The House On Jindalee Lane

by Jennie Jones

  ‘It’s time to go,’ he muttered. Deploy elsewhere. Anywhere, so long as it was far enough to ensure he didn’t see Edie and be constantly reminded of the mission he’d been unable to see through. For the first time in his life, he wasn’t returning to base unharmed, because being around Edie and not being able to take her in his arms hurt his heart to the point it was sometimes almost painful. He didn’t even have a base. He needed to find one.

  No-one in town would let her down. They’d rally around her.

  Josh and Ethan would front up and build the stage. She’d find someone else to be her stage manager.

  She’d produce the play, do it well, give everyone a grand old time, then get a great part she just had to take, and be off. That’s what their lives would be like if he kept reaching out for her. One day, he might make a perfect strike and she’d fall into his arms. They’d be here, living in her house, and they’d be happy but that pull of the lights, the reviews, the acting fraternity, the whole damned thing—that string attached to her heart that would always be the most important thing to her would call her. She’d refuse to go because of Ryan and he would have to let her go, because how could he not let her have what she wanted? He had no right to wish she was more like Kate and that she’d find a way to stay in the limelight while also staying here, in town, with him. No right. And if he hung around, like he was now, waiting for one more glimmer of reciprocal attraction in her eyes, one more moment of their gazes holding like they’d shared that morning …

  He got out of the four-wheel drive and tramped around to the kitchen door, still arguing himself into his decision. It’s best. Get out now.

  He halted when he pushed the door open, and gave Edie a fast appraisal.

  She was in front of the empty hearth and had her back to him with her mobile to her ear. ‘I didn’t expect him to get vicious just because I killed him off in Who Shot the Producer,’ she said to whoever she was talking to. ‘Nobody knows the dead body is him, except him!’

  Ryan stepped back, wanting to evaluate the situation before she spotted him.

  ‘I did not!’ she said forcibly. ‘I wouldn’t do that. I don’t behave the way he’s behaving.’ She drummed her fingernails on the mantle of the fireplace. ‘Tony, what should I do?’

  Ryan narrowed his eyes. Tony was the actor friend.

  ‘I’m not going to call him,’ she said as though Tony’s suggestion was outrageous. ‘I don’t want him knowing where I am.’

  Ryan took another soft-footed step back.

  ‘Would you?’ she asked, relief in her voice. ‘Thank you!’ She let her breath out. ‘I owe you. I will. Promise! Speak later.’ She ended the call and let her head fall all the way back so her hair spiralled down her spine.

  Ryan moved from the alcove of the back door and walked into the kitchen, behaving as though he’d just come in. ‘Kate said to tell you she’s up for the costume design thing.’

  She shot around, obviously startled by his voice.

  ‘Who was that?’ he asked, nodding at the phone.

  ‘Tony,’ she said quickly.

  ‘Everything okay?’

  She threw the phone onto the seat of an armchair next to the fireplace then swiped her hands over her face, pushing back her hair. ‘Fine.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ Ryan asked.

  ‘I just have a little problem.’

  ‘With Tony?’

  She shook herself, as though pulling herself together. ‘Um … No, not Tony. My other actor friend can’t be in the play. He um … He got a great part in … in a tour of The Rocky Horror Picture Show and he has to take it—they offered him Riff Raff.’

  Was it this actor friend who was causing her trouble? ‘Riff Raff?’

  ‘It’s a fabulous role. Almost as good as Frank N. Furter. I played Janet once,’ she added, throwing him one of her wide smiles.

  She was thinking on her feet. Not necessarily lying, but perhaps making something up to put him off the track of the producer she’d apparently killed off in her play.

  ‘So the producer in your play is real?’ he asked.

  ‘And sadly not dead.’

  She wrung her hands and Ryan made a further assessment. She’d answered immediately, without thinking. If she’d thought about his question, she’d have realised he couldn’t have known about the producer if he had just walked through the door.

  ‘By the way,’ he said, picking up a slice of cheese from what was obviously Edie’s lunch plate and biting into it. ‘Once I start building the stage, I’ll have to move back into the house.’

  With that pronouncement, which had come instinctively and reactively to the situation, his decision to leave went out the window.

  6

  The Script

  Edie’s heart was beating fast. She was dreaming, she had to be—but she couldn’t wake up.

  She was facing her family in the house on Burra Burra Lane, trying to explain about Marcus. He was there too.

  ‘How could you?’ Viv demanded from her wheelchair. ‘I’ll never walk again after this! An affair! With a married man!’

  ‘What I want to know,’ Ted said, ‘is who’s playing the detective?’

  Ted? What the hell was Ted doing in her dream? Typical. Interfering …

  ‘Will this one do, Edie?’

  Now Josh had turned up. ‘Do you want him to trample Marcus’s body or kick his head in?’

  There was a horse in the living room. It had to be a dream.

  Marcus walked towards her, head down, frown deepened, looking like he wanted to—

  ‘Edie.’

  Oh, thank goodness! Ryan was here. He’d save her.

  ‘Shoot him,’ Ryan said, and threw her a gun.

  Shoot him? Oh, God! Was the gun loaded?

  ‘You’ll never work again,’ Marcus said. ‘You’re nothing but an amateur from this point on.’

  The horse got really angry about this. He blew out his rage in a steaming fury, then reared, pulling the reins out of Josh’s hands and knocking him backwards.

  Everybody screamed.

  Edie’s finger found the trigger.

  ‘Ryan!’ she shrieked.

  Then woke up with a bang.

  She sat up in bed, slapped a hand on her chest and tried to catch her breath.

  The sheer curtains blew into the bedroom from an open window and the bunches of sprigged strawberries on the wallpaper calmed her as her focus returned and familiarity grew.

  ‘Edie?’ Ryan called from outside. ‘What are you yelling at? You okay?’

  She swallowed but her throat was a desert: all sand, no oasis. ‘Fine,’ she croaked.

  She untangled herself from the sheets, swung her legs over the edge of the bed, ran to the open window and pulled the flapping curtains aside.

  She waved down at Ryan. ‘Stubbed my big toe on the portable radiator.’

  He shook his head, although he smiled too. ‘I’ll get the coffee going.’

  He headed for the kitchen and Edie turned and sank against the wall. It was so good to know he was around to save her from death by nightmare or portable radiator. It was good having him near full stop: a mere loud yell away.

  She pushed her hair back from her face and stood up straight. Forget the silly dream. Time to start the day.

  ‘So I’ve made a start on the stage with the timber I’ve already got,’ Ryan said as he handed Edie her coffee. ‘Nick’s getting the rest of it down here in a day or two.’

  Edie wrapped her hands around the mug. Even though she’d showered and dressed she was still trembling from the dream.

  ‘One slightly raised, pitched stage coming up,’ Ryan said, then sat at the pine kitchen table. ‘I had more thoughts about how to cordon off both ends of the stage too, like you wanted.’

  ‘Thanks so much.’

  ‘So you’ve got backstage access without the audience seeing you.’

  ‘All crew dress in black,’ she told him. ‘It’s standard. So even in a scene change blackout,
there are no flannel or neon T-shirts to be seen. Thanks.’

  ‘No problem. You still need changing rooms though.’

  She nodded. ‘I need to use the big room at the back of the barn for two dressing rooms. But you’d definitely have to move back into the house because that’s currently your bedroom.’

  ‘Just a basic partition?’

  ‘Yes. That would be fine.’ He didn’t say he was going to move back into the house, let alone when.

  He picked up her character list off a pile of notes she’d left on the table and gave it his full attention for about five seconds, then laughed. ‘The Penniless Opera Singer, the Simpleton Groom and the Pugnacious Detective?’ he said, looking bemused. ‘What the hell is this play about?’

  Edie couldn’t help a smile as she snatched the list off him and prepared to go into her spiel. ‘The characters’ titles are all part of the fun. It’s a comedy,’ she added, in case he hadn’t got that and thought she’d written a bad drama. ‘I’ve created my own world and characters but made use of cliché scenarios—like melodramatic goings-on in a country vicarage. I can sell it on after this, if anyone wants it. Lots of writers do them for amateur theatre groups. Any writer out of work who needs something to do, really.’

  She didn’t mention that she was out of work because of Marcus. She hadn’t been out of work since she left drama school. It was hugely embarrassing. Now, according to Tony, Marcus had got even more vindictive.

  One night, returning to his hotel room with him, she discovered he was married. Pretty easy, since he’d checked his messages on his mobile, kept the speaker on and the suite had been filled with the sound of his American wife’s fury at her husband having an affair. Which he hadn’t—not with Edie anyway.

  Marcus had cut his wife off and brushed away the telephone conversation with one of his debonair smiles, but it engaged nothing in Edie except shock and disbelief.

  Thank God she hadn’t slept with him. She’d kissed him though—after the second date, and she hadn’t known kissing would be an issue because she hadn’t known he was married!

  It had taken a bit of a struggle to get out of his hotel room too.

  ‘Edie?’

  ‘Oh, sorry.’ She smiled at Ryan. ‘I was thinking about something else.’ A month after the hotel room incident he’d sent someone from his legal team to see the play in Sydney, snooping on her after she’d left him. With the play’s title and a murdered, villainous producer lying up-centre stage it hadn’t taken much to put two and two together. He’d been furious enough to contact her and tell her in no uncertain terms that she was an idiot and he’d make sure she never worked again. She hadn’t believed him, until he started those rumours. But something else must have happened now, to make him even madder.

  Tony was sussing out more and said he’d get back to her if he heard any goss around The Green Room—a restaurant and bar in the heart of Sydney where actors, writers, musicians and directors gathered and gossip flowed as fast as the wine. Whatever Marcus was doing Tony would find out. He knew everyone.

  ‘So,’ she said to Ryan. ‘The play opens with the dead body. Ted’s playing that part. Plus, I’m there as the leading woman and the leading man, who’s billed as the hired help, is also there. All characters are arguing about who might have murdered the producer.’

  ‘What’s your character all about?’

  ‘I’m a private investigator. I’ve been working undercover for the producer as his personal assistant due to a number of allegations about the abuse of his groom and the horses in his stables, and his vilification of the penniless opera singer.’

  ‘Of course. Why didn’t I think of that? What about the leading man?’

  ‘He’s in love with the leading lady.’

  ‘Does she love him?’

  ‘She’s so tied up with her career, she hasn’t got time to fall in love.’

  He looked at her for a long time before tipping his head. He sighed softly. ‘The part’s made for you then.’

  ‘Of course it is. I wrote it.’

  He blinked slowly as he gauged her, a smile forming. ‘What’s the leading man’s job if it’s not really the hired help?’

  Edie blew on her coffee. She’d made the leading man an ex-armed forces specialist who’d been in the jungle for years, evading bad guys and saving missionaries. He was highly skilled and motivated, but got fed up with the humidity in the jungle and missed a good bacon and egg sandwich, so he became a private investigator. At the end of the play the PI leading lady and PI leading man get together after the man realises they were meant for each other all along. They are both especially pleased that they do the same job and have so much in common. Unlike Edie and Ryan.

  ‘He’s a PI too,’ she said quickly, then blew on her coffee again. ‘But we don’t know that until the end because he’s undercover as the hired help.’

  ‘Who’s playing the part?’

  ‘My friend Tony. He played it in Sydney. We’ve done lots of shows together.’

  ‘I heard all about its success when you did it in Sydney. Gemma didn’t stop going on about it. Every time I telephoned her, you were all she could talk about.’

  ‘Sorry about that.’ He must have been bored silly. ‘But I did get a bit of praise. Don Dunn, the reviewer from the Sydney Morning Herald, said he found himself laughing at the ridiculousness even though he tried hard not to enjoy himself.’ It was no mean feat to get a pleasant crit these days.

  ‘By the way,’ Ryan said. ‘Ted’s still asking me what I know about the casting.’

  Edie put her mug down. ‘He’s playing the dead body—the lead, in some ways, since the whole play focuses on the dead body.’

  ‘He wants to play the pugnacious detective.’

  ‘He can’t,’ she said. ‘A professional actor is playing the detective.’

  ‘But hasn’t he just taken a part in The Rocky Horror Picture Show?’

  She’d said that to put him off when he’d sneaked up on her yesterday afternoon while she was on the phone to Tony. But fate was fate, so she’d better call her other actor friend, Damien, to check that he could still come down to play the part. They were casting for Rocky Horror and he might have auditioned. No musical theatre actor in his right mind would turn down a major national tour for a crummy little play in a barn in Swallow’s Fall.

  ‘Can’t you give Ted something?’ Ryan said. ‘He’s lonely.’

  ‘Lonely? Ted?’ She backed down on her scorn, remembering how she’d labelled Ada Ormond and how Mrs Tam had gently admonished her. But Ted was so infuriating. ‘The trouble with Ted is that he’s all jumped-up officious, then he does something really heartwarming, then he gets officious again. A person never knows where they are with him.’

  ‘That’s because Ted doesn’t know where he is.’

  ‘Yes,’ she admitted, ‘but he hasn’t done anything heartwarming in years. He’s currently in officious mode.’

  Ryan cocked an eyebrow and Edie took her eyes off him.

  Ted was lonely. Mrs Ormond was lonely. Edie was beginning to think she might be lonely too. Loneliness had never affected her before, mainly because there was always something to do, or be done, or get sorted. Now, the only goal she had was getting this play up and running. Plus, maybe, getting herself sorted—once she knew exactly what was wrong with her—and hopefully regain whatever it was about her persona she’d lost.

  ‘I need to call Olivia Bradford,’ she said, putting her mug down and standing. She might be stuck here forever so she ought to get on with following through on her friendship with Olivia. They’d caught up the other week, and Edie hadn’t got back to her. How thoughtless.

  ‘Olivia,’ Edie said two minutes later, after leaving Ryan in the kitchen and running down the hall to the living room where she’d left her mobile. ‘It’s Edie Granger. How are you?’

  ‘Pretty much the way I was when I saw you the week before last and we downed a bottle of shiraz together,’ Olivia said. ‘How are you, Edie Gra
nger?’

  Edie walked to one of the windows and looked out. ‘I’m sorry I haven’t been in touch since then.’

  ‘You’ve been busy.’

  ‘Hectic! But getting there and I really want us to meet up again. It was so good renewing our friendship—or acquaintance, whichever you prefer.’ She held her breath.

  ‘You don’t change, Edie.’

  Edie had a vision of Olivia shaking her head. ‘You really don’t think I’ve changed? You still think of me as your friend?’

  ‘Edie,’ Olivia said with some exasperation, ‘some friendships go on forever, wherever one finds themselves. So like it or not, I happen to think of you as my solid forever-friend.’

  Edie’s heart somersaulted. ‘Sorry I’ve been lax in communication.’

  ‘You haven’t. You send me a postcard from every majorly interesting and fashionable place you go.’

  ‘I know, but … I don’t really connect with my old friends very well, do I?’ It pained her to say it, yet admitting it also gave her some relief.

  ‘Shiraz,’ Olivia stated.

  ‘It’s just gone nine am.’

  ‘Renewal of friendship you think has slipped away from you.’

  Was Olivia saying it hadn’t? ‘It’s a bit early to start drinking but I don’t mind if you don’t.’

  Olivia laughed. ‘You’ve got it bad.’

  ‘Got what bad?’

  ‘I don’t know yet, but I’ll find out.’

  ‘How’s your life, Olivia?’ Edie asked, and waited through the pause.

  ‘Ordinary,’ Olivia said at last. ‘How’s yours?’

  ‘Showing cracks,’ Edie said. Then her eyes stung and her chest hurt as though someone had bound her in a thick elastic band and pulled it tight.

  ‘We need a meet-up, Edie.’

  ‘Yes, please,’ Edie said. ‘But I haven’t got a car so I’m not sure how I’ll get into town.’

  ‘Ryan will drive you.’

  ‘But I don’t want him to.’

  ‘But he’ll do it.’

  ‘Yes, but I—’ She lowered her voice. ‘Olivia, I think I’m asking too much of him. I irritate him, but I still like him. I can’t stop liking him.’