Page 23 of Weekends with the Sunshine Gardening Society
‘It did. But it’s so popular they keep it on.’ Now he was grinning like the movie was the best idea he’d had in eons.
‘I’ve seen it,’ she said, and grinned back.
‘Worth another look.’ He wiggled his eyebrows and Kathy laughed.
‘Learn to take “no” for an answer, Mitch.’
‘Didn’t hear ya say it.’
‘Okay.’ She leant towards him, her lips close to his ear. ‘No,’ she breathed.
He shrugged and winked again. ‘Can’t blame a bloke for tryin’.’
‘Off you go, Mitchell,’ Hans said seriously.
‘Yes, boss.’ Mitchell gave him a mock salute and turned back towards Leesa, who was, Kathy thought, a more appropriate match for him.
Hans had frowned. ‘I will say something to him.’ But Kathy told him she was sure Mitch did it as a joke.
Actually, she wasn’t sure – the look in his eyes appeared to be genuinely lascivious – but she wanted Hans to think she was. Mitchell didn’t deserve to get into trouble. Plus, his cheek made her smile, and it’s making her smile now as she remembers it. Even old ducks like her enjoy some appreciation from time to time, and it doesn’t have to mean anything. It’s probably better if it doesn’t.
The memory has carried her a fair way along and now she’s in Noosaville. The restaurant is only a few minutes away and the sweat patches under her arms are nothing that a couple of minutes in the air con won’t fix.
She turns onto Elizabeth Street and hears voices – female, one of them louder than the others – then a gate opens and three women step onto the footpath, right in her way without noticing.
Kathy stops and considers going around them, but that would put her in the gutter and there’s a car there, making it difficult to manoeuvre.
‘Lizzie, I’m telling you,’ says a short, robust-looking woman wearing a Beatles T-shirt, ‘a little beach flax lily in the corner there will bring a nice pop of colour.’
A young woman with long curly hair is biting her bottom lip. ‘I’m not sure,’ she says. ‘I don’t know enough about natives to say.’
The Beatles woman sighs then glances up and sees Kathy. ‘Sorry, love,’ she says. ‘We’re in your way.’
‘It’s fine,’ Kathy says, even though it isn’t really, but it’s the polite thing to say.
The trio shifts closer to the gate and Kathy gives them a tight smile as she passes.
‘There’s no rush to decide,’ says the other woman – or Kathy presumes it’s her because the voice is different, but they’re behind her now and she’s hardly going to turn around to check. Not until she’s at the end of the block, that is, when she risks a backwards glance and sees the Beatles woman opening the back door of the car and putting something inside. Then, to Kathy’s mortification, she waves.
With a quick wave back, and a quicker turn of the head away, Kathy scurries across the road towards the river and the safe haven of her workplace. She thinks about the woman and her beach flax lily on the walk home later that night, though, as she passes the house and sees one light on and hears what she’s sure is a Beethoven piano concerto coming out of a slightly ajar window.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
‘Youdon’t have much experience,’ says the woman – Sherry, Elizabeth thinks her name is – looking up at her while her finger taps the scant CV on the desk.
Elizabeth wants to say that motherhood is experience. She has to be a world-class organiser as well as housekeeper, cook and counsellor. Being the wife of a terminally ill man brought its own sort of experience too. More organisation. Tolerance. Learning of medical jargon – she had to remember Jon’s medications and his doctors’ names, keep track of his appointments, and keep everything running at home. But you can’t put that on a CV. No one would accept it as valid experience. Yet is there any experience more important than managing a small child into life and a grown man out of it? If only there were a job title for that. Elizabeth would be set.
‘Not in this sort of work, no,’ she says. ‘I haven’t been a doctor’s secretary. But I have, um, I mean, I do know a fair amount about doctors.’
‘Oh?’ Sherry has small eyes and big glasses that she keeps perched below her eyes, so Elizabeth isn’t sure what their purpose could be.
‘My … my husband was sick. For a couple of years. He had a lot of doctors. We went to a lot of appointments.’
‘Oh, right. And how is he now?’
Elizabeth should have foreseen that question, because it’s not as if she hasn’t been asked it a lot lately. By shopkeepers and random people in the neighbourhood who haven’t seen her for a while. So she’ll give Sherry the same answer she gives them.
‘He’s dead.’ Then she tries to smile in a reassuring manner, because people on the receiving end of news like that tend to want you to make it all right forthem, as if it’s not making her feel wretched having to say it. Knowing she’ll have to say it for years. If not forever.
