Sheep on the Fourth Floor

  Table of Contents

  Cover Page

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Copyright

  CHAPTER ONE

  A dirty white ute pulled into the loading bay of a multistorey concrete building. The driver wiped his forehead on the back of his hairy arm. ‘A man could just about toast his sandwiches on that road!’ he muttered.

  He stepped out of the ute and unlatched the cage on the back of the vehicle. A pair of yellow eyes stared timidly back at him from the far end.

  ‘Glad I don’t have a permanent woolly blanket on like you,’ the driver said sympathetically.

  ‘Mmmaaahhhhh.’ The sheep blinked at the driver and bleated uncertainly.

  The door of the loading bay swung open and a man in a white laboratory coat stepped out. His red hair was twisted into short, thick dreadlocks which swayed around his jaw. As he walked over to the ute, he frowned and glanced at the sky.

  ‘Phew, it must be over thirty degrees out here. You never know what it’s like outside. The air con is permanently on twenty-three in there.’

  ‘Hot day to be a sheep,’ the driver remarked. He nodded his head towards the ute. ‘Where do you want this latest recruit then?’

  ‘Ah, the animal. He’s heading to the fourth floor.’

  ‘Gonna be a bit of a shock for him,’ said the driver. ‘He’s just come from the paddock, nibbling clover and shaking the sparrows off his back.’

  ‘Good. We like them strong and healthy,’ said the man in the lab coat. ‘Now, if you’ll kindly fasten this chain to his collar and unload him, I’ll take him off your hands.’

  ‘Righto.’

  As the driver led the sheep off the back of the ute, the man in the lab coat spoke into his mobile phone.

  ‘Hi, Doc, Jeff here. Your sheep’s arrived. Just being off-loaded from the truck…. Mmhm…. We’ll be up shortly. Cheers.’

  ‘Here we go then, my woolly mate.’ The driver spoke softly and scratched the sheep behind its ear. ‘Now you’re all ready for your new home.’ He turned to Jeff. ‘By the way, his name is Rom.’

  Jeff smiled. ‘Come along then, Rom. Let’s get out of this sun before I start to blister.’ Taking hold of Rom’s chain, he bid the driver goodbye and walked back towards the building.

  The driver reached through the ute window and grabbed a banana. He leaned against the passenger’s door while he ate it, watching the sheep being led away. He glanced at the sign above the loading bay: ‘St Sebastian’s Hospital’.

  ‘What on earth do they do with sheep in a hospital?’ he muttered. ‘Doesn’t seem right, stuck in there with no sun or rain or fresh air. And he’s bound to get stressed being away from his flock.’

  He shrugged and tossed the banana skin back through the window. It landed on top of a small mound of cardboard hamburger wrappings. ‘I suppose it’s none of my business anyway.’

  As he opened the driver’s door he took a last glance at the loading bay.

  ‘Mmmmaaaahhh!’

  He heard the sheep cry out in alarm as it was led through the doorway into the darkness of the building. With a heavy clang, the door to the outside world closed behind it.

  The driver revved the engine and headed back to the main road.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Anna Pascoe gritted her teeth. ‘No, I’m really not interested in riding lessons,’ she said.

  ‘But, darling, you love animals. You’d be a natural. Did I mention that Philip, the instructor, used to coach the Olympic team?’ Doctor Penelope Pascoe raised her voice above the gnashing of the coffee grinder. ‘Virginia’s daughter has only been riding for a few months and she won a purple ribbon for showjumping last Sunday.’

  Anna slumped further into her chair and toyed with her bowl of porridge. She had long ago realized that her mother’s real wish was to be able to counter-brag with her friends, such as Virginia, about their children’s achievements. Anna also knew from past experience that if she avoided her mother’s eye and kept very quiet, the tedious conversation would pass more quickly.

  ‘Well, won’t you just give it a go?’ Penelope smiled hopefully in Anna’s direction. ‘You could try it for just one term and…’

  ‘Pen!’ Doctor Peter Pascoe lowered his medical journal and regarded his wife over the top of his reading glasses. ‘She’s already said she’s not interested.’

  Anna looked at her father gratefully and reached for the sugar bowl.

  ‘I just think a girl of fourteen should have a hobby,’ said Penelope, a little tetchily. She swept her dark brown hair away from her face with the back of her hand and let out a heavy sigh.

  There were times when Anna wished she was interested in horse riding. At least it would make her mum happy and stop the nagging. But she couldn’t deny the fact that she just didn’t…get the whole horsey thing. Maybe it would be different if a horse galloped up to her and declared, ‘Anna, nothing would make me happier than to have you riding on my back whilst I trot around this hot and dusty paddock and jump these silly poles wearing this ridiculously uncomfortable leather gear.’ Until that happened, Anna knew she would always think it was a slightly absurd pastime.

  ‘Most girls your age have a passion,’ Penelope continued to grumble.

  Yeah, a passion for boys and shopping malls, thought Anna. Not a lot of parental bragging material there.

  Penelope’s heels clicked lightly on the kitchen tiles as she walked across them with two coffees. She handed one to Peter then moved to the dining-room window. Cradling her own cup in two hands, she stared thoughtfully down the valley towards the Peraki township. Penelope’s red varnished nails tapped a steady rhythm against the china mug.

  Anna ate her porridge and kept quiet. Her father, a doctor at the local surgery, always insisted that she went to school with breakfast in her stomach. Sometimes Anna imagined the conversations he would have with his patients:

  Well, Mrs Talbot. Your ultrasound scan shows you have gallstones. This is no good. I suspect you have been starting the day without any breakfast.

  Twisted your ankle playing rugby at the weekend, did you, Mr Wilson? And tell me, what did you have for breakfast? Nothing? Well, I don’t quite know what to say, Mr Wilson, when you start the day in such a reckless manner.

  Anna noticed her mother hadn’t spoken for a couple of minutes. Maybe she had finally given up.

  But Penelope wasn’t quite ready to let it rest. ‘I mean, you can’t get by on academic studies alone,’ she said, turning away from the window towards Anna.

  Anna had heard it all before, but this time something occurred to her. ‘But you do, Mum. You haven’t got any real hobbies. You spend all your time at work in the lab.’

  It was true. Her mother was extremely dedicated to her career. She had never hidden the fact that she had gone back to work when Anna was only seven weeks old. Anna had
no memory of being persistently shuttled back and forth to Nana Richmond’s house, but her baby album hinted that that was where she’d spent a great deal of her childhood—it was full of photos of a grinning, dark-haired baby, surrounded by one or more of her nana’s cats and dogs.

  Penelope looked momentarily flustered. She lifted the cup to her mouth and took a sip.

  ‘That’s different,’ was all she could say.

  ‘Well, maybe I’ll be like you,’ Anna continued brightly, looking her mum in the eye. ‘I could get a job that’s a hobby as well as a career.’

  Penelope was muttering something about her job being hardly a hobby when Anna gasped and suddenly leapt up from the table.

  ‘I almost forgot,’ she said, kneeling down beside her school bag. She pulled a sheet of paper from between the pages of her diary. ‘This note’s for you, Mum. It’s about the careers visit.’

  Her mother blinked. ‘The what?’

  ‘It’s from my teacher, Mr Fox,’ Anna replied, passing the paper to her mother. ‘Do you remember you said some kids from my class could come and look around the lab next week?’

  Penelope groaned. ‘I’d forgotten all about it,’ she confessed. ‘I’m terribly busy next week.’ She quickly glanced at the sheet of paper then waved it in Anna’s direction. ‘I’ll see if I can sort something out for you.’

  ‘Thanks, Mum.’

  Anna had only ever seen her mother’s workplace from the outside. She knew that very important, world-renowned health research happened inside the imposing concrete building, but what specifically did that involve? What was it that her mother did for such long hours? Often she didn’t understand a word when her mum and dad discussed their workday. Penelope’s conversation was peppered with talk of ‘DNA’ and ‘bacteria’ and ‘antibiotics’, while Peter would describe in great detail some of his patients’ more rare or interesting medical conditions. Anna was very much looking forward to seeing inside the hospital laboratory. It was a place she had come to regard with much awe and fascination.

  ‘Well, I must run along,’ said Peter, gulping down the last of his coffee as he walked to the kitchen. ‘My patients will send out the dogs if I’m not at the surgery on time.’

  ‘Is it half past seven already?’ exclaimed Penelope. She cursed as she glanced at the kitchen clock.

  Together, Anna’s parents bustled to their cars, each striding crookedly under the weight of a heavy briefcase.

  Anna stood at the front door ready to wave them goodbye. Suddenly Penelope turned back to Anna.

  ‘Book club!’ she said. She smiled triumphantly. ‘See, I have got a hobby!’

  Peter snorted. ‘When did you last read anything that wasn’t a scientific article?’ he wanted to know. ‘I suspect your so-called book club is really a wine-drinking gossip club.’

  Penelope clicked her tongue. ‘Really, Peter, you don’t have to actually read a book to be able to have a discussion about it,’ she said. ‘Bye, Anna, darling,’ she called out. ‘Have a great day at school.’

  Anna glanced at her new red watch—a genuine Ziegler that her mum had brought back with her from a conference in Vienna. Only twenty minutes until the school bus left. Not nearly enough time to do her hair, Anna thought glumly as she sat looking into her bedroom mirror. The dark, wavy mass was impossible to control. She tried a simple ponytail. Her hair sprang out from the tie and sat on her back like some sort of affectionate pet. She pulled the tie out and tried to twist her hair into a tight bun.

  ‘Now I look like a cartoon,’ she grumbled. Trying not to look too closely at the crop of red spots on her chin, she brushed down the front of her blazer, pulling a stray hair from the Hillary College crest on the top pocket.

  A loud ticking sound made Anna turn her head; it sounded like someone was throwing stones at the window. Forgetting her hair for a moment, she stood up and walked across the room with a feeling of curiosity. As she got closer she realized something was hitting the window, but it wasn’t stones. It was a cicada, caught upside down in a spider’s web. As it thrashed about in a desperate attempt to escape, its body was banging repeatedly on the outside of her bedroom window. The sound made Anna shudder.

  It was struggling with so much energy that at first Anna thought it would surely break free. But even though she willed it on, the cicada remained stuck.

  ‘Poor thing, you’re just getting yourself more tangled,’ she murmured.

  Anna’s nose was only a few centimetres from the glass. She was so close she could see the cicada’s bulbous eyes and the intricate black lattice of its wings. She put her finger up as though to touch it through the glass. It was too beautiful to die.

  ‘It’s all right, I’ll help you get out,’ Anna said softly, and she stepped to the left and unlatched the window. She grabbed a coat hanger from the floor, intending to use it to gently prise the cicada out of the web, but as she leaned out of the window a spider emerged from a hole by the window frame. Anna hesitated. She wasn’t afraid of spiders—Nana Richmond had once adopted a massive hallway spider as an unofficial pet. This spider, which was now scrabbling its way along its web towards the cicada, was quite small in comparison. And it was only a fraction of the size of the prey it had just managed to ensnare.

  ‘Like a human versus a brontosaurus,’ said Anna, looking at the size difference.

  The cicada put on a renewed burst of energy as the spider crept up beside it. To Anna, its struggle screamed of desperation and terror. The poor insect needed her help. Anna lifted the coat hanger up to the web again but then her mind became gripped with doubt. What if she freed the cicada and the spider starved? Was a cicada’s life worth more than a spider’s? Was it her decision to make, which one survived and which one didn’t? Was the cicada injured? What if she untangled it and it died anyway? Then both of them would needlessly die because of her meddling.

  Anna wished there was an adult around to tell her what she should do. Even though her dad wasn’t there, she could guess what he would say: ‘Leave it to Nature in all her untamed glory,’ her father would advise. ‘Survival of the fittest; Charles Darwin and all that!’

  (‘Ick!’ her mother would say, having no tolerance for creepy crawlies. ‘Squash them both.’)

  Anna paused for a few moments longer, the coat hanger still raised beside the web. Then, with a heavy sigh, she made a decision. As she shut the window she didn’t need to look at the web to know that the fight was over. Spider venom would now be coursing through the cicada’s body, and even though the insect was still putting up a brave fight, its fate was sealed.

  Anna had no stomach for staying around to watch the spider spin its death shroud.

  She consoled herself as she left the house. There’s nothing I could have done. Like Dad would have said: it’s just Nature in all her untamed glory.

  As much as she believed it, Anna couldn’t shake a feeling of deep sadness for the cicada’s death, and an irrational sense of guilt that she had done nothing but stand by and watch it happen.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Kurt Osmond slung his heavy backpack over his shoulder and walked towards the front door.

  ‘Got your lunch, love?’ his mum called from the kitchen.

  ‘Yes!’ he yelled back.

  ‘What about your science homework, that pesticides project?’ His mother walked into the lounge wiping her hands on a tea towel.

  ‘Yes.’ Kurt edged towards the door.

  His mum looked Kurt up and down. She frowned. ‘Your uniform is looking a bit shabby, dear,’ she clucked. ‘Tuck in your shirt and straighten your tie or you’ll end up on uniform detention.’

  Kurt scowled and muttered a half-hearted ‘all right’ and then sped down the steps before she could demand a hug. His mum’s constant attention was annoying. Every time she saw him in his navy-blue blazer, or glanced at his school work, or read his name in the school newsletter, her eyes would sparkle and she’d clasp her hands together and bleat, ‘Your dad and I, we’re so proud of you!
’ It sometimes made him feel very uncomfortable. Especially if his older brother, Duggie, was around.

  It was only eight in the morning but Kurt could already hear Duggie tinkering around in the downstairs garage. Duggie was born to muck around with things—that’s what his dad always said. If he wasn’t constructing a new mountain bike from four broken ones, or fashioning a coffee-roasting machine out of an old popcorn maker, he was fiddling with the lawn mower to make it run faster. Recently, though, Duggie had outgrown household machinery. Now he had his own car, and in just a few weeks’ time he would start an apprenticeship at the local mechanic’s.

  Kurt paused on the driveway then wandered into the garage. He made his way towards the broken-down orange Corolla sitting up on blocks.

  ‘You paid two hundred bucks for that bucket of rust?’ their father had scoffed when he saw Duggie towing it up the driveway.

  Duggie’s plan was to flash it up, get it back on the road, and cruise through town with the window down and the stereo thumping, collecting glances of envy and respect everywhere he went. At the moment Kurt thought it looked like the type of car a very old man would drive to the supermarket to buy bleach for his false teeth. He would never dare say so to Duggie, though.

  The car’s bonnet was open and a clanking and zipping noise came from underneath. All Kurt could see of his brother was a pair of grime-splattered overalls. Kurt wished he had a pair of grime-splattered overalls. They looked cool.

  ‘What’re you doing?’ asked Kurt.

  ‘Car stuff, geek-boy,’ replied Duggie, not looking up. ‘Nothing you’d know about.’ He continued working on the engine. Kurt

  loved the clicking noise the tool made when Duggie turned it.

  ‘You could teach me.’ Kurt kicked at an oil stain on the ground.

  Duggie turned his head to look Kurt up and down. He had a streak of grease across the side of his mouth and a lump of something black in his hair. Duggie sniffed. ‘I’d have thought you’d be too busy learning about quantum…particles or whatever it is they teach you geeks.’