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Lucinda sat high in her neighbour's plum tree and practised kissing with her friend Trudi. They ate plums and kissed once, a peck on the lips. They laughed, ate more plums, and dropped wet red stones to the earth. The almond-shaped pits bounced, tap tap tap on the branches, leaving bloodred marks drying in the summer heat. A light wind riffled the mass of leaves shading Lucinda and Trudi from the view of their neighbour Mr Bock, or so they thought. They spied him through gaps in the branches walking past his kitchen window. What they didn't know was that Adam Bock had seen them alright. He'd watched them every day for the past week stealing in through the broken fence after school, climbing his tree, eating the plums, kissing each other. Every day they kissed, just the once, a glance. "Girls will be girls," he told himself, remembering his own childhood summers.

- Gina Cole

 

Old man Bock filled a cast-iron saucepan with water and quartered plums, placed it on the gas flame, added sugar and lemon juice and squinted against the setting sun shining into his kitchen. He stirred the ruby red mixture, dissolved the sugar, turned up the heat and brought the fruit to a rolling boil, all the while watching Lucinda and Trudi sitting in his tree and eating his plums. He saw them every morning, too, meeting up on the footpath and walking off together in their primary school uniforms, blue polo neck shirts and grey shorts. He knew Lucinda's name. Her mother Marieta, a tall, dark woman, often called her in for dinner around this time.

Mr Bock caught sight of Marieta leaning from her back door turning her head this way and that, searching for her daughter.

"Lucinda! Lusi! Lako mai. Dinner time." Lucinda reached for a large red plum at the end of a long bough. On a lower branch Trudi slow bounced, her eyes on Lucinda, her insides buzzing from the touch of Lucinda's lips on hers. The branch creaked under Trudi's weight. Swaying leaves swished in time with her curly red hair. The tree played along, bending its limb, its hand extended, carrying Trudi's jubilant heart.

Lucinda copied Trudi's up and down bounce with more exuberance, without any thought for the effect of this motion on the branch holding her on its lichen-covered length. The bouncing on Lucinda's side grew too raucous, too much for the tree. It flicked her off and sprang back, throwing Lucinda to the ground. The fall wasn't very high. But the suddenness of it caught her by surprise. She screamed and landed thump! on her back. The shock of her diaphragm going into spasm sent her mind reeling. She struggled to breathe. Her lungs refused to inflate.