Page 32 of Weekends with the Sunshine Gardening Society
Pat tilts his head to the side and looks at her. ‘Have you told her that lately?’
‘She won’t let me!’
He takes both of her hands this time and Cynthia feels her shoulders relax, the way they used to when her father pinched her cheek and told her he was pinching away her worries.
‘If I organise for the two of you to get together,’ Pat says, ‘will you try to start with that?’
‘Will you be there?’
‘If you want me to be.’
‘You know her better than I do. It would make sense.’ Cynthia doesn’t want to admit that she’s nervous of being alone with her own daughter.
‘You still know her, Cyn. Just like I still know you.’ He grins. ‘We go back, you and me. We’re family. And Odette is the family we made. So we have to make this right. She needs us. Both of us. And this may sound familiar, but she’s not that good at admitting she needs help. Or when she’s wrong.’
Cynthia’s eyes widen. ‘What are you implying?’
Pat lets go of her hands and holds up his own in surrender. ‘Nothing whatsoever.’
He picks up his mug. ‘Tea’s cooler now.’
‘Unlike my temper, is that what you want to say?’
‘Nah.’ He shakes his head. ‘That’s trickier than anything I would say.’
Which is true: even when she was leaving him he never punished her verbally, even if she might have wished he would. That was the paradox of the situation: she wanted to leave him but wanted him to not want her to leave. All these years later, she knows that’s because it wasn’t him specifically that she wanted to leave. It was her life. Except, as she found out, her life went with her.
‘You’ve always been a kind man,’ she murmurs, but he doesn’t say anything in response, and they sit and drink their tea in silence.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Thereare skills Elizabeth is sure she has: organisation, acuity, punctuality, the ability to make decisions and stick to them. What she’s not sure of today is where they’ve gone to. She managed to deliver Charlie to school on time but somewhere between there and her new workplace she lost time. Perhaps it was when she was sitting in the car hyperventilating because she’s about to be in an unfamiliar situation while still in the midst of widowhood, which is the most unfamiliar situation of her life and also a term she wishes did not apply to her.
Or maybe it was when she decided to take a walk around the block before going in, attempting to calm herself. Except she was sure that she had time for both the hyperventilating and the walk. When she parked the car outside the surgery – which looks like it was once a house on this little street in Sunrise Beach – she had fifteen minutes spare. Now, as she’s bustling through the door, still breathing hard, sure that she looks as flustered as she feels, she’s five minutes late.
‘Good morning,’ says a woman behind the desk with a tight-set perm and pearl studs in her ears. ‘Name?’
‘I’m Elizabeth. I’m, um … starting today.’ She looks around for the woman who interviewed her but can’t see her.
‘Oh, yes!’ the perm says. ‘Doctor Lopes mentioned that. I’m Olive. We’ll be working together in the mornings. You spoke to Sherry, right?’
‘Yes.’
Olive smiles the kind of smile Elizabeth’s grandmother used to make: tight lips and no eyes, like she’s smiled so many times in her life that she’s out of enthusiasm for it and won’t engage more of her face than she needs to. When her grandmother did it, Elizabeth thought it was because she didn’t like anyone much; later she realised it was because she’d spent her life appeasing others and by the time she was eighty simply couldn’t be bothered any more. Perhaps Olive, too, is tired of appeasing everyone who walks through the door.
Elizabeth considers apologising for being late – that would be the polite thing to do – but Olive doesn’t seem to have noticed so she lets it go.
‘So your son is in kindy?’ Olive says.
‘Yes. Charlie. I just dropped him off.’
‘And who’s getting him after school?’
She says ‘school’ asskeewwwland Elizabeth wants to giggle because that’s how her granny used to say it. Her father’s mother, not her mother’s mother, the tight-smiler.Are you off to skeeewwwwl?Granny would say when Elizabeth hopped up on her bed to say good morning. She took it for granted, having her grandmother in the house all the time. What she wouldn’t give to have someone living with her now, not to help with Charlie necessarily but to help her not feel so lonely. If Granny were still alive she would be sorting Elizabeth out, bossing her around, straightening her skirt, telling her to change her earrings, asking her if she’s eating enough. Elizabeth has tried to do that for herself but it’s not the same.
‘My parents will pick him up,’ she replies.
‘Oh?’ A raised eyebrow. ‘Does his dad have a busy job?’
