Like a House on Fire by Cate Kennedy Page B

resentment, dreams her nightly dream of an electric oven.
    It’s not that she doesn’t love the house. She does — it’s just still so makeshift and unfinished. The spare windows are still stacked under a tarp in the shed, and they’ve spread rugs over the spots where the floor dips and cracks. You can’t have a bath without bucketing out the water saved from the last one onto some dry patch of ground.
    She can hear Al giving the kids a bath now. That’s Al’s version of a fun activity with kids — stick them in the bath and try to foam up some bubbles with the biodegradable shampoo.
    â€˜Mum!’ she hears Hannah bawling from the tub.
    â€˜What?’
    â€˜I need my SHOWER CAP!’
    â€˜Get Dad to find it.’
    Now Al’s voice, muffled and distracted. ‘It’s not in here.’
    â€˜Have you looked in the shower?’
    She hears the shower screen door open, then silence, a belated muttered thanks. Too late though.
    â€˜My hair’s ALL WET ALREADY!’ comes Hannah’s wail, followed by that whiny crying that always sets Christine’s teeth on edge. Does Hannah do it at kinder? Do the workers there tut and roll their eyes about lack of discipline at home?
    â€˜Shut UP!’ comes Jamie’s voice.
    Violent splashing, then another high-pitched scream.
    Why doesn’t Al do something to intervene? She pulls open the big drawer with an irritated tug and gets out knives and forks.
    Al had been the first one she’d told, of course, after she’d found it, late one night in the shower. She recalls his face as he raised himself on one elbow in bed, reaching for his bedside lamp, how he’d rubbed a hand over his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger. Then the radiographer: how quiet she’d got, after the initial small talk. Christine remembers the sharply intent way she’d leaned her head closer to the image on the screen, her hand clicking, moving the mouse, clicking again, the light-hearted talk over.
    Then the doctor, finally, looking through the ultrasound films as he made a point of giving her the reassuring statistics of how many lumps turn out to be benign. She’d hated the way he’d stared off over her head as his fingers had coolly explored the lump, gazing into the distance like someone solving a mental equation.
    â€˜How does that feel?’ he’d said.
    â€˜Pretty tender, actually.’ Trying to breathe normally.
    Him writing something on her card, like his final answer in a quiz, before meeting her eyes again. Briskness and neutrality finetuned, as he said, ‘Best to take that out and have a good look at it, I think.’
    Christine sits at the kitchen table now and listens to the wrangling in the bathroom, her husband’s ineffectual protestations as the children fight over a certain squeaky bath toy they both lay claim to. From out of the corner of her eye, she sees the familiar tiny dark shape of a mouse run the length of the skirting. If she puts another trap out, she’ll have to remember to tell Al to check them before the kids get up tomorrow. Finding a dead mouse is likely to set them both off, demanding a funeral and burial, which would make them late for school.
    She gets up and finds two traps in the pantry, in behind the jars and plastic containers and the box full of herbal cough and cold remedies, valerian tea and rescue remedy. Back when the kids were born, she and Al would never have dreamed of treating them with any commercial preparations from the chemist. And they’d been lucky: the kids never got sick; she hadn’t been in a hospital since Hannah was born.
    Rescue remedy , she thinks as she replaces the little bottle on the shelf. And can’t stop her mouth twisting into a humourless, cynical curl as she dabs some peanut butter onto the mousetraps and sets them, pushing them cautiously back into shadowy corners with the tip of her