Kylie & Jack 1: Humble Beginnings

52. Ali

While Jack was out drinking with his mates and Kylie was at home scrolling Pinterest; while Loz visited Ryan in hospital with the boys; and while Sophie struggled to enjoy the movie Dean put on for them because yet another headache, Ali was caught in an endless loop of grief and anger. She wasn't yet ready to tell the girls only because she could barely believe it herself.

Saturday 22nd Jun. 10:39 PM

The phone was ringing incessantly somewhere in the house. Ali's father was snoring loudly in the lounge room while Tony Jones screamed at him during an episode of Q and A. Her mother was fussing over a Take 5 magazine crossword puzzle while Ali and Aud hurled pillows and random bits of furniture and laundry over their shoulders, looking for the phone.

"Found it! Hello?" Audrey said, flicking her long blonde hair out of her flustered face and placing the phone to her ear while Ali stood by hands on her hips and watching her sister.

"... oh my – shit – MUM –" Audrey cried out loud. Ali smacked her arm with a frown.

"– oi, keep it down, Dad's asleep –"

"– MUM! Mum, you gotta hear this!" Audrey yelled again, ignoring Ali.

When Cheryl ambled into the living room, magazine and pen still in hand and peering over her glasses perched halfway up her nose, she stopped short seeing the look on Audrey's face.

"It's Ange –" Audrey said, handing the phone out to her mother. Ange was Cheryl's older sister and the root cause of the rift within the family. Cheryl scowled, throwing the magazine and pen into an empty, leather arm chair and stalked up to Audrey to snatch the phone.

"What?" Cheryl snapped into the phone. Ali moved two steps closer to Aud, about to whisper why Ange was ringing when she noticed a full body change in their mother.

Cheryl glanced up at her daughters, a look of total and utter shock on her face.

All in the space of a few minutes, while Ange relayed her news to her sister, Cheryl's face went from an angry shade of red, to white, to ashen grey. She dropped the phone without hanging up, letting it fall with a pathetic, plastic clatter on the hardwood floorboards and collapsed herself into the leather lounge.

"Shit – Mum! What happened? What'd she say? Is it Pa?" Ali asked, falling into the seat beside her mother. Cheryl just sat there, staring into space, unseeing everything before her.

"He's gone ..." she breathed slowly. Her voice sounded robotic – like a malfunctioning machine. Ali bowed her head on her mother's shoulder and Audrey, standing in front of them, running her hand over her brow, kicked the recliner when their father snorted in his sleep so hard he jerked awake.

"Wozthafer?!" Bruce slurred, having been shuddered awake and looking around the room blearily.

"Pa –" Audrey started to say – although what word she was going to say next was a mystery even to her. Then Cheryl, still lost, cut her off.

"Dead ... gone ..." Cheryl couldn't believe it. She didn't want to – and she couldn't also shake how furious she was to find out from her lunatic of a sister, who had caused so much grief over their father these last few years, ended up being the one to break the news to her.

Meanwhile, Ali and Audrey shared a nervous look. They knew that once news of Johnny's death sunk in – and even spread across the family – that they would be sent across the paddocks to the main cottage to start the next stage of this civil war and salvage his things, as they had been instructed to do.

Bruce, however, was still shaking the sleep from his head and grumbled at Cheryl, "how'd that mad unit find out? Thought you were the next of whatsit?"