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‘Madness,’ Will said. But how old was Carol, anyway? Eighty plus, surely. How did she manage with things like wheelie bins and driving and changing light bulbs in ceiling fixtures?

‘I’ve told her I’m not moving, of course. Maybe that’s why Jodie didn’t help you … she’d driven all this way because her mother seems to have inferred I was ready to pack up my fine bone china and die. Maybe she was frustrated. That has to be it.’

The sunlight shining in the open front door dimmed as two more of Clarence’s locals stepped into the bar. ‘Looks like the rest of your committee’s arriving,’ Will said.

Carol wasn’t done. ‘And you know who runs the residents’ association at the old fogeys’ home, don’t you, Will?’

‘Clarence Gardens? I think the term is assisted living facility these days, Carol.’

‘Don’t get all woke with me, young man, I won’t have it. Joan Sloane runs it.Joan Sloane.’

All that outrage in Carol’s voice? The fire in her eyes? Will had exactly zero idea. Who the hell was Joan Sloane?

Chapter 5

Carol’s cottage in Clarence was over a hundred years old and dated to when timber getters settled in the valley. A simpler time, when a family didn’t need more than two bedrooms, a dunny out back and a living room where the missus of the house could show off the crockery she’d received as wedding presents in a glass-fronted cabinet.

The cottage also had a room Carol called the sleep-out: the old side verandah, screened in and louvred and too long and thin for any furniture to really fit. Despite the dimensions and the gaps in the floorboards, sleeping there in the narrow single bed, with the oscillating head of the pedestal fan whooshing a white-noise breeze over her, tucked into ancient bed sheets sporting tiny mustardcoloured daisies, Jodie was having the best sleep she’d managed since a Katoomba police officer had come knocking on her door in the middle of the night to tell her that Peter had become another statistic at a blackspot on the Great Western Highway.

She was sleeping so well she was barely conscious when she became aware of a figure looming over the bed.

‘Carol?’ she said, groggily.

‘You, young lady, have some explaining to do. My kitchen. Five minutes. Do not make me wait.’

What on earth? Jodie threw back the sheet and looked down at the T-shirt she’d been sleeping in. Too short for wandering about the house. She pulled on the clothes she’d worn yesterday, because a five-minute command did not give her time to wrestle with the cantankerous showerhead in Carol’s bathroom. Kitchen drama first, shower and clean clothes later. She was sliding into an orange vinyl kitchen chair just as Carol was plonking (well, slamming, more like) a teapot onto a quilted trivet on the table.

‘I didn’t realise it was so late,’ Jodie said, eyes on the clock. Eleven o’clock.Eleven o’clock!She must have been asleep for thirteen solid hours. Had that annoyed her great aunt?

Or maybe Carol had been on the phone to Jodie’s mum. Janelle had waved aside all Jodie’s objections to being sent here under false pretences when Jodie had called her. In fact, her mother had gone on to suggest that if Jodie wasn’t so caught up in her own headspace, she’d see for herself that Carol was too old to be living alone in a house and managing its upkeep, and Jodie needed to stop being so mopey, and to see she’d be doing Carol a kindness by encouraging her to see the move as the best idea since sliced bread.

‘Losing your business has made you very selfish, Jodie.’

‘My business partnerdyinghas made me verysad, Mum. Losing my business while grieving was just fate giving me an extra kick in the pants, in case I wasn’t already hurting enough.’ Jodie and Peter had been indulging for several months in a whole friends-with-benefits thing. Not quite a commitment, but notnotcommitment, either. And she’d been havingfeelings. Strong ones. Ones which involved her heart, and about which she’d now never have a chance to speak.

Did Mum know this? No way. Chatting about Jodie’s love life was so not a feature of their relationship. Nor was chatting about the sense of loss that had dogged her ever since the funeral: lost opportunities, lost moments—and maybe, possibly (probably) lost love.

Talking to Janelle could easily have put the cranky look on Carol’s face. The two of them were women who liked to get their own way and backing down was a concept neither of them quite got.

‘Has … Mum called you?’ Janelle had certainly threatened to now that Jodie had proved to be such a disappointment as a packer-upperer.

‘She has. I took great delight in telling her to mind her own business. She’s my niece, not my guardian.’

Jodie admired Carol’s confidence; she would never be so bold as to tell her mother to butt out.

‘I’ve been out at a committee meeting for the Christmas Twilight Markets. What I learned there—’ Carol shook her head, as though she was still reeling.

Jodie felt a tightness in her chest and despite the summer sun beaming through the open kitchen window, her back and neck and arms turned into gooseflesh. ‘Has something terrible happened?’ Please, no. Please don’t let her have to bear witness to any more bad news. Was the highway closed? A pile-up? A car through a guardrail? Had she slept through the sirens? Please—

‘Will tells me he injured himself the other day, saving you from falling over, and you didn’t even try to help him.’

Jodie blinked.Thiswas the terrible thing? ‘The publican? But he—’

‘He can barely walk. He’s refusing to go get his leg seen to at the doctor’s. He thinks it’s a big secret that he’s averse to medical help, but of course I know. Everyone in Clarence knows, but nobody mentions it. You need to go over there and help that young man.’

‘Help him?’ Jodie couldn’t even help herself, let alone the town’s brown-eyed publican. She clutched at a straw: ‘You said yourself he’s averse to medical help.’

‘You’re a physiotherapist, not a doctor, Jodie. That’s different.’