The Whole of My World Read online

  About the Book

  Today I am free.

  No guilt for who’s missing, what’s been left behind. My face aches from smiling in the wind and my voice rasps from all the screaming, and I know that it’s been forever since I’ve felt so completely alive.

  Desperate to escape her grieving father and harbouring her own terrible secret, Shelley disappears into the intoxicating world of Aussie Rules football. Joining a motley crew of footy tragics – and, best of all, making friends with one of the star players – Shelley finds somewhere to belong. Finally she’s winning.

  So why don’t her friends get it? Josh, who she’s known all her life, but who she can barely look at anymore because of the memories of that fateful day. Tara, whose cold silences Shelley can’t understand. Everyone thinks there’s something more going on between Shelley and Mick. But there isn’t – is there?

  When the whole of your world is football, sometimes life gets lost between goals.

  An unputdownable novel for anyone who’s ever loved or lost, drawn a line between then and now, or kept a secret that wouldn’t stay hidden . . .

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  Title

  Dedication

  Prologue: The Draft

  Pre-Season

  Chapter 1: The Warm-Up

  Chapter 2: The First Bounce

  Chapter 3: The Match Report

  Chapter 4: The Recovery

  Chapter 5: The Rookie

  Chapter 6: The Centre Bounce

  Chapter 7: The Replay

  Chapter 8: The Rules

  Game On

  Chapter 9: Little League

  Chapter 10: The Drill

  Chapter 11: Eyes Up on the Follow-through

  Chapter 12: One Week at a Time

  Mid-season Break

  Chapter 13: Chewy on Your Boot

  Chapter 14: New Recruit

  Chapter 15: Away Game

  Chapter 16: The Fifth Quarter

  Chapter 17: Post-game Address

  Chapter 18: Full Forward

  Chapter 19: The Interchange

  Chapter 20: Out of Position

  Chapter 21: The Talent Scout

  One Day in September

  Chapter 22: Qualifying

  Chapter 23: A Week’s Rest

  Chapter 24: The Countdown

  Chapter 25: Best on Ground

  Chapter 26: One Day in September

  Chapter 27: The Injury List

  Chapter 28: Counting the Cost

  Chapter 29: The End-of-Season Trip

  Chapter 30: In Training

  Chapter 31: The Pre-season Draft

  Acknowledgements

  Copyright Notice

  Loved the book?

  For my daughters, Hannah and Emily, whose stories are just beginning.

  And to my mum, for always believing.

  Dad always said we were lucky that there were two of us. Always someone to shepherd when you had the ball. Someone to pass to when the pressure was on. Someone to cheer when you kicked a goal.

  But when it came down to it, when it really was just us two, that’s not how it turned out at all.

  The mirror used to be my mum’s. Her mum’s before that. It’s oval-shaped with a gold frame and patches of tarnish around the edge, like smudges of dirt that won’t go away. Usually, I keep the mirror covered – I have a strip of black cloth just wide enough to tuck into the crooks of its gilded frame. I saved the remnant from Mum’s sewing cabinet exactly for this reason. But today is different. I need to see what everyone else will see.

  I study my reflection in the glass: mousy brown hair, blotchy skin, hazel eyes probably more brown than green if I’m honest. I’m short with a medium build – years of playing every sport I could are still visible in parts, even though everything seems harder to do now. I feel betrayed by my body. The lean muscles are looser, weaker. My chest has rounded out, full and obvious, despite my efforts to hide it. Hide them. It feels as though all the things that made me strong have become unrecognisable and soft. Of no use to me anymore. And there’s nothing I can do to stop it. Dad says I’m a late bloomer. I should probably be grateful for that, except now I’m paying for it.

  My school uniform doesn’t help. The grey blazer sits huge on my shoulders; the bulky jumper under it two sizes too big. Dad liked the idea of not having to buy another jumper until Year 12. The navy-and-grey tartan dress with a touch of white turns my hips square, and the grey socks and black shiny school shoes make my calves look thick and stunted, robbing me of any hope of even faking average height.

  I sigh, my heart squeezing. It’s bad enough I have to go to a school where I don’t know anyone without the humiliation of looking like a character from one of Mum’s old English girls’ boarding-school novels, with titles like We’re in the Sixth! and Second Form at St Clare’s. At least my breasts don’t stick out as much with my jumper on. I stand a little taller, press my shoulders down. I’ll get used to it. I have to. I mentally calculate how much is left of the school year. It’s March now, so I have the rest of Year 10 plus two whole years to go before I can leave St Mary’s Catholic Ladies’ College. At fifteen weeks a term, that’s one hundred and twenty-six weeks total.

  And I haven’t even started yet.

  I draw the cloth back over the mirror and push it against the wall; its default position.

  I hear Dad through the paper-thin walls even before he knocks. You can’t breathe in this house without announcing it to everyone else – and probably the neighbours, too, on a clear day. ‘Come in.’

  Dad stands in the doorway looking anywhere but at me.

  ‘Almost ready,’ I say, a wide smile firmly in place.

  He looks relieved. We’ve grown used to these moments without ever getting very good at them. Struggling to fill silences, looking at each other without our eyes meeting, talking about everything except what we should talk about. Or even what normal families talk about.

  ‘I could go with you . . .’ he begins, stopping when I shake my head.

  ‘You have to work. I’ll be fine.’ I give him my best ‘she’ll be right’ face as my heart pounds in my ears. ‘It’s not like a grand final or anything.’ I laugh hollowly. It sounds fake even to me.

  ‘No.’ He smiles and studies the walls of my room as though he’s never been here before. Shiny images of large brown-and-gold Falcons peer down at us as though preparing to swoop, dotting the spaces between newspaper pin-ups of Glenthorn Football Club premiership wins, team posters and other memorabilia. Wall-to-wall Glenthorn. Wall-to-wall football.

  My dad looks old in profile, I note with a start. His handsome face is craggier than I remember it. His sandy-grey hair is brushed and smooth at the top, but the ends curl unevenly, and there’s a ragged edge to his appearance. Although he’s shaved for work, his face seems to be cast in a shadow. Smudges under his eyes, probably from his newest bout of insomnia. I glance at the family photo by my bed – all of us laughing at the beach, sandswept and brown from the sun. Dad’s hair is blond-brown, the way mine is by the end of summer. He looks ten years younger, even though the photo was taken barely two years ago.

  I feel Dad’s eyes on me, watching me study the photo – our history shining up at us, taunting us, relentlessly cheerful.

  I blush and look away. So does he.

  ‘Did you see Hardie in the back line against the Vics?’ I manage in the stifling silence that follows. I saw the highlights on World of Sport.

  Dad’s face transforms entirely – a mix of enthusiasm for the subject and relief at having something
to say, the line of his mouth easing instantly. ‘He’s got it all right,’ he says, shaking his head in disbelief. ‘The way he can turn and spin – a cross between Compton and a young Barry Cable. He’s got some mongrel in him, too. They’ll come knocking, mark my words.’

  ‘It’s a different game in the West,’ I counter. ‘Nothing like here.’

  ‘Geography,’ he says, dismissing me. ‘There’s a Best and Fairest waiting for him, just as soon as he can make the cut.’

  ‘If Killer can’t win, your mate Hardie never will either. They don’t give Charlie Medals to Glenthorn players – and they don’t give them to redheads,’ I say, only half-joking. I started this to distract my dad, to make him feel better, except it’s working for me too.

  ‘That’s a myth,’ Dad scoffs.

  ‘Yeah? Name some.’

  Dad shakes his head, eyes narrowing, pretending he’s annoyed. ‘Too smart for your own good.’

  I shrug. ‘Just call it like I see it.’

  ‘You watch,’ Dad mutters as he closes the door behind him, but not before I catch the edge of his smile. It never fails to elate me – that smile. I hardly see it anymore. I always think of it as Mum’s smile since it pretty much disappeared when she died. Like he buried it in the grave beside her.

  I let the warmth of that smile sit with me for a bit then return to my Mighty Falcons notebook lying open on my bed. I touch the page where I pasted a new article on Peter Moss this morning. It’s still wet. A whiff of glue clings to the air. I’ll have to wait to add my analysis beside the newspaper’s. I run my eyes over the list of facts and figures compiled against his name – Best on Ground performances, trouble opponents, strengths and weaknesses, an ever-growing injury list . . . Each number, average and tally printed carefully in my best handwriting. He kicked four goals on Saturday that I still have to add before I can work out his new average.

  ‘Shell!’ Dad calls from the kitchen, startling me back to reality. My heart does something acrobatic in my chest. There’s no avoiding it.

  I study Mossy’s face in its pose for The Sun photographer. His blond hair and red moustache, pictured here in grainy shades of grey, are as familiar to me as my father’s. Perhaps more familiar. I draw strength from Mossy’s confidence, absorb the heat of his sunny smile and stand taller in my square blue-grey uniform. He’s been playing with a dodgy knee and a recurring back strain for two seasons. If he can kick four goals despite all kinds of crippling pain, I can face a room full of strange girls and find a friend among them somewhere.

  That’s what Dad says when something looks too hard or you fall over from trying: Pick yourself up, dust yourself off and get back to position.

  I shut the notebook, slot it neatly between my mother’s leather-bound copy of My Brilliant Career, which she gave me when I turned ten, and the family photo from the beach, and pat them three times each for good luck. I grab my schoolbag and head out the door.

  I stare at St Mary’s Catholic Ladies’ College as if the bricks themselves will tell me my future. Iron gates block the entrance, the points like sharp spears aimed at heaven. The red-brick building looms behind them, more like a jail than a girls’ school.

  Dad fought to get this ‘good Catholic school’ to accept my scholarship application after the deadline. He’d never seemed happy with Godless Glenvalley High, especially now I was a teenager. Or as he says, ‘becoming a woman’. I guess he’d counted on Mum for all that. St Mary’s probably saw me as a soft touch – no mum on the scene or anything they’d call a ‘family’ around to keep me grounded. A soul they could save. Of course they didn’t say that’s why they accepted me. They said it was because I blitzed the English test.

  ‘You have to know when to draw a line,’ Dad said that last extra-horrible week at Glenvalley High, when the silences had seemed longer and the loneliness beyond anything I could imagine, ‘between last Saturday and next.’

  I’d thought Year 10 would be better, not worse. But no one could forget, and neither could I. In their eyes Shelley Brown was broken. Half the person she used to be.

  In my eyes too.

  So I gave in to Dad, even though the school year had started, because I couldn’t face another day there. That’s what I’m doing halfway through Term One of Year 10 and already late for class.

  I’m drawing a line.

  I heave the new, creaky schoolbag onto my shoulder, weighed down with books I haven’t opened. I pass the main entrance to follow the six-foot-high red-brick fence to an open gate further on, half wishing the fence barring entry would never end. Sorry, Dad! I would have gone in but I couldn’t find the gate . . .

  Not likely.

  I keep going, my legs heavy as I make my way through the deserted school grounds. It’s quiet. Eerily quiet for a school. I almost give up. Let the tide that seems determined to pull me home take me away, back to the things I know. But I don’t. I keep wading, pushing against the force, knowing there’s no point putting it off. I’m as ready as I’ll ever be.

  I follow a sign pointing towards reception, where a plain, pasty-skinned woman asks who I am and why I’m there. I give her my name and she directs me to a seat in the waiting room. After a few minutes a tall woman with burnt-orange hair approaches me, her lipstick a crooked pink gash across her face. She wears a skirt just like one I saw my mum give to the Salvos years before, and her cheeks each have a pink spot. This, I discover, is my new principal.

  Mrs Brandt smiles and shakes my hand. ‘We’ve been waiting for you, Michelle. I’m glad you could make it.’ She keeps smiling but her voice has a briskness, a note of warning.

  I’m late and she isn’t happy.

  ‘Um, the tram takes a long time . . .’ I start, thinking about the blonde sun-tanned St Mary’s girl at the tram stop. It took me five minutes to gather the courage to ask her for directions and I almost didn’t, except getting lost seemed an even worse idea than looking stupid. But the girl pointed me to the wrong tram heading the wrong way, so I ended up feeling both lost and stupid. I picture her safely in class, telling her friends about the dumb new kid who’s probably halfway to the city by now.

  ‘Found your way all right then?’ Mrs Brandt’s voice is a mix of light and dark – ready to go either way. ‘I know those trams can be tricky the first time.’

  The blonde girl’s smug directions throb in my head. I nod and smile, trying to think of something to say that won’t sound idiotic.

  Mrs Brandt waits for me to speak like she’s deciding whether I’m simple, and she has a kind of ready concern in her eyes just in case I am.

  ‘Has class started yet?’ I rasp, burning with humiliation.

  She gives me that same unsteady smile, as though she doesn’t know what she’s dealing with. ‘Let’s go and meet your new classmates then, shall we, Michelle?’

  ‘Shelley.’

  ‘Sorry, dear?’

  ‘Shelley. I like to be called Shelley.’

  ‘We don’t much encourage diminutives here, Michelle. You were given that name for a reason.’

  ‘Still . . .’ I persist. I really hate my name.

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with Michelle,’ she says, eyeing me up and down, measuring me. ‘From Saint Michael, of course. A very honourable saint to be named after.’

  I wonder if she thinks there are any dishonourable saints, and if there are, whether it would be okay to change my name if I were named after them? ‘I don’t like it,’ I reply, smiling to make sure I don’t seem impolite.

  ‘Not for you to decide, dear. Your mother thought it was perfectly suitable or she wouldn’t have named you after him.’

  ‘She didn’t, Dad did. She used to call me “Shelley” with an “e”, like the writer.’

  ‘You’re familiar with Shelley’s poetry?’

  ‘Actually, she’s better known for her novels.’

  ‘She?’

  ‘Mary Shelley.’

  Mrs Brandt sniffs a little, as though she’s just smelt something unpleasant. �
�When people talk about Shelley, they usually mean the poet, Percy.’

  ‘Not my mum. She said Mary Shelley was a genius. Ahead of her time.’

  ‘Yes, well. Be that as it may, I’m sure if that were her preference she’d have indicated so in your application.’

  ‘She didn’t write my application, my dad did. My mum’s dead.’ The words seem to leap from me without my permission, but they stop her in her tracks, her smile freezing on those bright pink lips.

  ‘Of course. I’m sorry, your father mentioned that.’ And while her face matches mine in its ruddy shade, I don’t feel the satisfaction I should. Or want to. It still feels new, saying it like that, even after all this time. Because everyone knew. The whole of Glenvalley, anyway. That’s the point of changing schools, I remind myself: I get to start again.

  ‘Shall we go?’ she continues, but gently now. Her whole attitude has shifted – the way she carries her head, how she looks at me. It hits me then, like it always does, what I’m seeing: Concern. Sadness. Sympathy. A hard knot sits in my throat, the blood runs thick in my head. It actually hurts, sometimes, to have someone care.

  I raise my chin, meet Mrs Brandt’s gaze with a strength I don’t feel and fight the tears that sting my eyes. ‘Please call me Shelley.’

  Mrs Brandt studies me as though deciding something important. And then, like a light has switched on, her whole expression shifts. ‘Okay, Mich–’ She stops herself and clears her throat. ‘Shelley. Let’s go to class.’

  Thirty girls’ faces look up as one when we enter the classroom. Some look bored, some look curious, others just stare blankly. Thirty different girls with three different hairstyles. A lot like my other school except everyone is in uniform and no one with hair longer than their shoulder wears it down.

  Sister Brigid stands by her desk, a small dark-skinned woman with large thick reading glasses and a plain green dress. She isn’t wearing a habit – a lot of the younger nuns don’t – and her hair is short, straight and neat. Her hands are clasped in front of her, and when she steps down from the platform, she almost disappears she’s so tiny. But when she opens her mouth she seems enormous.