The Beloved by Annah Faulkner Page B

happened to Snap?’
    â€˜I’m nearly eight. And Snap’s a kid’s game.’
    â€˜But that’s what you are, CP.’
    He grumbled to Mama. When I knelt down on my pillow and pressed my ear against the wall I could hear them arguing.
    â€˜Poker, for God’s sake. At her age!’
    â€˜Well, at least it’ll challenge her mentally.’
    â€˜She’s a kid; she should be playing kids’ games.’
    â€˜I’d rather she played poker and used her brains than wasted her time drawing. Pencils and paints won’t get her anywhere.’
    â€˜She’s seven. Drawing is what seven-year-olds do.’
    â€˜Not like she does. She’s obsessive. She needs to be reined in before it gets out of hand. Our daughter’s a very wilful little girl.’

    The holidays stretched on through January; hot, steamy and raining nearly every afternoon. Mama took me with her a couple of times when she went after stories. One time we drove deep into the jungle to a village where somebody said a giant python had swallowed a pig. When we got there we saw chooks pecking at the ground, pigs snuffling about and little black babies playing in the dirt but no sign of the snake. Either it had gone or the story wasn’t true but Mama took some pictures anyway and I pulled out my pencils and paper.
    â€˜Forget that stuff for once, Bertie,’ she said. ‘I’ll teach you to use the camera. Now watch. You hold it in both hands like this, and look through here, and when I move this ring . . .’
    She moved the ring and a little girl with snot running from her nose blurred. The trees made a green halo around her head and you couldn’t see the snot any more, just the dark blob of her face. I pressed the button.
    â€˜No, not yet! You’re wasting film. Here, let me.’
    Mama walked around the compound taking photos of people, huts, dogs and pigs. Then she put the camera down and wrote in her notebook. I picked up the camera and looked through the viewfinder, fiddled with the dials and zoomed in on the tail of a parrot. Next, I found a knot on a tree. Seeing things up so close with the camera reminded me of the kaleidoscope; move it and you never knew what you’d see next. I pressed the button, moved the camera, found a pig’s bum-hole and bristly skin and snapped again. I found Mama’s ear and a tendril of black hair. Click, click .
    A few days later Mama came home and spread a stack of ten-by-eight photographs on the kitchen table. Black and white, sharp and smart.
    â€˜Nice,’ I said.
    â€˜Yes, they are nice. Except for these. Now who do you suppose took them?’
    I recognised the parrot’s tail but it didn’t look like much, just some stripes. Mama’s ear was a strange blurry blob but the pig’s bum and the knot were wonderful. Clear and close, they didn’t have to be a bum and a knot, they could be whatever you wanted.
    â€˜These are good!’
    â€˜ Good ? A pig’s . . .’
    â€˜It looks like a star!’
    She dropped her head back and shut her eyes and I knew what she was thinking. Why did I have to be the kind of kid who took photos of pigs’ bums and knots?

    My eighth birthday fell at the end of the first week of the new school year and Mama wanted me to have a party. My idea of a party was to have her and Dad, Tim and Stefi, toasted cheese sandwiches, chocolate cake and seventy-two Lakeland colouring pencils. Stefi’s mother could come but not her father.
    â€˜I don’t want Mr Breuer,’ I said.
    â€˜Of course not,’ Mama agreed. ‘It’s your party.’
    â€˜But Stefi can come.’
    â€˜Naturally. And who else?
    â€˜Mrs Breuer.’
    â€˜Children, Bertie. Your friends. Who do you want to invite? We need to make a list.’
    â€˜I don’t want anyone else.’
    â€˜Of course you do. Friends are important.’
    â€˜I don’t want