Careful What You Wish For by Maureen McCarthy Page A

still didn’t dare to look down, but reached for the brass handle of the red door, praying with all her might that it would open and let her through. When it did just that she breathed a sigh of relief.
    * * *
    It was summertime, bright and warm and wonderful with a clear blue sky above. What a relief! Ruth looked around and saw that she was standing on the edge of a big heart-shaped pool. The water was sparkling in the brilliant sunlight. She looked down and saw with real pleasure that she was wearing bright-red bathers – the exact same pair of red bathers, in fact, that she’d wanted last Christmas and didn’t get!
    So where was she? And why did it feel so familiar? Had she been here before?
    When she finally twigged, she had to laugh with amazement. She was in … her very own backyard, only everything was totally different. With all the scraggy bushes and piles of old timber and disused furniture gone, it was actually really big. No more rotting posts holding up the verandah. No peeling weatherboards. No football boots and bikes and discarded backpacks lying about, either.
    In fact, everything was clean and neat and perfect and there was no rubbish anywhere. Not one thing was out of place. The house itself had been painted a nice bright white with deep-red trimmings. The big backyard was as neat as a pin, surrounded on all sides by a very high, green, perfectly clipped hedge. The old fruit trees down near the back fence had gone. There were two long, perfectly manicured flowerbeds with a little path lined with rose bushes in the middle. It led down to the back gate. The huge back shed full to bursting with all her father’s bizarre inventions and her mother’s pottery studio had disappeared. In its place was a cute gazebo with towels and rubber pool toys hanging neatly on hooks.
    Ruth’s heart rate quickened with excitement and pleasure. Everything was so neat and ordered … it was all too much. Almost.
    ‘Ruthie!’ A voice sounding just like her mother’s, only softer and sweeter, came to her gently on the breeze.
    Ruth peered around but couldn’t see anyone. She walked around the pool, hoping like crazy it wasn’t all going to fade away any minute. What if it was just a dream? How disappointed she would be if she woke up suddenly and she was back in her normal house! But the bricks beneath her feet were as hard as any bricks, and when she reached out to touch a rose bush the leaves were shiny and thick. She bent to smell one of the blooms and smiled with delight, because the smell was heavy and strong. One of the thorns on the stem gave her finger a tiny prick and when Ruth brought it up to her mouth her blood tasted exactly the same too. She knew then that it wasn’t all going to disappear.
    ‘Mum?’ she called tentatively.
    ‘Over here, sweetie!’
    A strange woman was coming around the side of the house with a watering-can. The woman smiled and Ruth saw that it was her mother but that she … looked totally different . This mother was wearing make-up and high-heeled sandals, and her long grey hair had been cut off and coloured with blonde streaks. She was dressed in bright-green three-quarter pants and a striped T-shirt and she’d lost a lot of weight.
    ‘Nice little snooze?’ her new mother called gaily. ‘I’m going to fix lunch soon.’
    Ruth nodded and smiled back shyly. Something else was different about her mother. It wasn’t just the new clothes and make-up, but Ruth couldn’t work out what it was. Not that it really mattered too much, because this woman looked so wonderful compared to her old mother.
    ‘Why don’t I fix your hair so you can have a swim before lunch?’ The new mother was walking over with a big smile plastered over her face. She reached Ruth and turned her around by the shoulders.
    ‘My gorgeous girl,’ she murmured. ‘Such lovely hair.’
    Ruth tried not to feel awkward as her mother ran her fingers through her hair, eventually pulling it back into a ponytail,