Wind in the Wires Read Online Free PDF Page A

three times a day one of the cars had to make a trip to the public toilets.
    There were nineteen chairs around the trestle tables – kitchen chairs, outdoor chairs, fold-up camp chairs, and a high chair borrowed from next door for the baby, who was wearing a half-decent white cardigan that Gran had knitted. She’d knitted Pete half-decent socks, and the Purple People Eater for Cara. It was a statement, like saying, That will nark you, girl.
    Gran liked Cara’s dad better than Uncle John. He didn’t see as much of her so didn’t talk back like Uncle John. She liked John’s kids better than Cara, who didn’t talk back, but didn’t kiss her every time she saw her either. She had whiskers on her chin, and smelled of camphor – and so did the Purple People Eater.
    ‘When are you bringing your family home where they belong, Robert?’ Gran carped.
    Home, Amberley, where the dining-room table would have seated nineteen at a pinch. Traralgon’s table was hard-pressed to seat six, and no room to move around it when it did.
    They’d never go home now. The school principal was retiring sometime next year and Robert, the vice principal, might get his job. If he did, they’d be stuck here forever.
    Cara eyed her father, mentally betting every penny of pocket money for a month that he hadn’t brought them down here so he could be a vice principal, which he’d said was the reason.
    She’d asked Monica, her second oldest cousin, if she knew anything about Robert and Myrtle adopting her. Monica was plenty old enough to know the family history. If she knew, she was in on the conspiracy. Pete would have told her if he’d known. All he’d said when she’d asked him was that he wished someone would adopt him. Since Monica had married and moved out, Gran Norris had sold her house and moved into Monica’s room.
    ‘Be thankful for small mercies,’ Pete said.
    In a way she was. Had they still been living at Amberley, they would have copped Gran. John was too much like his father for Gran’s liking.
    He must have been. He looked nothing like Gran, or Robert. John was taller, broader, bald, which made him look older. Robert’s hair was thinning on top, though not obviously – unless you were looking down on him. He had a male version of Gran’s features, back when she’d had features. John’s features were heavier. Everything about him was heavier – except his wife. Aunty Beth was skinny. Having all of those kids, running around after two grandkids, and now Gran Norris, had worn her down to skin and bone.
    ‘Dragging your family miles away from home to this,’ Gran said, back on her hobbyhorse and determined to ride it to death.
    ‘You’re in a purple old mood today, Gran,’ Pete said, and Cara, her mouth full, slid from her chair and ran for the house, where she spat meat and potato into the bathroom washbasin, then stood attempting to gain control of her giggle. Her giggling reflection didn’t help.
    Rosie said she was good-looking. Dino Collins said she was the best looking sort in town. She looked heaps better when she sneaked on a bit of Rosie’s lipstick and eyeliner. Since Rosie, life down here had been okay. And Dino wanted to be her boyfriend. ‘Hands off. She’s mine,’ he said if any of the other boys started mucking around with her.
    His name was James, but they all called him Dino because he looked a bit like James Dean. Most of the boys had nicknames. They called Tony Bell ‘Ding-dong’.
    ‘Cara!’ Myrtle called from the kitchen.
    ‘Coming.’ She was supposed to be the hostess – or waitress. She washed her hands, raked a comb through her curls, then went outside with a tray of Christmas pudding, Myrtle behind her, carrying a second tray.
    Pete got the largest serve, and Steve, four years Pete’s senior, complained.
    ‘He needs it to grow on,’ Uncle John said.
    ‘If that girl keeps growing, she’ll be looking down on the lot of you before she’s much older,’ Gran said.
    Always ‘that