Page 65 of A Home Among the Snow Gums
Nearly seven pm. She’d know in five minutes, good or bad.
She hauled out the bucket of potatoes she kept in the bottom of her pantry and started peeling. Even she couldn’t screw up mash.
One hour and two-thirds of a bottle of wine later, she rang Kylie. ‘What are you doing?’
‘It’s eight o’clock on a Saturday night, and I’m a single woman with my own business and a damn fine pair of legs. What do you think I’m doing?’
Oops. ‘My bad. Forget I called, get back to your date.’
‘Wait!’ said Kylie. ‘Don’t hang up, I was messing with you. I’m painting my toenails, watching martial arts movies dubbed into wacky English and I’m wondering if it’s time I invested in six cats. What are you doing?’
‘Getting drunk and eating mashed potatoes. On my ownsome.’
‘Wow. And I thought my life was pathetic. I’m on my way over.’
Kylie breezed in ten minutes later with a waxed cardboard box under her arm.
Hannah frowned at her from the pity-nest of quilts she’d made for herself on the sofa. ‘I invited you, not your devil carbohydrates. What’s in that box?’
‘The café door fell open as I passed so I accidentally found myself at the naughty cabinet. Graeme made me buy these. Some sort of double-deep-fried-chocolate-bliss business. I stopped saying no when he said the word bliss.’
Hannah pulled the box down to sofa level so she could lift the lid. ‘I knew we were BFFs for a reason.’
‘Snap. Now, where’s the wine?’
Hannah pointed at the dining room table, which she’d set with her grandmother’s silverware, crystal wine goblets, flowers plucked (surreptitiously because, yes, it was illegal, and she didn’t need another visit from Sergeant King) from the park across the road. She was using a pewter footy trophy she’d flogged from Josh’s apartment as a wine cooler.
Kylie stared at the untouched display for a long moment while Hannah let pity tears gather behind her eyelids. ‘Oh, honey. You didn’t follow my advice, did you?’
Hannah sucked in a shaky breath. ‘Do you think you could hug me a second?’
Kylie dropped to her knees and her arms burrowed in around Hannah where she lay on the couch to hold her tight. ‘For lots of seconds. You want to talk about it?’
‘I think I’ve been an idiot, Kylie.’
‘Of course you have,’ her best friend in all the world told her.
Hannah opened one eye. ‘Free wine and ice-cream straight from the container is the appropriate response to an emotional crisis, accompanied by unconditional support … what part of the BFF code do you not understand?’
Kylie stroked her hair. ‘Sometimes tough love is the kindest a best friend can give. Where were we? You had been an idiot.’
She sighed. ‘Yes.’
‘And—just to check—we are talking about Tom Krispy Krauss?’
‘Kylie. The man is not a donut.’
‘Tell that to my hormones,’ said Kylie, moving to the table and pouring a hefty glass of water. ‘Now sit up, drink this, and tell me everything.’
‘Okay. I might have to backtrack. My idiocy didn’t really start with Tom. It started with the baby.’
Kylie’s mouth dropped open so far she looked like one of those clown games you could try chucking ping-pong balls into to win a cheap and highly flammable blue tiger at a country fete. The glass of water she’d poured wentthunkon the coffee table and Hannah realised whoever had come up with the expression ‘you could have heard a pin drop’ had never casually dropped a conversational bomb into a room with Kylie Owens.
‘What freaking baby?’The shriek probably woke all the animals tucked up in the sleepover room two floors below them.
Hannah smacked at Kylie’s hands, which had reefed up the blouse she’d chosen (and even ironed!) and were now podging her stomach and hip bones for evidence.
‘Would you get off me,’ she said. ‘Potential baby, not actual baby.’
