Page 60 of Thursdays at Orange Blossom House
Grace Maud doesn’t know the neighbours any more. A young couple moved in after she moved to town, and Tom didn’t seem to have much to do with them.
‘I’ll come to you,’ she says.
‘Mum, you can’t drive while you’re upset.’
‘I’m not upset, Tom. I’m fine. But Cecilia will drive me.’ She looks to the younger woman, who nods. ‘We’re on our way,’ Grace Maud says and hangs up before he can respond.
She doesn’t want him asking questions about how and why she has enough money to cover that year’s crop. She also doesn’t want to give herself the opportunity to feel slightly pleased that the fire means they won’t be discussing the very issue that has kept them apart. For now.
Without a word between them, Cecilia picks up the car keys and her handbag, Grace Maud collects her own bag, and they leave the house, and the shopping on the bench.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
If Dorothy didn’t have all these customers to distract her, she knows she would fall apart. But she’s not going to think about it. That’s what she decided this morning:no thinking. Then the day makes it easy for her by sending tourist after tourist through the doors for breakfast or coffee or tea or all of it. Orders for eggs, orders for toast, chitchat about the spring humidity, questions about crocodiles, questions about stingers.
Dorothy spent a minute wondering if Ruth would be interested in coming back to the café to work a couple of shifts a week – since she’d enjoyed it so much, she said, while she was covering for Dorothy – then two new customers came through the door asking for lamb’s fry, which she had to tell them they didn’t serve.
‘What kind of country is it when a man can’t get lamb’s fry for his breakfast?’ the man of the pair huffed.
‘Shut up, Ern,’ muttered the woman beside him, then she gave Dorothy one of those smiles that doesn’t quite reach a person’s eyes. ‘We’ve been to a few places looking for lamb’s fry.’
‘We have sausage,’ Dorothy said helpfully.
‘Blood sausage?’ the man asked, narrowing his eyes.
‘Any sausage will do, love, thanks.’ The woman grabbed the man’s wrist and yanked him towards a table. Then she ordered for both of them: sausage, bacon, eggs, tomatoes, four pieces of toast for him, one for her, a strong pot of tea and lots of milk, and did they have sugar cubes or was it just that loose stuff in the bowl? On any other day Dorothy would have found them mildly annoying but today they’ve been useful, keeping her busy.
‘How many people is this for?’ Frederick says, squinting at the docket.
‘Two.’
He raises his eyebrows and glances towards the table. ‘All right,’ he says, then smiles at her. Not his usual smile. A slightly sad smile. A sympathetic smile. A smile that makes her want to scream.
‘Dorothy?’
She turns around and there’s Patricia. Dorothy notices she has her hair pulled back and remembers Patricia telling them she’s growing it out, a decision she came to after Grace Maud made a slightly unkind, if true, remark about Patricia’s choppy long bob not doing much for her face.
‘Should I cut it all off, then?’ Patricia had said with more good grace than Dorothy would have mustered in the circumstance.
‘God, no!’ Grace Maud had said. ‘Grow it long.’
‘Long?’ Patricia had frowned. ‘I’ve never had it long.’
‘Why not?’
‘I wasn’t allowed.’
‘When?’
‘When I was … Mum didn’t like it long.’
Grace Maud had looked at her as if she was slightly stupid. ‘And how old are you?’
Patricia had blushed and said nothing.
That was a week and a half ago. Dorothy hasn’t seen them since. Which is, no doubt, why Patricia is here now.
‘Hello, Patricia,’ Dorothy says as cheerfully as she can.
