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‘It’s a deal,’ he said, then he shifted his head a little, because if ever there had been a time to seal a deal with a kiss, this was it.

He pressed his lips to hers, and she started to kiss him back and wrap her arms around him even tighter and run her fingers into his hair, along his scalp, in a way that was doing very lovely, urgent things to his nerve endings, but then she pulled back and said, ‘Wait.’

‘Let’s not wait,’ he said. ‘I’m done with waiting.’

‘No,’ she said, ‘we’re forgetting something.’

He racked his brain. What more was there? Him and her, together. Sure, the future was completely unsorted, but did that matter? Not a scrap.

‘Carol,’ she said. ‘Joan Sloane. The Christmas cake war.’

‘Oh,’ he said. ‘That.’

‘I’m going to have to go and see Carol tomorrow at the hospital. And you know what? I’m going to take the cake tin, and I’m going to go through her drawers here and find that scrapbook. I won’t read it, but I’m going to take it all in tomorrow and tell her what we know. At the hospital.’

‘Really? You won’t wait till she comes home?’

‘I think definitely at the hospital. It’s neutral territory. And if she does react badly and relapse into some sort of fainting event, we’ll be close to medical help. And by we, I mean me and Carol, obviously,’ she said, patting his cheek. ‘I can tell you all about it when I get home.’

He took a breath. Pressed his forehead to hers. ‘I’ll come with you.’

She moved back a smidge—just far enough so he could see her eyes as she frowned at him. ‘You don’t have to.’

‘I know I don’t. Iwantto.’ That wasn’t quite true. ‘I want to want to.’

‘Okay,’ she said.

He could feel himself getting a little sweaty and a little heated, and it was probably anxiety because he had just committed to doing what he really didn’t want to be doing: visiting a hospital. But Jodie was squirming on his lap a little more, and she had her teeth on his earlobe, and one of her hands was unbuttoning his shirt, and he was feeling very much like things were about to get a little too frisky to be conducted on Carol’s front steps, when she said: ‘I know the perfect way to distract you between now and when we head into the hospital tomorrow.’

She stood up, dangled a set of keys provocatively, then unlocked the door and sauntered inside, leaving the door wide open behind her.

Christmas Day

The little dining room in Carol’s house was busier than it had been in years, which was making her feel a little weepy. But that was enough of that nonsense, so she set the last trivet on the table, straightened the silver serving spoons, then hurried back to the kitchen to check on the bird that was currently roasting in her oven.

She had tried to talk Jodie out of buying a turkey, because surely a chicken would do, and it wasn’t as though Jodie had any patient money coming in yet. The sleep-out conversion wasn’t quite finished, the medical bed and medicine balls and other paraphernalia she had collected from Katoomba were still living with the empty kegs in the pub’s storage shed, and the little sign for the front garden—Clarence Physiotherapy Practice—that Will’s brother Joey had made was propped up in the old front room that was now Jodie’s bedroom.

And there were those silly tears again. Carol picked up the corner of her apron and dabbed it to her cheeks. ‘This will be a happy day,’ she said to herself. Momentous … potentially volatile (because she hadn’t really thought Joan would accept their invitation, but perhaps Jodie had exceptional powers of persuasion and had convinced Joan they wanted to thank her for her medical expertise in the judging arena) … buthappy.

‘Carol?’

The voice came from the doorway.

‘What do you think?’

Jodie did a twirl to show off the little green sundress she had found in the vintage store over on Narli Lane. It was a darling thing, spotted and frilly, and Carol reflected on how much change she had seen in Jodie since she’d come to live with her in Clarence. The girl’s eyes shone. Her cheeks had some colour. She had plumped up a little.

Seeing her so young and so pretty and so smiley, with her dark red hair fashioned in a loose knot on the top of her head, reminded Carol so forcibly of when she herself had been a young woman living in this very house that it was hard not to reflect on all those sentimental songs and stories the radio carried on with at Christmas time each year: should old acquaintance be forgot and cattle lowing over new babies and hearts unfolding like flowers …

She was the old acquaintance in the songs now, but not Jodie. The girl had her life ahead of her, and it would be a joyous one. Awondrousone. Carol just knew it.

‘What time did we say again, pet?’ Carol asked.

‘One o’clock,’ Jodie said.

And like a cuckoo in a clock had just heard them, one sharp knock sounded against the little metal frame of the flyscreen door at the front of the house.

Jodie’s eyes opened wide as she looked at Carol.