Page 2 of A Country Practice Christmas
Carol looked her over, head to toe. ‘Why the long face?’
‘Um …’ Jodie had no intention of deep-diving into her own woes, which left her with Carol’s. ‘I wish I was visiting for a different reason, that’s all,’ she said.Deflection, go me. ‘I hope you’re not sad,’ she added. ‘Change can be hard.’ There, shecouldstill be comforting. ‘And don’t worry about the boxes you’ve already packed being in my way. I don’t care where I sleep.’ She didn’t care about anything, truth be told, besides being left alone.
Carol pursed her lips. Jodie waited for her to suggest a cup of tea and a biscuit—Iced VoVos were her great aunt’s favourite, if she was remembering correctly—because breakfast at the motel this morning had consisted of instant coffee in a polystyrene cup and a single shortbread biscuit from a plastic sleeve with a very overdue use-by date stamped on it, but Carol just stood there, a furrow between her eyebrows.
The gathering in the small cottage hallway—which up until now had consisted of Jodie, Carol, Jodie’s basket of belongings and an aroma of furniture polish—suddenly expanded to include foreboding.
‘Tell me, pet, whatisthe reason you’re here?’ Carol said. ‘The thing I’m supposed to be sad about?’
‘Uh …’ Was Carol’s fall and subsequent hip replacement surgery not the only reason she was moving out of her home? Was she senile, as well? How could she not know why Jodie was in Clarence?
‘Your move,’ Jodie said gently, setting her basket onto the hall table and taking her great aunt’s hand. Maybe she hadn’t lost all of her ability to care, after all. The poor old duck. Infirm in bodyandmind.
‘Go on,’ Carol said. Not gently. Grimly.
Jodie cleared her throat. ‘Into the home.’ Jodie reached into the basket, shoved aside a rolled ball of socks, a phone charger and a tatty bra, then pulled out the crumpled stash of paperwork to hand over as a memory prompt. ‘Here. This place. A single room with your own ensuite and everything. Weekly mahjong, vegetable gardens …’
She’d reached the end of what she could recall about Clarence Gardens. Her mother had assured her it was to be Carol’s future home, but Carol was not, as Jodie had hoped, now skim reading the paperwork and nodding her head, saying,Oh yes, that place, silly me, et cetera et cetera.
What Carol did do was take the paperwork from her hand, tear it in two, then drop it back into Jodie’s basket. ‘Your mother,’ she said, ‘has been a little too busy. I’m not moving anywhere.’
‘But—’ Jodie said to empty air. Carol was walking down the corridor in the direction of the kitchen.I’ve driven all this way.
Where the front of the house had some old and new to it, the kitchen was just as Jodie remembered: straight out of a 1950sWomen’s Weeklyphoto shoot. Sage green Laminex, a central table, also Laminex, but gussied up with a studded strip of aluminium around the rim. Steel-legged chairs with orange vinyl upholstery, one of those toasters where the sides flopped down to put your home-cut bread in, a standalone oven with floral tin covers adorning the four electric hobs.
And on every available surface was a cake tin, browned-off parchment paper rising up above the sides and deep-coloured fruit cake within, with a page of handwritten notes beside each cake. The scent of booze hung as thickly in the air as Jodie’s heartbreak, despite it being barely past ten in the morning. Surely Carol hadn’t been drinking?
Perhaps they could circle back to the aged care home later … after she’d rung her mother for the lowdown on just what was wrong with her great aunt. ‘Been doing a little baking, Carol?’ she said.
Carol tapped Jodie’s hand away as she reached out to a crumbcrusted glacé cherry that was poking up from the surface of the closest cake. ‘This is not a little baking, Jodie. These are my entries for the Christmas cake competition. You helped me bake them one year when you were little, don’t you remember?’
A glimmer of memory: tinsel and music and mango crates; kids running full pelt on a dark grassy lawn with sparklers in their hands. A canvas awning over a trestle table filled with cakes and a heavy glass trophy that she’d been allowed to carry home. ‘The Clarence Christmas Twilight Markets. Wow, I can’t believe they’re still going.’
‘Of course they’re still going. Why on earth wouldn’t they be?’
Jodie shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Public liability insurance, a dwindling population, lack of volunteers, fire hazards, cancel culture …’
Carol frowned but didn’t say anything. Instead, she waited until Jodie’s negativity tapered off, then opened one of the green-painted kitchen drawers and removed a pastry brush. ‘Make yourself useful, pet, and pass me that bottle. I’d just unwrapped them when you knocked on the door and they’ve been exposed to the air long enough. Can you be trusted with a brush?’
‘Um … yes?’
Carol measured a large silver spoon’s worth of whisky into a teacup and handed it to her. ‘Dip and swipe. Mind, I want the entire surface covered with the same amount so don’t slop it around on one side and be stingy on the other.’
‘Why so specific?’
‘Pet, we’ll be feeding these cakes until midnight if you’re going to question my every move. Let me catch you up. Six cakes, all the same recipe, baked two at a time over three consecutive days. One from each bake is the sampling cake, and the other is the competition cake. I will test each of the sample cakes on the day of the markets to decide which one is the best for my entry on the day. I wonder …’
‘Yes?’
‘I wonder if I should make you sign some sort of nondisclosure agreement for the duration of your stay, Jodie. There will be people out there—’ Carol waved a boozy teacup in the general direction of the front door ‘—who would very much like to know what goes on in this kitchen.’
Hip replacement, senility, paranoia. The picture was painting itself.
‘I promise not to mention your cakes, Carol.’
‘Or my method.’
‘Or your method.’ Jodie grinned. Really … this wascakethey were talking about, not GPS coordinates to buried treasure. Her cheeks felt stretched by the unaccustomed movement.
