The House That Was Eureka by Nadia Wheatley

the stage and waited.
    ‘Hey, Lizzie!’
    The others had gone. Lizzie was up at the door, about to turn out the light.
    ‘You can stay there long as you like, Nobby Weston. Just shut the door properly when you leave.’
    She flipped the light out, leaving him in darkness.
    ‘Whadda you think you’re playing at?’ Nobby was wild himself now. Jumped off the stage and twisted his leg. Then ran through, hurdling chairs, knocking a bench flying, as he chased the shape he couldn’t see, chased the sound of her quick running breathing. Out on the gravel, over to the fence, then down through the lantana bushes to the back of the hall, and up the stairs of the fire escape. Grabbed her at last on the landing, a thin wild shape panting as it tried to open the door that led backstage.
    Lizzie still didn’t give in. Fought him hard with her fists now, pushing him back against the landing railing. Down there glowed the lights of Redfern and Mascot and Alexandria, and Nobby felt the rusted iron of the rail wobble against his weight.
    ‘For Christ sake, stop girl! We’ll both be gonners!’
    But she wouldn’t stop. Nobby felt the depth of that distance drag them down. Both falling, two bodies clasping stick-arms, both spinning down to death. (Like one day, years before, when the world went whirley and they slipped off a shed.)
    He slapped her then and grabbed her fists, pulling them round behind her back, pushing her down onto her knees. Winning. It was Lizzie who’d taught Nobby to fight. Then let his own body sink down to sit on the landing, holding her fast in case she started again.
    But she was done. Her breath coming out noisily in coughs.
    ‘Give in?’
    ‘Just wait till I get me breath back.’
    But she didn’t try again. The coughing built up and up till she felt her whole body taken over by the huge coughs that started way down in her lungs and skipped their way up her windpipe.
    ‘Hey girl, girl.’ Nobby slapped her back to try to stop it. Sometimes these attacks of hers would go on for half an hour or more. At last it finished.
    ‘I hate you, Nobby Weston,’ Lizzie said. ‘Bloody bronchitis.’ She’d had it on and off since she was a kid, and it always came on specially bad when she was upset.
    ‘Sorry. But I had to find out.’
    ‘What?’
    ‘Why you were sour on me. Why all of you were.’
    ‘You know. You dirty traitor. You and your mother. Turning on your own class. Kicking kids out into the street. And then you have the hide to come tonight and cheer your scabby guts out, Big Comrade Nobby Weston from the Anti-Eviction Committee!’
    Nobby looked out over the lights. Alexandria, Redfern, the back of Newtown, Macdonaldtown. Workers’ suburbs full of houses that the workers couldn’t afford to rent. There were strings and strings of houses there, whole terrace blocks in some streets, sitting empty now that their previous tenants had lost their jobs and had to move out. Hundreds of empty houses, and for every empty house there was a family now homeless, or near enough as made no difference. If they were lucky, they’d have squashed themselves into a relative’s house; if unlucky, they’d be out living under bags and bits of tin in the unemployed camp at La Perouse. Families who’d had to move when their landlords kicked them out.
    That was what Lizzie was talking about now. For Nobby’s mother had gone to Court today and obtained an order from the magistrate giving Lizzie’s father a week to pay the back-rent. If he didn’t pay it by next Friday, a warrant would be issued on Monday, 25 May, ordering the bailiffs to evict the Cruises.
    ‘Pay the back-rent!’ Lizzie said. ‘She’s off her head. It’s twenty-five quid.’
    It was five months since the Cruises had paid rent: for it was five months ago that Lizzie lost her job, and for two years Lizzie’s earnings had been the only cash coming regularly into the Cruise household. Paddy and Mick had only had the odd day’s work since