Page 28 of Weekends with the Sunshine Gardening Society
‘You were rooting.’
‘Cyn!’ Lorraine’s cheeks turn pink and she looks around again, but Barb and Shirl seem to be discussing some spiky plant on the other side of the garden.
Cynthia laughs. ‘You made me say it. I gave you the nice, polite Latin way out and you didn’t take it.’
‘I didn’t even know you knew what that word means.’
‘Me? The teenage preggo?’ Cynthia winks.
‘Anyway.’ Lorraine reaches in to grab some leaf litter of her own then puts it in the big garbage bin situated between them. ‘Cora walked in.’
‘Walked in on you?’ Cynthia’s nose twitches.
‘Yep. Didn’t knock. Didn’t say “yoo-hoo”.’
‘Does she normally say “ yoo-hoo”?’
‘Shut up. You know what I mean.’
Lorraine briefly closes her eyes as she recalls her mortification at seeing her mother-in-law standing in the doorway while Mike was nuzzling her neck. And more besides. Gah!
Cynthia starts to smile and stops. ‘Sorry. It’s awful, I know. But it’s a little bit amusing too. So what happened?’
‘I had to tap Mike on the shoulder to get him to stop.’
‘You mean she didn’t walk out immediately?’
‘No. I think she was in shock.’ The sight of Cora’s face is something Lorraine is going to try hard to forget but she suspects she never will. ‘Not half as much as I was, though.’
‘And it’s never happened before?’ Cynthia gets up and indicates that they should move on to the next patch of litter.
‘A couple of near misses. Anyway, she said she wanted to tell us that she was taking Simon to church.’
‘But you’re not religious.’
‘Exactly.’
In fact, Lorraine suspects Cora invented the excuse on the spot, almost as if it was the worst thing she could think of to say to Lorraine at that exact moment. Because they’ve had this out before: Cora wanting the boys to be raised Greek Orthodox and both Mike and Lorraine insisting against it.
‘So I said she couldn’t do that and now she’s not speaking to me,’ Lorraine continues.
‘Maybe she’s embarrassed that she walked in on you. Did she see a boob or anything?’
Lorraine has to stop and think about that. ‘She could have. But who cares! She walked in! And she didn’t walk out straightaway! Honestly, it’s almost like she wanted to watch, the perv.’
Lorraine turns to put some litter in the bin and almost bangs into Shirl.
‘How are you going?’ Shirl says.
‘Making progress,’ Cynthia says, smiling sweetly. Cynthia likes Shirl, Lorraine can tell, because she always does what Shirl says and smiles when she does it.
‘Good. Barb and I are going to have a chat to Von about this cactus thing.’ She points to the spiky plant.
‘You don’t want it here?’ Lorraine asks.
‘It doesn’tbelonghere.’ Shirl looks offended, but Lorraine reckons it’s because of the cactus, not her. ‘It’ll spread its rotten spawn everywhere if we don’t yank it out and we can’t have lots of little cacti everywhere. No, no.’ This is accompanied by a vigorous shake of the head.
‘No, no, what?’ It’s Von, calling from the edge of the garden, her hearing clearly better than Lorraine would have thought for a woman her age. Rude of her to think it, but at least she didn’t say it.
