How many business openings had she attended in her old life? How many dry, emotionless little articles had she penned for theSouth Coast Morning Herald?
The old bank building in the small town of Hanrahan has been given a new lease on life this week with the opening of The Billy Button Café. Vera De Rossi serves Italian-style sweets as well as some old-fashioned country favourites, and plans to open—
‘Blah blah blah,’ said Vera, and grinned, surprised at herself. Journalism had been her life, once, and she’d prided herself on her cool, dispassionate prose.
She took a sip of the green tea she’d perched on a stool by the tub. That was the old her.
The new her baked fancy tarts and made epic beef bourguignon and could use whatever flowery words she damn well chose.
‘Opening day at The Billy Button Café was frazzling and glorious,’ she announced to her imaginary audience. ‘It was nerve-racking and frantic. It was’—she hunted for the perfect word to capture how she was feeling—‘empowering.’
She smoothed the top page of her notepad, where lavender steam was making the corners curl, and continued her letter to her aunt.
I hope you’ve settled into your new room and you’re enjoying the garden. Such a pretty view! So much better than that gravel carpark your window at the old place looked out on. Have the local birds found you yet? I wonder how the butcher birds of Queanbeyan are coping without your toast crumbs keeping them plump?
I’ve not got very far with unpacking all your storage boxes, Aunt Jill, but they’re in the spare bedroom of the apartment I’m renting in Hanrahan. If I unpack anything fun, I’ll bring it in to show you.
She sat bolt upright in the bathtub.
The De Rossi brush! Of course, that’s where it must be! She must have slung it into one of those storage boxes instead of packing it in Jill’s suitcase for the move from Acacia View to Connolly House. No wonder she hadn’t been able to find it.
Tossing her notepad onto the stool, Vera hauled herself upright, ignoring the protests from her sore feet. She dried herself off in a hurry, flung herself into jeans and a t-shirt and the softest, flattest shoes she owned, then went into the spare room.
Cartons stood in a higgledy-piggledy row, their bland brown sides neatly annotated with words likebooks,andwinter outfitsanduseless knick-knacks with sentimental value.
She swallowed. Jill—the old, fun, hippy Jill—would have hated to see remnants of her adventurous life packed so neatly away.
So boringly away.
Vera could do something about that. Not this second, perhaps, or even this month, because she was up to her eyebrows in café jobs as it was—but soon.
For now, finding the family heirloom her aunt had used to brush Vera’s hair when Vera was a little girl would have to do.
She ripped into the masking tape until the flaps of the first carton flopped open, revealing the jumble of memory within.
The brush was there, right on top. Vera smiled. Maybe fate really was going to be on her side from now on.
When she arrived an hour later at Connolly House, her aunt Jill was seated in a wicker chair beneath the speckled canopy of a grevillea. Her face, once so quick and lively, stared into Vera’s with interest, but no recognition. So, today was going to be one ofthosevisits.
She set the sherry bottle and two tiny crystal glasses down on the picnic table, and gave her aunt a kiss. ‘Hello, Aunt Jill. It’s Vera. How are you settling in? Your room looks lovely, and someone has popped a rose on your bedside table. How sweet is that? Fresh flowers!’
Still no response. The visits where Jill struggled to formulate thoughts into words were becoming more common. ‘Do you like it here, Jill?’
She hoped so. The gardens were beautiful—as Jill was, colour in her cheeks from the crisp mountain air, the soft fleece she wore newly laundered. Nursing staff and residents could be heard chatting and laughing in the gardens behind them, and she could almost feel the late afternoon sun gilding the place with peace and serenity.
She felt hope loosen the tight knot of worry that was her constant companion. Maybe this hospice would slow down her aunt’s demise. Slow down the loss of memory, the loss of speech.
Maybe Connolly House reallycouldbe a home for Jill.
She poured a full nip of sherry into a glass for her aunt, and a scant splash into a glass for herself. Jill’s favourite tipple was the rock bottom of adult beverages, so she only ever pretended to drink it.
‘Jill? A drink for you?’ She held out the glass, ready to assist her aunt to hold it if need be, but her aunt had turned her face to the mountain range which was never out of view.
Not sherry, then. Perhaps Jill was still confused about where she was. She could do something about that, she thought, and tried to recall some snippets of local lore.
‘This close mountain you can see is called Old Regret by the locals. Rock climbers love it, and there are horse-riding trails, and a few privately owned properties that farm on its lower slopes.’ Now, where had she heard that? In the online material when she was researching homes who had room for her aunt, perhaps. ‘Behind it are the eastern ridges of the Snowy Mountains. People ski up there, in the winter.’
She’d skied herself a little, growing up. On school trips and occasionally with friends.