Nine Perfect Strangers

‘What?’ Lars propped himself up on his elbows. ‘Look up where?’

‘All the songs were about stars and the moon and the sky,’ she said. ‘And Masha said that we have to look up.’

The younger ones caught on first. Zoe, Ben and Jessica leaped to their feet and began to walk around the room, craning their necks to study the vaulted stone ceiling with curved wooden rafters. The older ones followed more slowly and warily.

‘What do you think we’re looking for?’ asked Napoleon.

‘I don’t know,’ said Frances.

After a moment, she said sadly, ‘Maybe I’m wrong.’

‘There!’ Heather pointed. ‘See? Do you see?’

‘I see it!’ said Jessica.

Frances followed her gaze. ‘I don’t actually see anything,’ she said. ‘My eyesight is terrible.’

‘It’s a sticker,’ said Tony. ‘A sticker of a gold star.’

‘What good is a sticker?’ asked Carmel.

‘There’s something above the sticker on the rafter there,’ said Zoe.

‘It’s a package,’ said Napoleon.

‘I still can’t see it,’ said Frances.

‘It’s wrapped up in brown paper.’ Heather took Frances’s hand and pointed it up to the ceiling, trying to get her to look in the right direction. ‘It’s jammed into the little triangle where the two rafters meet, camouflaged against the wood.’

‘Oh yes, I see it,’ said Frances, although she didn’t.

‘Okay, so let’s get it down,’ said Jessica to Ben. ‘Lift me up onto your shoulders.’

‘I’m not lifting you up, you’re pregnant,’ said Ben. ‘You’re possibly pregnant.’

‘Lift me up, Dad,’ said Zoe to her father. ‘You’re the tallest.’

‘I don’t think we’d get enough height.’ Napoleon tilted his head back, considering the distance. ‘Even if you stood on my shoulders you wouldn’t reach it.’

‘The obvious thing to do is throw something up to knock it down,’ said Lars.

‘I’ll jump up and knock it down,’ said Tony. He looked up at the rafter with a gleam in his eye. ‘I just need a couple of you guys to give me leverage.’

‘You cannot possibly jump that high,’ said Frances.

‘I got the mark of the year three times in a row,’ said Tony.

‘I don’t know what “the mark of the year” means, but that’s impossible,’ said Frances. It was like a joke to think of someone jumping that high. ‘You’ll injure yourself.’

Tony looked at her. ‘Have you ever watched a game of Aussie Rules in your life, Frances?’

‘I understand that you leap about energetically –’

‘Seriously,’ said Lars. ‘We just need to throw something up there, dislodge it from the rafters.’

‘We leap about,’ repeated Tony as if to himself. ‘We leap about energetically.’

‘It’s very impressive leaping,’ said Frances. She remembered how she’d made the mistake of scoffing when Henry had started talking about how he wanted to learn to hang-glide at the age of fifty. All her friends had shaken their heads. Oh, Frances, you never tell a man in the middle of a midlife crisis that he can’t do something. Henry did three months of hang-gliding lessons and suffered a chronic hip injury before he felt he’d proved his point.