of course I didn’t!
she wanted to shout.
I’ve bloody well
grown up, and guess what? I’ve changed. I actually don’t agree with much of what you and Mum think anymore!
    He sighed loudly. ‘Well, love, it’s your life, isn’t it. It’s up to you what you do.’

11
    Liza came into the kitchen to see Ferg clutching an avocado. There was a pile of vegie offcuts beside the chopping board. Ferg gripped the fruit and ran the knife through its guts.
    â€˜Can I help?’
    He didn’t look up.
    â€˜Hell-o-o-ww …’ She was still a bit hyper from another visit from Mike that afternoon — twice in one week! — and had been kicking the footy around in the wind with Sam. ‘Ferg! Speak to me. What’s up?’
    The salad was finished. He scooped up the scraps for the worm farm with both hands, crushing them.
    â€˜Thanks for doing dinner,’ she tried.
    â€˜Maybe I should do enough for five, now that Mike’s gunna be here all the time. Popping in.
Moving
in.’
    She was surprised by his tone. ‘He just wanted to drop that computer magazine off for Sam. I thought it was nice of him. Beyond that, I reckon he’s all talk, your brother. He’ll never come down, not for long, anyway.’ Liza paused. ‘It’d be fun for Sam, though, someone else to hang out with.’
    Ferg’s head snapped up. His eyes were dark. ‘Sam’s got plenty of people to spend time with — good people. I don’t want him mixing too much with Mike, I don’t like the idea.’
    â€˜Fergus! He’s your brother.’
    He became intensely preoccupied with a slab of salmon, and she waited there a moment, staring at the chopping board, before leaving him to it.
    Later, Ferg went outside into the warm wind. Liza was trawling recipe books, his mum was in bed already and Sam was in his room, at his computer. Most nights were spent like that, either around the telly or each pottering around doing their own thing. Ferg liked it that way, was never one for going out, socialising. Not much good at chitchat, he thought now, as the wind found its way into the marri’s highest branches, husking them together like a sudden flurry of maracas.
    Despite the wind, stars salted the dark sky, and Fergus noticed first, as always, the startling brightness of Venus, fairly glowing compared with its smaller companions. ‘But that’s cos it’s a planet, Dad, not a star,’ Sam had reminded him once before when he’d made the observation.
    His own father had shown Venus to Ferg when he was little, when the house was on its own out here in the middle of the forest, with only a few paddocks cleared like the burn marks of meteorites. Jack had built the cottages for the single blokes who’d worked on the farm, milking, looking after the cows. When he retired, he and Pip moved into the more comfortable one, and Ferg and Liza moved into the farmhouse to run the property. They sold the other cottage to Mrs Perry, along with a couple of acres, to help get a start on the blue gums. It was only after Jack died that Pip moved back in with them, into the main house.
    Ferg had worried over the decision to expand into blue-gum farming, over the changes it would bring to the property. Part of him wanted to keep the place as it was when his father imagined it, created it, but Jack had told him many times that change was the only way, you had to be able to stay in touch with your children and their children, in touch with their ideas.
    Ferg shook his head at the memory. ‘Better bloke than me, Dad,’ he said out loud, into the night.
    A sudden gust caused the marri to strain at the ground, making tiny faulting, shifting sounds, and, although it had been