Water under the Bridge

by Lily Malone

‘But we won’t know that till someone makes an offer, I guess,’ Ella added.

  * * *

  At that first Home Open, the people that weren’t turned away by Jake’s whipper-snipping clucked about how expensive the house was while they dropped choc-chip cookie crumbs all over the jarrah floors, and Ella smiled till her face ached.

  She held the second Home Open a week later on a Saturday and got the half of town that hadn’t come to the first one because Saturday suited them better. They clucked about how expensive it was while they dropped banana muffin crumbs all over the jarrah floors she’d swept to a sparkle.

  Ella smiled till her face ached and inhaled the relaxing scent of cinnamon for an hour after she’d brought the Open Now signs in and everyone had gone home.

  Then she sat herself in Irma Honeychurch’s kitchen and had a damn good cry.

  CHAPTER

  5

  ‘Erik, I’m going officially nuts out here. I don’t know what to do. It’s like my son is a stranger in my own house. He won’t talk to me. The school called me today. Sam pushed a kid at lunchtime over a game of handball. Handball! And that’s the second time since school started. He’s only been there three weeks! If he gets a third white slip, they can suspend him. He’s ten years old and he could get kicked out of school!’ All of that came out in such a rush that Ella felt dizzy.

  ‘Do you want that I come at the weekend? Talk to him?’

  When Erik Brecker said those magic words, Ella remembered every reason why she loved him and why she’d married him. Erik had always been there for her. Unconditionally. Unreservedly. ‘Would you do that? Sam would love that. I would love that. I could use some adult company.’

  ‘I will work this out, Ella. I will change some session times. Okay?’

  ‘Thanks, Erik. Thanks so much. We’ll see you Saturday, okay? I’ll clear everything off the couch.’

  She ended the call. It was four in the afternoon on a Wednesday. Sam should be home any minute and the house looked like it had been mugged. Breakfast dishes were stacked in the sink because Sam forgot to load the soap powder in the dishwasher last night and it hadn’t yet finished its cycle when she flew out of the house this morning. The kitchen counter had school consent forms she needed to sign and get back for an excursion next week (she hadn’t paid that $32 yet) and her handbag had spilled as she’d thrown it in her rush to get to the landline to catch Erik’s call, dumping business cards, her phone, half a dozen brochures of the Honeychurch house, her hairbrush and lipstick, and the two apples she hadn’t got around to eating for lunch.

  This was her life.

  This was supposed to be her new life as a successful real estate saleswoman bringing up her son in a small country town, but it looked exactly like the old life in Perth she’d tried to leave behind. Just without Erik.

  Ella sat her butt on the bar stool, elbows to the countertop, and dropped her head to her hands.

  That’s how Sam found her when he walked in the door a few minutes later and dumped his school bag on top of her apple.

  ‘Hi, Mum.’

  ‘Hey. How you going?’

  Sam opened the fridge door and shut it pretty much straight away. He moved on to the pantry. ‘There’s never any food to eat in this house.’

  ‘Have an apple, Sam. There’s plenty of fruit.’

  ‘I’m sick of fruit. All the other kids get a bakery order for lunch. Taking a cheese sandwich every day is crap.’

  ‘Don’t use that word. I hate that kind of language. We talked about this.’

  Sam came out of the pantry with a box of sultanas in his hand. ‘Can I have these?’

  Ella waved an impatient yes as she got off the stool.

  ‘Why can’t I ever have a bakery order?’ Sam pressed.

  ‘Maybe if you do the right thing at school all week you could have a lunch order on a Friday. If you strung one good week of behaviour together where I don’t have to—’ she was very close to screeching lose my shit.

  Ella counted to five, praying for patience, and started again. ‘You tell me why I should pay for you to have a lunch order when you can’t even remember to run the dishwasher for me at night? I don’t know what to do with you, mate. I’m trying real hard to make this work—our move to Chalk Hill—but I don’t think you’re trying at all.’

  Sam flared like a struck match. ‘I hate Chalk Hill. I wish we’d never left Perth. It’s dumb here. It’s so dumb, Mum. Why’d you have to drag me out here away from my friends?’

  Ella flared every bit as hard and fast. ‘What friends? Those ones who kept getting you in trouble? Those great friends who threw rocks at cars on South Street and the police got called out? Those same friends who broke the window on Mrs Magnusson’s car down on the corner? Mrs Magnusson always used to have a lolly or a muffin, or something for you when you were a little boy. Always. So don’t talk to me about those friends! Those were not your friends, Sam.’

  ‘I said I was sorry about Mrs Magnusson’s car. You don’t have to go on and on about it. You didn’t have to make us leave home.’

  ‘I do have to go on and on because you just don’t get it.’

  Sam’s lip didn’t quiver like it would have done when he was seven or eight, or even nine, but he couldn’t hold her glare and his chin lowered.

  All the anger leaked out of Ella. ‘The school called me today.’

  His hand stopped midway to throwing a fistful of sultanas in his mouth.

  ‘They said you pushed a boy in the playground over a game of handball.’

  ‘He was yelling at me that I was out. I wasn’t out,’ Sam said.

  ‘Why do you have to make it so competitive? It’s supposed to be fun. You’ve got to learn to let it go, Sammy. It’s only a game.’

  ‘All the kids were in my face, Mum. All the kids. They were yelling at me that I was out. I saw it and the ball didn’t bounce twice on my side. It didn’t.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter whether the ball bounced twice. You can’t push a boy because he doesn’t agree with you. You have to find a way to work it out without using your fists.’ Ella leaned forward, trying to will Sam to understand. ‘Otherwise you’ll hurt someone one day. You have to learn to control it, Sammy. If you can’t control your temper now over something in a playground that really doesn’t matter, how are you going to control yourself when you’re older and things get so much more important?’

  ‘They make me so angry. It upsets me when they yell at me and it wasn’t my fault.’

  ‘I know it’s hard, Sam, but please can you try? Just try to let things go when they don’t really matter. Don’t get so angry over the little things. Okay? Can you do that for me? I’m trying so hard to make a go of this new job. I want things to be better for us. I’m trying, okay? I’ll try to be a better mum and not get grumpy if you can try to be my best boy. The best boy you can. That’s all I’m asking for, okay?’ She swiped at the tears that were trying to sneak down her cheeks.

  ‘Okay.’

  This time Sam crumbled towards her and Ella wrapped his skinny body in her arms, tucking his head into her breast. She inhaled the scent that had been her son’s since she first sunk her nose into his skin when his hair was wet and scrawly in the hospital the day he was born, and Erik held her hand, panted with her and hugged them both.

  Why couldn’t Sam be more like Erik and less like his father?

  CHAPTER

  6

  ‘It’s too expensive, Harvey,’ Ella said, when her licensee asked her how things were going at the Thursday sales meeting. ‘I haven’t had anyone come through who isn’t a neighbour or a tyre-kicker or a distant cousin or a bloke who can remember when his kid sister fell out of the mulberry tree. I haven’t had a single call off the website. Nothing from the ads in the paper.’

  ‘You got the price on the website?’ Harvey asked, sipping the cup of tea Ella made him, rocking on his chair.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Take it off. Have it price on application. That might
get some calls.’

  ‘Can I do that without speaking to the owner?’ She didn’t want to admit to Harvey how hard it was to get Jake to answer her calls.

  ‘Technically, probably not, but I don’t think Jake would mind.’

  ‘You know and I know it’s overpriced to bu-blazes.’ Ella wanted to say buggery and had to stop herself.

  ‘It’s a development lot zoned commercial on a prime street, Ella. Be a bit positive,’ Harvey’s son Bob said from the meeting room door.

  ‘I am being positive, Bob. I’m positive it’s about two hundred thousand dollars over my appraisal,’ Ella said.

  Bob tilted his chin at her. ‘You want my advice?’

  No. Ella gritted her teeth. ‘Sure.’

  ‘Hold a Friday night Home Open and offer wine and cheese.’

  Ella wasn’t sure if Bob was pulling her leg. ‘Why would that bring along anyone different who hasn’t come Saturday or Sunday?’

  ‘Not everyone likes muffins and cookies. Wine and cheese is a richer crowd,’ Bob said, before he walked away. Bob didn’t always attend the weekly sales meetings. Ella was sure he thought they were beneath him.

  ‘Was he serious?’ she asked Harvey.

  ‘Why wouldn’t he be? We’re a team here. We want you to succeed.’

  Ella bit her lip and thought, Team, Schmeem. Robert (myfriends-call-me-Bob) Begg hadn’t wasted any opportunity to let her know he was top dog around here.

  ‘Do we have a budget for things like wine and cheese?’ she asked Harvey. ‘Nice wine and cheese.’

  ‘How nice?’

  ‘Oh … like twenty bucks a bottle, maybe?’

  Harvey went a bit pale.

  ‘Fifteen?’ Ella offered.

  Then Harvey brightened. ‘How about we meet you 50:50. Company pays half. Ten bucks each.’

  Crikey. ‘Thanks, Harvey. That would be great.’

  Ella took her coffee and went back to her space to ponder. She refused to call her space an office. What she had was a chair and a bit of the bench near the kitchen, where she argued for elbow room with a stack of under offer stickers, sold signs, presentation folders and a printer that hadn’t worked for years, but that no one was game to throw out in case they needed it one day.

  Harvey and Bob each had a glass-fronted office. Harvey and Bob had matching coffee cups, name plaques on their doors and personalised pens.

  Harvey and Bob had clients, contacts, listings, phone calls to return, leads …

  Ella cut herself short. It wasn’t like her to whinge about things that were out of her control. How many times had Erik reminded her of that when they’d compared split times at the end of a training session? It is on you, Ella. You are the one in charge. You cannot control what the others will do in the pool but you can control what you will do in the race. Work it into the turn. Push off the wall with everything you have got and build, build, build.

  She used to build, build, build till her arms were on fire.

  Right. Ella picked up the phone. She dialled Jake’s mobile phone and waited through the first rings.

  At the edge of her vision Bob sat in his office, hands behind his head, talking big with someone on speaker phone. Between them, Harvey and Bob Begg knew every man and his dog in and out of town. They’d just about sold every man the house in which he lived, and the house in which his damn dog lived, and that made it pretty bloody impossible to convince anyone in Chalk Hill to bypass the Beggs and let her sell their house.

  ‘It’ll take time, Ella,’ Harvey had said, when she’d come to see him at the end of January, her first full month at work where she’d door-knocked all the homes on her lead lists in Chalk Hill, talking to people, handing out business cards.

  ‘You’ve reached Jake. Leave a message.’

  Sigh. Ella waited for the beep.

  She did get a modest retainer from Harvey, thank goodness, to help her while she started up, but $500 a week didn’t go far once you took out rent. She was already dipping into her savings and she’d have to pay her retainer back once she started making commissions.

  That was why Irma Honeychurch’s house was so important. It was her only listing. Her only hope for a sale.

  Ella wasn’t stupid. The Honeychurch home was over-priced, and she knew that’s why Bob hadn’t seriously fought her for it. Harvey had thrown her a bone when he’d flicked the listing in her direction, and all she could do was chew. Chew until her gums bled because this was her new life and this is what she wanted.

  The beep took forever. Jake must have a heap of messages.

  Ella glanced at Bob. He had paperwork in a pile on his desk, pen poised above the forms. Was he writing another contract? Any second now he’d be ringing the made-a-sale bell.

  Beep. Finally.

  ‘Hi, Jake, this is Ella Davenport. Sorry that I’ve missed you, feel free to get back to me if you’d like. Just a quick update on activity at your place at the Home Open last weekend—I had a good lot of people through but they were mostly neighbours again—my bet is you would have known most of them—so I don’t have any leads at this stage. The house is still getting views on all the major websites but the website isn’t generating many leads. I really think it’s about price mostly, though the house could also do with a paint. Someone commented at the last Home Open about the verandah posts. They’re a bit flaky.’

  There was a pause. Not a comfortable one. Maybe she shouldn’t criticise his nan’s house over the phone.

  Bit late for that now.

  ‘Anyway. I thought we might try a different style Home Open this week. Do a wine and cheese night on Friday. Um, that’s tomorrow night. Okay? I hope that’s fine with you. Call me if you’ve any problems with that plan. Okay?’

  He wouldn’t call. He never did.

  She had the least motivated seller ever.

  * * *

  So, Ella thought Nanna’s place could do with a lick of paint, did she?

  And Ella thought he needed to adjust his price?

  And some busybody said the verandah balustrade could do with sanding?

  Fine.

  Jake had listened long enough. He erased the message.

  He might not want to sell the house, but he sure as heck didn’t like the townsfolk thinking he’d let his nan’s place run to wrack and ruin.

  Nor did he need his brother, Abel, on the phone every five minutes asking if there’d been any action on the sale front.

  ‘Give Ella time, Abe. It’s only been on the market for six weeks.’

  ‘We should have listed the place with Bob Begg. Told you that,’ Abe had said.

  ‘Why are you in such a bloody hurry to sell it anyway?’

  And that was when Abe always made some excuse about the restaurant getting busy, and he’d hang up.

  He’d had enough of playing nice with his youngest brother. This whole charade of a sale was all about finding out what was up with Abe and why he was so desperate for his share of the proceeds from the sale of Nanna’s house.

  All that put Jake in a grumpy mood as he drove up Chalk Hill Bridge Road on Friday afternoon after taking an early pass from Honeychurch Hardware and Timber. He parked his Landcruiser on the verge of Nanna Irma’s house, pressing just hard enough on the brakes to raise a satisfying grumpy skid, then got out of the car.

  Jake snatched an extension cord out of the back of the Landcruiser and slung it over his shoulder, got a hand around his sander, caught up a stack of 100 grit sheets in the other hand and bumped the rear door shut. He almost tripped on Ella Davenport’s For Sale sign stuck at a perfect right angle where the path met Nanna’s front gate.

  He opened the old gate, noticed it didn’t exactly gleam anymore, plus it squeaked, and wondered whether Ella had people suggesting he restore the gate to a shine too and oil it.

  Up the path. Up the steps.

  He dumped his gear near Nanna Irma’s doormat.

  Hold it. This wasn’t the doormat that had welcomed his and hundreds of other feet over the ye
ars. This was a shiny new bright blue.

  Maybe someone complained about the old tatty brown one.

  Was ultra-determined, super-persistent Ella Davenport buying new doormats now too, or would Harvey Begg say that was all part of the Begg & Robertson package?

  Jake kinked his neck to one side, then the other, and tried to force his shoulders to relax, and that was when he realised something was off.

  The solid front timber door was open, but the screen door was locked shut.

  ‘Hello?’ he called inside.

  There was no answer.

  Jake frowned. It was hardly the most responsible thing for a real estate agent to do, leaving the front door open even if the screen door was locked. If the last person to lock up at the hardware shop missed locking a gate, he’d have hauled them over the coals.

  He took Nanna’s spare keys from his pocket and opened the screen door, stepping through into a house that smelled nice enough to stop him mid-stride and make him take another sniff. Cinnamon? Apple pie?

  Since when did they make cleaning products that smelled good enough to eat? It must be something Ella had used to polish the old timbers.

  Moving quickly, ignoring the growl of his stomach, Jake plugged his extension cord into the power outlet in the hallway and ran the line back outside, letting it wedge the screen door open a crack. He fit the 100 grit into the sander, pulled a mask over his mouth and let it rip, sanding flakes of navy paint off the balustrade, keeping his head down.

  * * *

  Not again!

  ‘Jake?’ Ella tried again, louder. ‘Jake!’

  Her infuriating, cockatiel-loving client had his big burly back to her, and Ella couldn’t get closer without getting covered in a cloud of old paint and sawdust. Her hands were full with a tray of cheese and crackers, plus she was wearing her favourite white shirt and a crisp pale pink skirt, and all that dust would totally ruin the efficient, classic, agent-in-control look she was searching for so desperately.

  Ella checked her watch. She was five minutes early; the Home Open began at 4:30 pm. She didn’t need any extra time to air out the house because she’d already opened the windows earlier when she’d called in to offload the wine and wineglasses. That was when she’d done her cinnamon stick trick.