Always seems to rain on my birthday. I allowed myself an extra-long lie-in. I could hear water bubbling under the house. No phone calls. No letters. Just how I like it.
Almost without realising, I found myself padding around the kitchen in my dressing-gown, making a chocolate cake. The ease of the movements, the measuring, folding. Tapping the side of the tin to level the batter.
Opened the door to find Charlotte looking like a drowned rat in a pair of new spotted gumboots. I tried to get her to take them off to walk through the house, but she insisted on going via the driveway, splashing through the rainwater to get to the backyard, so I waded along with her. For a moment, I was worried she was here out of birthday obligation, that Tim or Camille somehow knew the day, but I decided it was unlikely.
The usual ceremony, the worship of the sprouts. The single good seedling has pushed itself up with those two funny fat leaves they get first, before the crinkled ones come up. I’ve always liked those first leaves. They look like illustrations in a children’s book. Charlotte stroked them with the very tip of her finger, like they were a pet she was nervous to touch.
The rain started up again while we were out there, bellowing down on the roof so loud I couldn’t hear her, even shouting. She cupped her hands around her mouth, and I bent down to get closer, but I couldn’t make out a single word. Crushing, staggering sound. Water was sloshing in under the door. Charlotte’s eyes were wild and scared, and I grinned at her, to calm her down. Did a little rain dance, holding a digging fork, pretending to be harvesting carrots. I was always shithouse at charades. Still, it made her smile.
All of a sudden, the rain let up, and there was just the dripping of stray blobs of water.
‘Good for the farmers,’ she said.
I cracked up. My mother used to say the same whenever it really pissed down.
‘I dunno about that. I reckon it might have drowned a few crops.’
Her eyes widened. ‘Can plants drown?’
‘Oh yes. You’ve got to be careful not to overwater things. I killed an avocado tree that way once. Got its feet too wet.’
She looked down at her gumboots.
‘You won’t drown from your feet being too wet,’ I said. ‘Don’t you worry.’
We picked our way across the yard. There were bubbles coming up in the water, ripples across the lawn. Council was going to be getting some bloody letters this month.
On the porch, she shook herself like a dog, her hair fanning out, sluicing water. I stepped out of my gumboots and went to find an old towel to drape her in.
She smelled the cake in the kitchen and her eyes lit up. I offered her a slice. She got halfway through nodding, then, god bless her, stopped herself and asked if we could bring some to her parents too. The sweetness of this child.
‘Of course,’ I said. ‘Just let me ice it.’
The extra waiting made her look faint, like she was about to explode with the effort of being so good. I whipped the sugar into the butter, added a drop of vanilla. Spread it to the edge, let her lick the spoon. I took the excuse to pull out the old green plate, the one that looks like cabbage leaves. The cake looked grand on there, the beautiful dark chocolate, the pale yellow icing.
‘Lead the way, madame,’ I said, and she hoofed it through the house, made it to the front door, remembered she’d forgotten her gumboots, raced back to grab them from the back porch, crashed through the living room and stood, jumping up and down, waiting for me to manoeuvre the cake with one hand and my boots with the other. We gave each other a nod, and opened the door. She stepped out, and I turned to kick the door closed.
She was striding through the water in the yard, and I trotted behind her, a wake behind me that you could have waterskied on. When we reached the footpath, she skipped along the fence and reached up onto her toes to undo the latch. The gate swung open. She stopped dead and I collided with her, holding the cake high to keep from dropping it. I opened my mouth to chastise her, and then looked through the gate. My mouth stayed open.
The house was gone. There was no wall left standing. Just a vast, gaping hole that the water was gushing into. The sides were dirt and it went down so far that there was nothing to see but dark.
This is an extract from Sarah Walker’s The Water Takes (Simon & Schuster Australia), available now at your local independent bookseller.
