Well, I'm taking a bit of a break from writing like a narrative. Not much has happened for about a week, except for a few important things which I'll quickly update you on:
My brother did come to justice. When I finally trudged through the front door (I'd been in that storeroom for just over three hours!), I immediately told Mum and Dad – who were home by that time – what my brother had done. They weren't impressed, and he's been forbidden to leave the house for a week. For someone who enjoys socialising with people, grounding is a pretty decent punishment.



Mum's X ray and test results came through a few days later, and apparently she'd torn the cartilage in the second joint of one of her fingers. Although there were no broken bones as such, this almost guaranteed that she'd have shocking osteoarthritis in that joint later on in her life. She seemed to accept this, though. She got back to work pretty soon after that. It was difficult to work with the plants with a bandage on her finger, as the bandage became repeatedly soaked with whatever was in the plants, and generally stayed that way for the rest of the day. She didn't seem to mind; in fact, she said it had an almost soothing effect on her injured finger and started investigating whether the plants had anti-inflammatory properties.



My Dad enlisted my help the other day. I was in my room, happily typing away at a novel I was writing, when I heard a knock on my door.
"Come in!" I called, quickly saving and minimising the story.
Dad wandered in. "Ellie, I was wondering if you're up to a bit of songwriting," he said.
I laughed. "I'm not much of a musician, Dad."
"No, no, not the music," he said. "I thought you might like to help with the lyrics."
I raised my eyebrows. "OK," I agreed. "What's it about?"
He led me downstairs to his music room. It had such a different atmosphere to my mum's lab – where the lab was clean, white and smelt of plants and detergent, the music room was cosy and cheerful. I noticed the electric piano was turned on and Dad's laptop had a document open on the screen.



"Apparently," Dad said, sitting down on the piano stool, "I've been commissioned to compose the song for the next Australian Idol winner."
My eyes bugged. "Really?" I asked. Dad had written for Idols before, but never the winning single that they'd release if they won. This was a big deal for him, since the single invariably made it into the top ten on the music charts, meaning Dad would be raking in the royalties if it did.
Usually, though, Dad liked to write songs that were cliched and self-mocking, and I wondered if he was going to do the same for a song that was destined to be so big. The stakes were pretty high.
"So is this going to be a serious song?" I asked. "Or one of your mock-songs?"
"Oh, it'll be a mock-song," he said, grinning slyly. "I can't wait to see what'll happen to this one."
I grinned. "What have you got so far?"
"I'll show you…" Dad started to play what he'd written, giving me a bit of a commentary as he went. "OK, so it starts off with these repeating empty fifths, played gently with a moderately slow tempo, see…just simple, but used in so many songs…and it uses a standard chord progression, one-five-six-four…and the lyrics I've got so far go a little bit like this…"
He cleared his throat and began to sing along to the soft piano backing.
"I'll be your shelter in a storm,
And in the dark, I'll be your light
And when it's cold I'll keep you warm,
All through the long cold winter's night…"
"That sounds really familiar," I said, and he nodded, still playing.
"It's one of those uplifting, hopeful, I'll-be-there songs," Dad said, smirking. "I was wondering if you'd like to write the chorus, here are the chords…"



He played some chords on the piano, looking at me. I glanced from the lyrics on the screen to the keys as Dad was playing them.
"Um…" I thought out loud. "How about…something about…looking inside yourself?"
"Sounds good," Dad said, nodding. I typed it in.
Dad kept playing chords, and I kept thinking. "What about…listening to your heart?"
"That was the title of one of the past Idol songs, but…yeah, chuck it in," Dad said, nodding.
Eventually, as Dad played, I cobbled together the corniest lyrics I could come up with. Dad read through them, added the second verse and the bridge, and laughed.
"If this goes to number one," he said, still chuckling, "it will be hilarious."


A few days later, I noticed Mum had removed the bandage from around her finger.
"Your bandage is gone," I said, surprised.
"Yeah," Mum said, glancing at her hand. "My finger doesn’t hurt much any more." She frowned. "Doesn't hurt at all, in fact. I think it's time to book another X ray."
They drove into Eridessa for another X ray the following day. When the results came back, however, both Mum and Edward were shocked. Edward suggested that Mum have another test at the hospital, similar to the one she'd had the first time. So she did that, and when those results came back, they stunned everyone.
It seemed that the injury had healed much, much faster than expected. Mum's cartilage was now completely normal again. Which, in itself, was completely abnormal.
Mum, of course, was convinced that the plants had something to do with it, since her bandages had been routinely soaked in the extract from the plants every day, as she said it was soothing. Consequently, she spent increasing amounts of time in her lab, conducting investigations and experiments throughout the day and long into the night.
Finally, one day, she came striding out of her lab, grinning from ear to ear. I just happened to be coming down the stairs at the time to see this.
"Ellie!" Mum said, before she reached over and inexplicably gave me a hug.



I was surprised. "Wow, I should come downstairs more often!"
"Have you seen your father?" Mum asked, still excited.
"He's probably in his music room…why?"
"I've just made a big breakthrough," Mum said, sounding thrilled. Intrigued, I followed her into Dad's room.
"Honey," she said to Dad as he typed on his laptop.
"Mmm?" he murmured, still typing. He paused, rolled his chair over to his electric piano, and played a short sequence of notes before rolling back to his computer and typing again.
"I've just made what I think is a really big breakthrough," Mum said excitedly.
Dad finally stopped typing and looked up at Mum. "Really?"



"Well, you know how I thought those plants had anti-inflammatory properties," Mum said. Dad nodded, and Mum went on. "I kept conducting some further tests, especially after all my X ray results showed my cartilage had grown back so quickly. Anyway, to cut a long story short, it appears that the extract from those plants promotes cartilage growth and repair."
Dad blinked. "Cartilage growth and repair?" he repeated. Then his eyes widened. "What about regeneration?"
Mum nodded. "That too," Mum said. "And I faxed all my results over to Bosrich, who then tried out the experiment on a patient who had almost no cartilage left in his knee because of arthritis. And you wouldn't believe it, but after a few days, he started growing fresh cartilage in that joint! The plants seem to kick-start the stem cells to start producing new cartilage tissue, and self-repair the damage caused by degenerative arthritis."
Mum paused for a moment for dramatic effect. "If all goes to plan, I think I've just found the cure for osteoarthritis!"
Dad's jaw dropped, and he got up to hug Mum. "Honey, that's fantastic," he murmured.
Bosrich was the main pharmaceutical research facility that my Mum worked for, and they were also connected to a big hospital. If Mum had found a cure for arthritis, for which there was currently no cure, she would be improving the lives of people all around the world. It was a discovery of tremendous proportions.
Mum and Dad stood there for a while longer, discussing Mum's work. I started to get a little bored, and went to leave.
"Ellie," Dad called as I left. "I've almost finished the final score for our song."
"OK," I said, "what's the title?"
"'Together'," he smirked. "And I've just recorded the demo, too."
"Hey, does that mean that if the song is big, I'll get some of the royalties?" I asked, grinning.
Dad nodded. "And your name on the liner notes."
"Cool," I said, grinning from ear to ear. It was a big day for the Larsons.