The tall woman was on her feet and heading their way. ‘Carol Wallace,’ she said as she reached them. It wasn’t a greeting, more like an opening statement in a high-stakes prosecution.
‘Joan Sloane,’ replied Carol. Again with the inflection.
A pause, while Jodie stood there, apparently forgotten. There were definite Wild West vibes going on. Gunslinging vibes. Any minute now, Joan and Carol were going to back up twenty paces and haul six-shooters out of the pockets of their floral dresses.
‘I didn’t know you were thinking of moving into Clarence Gardens,’ Joan said into the silence. Like it was a personal affront.
‘I’m not,’ said Carol. ‘Good heavens, no!’
The tall woman’s lips thinned.
‘I’m giving my great niece a tour. She’s thinking of setting up a physiotherapy practice in Clarence and I’m showing her around. I can’t believe the residents’ association hasn’t set up an exercise room here, Joan. A foolhardy oversight, surely?’
Luckily, Jodie wasn’t engaged in doing anything more rigorous than standing on greige linoleum, because if she had been, she’d have fallen over. She was setting up awhat?Where?
And was Carol deliberately provoking this woman?
Joan’s face had moved from thin lips to full frown. ‘I was going to invite you to sit down and have a cup of tea with us, but I can see that you’re far too busy finding fault, so—’
‘We accept,’ said Carol.
Whatever was going on, Carol would have to explain to Jodie later. Social undercurrents running deep and all that.
‘Hi, I’m Jodie,’ she said when they had taken a seat at the table. Joan was at the head, pouring tea out of a large pot, and the man—Campbell? Cameron? She hadn’t quite caught it—had taken the lid off a plastic container and was busy cutting fingers of fruit cake and placing them on little plates to pass around. His hands, both of them, had a distinct tremor.
Marcia and Annie, the two women, seemed to be in charge of milk and sugar respectively.
‘Just milk,’ Jodie said.
She accepted a plate with a slice of fruit cake on it from Campbell’s (or Cameron’s) wavering hand and took a bite.
‘Delicious,’ she said, more to break the loaded silence than because she had any great opinion. Cake was just cake, wasn’t it?
‘Thank you,’ Joan murmured.
Apparently this cake wasnotjust cake. As she was taking a second bite, Jodie noticed Carol was inspecting her slice with the air of a nanophysicist inspecting an atom. She was lifting the plate. She was sniffing the brown, fruity mass. Jodie knew she was staring, but she’d neverseensuch concentration over baked goods.
‘… an old family recipe with quite a story attached,’ Joan was saying. ‘But with no children to pass the stories along to, what was I to do?’
Carol was now divvying up her slice into fruit chunks and cake crumbs and pressing them between thumb and forefinger. If she was listening to Joan’s monologue about tins and old-fashioned cursive and the pain of parting with one’s precious family history when downsizing, she wasn’t showing it.
Everyone at the table, Jodie noticed, had their eyes on Carol as she inspected … dissected—whatever the heck she was doing—the cake.
Finally, after what seemed like breaths had been held by every person there for so long that lungs, young and old, would soon fail, Carol lifted the unbroken chunk to her lips and sank her dentures in.
And that was when all hell broke loose. The sugar bowl was flung across the table, an innocent and unsuspecting floral plate was smashed to the ground and an accusation was sent spinning into the air.
‘You,’ said Carol, her voice breaking, her twig-thin chest heaving, her gnarled index finger pointing shakily at Joan, ‘havestolen my recipe!’
Chapter 6
The lunchtime run was busier than usual and had included a large family up visiting from Sydney, who’d booked out the farmstay cottages up at Wirraway but were keen to try the pub’s lamb shank pie, which they’d seen reviewed online.
‘Feck’n ’eck,’ said Fergus as he shoved the last tray of plates into the commercial dishwasher. ‘We’re running hot today.’
‘That,’ Will said, as he leaned a shoulder against the kitchen wall to take the weight off his leg, ‘was the beginning of the Christmas rush. School broke up last week, which means every holiday place from here to the coast is about to become chock-a-block. December and January are two of our biggest months.’
‘Is it too late to say I can’t do December after all, boss, and I’m heading west?’