by Cathryn Hein
At the gate, she hesitated. Before, Em would have walked round the back, knocked and pushed the door open, calling out the way Karen, Sally and Josh did. But she wasn’t a teenager any more, and that degree of familiarity was a privilege she’d forsaken. Straight shouldered, she opened the latch, walked down the path and knocked.
The front door opened. A puffy-faced woman with an orange satin scarf tied around her head regarded her with bewilderment for a half-second before flinging her arms open.
‘Em!’
Em fell into her embrace, eyes itching as she felt the fierceness of Michelle’s hug.
Finally, Michelle released her hold and stood back, her hands still gripped on Em’s arms. ‘Look at you!’
‘How are you, Michelle?’
Josh’s mum smiled. ‘Oh, you know.’
‘I’m sorry, I should have been in touch —’
‘Oh, shush. You’re here now. That’s all that matters.’ Michelle stood aside, her face now suffused with colour and excitement, and beckoned. ‘Your timing couldn’t be more perfect. I’ve just finished a batch of fairy cakes. They’re for Karen’s baby shower tomorrow but she won’t mind if we pinch a couple.’ She pressed a hand against Em’s shoulder. ‘Go on. Off you go through to the kitchen where it’s warm.’
Em tried not to stare at the hallway walls as she passed. The collection of collaged photos had multiplied in the years since her last visit. Frames of varying sizes hung in three loose rows, at her eye-line. Most of the new additions were of babies and grinning children, but there were wedding photos too. Em was unable to hide the falter in her step when she spied a large frame filled with several pictures, all images from Josh’s big day.
Michelle stopped, giving Em the freedom to pause and stare. A freedom she wasn’t sure she wanted.
‘She was a nice girl, Bianca.’
Em sensed Michelle’s assessing gaze but couldn’t respond. Jealousy had squirmed its way into her gut and tightened her throat. Bianca made a radiant bride: pink-lipped, blue-eyed, and stunning in a simple strapless gown, her pale hair expertly piled to show off the lightly freckled skin of her neck and upper chest. Her face was tilted upwards, regarding Josh. He was grinning at the camera, handsome in a dark suit, one arm around her bare shoulders, his eyes sparkling with pride and happiness. The way, a long time ago, they had with Em.
‘He looks happy,’ said Em, to break the silence.
Michelle caught her eye and smiled sympathetically. ‘He was. But that was then and this is now.’ She looped her arm through Em’s. ‘Enough of that. Time for tea and cake, and you can tell me all about what’s been going on.’
Em glanced at her watch. She needed to go. Any longer and Granny B was liable to walk out in a huff, leaving the shop door open and the register unsecured.
She smiled apologetically at Michelle. ‘I’m sorry, I’d love to stay but I really need to get back.’
‘I know, I know. I can rabbit on, but it’s just so good to see you.’ Michelle put her hand around Em’s forearm. ‘Almost like the old days.’
Em was disappointed to leave the cake-scented fug of the kitchen but glad she’d called in. As they rose, Michelle cocked her ear. Her eyes slid to Em’s. ‘Ah, now he took his time.’
‘Mum?’ A door banged. Josh strode in, his expression surprised when he spotted Em before turning cool. ‘Hey.’
‘Hi.’ Em’s skin flushed at the sight of him, masculine and capable. Josh wore work clothes, similar to what he’d worn in the shop the first time she saw him. Sawdust clung to the sleeves of his jumper. His hair was mussed, his beard untrimmed. He smelled earthy, of timber and oil and work.
‘I thought you were supposed to be in Adelaide or something.’
‘No, only Tuesday night.’ Em tilted her head. ‘How did you know?’
‘I went to the shop. The lady there said you were off until today.’
‘It’s been one of those weeks, unfortunately. Gran had a specialist’s appointment in Adelaide that no one else could take her to and she insisted on staying the night. Then Thursday I had to be home for the tree people and this morning it was the stump grinders.’ She smiled and touched her ears. ‘I think all that noise has given me tinnitus.’
Josh lifted his chin in acknowledgement but didn’t return the smile.
Silence fell. They stood awkwardly. Em didn’t know how to behave. She didn’t know where she stood with him and Josh exuded an air of annoyance she didn’t understand.
‘I really have to go,’ she said, adjusting the bag on her shoulder.
Michelle frowned at her son, seemingly perplexed by his behaviour. ‘Why don’t you take Em to the shed and show her your work?’
Em glanced at him and shook her head. ‘I really don’t have time.’
‘Go on. A few minutes won’t hurt.’ When neither moved, Michelle pushed again. ‘Go on.’
Josh sighed and gestured towards the door. ‘There’s not that much to look at.’
Railroaded but also curious, Em bent to kiss Michelle’s cheek. ‘It was lovely to catch up.’
Michelle squeezed her hand tightly. When she spoke again her voice had a tremor to it. ‘You’ll visit again?’
Em glanced at Josh, who was frowning at his mother. ‘Of course.’
‘Good,’ said Michelle, swiping at her leaky eyes. ‘Now, off you go.’ She attempted to shuffle them from the kitchen but Josh wasn’t so easily moved.
‘Mum, you okay?’
‘Just tired from the excitement of seeing Em.’
His eyes narrowed. ‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes, I’m sure.’ She gave him a gentle push. ‘Go. And behave yourself. Em has to go back to work.’
‘Is she really all right?’ Em asked as they walked down the drive to the garage. The sliding door was open now, exposing a workshop filled with tools, timber and projects.
‘I hope so. She keeps trying to do too much. She should be resting.’
Em wasn’t sure if that was a rebuke and decided to ignore it. ‘It must be hard for her, though. She was always so active, and she loves looking after everyone.’
‘Yeah, but now it’s time for us to look after her.’ He paused, the mineral scent of oil stronger despite the open door. ‘So how did the tree removal go?’
‘Good. Efficient.’ Em’s mouth twisted. ‘Sad.’
‘Yeah, I guess it would be.’ He indicated the rear bench. ‘Come have a look at this.’
She followed him across the garage, admiring a beautifully crafted kitchen trolley as she passed. On the floor, protected from the concrete by an off-cut of carpet, sheets of jarrah were laid out. Even raw, the colour was rich and vivid, the grain fine but with interesting, artful loops.
A thin stack of papers lay on the bench. She stared at the top one, trying to work out what the drawings represented, unsure until Josh slid a sheet from the bottom and laid it on top. A strange swooping feeling came over her. It swung through her body and disappeared, leaving a deep warmth in its place.
She glanced at him, heart fluttering. ‘It’s an easel.’
‘Yeah.’
Em looked back at the plans, carefully drawn in fine pencil, the dimensions and notes written in precise numbers and uppercase letters. ‘You did this.’
‘And Dad.’
‘Is it. . .?’ She swallowed, afraid to say it in case she had it wrong.
‘It’s for you. Using the cypress timber.’
‘Oh, Josh.’ Em looked back at the plans and pressed her lips together but the tide of emotion kept coming. Embarrassed, she put her hand to her mouth but the urge to cry at the perfection of his idea remained.
‘Hey.’ He wrapped her in his warm arms as though the prickliness of earlier had never existed. ‘Don’t.’
‘I’m sorry. It’s just. . . after this morning.’
‘I know.’
‘It’s perfect.’
‘Don’t be so hasty.’ He smiled down at her. ‘We haven’t even started it yet.’
&nb
sp; She pointed at the kitchen trolley. ‘Men who can make that won’t have any problem with an easel. You’re just being modest. I know talent when I see it.’
Josh brushed the knuckles of his damaged hand down her cheek, causing Em’s heart to do a slow tumble. ‘Thanks for coming to see Mum.’
‘I’ve been meaning to and this morning I had a few spare minutes.’ She lifted her sleeve to check her watch again and groaned. ‘Gran is going to kill me. I really have to go.’
‘Okay.’
He didn’t release her.
‘Josh?’
‘I missed you, Em.’
In the security of his arms, with her heart soothed by his embrace and thoughtfulness, the words resonated deeply. ‘I missed you, too.’
He kissed her tenderly and pressed his forehead to hers, smiling in a way that made her heart somersault even higher.
‘So we’re okay?’ she asked, hopeful but still uncertain.
‘We’re okay.’
*
Granny B was pacing the street at the front of the shop, the tails of her tweed coat flapping out like bat wings, when Em arrived.
She regarded her granddaughter with an expression as steely as her hair. ‘And where have you been?’
‘At the hill.’ Em paused. ‘And I called in to see Michelle.’
‘I have been waiting for over an hour!’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘A rather inadequate word: sorry.’
Em gave the street a quick scan, noting the pension-week shoppers, the people hurrying towards the banks and the post office, and made sure to keep her voice neutral. ‘I didn’t mean to take so long. The workmen finished early so I thought I’d use the time to catch up with Michelle.’
‘Catch up with that son of hers, more like.’
‘Josh was in the shed for most of my visit, working.’ She glanced at the shop door, reluctant to enter. Boredom and Granny B never mixed well and her grandmother had that look, a sly smugness underlying her anger. ‘So how was it? Busy?’
‘No. Dull as dishwater.’ Granny B’s eyes narrowed as she looked past Em. ‘Ah, if it isn’t Barry McClintoff, our illustrious mayor. Must have a word to him about this ridiculous cut to the Seniors Month budget they’re proposing. Completely unacceptable. You can call me a taxi on my return.’ And with that, Granny B strode off.
Gingerly, Em pushed opened the door and stepped inside, her shoulders immediately sagging. The shop’s air-conditioning had been cranked up to tropical, but that wasn’t the worst. As she feared, idle hands had been at work.
The bins containing the small impulse-buy items had been shoved to the side, blocking the racks of practical notebooks, folders and stationery. In their place, rising precariously from the floor, Granny B had constructed a notebook tower using stock from the expensive new jewel range. It looked amazing: a spire of glittering colour. Em had to concede the design was impressive, as was the effort taken in its assembly. But that was where her admiration ended. All that pile represented was stock shrinkage and loss of profit.
Almost too afraid to breathe lest she cause the structure to topple, Em stepped around the tower and headed for the storeroom to stow her bag. What a morning. First the cypress, then Michelle and Josh, and now this.
At the thought of Michelle, an intense bulge of sadness welled in Em’s chest. She pushed it away. Time to rescue her books.
The door’s bell tinkled, followed by a whoosh of air and rattle of the storeroom’s bead curtain as the outside cold sucked the inside warmth towards it.
‘Emily! I’m ready for that – oh.’
Em closed her eyes as the sound of forty collapsing notebooks reached her ears. When the noise finally ceased, she rubbed her mouth and walked stiffly back into the shop.
Granny B stood regarding the mess, her face screwed up in a mixture of disbelief and contrition. She pursed her lips before lifting her chin in defiance. ‘Sorry.’
It took all of Em’s self-control not to throw Granny B’s comment about the inadequacy of the word back at her. Instead, she pointed at the door. ‘Out. Now.’
For once her grandmother obeyed.
Eighteen
Hands deep in her jacket pockets against the Sunday early morning cold, Em trudged through the thick grass of Lod’s paddock. Wet leaves left slick trails along her rubber boots, a few of the longer stalks painting damp streaks along her jeans. The ground was soggy from overnight rain but the sky glowed a glorious winter blue. The sort of sky that raised hopes and made the world feel peaceful.
Lod waited at the paddock’s far end, head raised, lower legs camouflaged in the long grass as though he’d been cut off at the knees, his ears swivelling at her approach. She greeted him with affectionate rubs before sliding a halter over his nose and leading him back towards the house, Muffy trotting alongside, her belly hair hanging in thick dregs from the damp.
Lod bunted her as they walked, seeking scratches and attention. ‘You’re a darling boy, ’ she said, indulging him.
Her friends were scheduled to arrive any minute. Jas with sweet, dopey Ox and Teagan with fractious Astra. After a week of no contact the sound of Teagan’s voice on Em’s answering machine Friday night, saying she could make Sunday’s scheduled clipping session, had relieved some of the week’s tension. That and Josh nuzzling her neck from behind as she listened.
He hadn’t acted like a man conserving his energy for football the next day. Within minutes of his arrival at the hill they were making love. Expecting at least a scratch from her new friend, Muffy had curled up in a sulk in her basket when Josh had ignored her and reached straight for Em.
Afterwards, she’d grilled two well-marbled steaks that she picked up from Horrigan’s on the way home, and served them with homemade thick-cut chips, long green beans and buttery tarragon-scented béarnaise sauce. They’d sat at the table with the television murmuring in the background, discussing inane things – town politics, sport, Karen’s pregnancy, Sally’s boys, the cliffhanger ending of the latest episode of a TV series. Nothing about the future. But after the intimacy of his dad’s shed, the promise they were okay, it somehow didn’t seem to matter.
Friday night football had followed. Em would have preferred a movie but Josh asked to watch it, and she hadn’t minded. Being with him, his arm slung along the back of the couch, fingers toying with her hair, felt enough. As did their slow wander to bed afterwards, the caresses, whispers and gasps. The way he’d lingered on Saturday morning, making her late for work, seemed enough too.
Only this morning when she woke, wishing he was by her side, smiling his lazy early morning grin at her instead of waking at his parents’, no doubt hungover from the buck’s party he’d gone to the night before, did she realise how shallow it all felt.
Em wanted more from him. That special magic that Felicity and Dig had. The thing that made the world sparkle and the future seem like it couldn’t come fast enough. All the things she could have had already if she hadn’t been so stupid the first time round.
He could kiss and caress, make her tremble with want. He could make her heart stumble and flutter, and gaze at her with those molten, desire-filled eyes. He could design easels and press his forehead to hers and whisper that he missed her, but would he ever trust her enough to love her like she was beginning to love him? Because, in his shoes, having suffered the indignity and hurt that he had, Em didn’t know if that was something she could do herself.
She released Lod into the stable and left him to snuffle at the feed she’d set for him. With a morning of clipping ahead and lunch to cater for, Em had woken at dawn to bake and prepare. Both stables were mucked out, the concrete slab in front swept clean. A bucket of brushes sat near the hitching rail along with two heavy-duty crates. On one lay a set of clippers, long orange extension cord snaking across to the external power point at the stable. A new under-rug for Lod was slung over his half-door, his old rug folded alongside for Teagan, should she need it for Astra. With the nights and mornings
still cold, and without their extra layer of woolly coat, the horses would need protection from the chill. Teagan couldn’t afford new rugs, not with the Bliss’s money troubles.
Satisfied everything was in order, she headed back towards the house for a quick cuppa. She was halfway across the garden when Teagan turned her white tray-top Toyota and dented aluminium horse float into the yard. By the time they’d hugged and lowered the float’s tailgate, Jas had also arrived. The farm came alive: Muffy dancing around the cars and floats, releasing the occasional yip, Astra whinnying and Lod returning the call, Kicki and Cutie bellowing plaintive hee-haws from their paddock gate in the hope their greatest fan, Jas, would pay them attention.
Neither Em nor Jas made any comment about Teagan’s birdlike bones or the dark hollows under her eyes, made even more vivid by her winter-pale skin. They shared a look though, an agreement that the situation needed probing, and Em was glad she’d put an extra bottle of wine in the fridge for lunch. An afternoon of girl talk was needed, and the way Em was feeling, she could do with some advice about Josh.
Hoping she might learn from the others, or at least calm a little, the girls agreed to leave fractious Astra until last. The filly paced the stable, poking her head out of the half-door before jerking back inside to wheel another agitated circuit. Lod paid her no attention, content to stand dutifully on the concrete in the sun, waiting for his clipping, off-hind leg cocked and his hoof resting on its point. His head was down and eyes half-closed in a doze like his old friend Ox, now equally slumberous in Lod’s stable.
‘Honestly, you’d send her to the knackers if she weren’t so stunning,’ said Jas, shaking her head as Astra embarked on yet another restless round.
‘She just needs to mature,’ said Em.
Teagan reached up to scratch Astra’s nose. ‘She’s only four.’
‘Ox was calm at four.’
‘Yes, but Ox had no balls.’
Jas grinned and blew a kiss at Ox. The big grey twitched his ears and blinked across the half-door before returning to sleep. ‘Poor thing. I wonder if he misses them.’ She turned back to Em who was perched on a crate, clippers in hand, palm pushing over Lod’s mane so she could clip the top-side of his neck. ‘Speaking of balls, how are things with Josh the Sexpot?’
