Pictures of Lily

clear of those emus though. I didn’t trust the way they looked, with their beady little eyes.’
    He laughs and I remember the queue of people waiting, and say, ‘I’d better move on.’
    ‘You’re alright, our replacements are here.’
    The woman I recognise as Janine the Map Bearer comes through the gates on the other side of the small enclosure. She’s carrying another koala.
    ‘Hello, there,’ Janine says to me and I step aside as Ben lifts Cindy off her perch. ‘How’s the jetlag?’
    ‘Not bad, thanks.’ I remember hearing the word ‘jetlag’ from my dad when he went to America once.
    ‘Do you want to come with me to put Cindy back?’ Ben asks me, positioning the koala over his shoulder like a baby.
    ‘Um,’ I reply hesitantly. I don’t want to get in his way, but I still have some time to kill before Tasmanian Devil feeding time at eleven. ‘Yes please, if that’s okay?’
    ‘Of course it is.’
    I follow him out of the gates as Cindy looks back at me, languidly chewing on a leaf.
    ‘How many koalas do you have?’ I ask.
    ‘About fifty,’ he calls back to me. ‘The ones who get photographed with the tourists are only allowed twenty minutes per day of handling so we need a fair few, especially if one or more of them are under the weather.’
    He walks to the nearest of two koala houses, or ‘lofts’ as I later discover they’re called. Several koalas can be seen snuggled into the branches of a gum tree. Ben climbs over the wall and gently places Cindy on a branch where she carefully ascends into the darkness of the loft’s wooden eaves. There’s a sign that says Shhh . . . Please be quiet. Koalas have very sensitive hearing , so when Ben’s walkie-talkie starts to crackle, he leaps over the wall and hurries away, indicating that I should follow him.
    ‘Yep?’ he says.
    ‘Ben, it’s Michael,’ I hear over the buzzing noise of the walkie-talkie. ‘Got a problem with one of the wombats. Can you do the devil talk?’
    ‘Sure. I’ve got Lily here with me, actually.’
    ‘How’s she getting on?’
    ‘She’s just met Cindy.’
    I hear a low-throated chuckle and Ben purses his lips, trying to keep a straight face.
    ‘Can you bring her back to the staffroom for lunch?’
    ‘Will do.’
    ‘Thanks, mate.’
    One last crackle and the line goes dead.
    ‘You don’t have to look after me,’ I say quickly.
    ‘Come on,’ he replies, his blue eyes crinkling at the corners.
    ‘Where are we going?’
    ‘To get the devil food.’ I start to follow him along a path lined with low dense shrubs and grasses. ‘And you’re going to tell me how your mum and Michael’s date went last night,’ he adds.
    ‘Ha! Well, they seemed happy enough this morning.’
    ‘Sleep in the same room?’
    ‘That’s a bit nosy, isn’t it?’
    He laughs. ‘That’s a yes, then.’
    I tut at him before saying, ‘Come on then, your turn: who came first, the koala or my mum?’
    ‘What makes you think their names aren’t a coincidence?’
    ‘I don’t believe in coincidences.’
    ‘Alright then, Michael hooked up with her the week before Cindy was brought in.’
    ‘So you named the koala after my mum? I reckon she’d be flattered. Feel a bit sorry for the koala though. What happened to her? The koala, I mean.’
    ‘Her mother was hit by a car. Cindy got thrown off her back and the driver brought her in.’
    The smile drops from my face. ‘The mother died?’
    ‘I’m afraid so.’
    ‘That’s terrible!’
    He gives a little shrug. ‘It happens.’
    We arrive at a small single-storey brick building with a green corrugated-iron roof. Ben unlocks the door and goes through, holding it back for me and simultaneously switching on the lights. A long row of fluorescents flicker into life, revealing a large room filled with bags of what I assume is animal feed. The air smells musty, but not unpleasant. Ben walks determinedly towards a fridge and pulls it open. He hands me a silver bowl from a nearby shelf.
    ‘Hold this, would you?’
    ‘What’s it for?’
    ‘Devil food.’ He pulls some furry yellow objects out of the fridge and puts them in the bowl. It takes a moment for it to register that the objects are dead chicks.
    ‘Argh!’ I shriek, dropping the bowl with a clatter and clutching my hand to my chest as the birds take one final flight. Ben almost jumps out of his skin.
    ‘Sorry,’ I apologise. ‘I didn’t realise what they were.’ I quickly bend down and pick up the bowl, but