The Loudness of Unsaid Things

by Hilde Hinton

Genres: General Fiction

Synopsis

'My heart grew, then broke, then mended itself. A wise, funny, brave novel and a story that you will never want to forget.' Favel Parrett

An unforgettable story of loneliness, isolation and finding your way. Heart-wrenching, wise and wryly funny, this novel will make you kinder to those who are lost.

Miss Kaye works at The Institute. A place for the damaged, the outliers, the not-quite rights. Everyone has different strategies to deal with the residents. Some bark orders. Some negotiate tirelessly. Miss Kaye found that simply being herself was mostly the right thing to do.

Susie was seven when she realised she'd had her fill of character building. She'd lie between her Holly Hobbie sheets thinking how slowly birthdays come around, but how quickly change happened. One minute her Dad was saying that the family needed to move back to the city and then, SHAZAM, they were there. Her mum didn't move to the new house with them. And Susie hated going to see her mum at the mind hospital. She never knew who her mum would be. Or who would be there. As the years passed, there were so many things Susie wanted to say but never could.

Miss Kaye will teach Susie that the loudness of unsaid things can be music - and together they will learn that living can be more than surviving.

Release date: March 31, 2020

Publisher: Hachette Australia

Print pages: 320

Sample

The girl crawled into the space between the glove box and the floor of the HR Holden and curled herself up as tight as she could – but not before she’d checked that all four door locks were firmly pressed down. The tops of the locks looked like golf tees and they had perfect swirls cut into the plastic. They felt like fingerprints looked.

‘I’m just going to the chemist,’ her father had said, ‘I’ll only be a few minutes.’

The amusement dancing around his eyes annoyed her. She had told him her fears and he explained that facing them was character building. Although she was only seven, she’d had her fill of character building.

Boland and Eastwood were criminals who had kidnapped a bunch of kids from a nearby town just a few months ago and it had frightened her to the end of her toes. Whether it had been coincidence or not, she had been given a golden Labrador within a few days of the kidnapping. She’d been on and on about having a dog for as long as she could remember. For at least half her life anyway. Whether or not the dog was related to the kidnapping no longer concerned her. He was handsome and his tongue was big and floppy, it made her laugh. She knew she would never tire of him for as long as she liked aniseed ice cream – and that was at least forever.

Ever since the kidnapping she had been waiting for Boland and Eastwood to escape from jail and kidnap her. Life had changed. When she was alone, the threat became so imminent and inevitable that she had taken to hiding, as she was now in the car, balled up so tight she could surely fit in a matchbox. Since the kidnapping, sleeping between her Holly Hobbie sheets had become fitful and difficult and lengthy. Catching the Hepburn to Daylesford school bus was now a test of how long she could hold her breath. She could probably swim the whole pool underwater now. Not the local pool – the one they used in the Olympics. She would picture how far along the pool she would get as she waited for Boland and Eastwood to come to take her bus, hoping all the while that she wouldn’t blow up like the blueberry girl in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

The taunting from the kids who went to the state school didn’t bother her anymore. Nor did the fact that she had to wear a dumb tie and they could wear whatever they wanted. No one would care about that stuff once Boland and Eastwood were on the bus. The other kids would like her once they were all on the same side against the kidnappers. She wondered if kidnappers ever kidnapped grown-ups and, if they did, what those kidnappers were called. There was no way her dad would be this scared. Or her mum.

There was no thought required when her dad asked her what name suited the dog.

‘Boland, so when he kidnaps me he’ll let me go because I named a whole dog after him,’ she said as she tugged on his velvety ears. When it happened, she would stand tall and pretend not to be scared – she’d push her fear to the ends of her fingers. Boland would be so impressed he wouldn’t notice her fingers were blue because she was so scared. Not many people had dogs named after them.

Then it happened.

Boland was at the chemist too. He had gone behind the car and he was so stealthy that she hadn’t even heard him trying the door handles. But mastermind criminals aren’t stupid enough to make a sound while trying the doors. He must have used his eyes and seen that the golf tees were firmly pushed down before he realised he needed a plan B to kidnap her. The only option he had left was to push the car to wherever kidnappers take kids. Panic sat at the bottom of her stomach with the cream puff she’d eaten ten minutes before. It was tight in there and she wished she hadn’t eaten it, even though cream puffs were her favourite after aniseed ice cream. The car was moving. Boland and Eastwood must be pushing it. She reminded herself to remember Boland was the boss and to make sure she gave him more attention than Eastwood. But where to? Probably a barn. That’s usually where victims were taken. Even though she lived in the country, she didn’t know what a barn looked like. Except that they were big, and no one would hear her scream.

Before she could process her actions, she peeked her eyes over the dash and through the bottom of the windscreen. The car was heading straight for the chemist. In Daylesford, people parked perpendicular in the middle of the street as well as alongside the shops. Perpendicular was one of her new favourite words. Maths always made the best words, like equilateral. Maths even found a new way to say pie.

‘Oh my god,’ she thought to herself. She’d never really believed in God, even though she did her Holy Communion. She didn’t believe in God because she couldn’t see him, but she could believe in Boland even though she hadn’t actually seen him herself, because the bus full of kids he took had seen him. Besides, even if God was real he wouldn’t like her because she hadn’t respected the wafers. If only she had swallowed them instead of seeing how long she could keep them in her mouth before they disintegrated. She and her friend Claire always poked their tongues out at each other from across the church aisles with the wafers balanced on them, to see whose could last longest. One time, Sister Sylvester had seen their competition and she had her bum smacked with the metre ruler for being disrespectful to God. Sister Sylvester had lifted her skirt to hit her in front of the whole school. She was wearing her orange undies that day and everyone saw them. It made the ruler hurt less because the orangeness of her undies was so much more painful. Fat Donna put an orange on her desk for a week after that. No; God was not going to help her now, so she put her head down as far as she could and hoped Boland would make a mistake.

BANG!

The side of her head hit the glove box so hard it hurt more than the orange undies. Through the throbbing she tried to stay calm and think of dog Boland’s big floppy tongue that somehow managed to fit in his mouth, even though it was so big. She tried to focus on the humour dancing in her dad’s eyes, even though it usually made her mad. Her dad’s eyes were a happy place. She wanted to see his face so badly. She told herself to think of the stupid orange curl that always stuck out of Sister Sylvester’s head thing. That always made her giggle; but not today.

She didn’t know whether she was going to be sick in her own lap when she realised the car was no longer moving. All her bravery was summoned and she peeked her eyes up above the dash again. The front of their car was in the side door of another car parked alongside the shops. There wasn’t any sign of Boland or Eastwood. Cool. Boland buggered up, like the time she got caught pouring sand in the back of Fat Donna’s chair-bag so her books would be all gritty. She’d only wanted to get even because Donna left oranges on her desk and dobbed on her, even for thoughts. Boland and Eastwood must have had to run away when all the shoppers and shopkeepers came rushing out to see what was going on. She couldn’t believe they had made a mistake.

‘Unlock the door,’ her dad kept saying really loudly as he pelted his hands on the driver-side window. His eyes weren’t full of fun.

She put her fingers either side of the golf tee lock and lifted. He pulled her up through the car and past the steering wheel and gave her a huge hug. She felt like she was in heaven, even though she didn’t believe in it.

‘Boland came and tried to get me, Dad,’ she said in between small gasps because her chest was squashed. ‘But he ran away when we hit the other car,’ she added, boiling with relief. She thought she heard him say a naughty word and something about the handbrake, but she was so full of happy and relief that she didn’t have enough room to listen.

She lay there between her Holly Hobbie sheets in the new concrete house thinking how slow birthdays come around, but how quick changes happen. One minute her dad was sitting her down saying that the family needed to move back to the city and SHAZAM, here she was. Her bedroom was in the front of the house and the street felt close. Back in Daylesford the street was a dirt road ages from the house. There was more noise here. She liked having a front fence. It was thick like the concrete walls of the house. It was perfect to walk along. She could be a gymnast on a balance beam – even though the fence was fatter and she never actually did backflips. But she could stand like she’d just landed and look over at the imaginary judges holding up scorecards. It was also a great place to just sit and watch people and cars go by. There were so many people here. Although she had lived in the city before moving to Daylesford, all she really remembered was a lady called Carmel who knitted her some mittens. Other than that, there was no pre-Daylesford. Strange how her dad said they were going back when she didn’t remember being there in the first place.

What she did know was her mum seemed happy about it. She didn’t see her mum much anymore. She floated in and out. It was hard not knowing which side of Mum she was going to get; maybe it was character building like facing her fears by being scared. Was her mum going to be a woman sitting in the corner living in her own brain, or a woman with big enthusiastic eyes wanting to dance and prance while she did normal stuff like stir the porridge? Stirring the porridge was a serious business that required the same pace all the way through to prevent lumps. It was meant to be her job anyway, not her mum’s. Once, when she was stirring, she saw a ladybird on the wall near the stove and she lost her rhythm. Why a ladybird would want to crawl up a long blank wall was a mystery and before she knew it the porridge was lumpy again. When she was smaller she had a little kid’s chair that she would drag over to the stove. Now she was bigger she didn’t need the little chair, but it sure made a great platform to stir the porridge from back then.

After they moved to the concrete house in the city, her mum moved out to a little flat a couple of kilometres away in North Melbourne. It was made of thick bricks too. She knew the flat was in North Melbourne because that was her football team and she could almost see the players’ jumper numbers when she looked out her mum’s new kitchen window from the eighth storey. The Galloping Gasometer stood out a mile because he was big and square and different from the other players. She had to go and see her mum every second weekend no matter what. She had tried to talk to her dad about staying home, but he said no. ‘Your mum’s your mum,’ he said, every time. And that was that. Even though she knew very well that her mum was her mum she still didn’t want to go. But some things weren’t worth mentioning. Final, like the final siren.

One day she told Helen Gallos that she didn’t much like her mum. She was full of courage and chicken twist chips at the time. Helen Gallos lived down the road in McCracken Street, Kensington. It sounded good when you said it really slowly, like a prime minister. ‘Mc-Crack’n Streeet, Ken-ziiinng-ton!’ Before her dad would let her go for bike rides in the area she had to chant ‘Sixty-four Mc-Crack’n Street Ken-zing-ton’ so that if she got lost, she could help herself find her way home. She wasn’t scared anymore because Boland, the person not the dog, didn’t even live where there was concrete. Unless there was concrete in jail. She didn’t worry about him much anymore since they’d moved. He’d never find her here. She could hardly find herself. At first she’d cried when her dad had said that the dog Boland couldn’t come to the city. Now that she lived in the concrete she could see that he was better off back home. Her dad had found a nice farm for him to live on.

Helen’s dad worked in a chip factory and she was fat. Probably because her dad worked in a chip factory. Whenever she went over to Helen’s she got a free pack of chicken twists. There was also a Vietnamese family on the other side of the street past the school she didn’t go to. They had a nice daughter called Vo, who was very good at listening and not so good at talking. It was a funny name and their dinners tasted like flowers smell, but they were lovely people. They smiled and nodded a lot, so the girl smiled and nodded a lot too. It hurt her neck.

When she wasn’t visiting the people in the street, she rode her bike around the Kensington streets. As she rode she marked all the houses out of ten. She liked the ones with the curvy verandas; her dad told her they were called bullnose verandas. No matter how hard she looked, she couldn’t find the bull connection. She was learning all the architecture terms that she could, and she liked the double-fronted houses the best. Double-fronted made sense because there were two sides beside the door. They were more symmetrical. The single ones looked out of balance, no matter how charming the rest was. She didn’t like wire fences, she thought picket fences looked best. They were always painted the same colour as the house. She would ride by wondering if it would look odd to paint them the same colour as the window frames instead but by the time she rode home she would be wondering about something else.

The main difference between Daylesford and Melbourne was the heat in summer. In Daylesford it felt cooler and she had the swimming pool up there. There was no swimming pool near her house in Melbourne and she missed it. All the asphalt and concrete and tall buildings made it hotter. She loved going for a walk in the evening with her dad though. As the sun set and the summer evenings kicked in, the air would cool a little and they would walk for ages, looking at the houses. They marked the houses out of ten together and listed their reasons. She never gave a ten, only a nine and a half. Otherwise she wouldn’t know what to do if she saw the perfect house. One time her dad gave a house twelve out of ten, but she didn’t say anything. She was learning when to get upset and when not to. He was good at teaching that.

She also liked kicking the footy on the street with her dad, but she had to watch out when he kicked it too far and it went over her head. When her dad had enough of kicking the ball, he would kick it over her head and go inside when she turned around to run and get it. He would just be gone. She learned to run backwards and keep an eye on him as she retrieved the ball. This usually got a laugh out of him, so he would stay out a bit longer.

Sometimes, when she was allowed to stay up a bit late, they would sit in the kitchen together and play cards. He had taught her how to play canasta and five hundred. Her hands weren’t big enough to hold all her cards, so she placed them on a kitchen chair next to her, constantly guarding them in case he cheated by looking under the table.

Even though they lived in the city, it was a quieter life. Up in Daylesford she had plenty of space and things to do. Here she was more housebound, despite her rides, and they didn’t have a TV, so it was quiet. She had books, jigsaws and colouring-in but you could only tip out all your puzzles on the floor, mix up all the pieces and put them all back together so many times.

School was quieter too. Everyone already had their friends by the time she got there, so she was mainly alone. She went to St Mary’s in North Melbourne, so at least she could stand at the chunky stone fence and watch Victoria Street and the trams. She did laps and laps around the church, memorising every variance in the stones. She even learned to climb the textured stone walls, though the gaps in the rows of stones were small. The ridges for fingers and toes became more and more visible the longer she stared at the walls. She planned the climbing route before she made any attempts, and hours of practice were put in during lunch and recess breaks. Once she could get about five metres up, she showed her dad when he came to pick her up. He got scared when she held position and looked down at him, courageously lifting a hand off the wall and offering a small wave. Later that year he showed her some grey hairs and said it was her fault for climbing the church.

One morning she walked out into the concrete backyard and discovered some people had broken in, lifted off the top of the clothesline and then lifted her bike and the locked chain off the pole. The big triangle bit was just sitting on the ground near the back fence. She didn’t know why they would want her bike at all. It wasn’t even a good one. It was from the Trading Post. Everything was from the Trading Post. It felt like even her clothes were from the Trading Post. They were new to her, but she knew they weren’t new-new. Her dad understood how much she needed a bike. It was her peace. They didn’t really have anything they didn’t need. Except maybe cutlery. They had enough for more days than they did the dishes.

A couple of days after her bike was stolen, she walked out of school and saw her dad’s car was parked smack bang in the middle of the schoolyard. It was odd. He always parked outside. Plus the boot was open, and he was grinning. As she got closer, so did the other kids because something different was happening. She could see some handlebars. Part of her nearly jumped up into the sky – a bike! The other part shrivelled up like an old orange that had been at the bottom of her schoolbag for the whole holidays. All the other kids were looking, and a few sniggers hit her ears. It was a new-old bike, with a big long floral seat and faded handlebar tassels. It looked like it may have had a basket with big plastic flowers on it at some stage. She was glad it didn’t have a basket anymore, but her elation was brief.

Her insides knew she should say thanks, but her outsides shut the boot and made her walk to the car and sit in it. The time it took for her dad to come back, sit in the car, start the engine and completely ignore her was interminable. She felt sick sitting there as they drove away.

‘Thanks for my bike, Dad,’ she said, trying unsuccessfully to keep the desperation and regret out of her voice. She wished she could have the moment over again. She would run over, say thanks, hug him and she wouldn’t even care about the stupid kids who weren’t even her friends. They weren’t worth this. Something inside her knew that a sacrifice had occurred for the new-old bike to land in the boot. And her dad had stood there looking so pleased with himself as he presented it to her. He couldn’t even wait until they had gotten home because he was so excited that he wanted to show it to her straight away.

She let the stupid kids ruin her new-old bike.

They had two whole parents and snotty-nosed brothers and sisters and lives that mimicked each other. She had her dad, her crazy sometimes-there mum and a house that didn’t look like the others. Not from the inside. She loved the inside and the card games and the laughs and the books that took her to faraway places. Helen the Greek girl never reacted to her bare house, neither did Vo, but these kids would have. If ever they went to her house. Which they didn’t. That day she betrayed the only thing that m. . .