The Piper's Son by Melina Marchetta Page A

still believes the Labor Party are the true believers?”
    “They’re my choices?” Bernadette asks, dismayed. “Can’t I have another one?”
    “What does Sam say about this?” Tom asks, eating the cereal from the box with his hands.
    “Sam and I aren’t together.”
    He points to her belly.
    “So you’re giving birth to the Messiah, are you?”
    “Why is Sam an issue all of a sudden?” she says angrily.
    “Georgie, you’re sleeping with the guy!” Lucia says, laughing with exasperation, looking at Tom. “She’s sleeping with him, isn’t she?”
    He stares at them, mid-mouthful. “Please,” he says after he’s swallowed. “It’s bad enough that the middle-aged are having sex, without thinking of my aunt doing it. And I don’t know why someone just doesn’t tell Sam to use a condom instead of impregnating the women of the inner-west.”
    Georgie stares at him, stunned, and then she bursts out laughing.
    “Middle-aged? What a little dickhead,” Lucia says.

To: [email protected]
    From: [email protected]
    Date: 25 July 2007
    Dear Finke,
    Okay, so you’re cranky. I can imagine that if you are reading this now, you look cranky. That crease on your forehead and that stare that can slice the bejesus out of anyone. How is life there? Truly asking. Life here is pretty shitty. Mind-numbing at times, to be honest. Don’t know why I’m even telling you, but Georgie reckons she writes to Joe and sends the letters to his in-box, and that somehow getting things off her chest helps. (She actually has a chest these days, courtesy of a pregnancy.)
    This, by the way, is not helping, but I have nothing else to do, so at least it relieves the monotony. I’m working in a hideously boring data-entry place a couple of hours a day, and I’m sure that Francesca and Justine have told you I’m the dish-pig at the Union alongside your new bestie, Ned. I tend to keep to my corner while the troika bond.
    Anyway, I’m just going through the motions these days and wake up each day to the same scenario. I can’t begin to tell you how hard it is filling up seven lots of twenty-four hours without the assistance of illicit substances. TV sometimes helps, but Georgie has the most pitiful collection of boxed-set DVDs. I’ve covered
Sex and the City
(season three is my favorite), as well as
Will and Grace
and
The West Wing.
Every time we have an issue, she brings it back to
The West Wing.
Georgie thinks she’s C.J., who was the press secretary.
    Best be going. Don’t want to o.d. on a good thing.
    Cheers,
    Tom
    There is nothing in his in-box the next day. Part of him is relieved. He can imagine her seeing his name and pressing the delete button, and that thought gives him the freedom to hit the keys again. It becomes part of his way of filling up those seven twenty-fours. Between working alongside Mohsin the Ignorer, lying on ugly banana chairs in Georgie’s backyard at night, chatting to Sam, who seems to come by more frequently, or working from five to ten at the Union, his life becomes consumed by the number displayed alongside his in-box. Most times there will be an e-mail from Anabel and one from a mate he met at uni, who sends him the most ridiculous stuff on YouTube or attachments with a plethora of tits or other types of nudity. But Tom decides it’s going to be his mission to keep on writing to Tara Finke. He’s going to aim for the record. He’ll stop at ninety-nine unanswered e-mails. He’s going to wear her down.
    To: [email protected]
    From: [email protected]
    Date: 27 July 2007
    Dear Finke,
    I can now type fifty words a minute without looking at the keys. As I type, I’m actually looking at the guy on my right-hand side, who persists in speaking to me although I can’t understand a single word that comes out of his mouth. He has a very thick Irish brogue and I feel like Marjorie Dawes in the
Little Britain
fat-busters sketch, who can’t understand the simplest of words because the