Between by Lisa Swallow
PART ONE
Chapter 1
The wind whips my long, blonde hair across my face as I check the address again. The paper the girl scrawled the street name and phone number on flaps between my fingers as I summon the courage to knock on the door.
The large, red-brick house is halfway up a steep hill, on a main road leading toward the town. Jammed between similar houses, only the colour of the front door and curtains distinguishes this house from its neighbours.
When the bus travelled up the hill, I looked back at the buildings shrinking behind me, as if I was climbing to the top of a roller coaster. The thought of going down the hill on the bus to work every day brings on my too-familiar head spins.
The number 104 is painted in large, black figures on the brickwork, so there’s no mistaking this is the place. I approach the red painted door and, as I knock, paint flakes fall to the ground. I tip back my head to count the windows of the three-story building. Does every room belong to the house, or am I looking at a series of flats? No sound comes from inside so I knock harder, and then face an embarrassing moment when someone opens a door I’m banging too heavily on.
A girl smiles broadly at me and ushers me inside. She’s wearing pyjamas with cartoon dogs on them and a huge pair of fluffy slippers. Her curly, auburn hair is pulled away from her freckle-covered face; a face scrubbed clean of make-up. I recognise her as the nurse I met at the hospital when I was studying the notices, desperate to find somewhere to live.
“Rosalind!” she calls by way of introduction, and then turns to me. “Is it Rosalind? Or are you a Rosie? Linda?”
I shake my head, too overcome by the interior of the house to reply. The front door opens straight into the lounge room, and I swear I’ve stepped into a 1970s time warp. The brown and yellow carpet is threadbare in places; a well-worn path leads down a hallway toward an open door through which stands a Formica kitchen table. Attached to the magnolia-painted, wood-chipped walls around me are strange pictures made of multi-coloured string and a particularly creepy looking Pierrot clown sitting on a half moon.
Beneath that picture is a brown sofa, the exact disgusting shade as the carpet, with a similar threadbare nature. Lounging back in the chair is a girl around my age with long brown hair, legs tucked under her, reading a book; I tip my head and see it’s a Psychology text. She lowers the book and regards me with pale blue eyes.
“Which?” she says.
“Pardon?”
“Which are you? Rosalind, Rosie, or Linda?”
I giggle nervously. “Oh! I thought you just called me a witch!”
The girl looks at me as if I need locking up, looks toward the curly-haired girl, and then back to me. “Yeah, right…”
“Rose.” My nerves get the better of me. “And I’m not a witch.”
My lame attempt at a joke increases the scorn on the brown-haired girl’s face. “Okay…”
The other girl bounces over in her ridiculous slippers. “Did I introduce myself when I saw you at the hospital? I bet I forgot! I’m Lizzie, and this is Grace.”
I nod because my mouth is too dry to speak after sticking my foot in it. Suddenly, I’m not sure if I could live here even if they wanted me to.
Lizzie sits next to her housemate. “Don’t worry, we won’t interrogate you. We just need someone to fill the room. Rent’s a bit much with just the three of us; plus, Grace is moving out in a couple of weeks.”
“Three?”
“Yeah, Alek’s not around right now. He’s at work, but he doesn’t really care who lives here,” says Grace.
“Yeah, he’s cool with whoever comes here.” Lizzie stands; she seems unable to keep still for long. “Let me show you the room.”
Before I came here this afternoon, I did wonder why there was such a cheap room available in a house with easy transport routes to the town. When Lizzie shows me the room, I get more of an idea why. The door opens onto the foot of the bed, and the narrow room has a small window at the other end with a low chest of drawers jammed against it.
Lizzie shrugs apologetically. “Sorry, I know it’s not very big…but it is cheap.”
I grip the handle of my small bag, wishing I had more time to find somewhere to live. I’m fighting with students for spare rooms, and my job as a hospital porter doesn’t pay for a place of my own. I shouldn’t have left it so late to look for somewhere to live before I came back here. I guess, when you make last-minute decisions, you end up with last-minute rejects.
“Yeah, it’s no problem.” Having a bed to sleep in and a roof over my head are more important than space for belongings I don’t have. I’ve overstayed my welcome at Jamie’s parents’ house, and I need to move on.