A few days later, Zidra, hiding under the hedge in the front garden, watched the small boy as he lobbed another stone at the skinny black girl with the torn dress. Her legs were scratched and she was wearing grubby sandshoes with no socks. ‘Cowardy cowardy custard,’ the boy chanted.

The stone hit the girl hard on the thigh. Zidra winced in sympathy. After picking up the stone, the girl hurled it back at the boy. It hit him in the stomach and he doubled over, moaning. The girl, not content with the success of her attack, strode towards him and shouted, ‘Shut up yer bloody bum!’ She shook her fist at the boy. Zidra watched in admiration from her hiding place and muttered these new words quietly to herself.

Just then her mother came out of the cottage. Zidra crouched lower in the shrubbery. She couldn’t bear to be spotted. Her mother would call out something in the thick foreign accent that had embarrassed Zidra so much from the moment she realised Mama spoke differently from most other people. Zidra herself could pick up accents wherever she went. Mostly she chose to speak Australian English but sometimes she would put on a Bradford accent. Now, hidden in the bushes, she remained silent as her mother stomped down the side of the house, calling, ‘Zidra, Zidra!’

‘Zidra, Zidra!’ the small boy mimicked once her mother was out of earshot, and then for good measure he added, ‘Bloody wogs, why doncha go back home? Boongs not wanted ’ere neither.’

What a boong or a wog was Zidra had no idea, although she realised they couldn’t be words of endearment. The skinny girl grabbed the boy by one of his jug-handle ears and dragged him, whimpering, up the street. After twenty yards or so they were joined by some white children. Abandoning her ear-hold, the skinny girl raced up the hill, leaving the others far behind.

‘Cowardy cowardy custard!’ the small boy called again, and was joined in his chanting by his friends as they marched up the road towards the schoolhouse, high on the headland.

The school bell rang and Zidra felt her stomach lurch. These children would be her classmates when she started school on Monday week. Until then she could stay at home to get used to the place, Mama had announced, but after this it was back to lessons. Zidra didn’t want to go to school though. She’d rather spend all her time in this paradise of a garden.

‘Zidra?’ Her mother was now running up the side of the house.

Emerging from her hiding place, Zidra couldn’t resist trying out the expression she’d just learnt. ‘Shut up yer bloody bum,’ she said softly. Afterwards she was glad that her mother didn’t seem to hear.

That afternoon, Zidra hid under the hedge again to watch the children going home but she couldn’t hear any voices. No sounds at all apart from a faint rustling as a breeze lifted the leaves of the hedge and the distant thump of the surf.

‘Wotcher doing under here?’

Zidra gave a little squeak. The voice was coming from right next to her, and there was the skinny black girl, crouched under the hedge not more than a yard away.

‘Did I scare you? Didn’t mean to.’ The girl smiled, showing all her teeth. They were very white. Zidra liked the way she smiled so you couldn’t help smiling back. The girl’s wavy hair was cut in the same style as Zidra’s but prettier; Zidra hated her own curls.

‘I saw you this morning throwing rocks.’ Zidra tried to keep the admiration out of her voice.

‘That was just at Barry,’ the girl said. ‘He started it. Gotter stick up for yerself at school. No one else will. Anyway, I knew you were under the hedge. The others didn’t, but I did.’

‘How did you know?’

‘Saw your face. Couldn’t miss that little yellow moon shining out of the bushes.’

Zidra laughed. She liked this image and the kindliness she felt in the girl. ‘What’s your name?’

‘Lorna Hunter. I know yours already. Heard your mum call you this morning.’

‘Bet you don’t know my last name though,’ Zidra said, and then wished she hadn’t. Kids sometimes laughed when they heard it.

‘What is it?’

‘Talivaldis.’

Lorna didn’t laugh. ‘It’s nice,’ she said. ‘Sounds like a song. I’ve heard music coming from your house. Do you play the pianner?’

‘I’m learning but I hate it. She’s a teacher.’

‘Who?’

‘My mother. She sings too.’

‘I love singing.’ Lorna broke into song. Her voice seemed to come from somewhere deep inside her. There were no words to the song, just pure sound. I’ve never heard anything so beautiful, Zidra thought, even Mama singing.

‘You’ve got a lovely voice,’ she said.

Lorna gave her infectious smile again. ‘I can show you some really good places to play,’ she said. ‘Maybe after school one afternoon.’

‘What sort of places?’

‘Bush places, swimming holes in Stillwater Creek, that sort of thing. Why doncha go to school?’

‘I’m starting a week on Monday.’

‘They might gang up on you, some of them. ’Specially the boys. I’ll look out for you, though. Miss Neville will too. She’s tough but she’s nice when you get to know her.’

‘I met her yesterday and she wasn’t all that nice. Put me right off the tables.’

‘She’s got a thing about multiplication tables. Gotter learn them off by heart.’

Zidra was just about to reply when her mother came out of the front door and down the front path. ‘Zidra!’ she called. ‘Who are you talking to under the hedge?’ She bent down, smiling.

‘My friend, Lorna.’ When Zidra looked around she saw that Lorna had gone as noiselessly as she had arrived.

‘Is that a pretend friend or a real one?’

‘A real one, of course,’ said Zidra, embarrassed in case Lorna was in the street, listening. She wriggled through the hedge and peered out the front but Lorna was already at the bottom of the hill, almost as far as the lagoon.

‘You will make lots of friends when you start school,’ Mama said, when Zidra crawled out of the hedge. ‘And now we must remove all those leaves from your hair before you come inside.’

‘She was here a minute ago,’ Zidra said, scuffing at a stone with her foot. ‘She’s not pretend. You frightened her away.’

‘Of course she was here.’ Mama put her arm around Zidra’s shoulder and gave her a little squeeze. ‘Try not to damage your shoes, darling. I polished them only this morning.’ Together they inspected the shoes; they were dusty and scratched.

‘I need sandshoes for playing in,’ said Zidra. ‘Like Lorna’s.’

Zidra refused to go into the post office with her mother. Mama was going to ask Mrs Blunkett to put her advertisement for piano lessons in the window. There was a queue inside and waiting in that couldn’t possibly be as interesting as hanging about outside.

A rickety old picket fence surrounded the small square of garden next door to the post office. One of the pickets had fallen sideways. Zidra thought it would be easy to get it to stand up straight again. The picket was only held with one rusty nail at the bottom but there was another poking out of the crossbar at the top. Wiggle, wiggle. If only she could get the hole in the top of the picket to line up with the nail, then it would stand upright. The nail and the hole just wouldn’t align, no matter how hard she struggled. The picket was soft and splintered at the top so maybe she could just ram it onto the nail. She pushed hard with both hands and then let go. The picket fell off the nail at the bottom and landed at her feet.

‘Having a spot of bother?’

Startled, Zidra looked around guiltily. A large fair man a good bit older than her mother was looking down at her. She’d seen him in the street the day before. It was good that he was smiling. It meant that he was one of those forgiving grown-ups rather than the other sort.

‘Let me fix it.’ He picked up the picket and managed to reattach it to the crossbar by dint of a bit of wriggling and pushing. ‘There. No one any the wiser now, except you and me.’

She smiled at him. His moustache was several shades darker than the hair on the top of his head and golden hairs sprouted out of his nostrils. Zidra could see them glinting in the sunlight.

‘I’m Mr Bates,’ the man said. ‘Would you like a rainbow ball?’ From a pocket he took a small white paper bag and held it out. She wasn’t supposed to eat anything but apples between meals because of her teeth. Her mother said they were as soft as chalk and at great risk of decay, and she’d already had three fillings before they left Homebush. She peered into the bag. Big round sweets; the loveliest looking gobstoppers she’d ever seen. Mouth watering, she still hesitated.

‘Go on, be a devil,’ Mr Bates said.

She wasn’t supposed to accept anything from strangers either, but this man was hardly a stranger, she’d seen him only yesterday. Anyway, Mama was still talking to Mrs Blunkett inside the post office and couldn’t see what she was up to. She reached into the bag and took out one of the rainbow balls.

‘Take two and don’t tell your mother,’ Mr Bates said, winking.

She winked back and took another. One went into her mouth and the other into her pocket for later. Sucking hard, she didn’t feel in the least bit guilty anymore. The illicit nature of this treat was almost as enjoyable as its sweetness.

‘I hear your mother teaches the piano,’ Mr Bates said. ‘What do you want to be when you grow up?’

Answering his question when her mouth was full of rainbow ball was difficult, and anyway there were so many years between now and adulthood. They seemed almost infinite. Infinity bothered her, especially at night when she was trying to go to sleep. It filled her with panic. When she died she was supposed to be going to heaven and life there went on forever. That was even more bothersome because then you had to think of life here ending and how could you realise it had ended if you were dead and in infinite heaven?

‘Maybe you’ll be a mummy with lots of children,’ Mr Bates said encouragingly, in the sort of voice grown-ups sometimes used when they were talking to children.

Zidra cringed. Pushing the sweet into one cheek with her tongue, she managed to say, ‘Not a mummy or a daddy. I’ll probably drive a truck rather than teach the piano.’ Even she was surprised by this choice. What she really wanted was to have adventures and roam the world, and return to Mama from time to time when she felt like a rest.

Mr Bates laughed, before strolling on. Zidra stood up and idly kicked one foot against the kerb. One by one people came out of the post office, but not her mother. To amuse herself, she read the advertisements stuck to the window. Most of them were dull but there was one for puppies who were looking for a good home. Although her home was a good one for puppies, her mother would think otherwise. Peering between the advertisements, she saw that the queue had now gone and her mother was talking to Mrs Blunkett. Mrs Blunkett had curly white hair and so many freckles that she looked orange. She was nodding vigorously and holding the white card over which her mother had worked so hard the night before to find the right words to describe her skills as a piano teacher.

The piano tuner had come that morning, all the way from Bega, to fix the piano. ‘It no longer plays plinkety-plunkety but plays as it is meant to sound,’ Mama had said in an overexcited way to the piano tuner. Immediately she’d dashed off a short piece that involved much movement up and down the keyboard. The piano tuner had clapped when she’d finished. ‘I was showing off a little,’ Mama admitted later. ‘But one does not know to whom the tuner will relay the information about my prowess. Mighty trees from little acorns grow. We must never forget that, my darling little Zidra.’

Zidra took the rainbow ball out of her mouth and inspected it. It was whitish-grey with swirls of colour. After putting it back in her mouth, she wiped her sticky fingers on her skirt. When she was a little girl she used to wipe her sticky fingers on her hair. Mama often reminded her of this, sometimes in public.

At first her mother had been on her best behaviour when they’d visited the school the day before. The mistress, Miss Neville, was almost as thin as Mama and a bit taller. She was wearing a light grey suit with a long skirt. A pretty pink-and-blue patterned scarf was tucked into the neck of her white blouse in the same way that Papa used to wear his cravat for special occasions. This had upset Zidra, for she tried not to think too much of her father, it made her sad. Before she’d had time to recover, Miss Neville had made her recite the six times table. Zidra had been unable to continue beyond six times three is eighteen. ‘She’s a little behind for a nine-year-old,’ Miss Neville had said.

‘Ees it not enough that her Papa has died but that she must be insulted too?’ Zidra’s mother had said, her English lapsing as it sometimes did under stress. Zidra had blushed for them both.

Miss Neville had looked out of the window while making a minor adjustment to her cravat. ‘I didn’t mean to cause offence,’ she said. ‘But I do believe in being direct.’

After a moment, Mama said, ‘Offence has not been taken. I too favour directness. You will find that Zidra ees very advanced at ze reading. In Eenglish and in Latvian.’

Although Miss Neville had made no comment about the Latvian, she’d offered Zidra a book from the shelves behind her, Alice in Wonderland. Zidra had opened it and read several paragraphs aloud, glad of the opportunity to prove herself. ‘Very good indeed,’ Miss Neville said. ‘Although perhaps read with a little too much expression. We Australians are given to understatement. You will not find us an emotional lot, Mrs Talivaldis.’

Zidra had turned these words over like sweets in her mouth, while committing them to memory. Later she’d repeated them to her mother in Miss Neville’s carrying but slightly husky voice. Mama had laughed and hugged her, and that more than made up for her failure with the six times table.

Now Zidra peered through the post office window again. Mrs Blunkett was gluing Mama’s advertisement to the window. Seeing Zidra, she smiled and Zidra grinned back. After crunching up what remained of the rainbow ball, she swallowed the pieces and wiped her lips on her forearm just as her mother came out into the street, followed by Mrs Blunkett. In her pocket Zidra could feel the reassuring shape of the second sweet.

‘What a lovely little girl you have,’ Mrs Blunkett said to Mama.

‘Thank you,’ Mama said, smiling. ‘Sometimes she’s an angel and sometimes she is not quite so angelic.’

Mrs Blunkett laughed and went back inside. Zidra’s attention was now distracted by a bleached-looking sea urchin shell that someone had left lying on the footpath. She kicked it and watched it bounce down the hill almost as far as their front gate. That had to mean good luck.