Chapter 8
When Mum and Dad finally came up to my room to try to cheer me up (ha!) I was face down again on the bed. This time I didn’t care about the mascara streaks on the pillows. Black marks on purple satin are tiny problems when the rest of your life is ruined.
They tapped on the door and pushed it open tentatively.
“Coco?” said Mum. “Can we come in?”
I stayed with my face down and didn’t even answer. There didn’t seem to be much point. They were going to do what they were going to do anyway, and nothing I said was going to make any difference.
Mum took silence to be agreement and tiptoed in like she was trying to save my feelings or my dignity or something. Dad followed her, looking around in surprise. I didn’t think he’d been up here since I was about eight. He sat awkwardly on my beanbag with his knees up to his ears and fingered a velvet cushion as though he had never seen one before.
I flipped over onto my back, but I kept my eyes firmly fixed on the ceiling.
“Coco, sweetie,” said Mum, sitting down on my bed beside me and trying to put her arm around me. “I know this is all a big shock, but why aren’t you at least trying to see the positives?”
I shrugged off her hand and moved my eyes to the corner of the room.
“Oh come on honey,” she said. “You have to at least talk about it. Look, we’re here together. We want to talk about it with you.”
I steeled my face and sat up, turning my back to Dad and completely ignoring him.
“Did you know about this?” I asked her accusingly. “How can you just sit there and let Dad pull a huge life change onto us all with no warning at all? And then just agree to it. I mean, who knew any of this?”
“Well, it’s not quite true that there was no warning at all,” said Mum. She shifted back and looked at me oddly. “I mean, Dad’s been talking about being unhappy in his job for at least a year now and the bank has been cutting staff for a year and a half. Surely you knew that? And we went for that holiday down the coast and we were looking in real estate windows... you remember that, right?”
All I remembered was a boring trip away last year staying in a daggy cabin on a smelly farm, with no shopping malls worth visiting, patchy mobile service, bad cafe food and Josh being mean to me. Oh, and the world’s best pies. Yeah, right.
“This whole thing came from that?” I said. “But that was like, months ago. And you always look in real estate windows all the time, wherever we go. I thought that was just one of the weird things parents do.”
Mum looked at me, slightly confused. “Yes, but normally when people look in real estate windows it means they just might be looking for real estate, right? Anyway, you knew that lots of people from Dad’s firm were being offered redundancies starting about six weeks ago, didn’t you? If Dad didn’t lose his job now, he almost certainly would have in the future. He took the redundancy this week.” Now she looked frustrated. “Surely we told you this? I know we told you this. Weren’t you listening?”
I shrugged my shoulders. “I guess. I don’t really pay much attention to that stuff. But anyway, this is different. I didn’t think you’d do anything like this. It’s another whole step to go and buy a farm and move to the country and build a house and home school! It’s going to be terrible for us all!”
Dad spoke up. He was still squashed into my beanbag. “Actually, Coco, I think it’s going to be amazing for us all.” He fought his way out of a pile of cushions and stood up.
“This is an opportunity for our family to be together in a way that we’ll never have again,” he said. “You guys are all growing up. And I’ve been working way too many hours for too long.”
His face got all excited and his hands started whirling around. “I just think we need to spend time with each other before life takes over and we start to head off in separate directions.”
Hmmmph! I thought to myself, pursing my lips. You’re just taking me in your direction and I don’t want to go. But Dad didn’t seem to notice my face. He just kept on talking.
“This is something we can all do together as a family so that we spend more time together. I read a book this year that made me really think about stuff, and I think we need to do something meaningful together. Basically we need some adventure in our lives.”
His face was all lit up, like a little boy who has just been given a new puppy.
“I’ve been wanting to do this for years, but I never talked about it because I never thought it could happen. And then I guess I wanted to surprise you all. It seemed like it would make it even more of an adventure.”
I raised my eyebrows. “What about Mum? It seems a bit mean to spring something like this on her out of the blue.”
“I’ll admit he took me by surprise,” Mum said. She moved over to sit at my dressing table. “But I have to say I’m not really shocked. It’s been a little secret dream of mine too. Living cooped up in the city has never been my favourite thing.”
Dad made a move to sit next to me. He was trying to make amends, but I wasn’t about to let him.
“Come on, Coco,” he said, putting an arm around me. “It’s not going to be that bad. Surely you can get over the shock and think positively. There must be something that gets your imagination excited about all of this.”
I pulled away and played with the tassel of the purple cushion on my lap. I couldn’t talk. I just felt like I was going to cry. I had a black pit in my stomach and a burning volcano in my head.
“Isn’t there anything you like at all?” he said again.
“No,” I sputtered. “I can honestly say that there is nothing I like about this plan. Nothing at all. I can’t believe you’re doing this to me. It just all feels like I’m in a bad dream.”
I was pretending to look away, trying to keep the tears in, but I saw Mum and Dad exchange a look. Mum shrugged her shoulders and Dad made a face. He nodded at Mum as if to say, ‘go on, tell her.’
“Look,” said Mum. She had her ‘lets-all-calm-down’ voice on. When she uses it, it sounds like she’s talking to little kids. I think it used to work on Charlie and me when we were five, but it hasn’t since then.
“Coco. Sweetie. Why don’t you agree to give it a year? If you really, really hate being on the farm after twelve months, we can work out something. Maybe you can come back to Sydney for school and be a boarder. We don’t want you to be unhappy, really truly. That’s not what this is about. But we think it would be good to give the whole thing a try. Just for a year.”
I turned over on the bed in a thump and glared fiercely at the ceiling. The top of my purple canopy mosquito net quivered from the jolt. I knew I was beaten. Screaming and fighting any more was never going to change it. I had to give in. But I wasn’t going to give in completely. I still had some weapons up my sleeve.
“All right,” I said, between clenched teeth. “I will give it a year. But I can tell you this. I’m not going to be happy. I’m not going to like it. And I’m definitely coming back to Sydney as soon as the year is over.”
Mum and Dad raised their eyebrows at each other.
“That’s my girl,” said Dad, and he reached out to stroke my head.
I rolled out of his reach, stuck my head up and looked at him full in the face.
“Stop it Dad. I’m only doing this because I have no choice. Okay, sure, I’ll do the year. I’ll stick it out. But just so you know how angry I am, I’m not going to talk to you for the next twelve months.”
“Coco!” said Mum. “Don’t be rude to your father!” Her face was red and her eyes were flashing.
“No Deborah,” said Dad, “it’s ok. If she can’t talk to me yet, that’s fine.” He looked surprisingly calm and unworried. “It was a shock. She probably needs some time to be on her own now.”
He stood up and went to usher Mum out of the door. “Come on, let’s go downstairs. She’ll come down when she’s ready.”
Mu
ch you know, I thought furiously. I’ll never be ready. But I went down anyway, stomping my feet and tossing my hair and making sure that they knew I was still cross. There was birthday cake down there and I wasn’t going to miss out on my once a year tiramisu just because my dad had turned into the world’s biggest nutcase.