Leaving Hollow Tree

Oscar and Sarah Lahey went back to the family farmhouse at Hollow Tree for the last time on a Friday, to pack what they would take to New Norfolk. They had been living at their grandparents' house at 19 Hobart Road since their parents left for Europe, and the arrangement was now permanent. Patrick and Jane Lahey had been confirmed as their guardians under the terms of Greg and Pip's wills, which named them as the children's carers in the event of both parents' deaths.

The work took the whole day. Patrick drove up with the children in the morning. Greg's brother Robert followed in his plumbing van, and Linda and Richard Longey came in their own car. Patrick spent most of the day in Greg's shed, packing tools into crates, a few of which Oscar asked to keep. Linda took the kitchen. Jane did not come. She said there was too much to do in New Norfolk, and nobody pressed her.

The children were each given the afternoon to choose what to take from their own rooms and from the rest of the house. Sarah took her books, her mother's reading glasses from the bedside table, and the quilt from her parents' bed. Oscar took his rugby gear, his father's drafting set, and very little else. He spent much of the afternoon walking the fence lines he and Greg had repaired over the winter.

The chickens went to a neighbour down the road who had offered to take them. The furniture stayed. The executors had decided the property would be kept in trust for the children rather than sold, and leased out until they were old enough to decide what to do with it themselves.

Patrick locked the house a little before dark. Sarah cried on the drive down the valley. Oscar sat in the front seat and watched the road. They were enrolled at their new schools in New Norfolk the following Monday.