The House At the End of the Street

by Jennie Jones

  A woman dressed in winter soccer strip stood with her hands at her sides, a baseball cap covering her head with the peak pulled low over her face.

  ‘I’ll ruin these studs if I go on the road,’ she said, bending her leg and lifting her foot off the grass to show him the soles of her soccer boots. ‘They’re new.’ She kept her head bowed. ‘Oh, come on, Josh,’ she said, sounding exasperated now. ‘Throw it back.’

  Well, she knew him but he didn’t know—

  The woman pulled the brim of her pink cap back from her face and stared at him, hands on her hips.

  Jesus, Mary and—Josh stooped and picked up the soccer ball, breathing deeply. Gemma Munroe. Five-foot-six. Top of her head almost reached his chin. He knew that thanks to the time he’d kissed her and discovered how far he had to bend to do it, being six-four himself. What the hell was Gem doing in town?

  He made his way to the park, the frozen grass crunching underfoot. The leather of his shoes would be whitening with each step he took; his hiking boots were on the back seat of the hire car.

  The kids, ranging from about seven to eleven years old, stood behind Gem, arms hanging at their sides, puffing hard in their long-sleeved soccer sweatshirts, eyes squinted against the winter sun.

  ‘Hello, Gem.’ He bounced the ball from hand to hand. ‘That’s some kick you’ve got. Might want to curb your enthusiasm before you hurt someone.’

  ‘It was my left foot, Josh. The weakest. If I’d known it was going to hit you I might have used my right.’

  Josh couldn’t read the look in her blue eyes but he could feel an additional chill factor in the air. He threw the ball up in the air, caught it on the tip of his index finger and let it spin as he stared at her, taking a moment to separate the picture of the seventeen-year-old he’d last seen from the woman standing before him. She still looked like a sporty goddess. Just what he didn’t need.

  ‘They said you were coming back,’ she said

  ‘And what are they saying about it?’

  ‘What happens in this town is everyone’s business. Or have you forgotten?’

  Her tone sent his own indignation soaring. He’d only arrived three minutes ago. How could he have pissed her off in that time? ‘I wiped it from my memory,’ he said. As he had Gem. Alright, he’d thought about that kiss over the years and she popped into his mind sometimes, but he removed those thoughts as fast as he could, wanting to forget what had happened between them. Not to mention the consequences.

  She frowned at him, the tip of her nose as pink from the cold as the baseball cap on her head. She muttered something. It sounded like an insult.

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘I said I wondered if you’d come back one day.’

  ‘And here I am.’ He pitched the ball at her.

  She caught it in both hands. ‘Don’t expect me to cook the fatted calf.’

  ‘Are you Josh Rutherford?’ a girl asked.

  Josh looked past Gem’s shoulder to a nine- or ten-year-old kid. ‘Yes. Who are you?’

  ‘Edie Granger,’ she said with an impish smile as she tossed a ponytail of rich brown hair over her shoulder. ‘I’ve heard about you. My daddy told me. You used to work for him.’

  Josh’s breath caught in his chest. Edie Granger, no longer a babe in arms.

  ‘At least say hi to the kid,’ Gem said. ‘Or have you lost your manners along with your memory?’ She didn’t wait for an answer. ‘Come on, guys.’ She marched towards a large metal outbuilding on the perimeter of the park.

  ‘Hi,’ Josh said, giving Edie a smile then running a look over the rest of Gem’s motley crew of footballers. He didn’t recognise any of them. Couldn’t see a resemblance to people he knew. They could be anybody’s kids.

  He followed the group.

  ‘When did they build the park?’ he asked Gem. And where had the town got the money from?

  ‘It’s a sports field,’ Gem informed him.

  ‘It looks like a park.’

  ‘It’s on its way to becoming a sports field.’ She slid open the huge doors of the shed.

  ‘Good God.’ Josh stepped inside the echoing metal construction housing an old truck with a plough attached, a tractor, a ride-on lawn mower and other agricultural equipment, none of which he remembered. He recognised stacks of trestle tables and tents as being the ones used for the annual fair and felt some relief that at least one thing in town hadn’t changed. He’d spent every summer of his youth putting up those marquees and tables.

  ‘A sports stand is on the bucket list,’ Gem said, scooping up a bright, striped cardigan, thrusting her arms through the sleeves and wrapping it around her body. She pushed the sleeves up her arms and re-arranged the bracelets on her wrist. Beetrootred beads and silver chains. He noticed she wasn’t wearing a wedding ring.

  ‘So you’re teaching soccer?’ he asked. And what else? Tobogganing probably, she’d loved that sport in the winter months. ‘Don’t tell me the town’s got a skateboard rink tucked away somewhere?’ Gem had been ace on wheels too. ‘Still got your skateboard?’ he asked. ‘Oiled and ready for spring?’

  ‘I was year ten, eleven and twelve champion, Josh. Of course I’ve got it and yes, it’s ready for spring.’

  ‘Just asking.’ Change the subject. ‘So, are you a school teacher?’

  ‘Nope.’

  Josh drummed his fingers against his thigh. Given her talents and that she was still living in Swallow’s Fall, what else would she do for a living?

  She pulled the baseball cap off her head and shook her hair. Wavy ash-blonde and platinum. Still tousled. Still shoulder length. Still amazingly easy on the eye. He gritted his teeth, supressing the need to check her out below the neck. He didn’t want to care about how slim and athletic she was. Or the way her soccer top had stretched across her breasts as she stood in the park, hands on hips.

  The kids changed their footwear for wellingtons or hiking boots, stacking their soccer boots on shoe racks. Gem flung a pile of soccer shirts at Josh. ‘Make yourself useful. Put them in that laundry bag over there.’

  She turned her attention to the kids, handing out apples and muesli bars, a smile on her face as she paused now and again and tucked in shirts, fastened coats and straightened hats. ‘Okay, kids. You know the drill. Everyone waits outside the stock feeders’. Everyone stays together.’ She went to the doors, the children following her, chatting and eating. ‘Your mum or dad will be here in a few minutes,’ she said. ‘Edie, you’re staying in town with the Tillmans tonight, is that right?’

  ‘Yes. Mum and Dad are back tomorrow.’

  ‘Your parents aren’t home?’ Josh asked her.

  ‘Went to Canberra. They’re picking up a new horse for Lochie.’

  ‘Right.’ So he’d be excused from further facing of the truth today. Just as well, given the reception so far. The Grangers had every right to be pissed off with him. More than almost anyone in town.

  Gem slid the door of the hangar closed, refusing Josh’s assistance by moving him with a nudge of her shoulder. He frowned as he stepped back and let her get on with it. Touchy. Or was it nerves? Maybe she was remembering that kiss. He hoped to God they wouldn’t have to discuss it. Although she rightly deserved an explanation, Josh wasn’t going to give it.

  ‘Your father still in town?’ he asked.

  ‘Hell, no. He’s long gone.’ She snapped the padlock, pocketed the keys and led the kids past the scaffolding and to the front of the stock feeders’.

  Josh glanced at the scaffolding, expecting renovation work or a rendering job but instead saw art. He didn’t have time to inspect it but it covered the entire wall.

  ‘Okay, everyone sit on the bench.’ Gem herded the kids like any school teacher of worth. ‘No climbing on Mr Tillman’s horse.’

  Josh grinned. Tillman still had the same, mega-high plastic horse outside the stock feeders’ business he’d run for decades. Josh had grown up copping a ride on that horse—as had Gem and every other kid in town; Ted Tillm
an bearing down on them, threatening to tan their hides, or worse, tell their parents.

  ‘I remember when you fell off,’ he said quietly to Gem so the kids wouldn’t hear.

  ‘I was pushed.’

  ‘You fell.’

  ‘Watch out!’ She grabbed his arm as a cat skittered from beneath the plastic horse and between his feet. But she was too late and he slipped on a patch of ice and landed with a thump on his backside. He put his hands on the ground behind him. ‘There was no need for that, Gemma.’

  ‘For what?’ she asked, staring down at him.

  ‘You pushed me.’

  ‘You slipped. You won’t get far in those city shoes.’ She turned, waved to the cars that were pulling up to the pavement, then checked that all the kids were getting into the vehicles. ‘Go straight inside,’ she said to Edie, indicating the opened doors of the stock feeders’.

  ‘I will. See you later, Gem.’

  Gem turned without looking at Josh, still sitting on the pavement, threw another wave to the parents then walked across the street and slammed up the stairs to the walkway.

  Must have forgotten about those new studs on her boots.

  She took keys from her cardigan pocket and unlocked the door of the toy shop, yanking it open so hard the little bell that sat on a brass hinge above it echoed down the street.

  ‘Every time a bell rings, an angel gets its wings.’

  Josh looked up at Edie. ‘Is that right?’

  ‘That’s what Mummy says. And by the way, if you want to buy me a present, it’s my birthday soonish.’ She paused. ‘Well, four months. But I’d take a welcome home present from you.’

  He may as well buy her one. So far, he hadn’t been the recipient of a welcome and doubted anyone would be giving him a present.

  ‘I like horses best,’ Edie continued, ‘so a saddle would be good because I have to share one. But if that’s too expensive, I’d settle for one of those plastic doctor’s cases.’ She pointed to Cuddly Bear. ‘That’s a toy shop.’

  ‘I know.’ Suddenly Main Street was flooded with images of himself as he’d been way back when. Going about his day-to-day business. Trying to make ends meet. Two jobs, then three—back working in the toy shop at weekends, scraping for a living. Not any more. He’d returned healthy, wealthy and emotionally stable. Albeit sitting on his rear end in the middle of Main Street.

  Edie held out a hand but as he’d likely pull her over if he let her help him—and bless her for trying—he picked himself up off the pavement and brushed the snow and dirt from his trousers. Now his backside was soaked.

  ‘Daddy says you’re family.’

  He looked down at this miniature Sammy Granger. A slim colt. Except that Edie was blue-eyed and tall, like her father. ‘Does he?’

  Edie nodded. ‘You left town when I was a baby and my brother Lachlan was two so we don’t remember you. But there’s a photo of you in the dining room and sometimes Daddy tells us stories about all the building work you did.’

  ‘That’s right.’ Ethan had trained Josh in building and, most importantly for Josh, in carpentry. ‘So how’s school?’ he asked. He hadn’t seen a school yet, so unless they’d built one outside of town, he presumed the kids still got the bus into Cooma.

  ‘It’s school holidays. Didn’t you know that?’

  Obviously not.

  ‘Why did you leave?’

  Josh ran a hand over his jaw. Kids. Straight-up questions, no messing about. Something he usually liked but not today.

  ‘Why?’ she asked again.

  Gem was one of the reasons. Or more correctly—her father. ‘Oh, you know.’ He shrugged the answer off.

  ‘Have you come back to stay? You can spend winter with us, since you’re family.’

  Having the kid keep mentioning family stung more than a soccer ball to the jaw. He didn’t have a family. Didn’t need one. Didn’t want one. He was here for business only. Pleasure was fifteen thousand kilometres away in the Florida Keys.

  ‘Lochie’s nearly thirteen,’ Edie continued. ‘He’s a grump.’

  Josh listened to Edie while thinking about tomorrow and how Ethan Granger would react when he saw Josh. Same way Gem had most likely.

  Edie stepped closer and slipped her hand in his. ‘You’ve got to meet Vivian too. She’s my little sister. Vivie’s the one I have to share the saddle with.’ Edie rolled her eyes so far back that for a second Josh only saw white. ‘She’s seven, and you know how painful seven year olds can be.’

  Josh laughed and squeezed her hand. It felt like a gentle flower in his larger, work-hardened hand but he liked that she was easy enough with him to hold his hand. If adults could go about their lives the same way as kids, the world might be a more frank and up-front place.

  He indicated the toy shop with a jab of his chin. ‘How come it isn’t open?’ And what was Gem doing with the keys?

  ‘Because it’s Sunday. Gem does sports stuff first, then she opens her shop.’

  ‘What do you mean, her shop? She doesn’t own it.’

  ‘No, but she runs it. She practically owns it. She’s going to buy it.’

  Josh released Edie’s hand, pulled his coat apart, yanked his jacket aside and struck his hands to his hips. He turned to Main Street in the hope the wintery scene might lessen the load that had suddenly landed on his shoulders.

  ‘What’s wrong with that?’ Edie asked.

  Josh eyed the kid, tugging his mouth into a grimace. ‘Nothing. It’s great.’ Right.

  Two

  So much for facing her problems.

  Gem leaned against the toy shop door and wrapped her arms around her torso but it didn’t stop the shock tumbling through her system or slow her pounding heartbeat.

  It had been hard not to look at Josh in the sports shed. Nigh-on impossible not to study the rich, dark brown of his eyes and the tilt of his square jaw without him noticing. She’d managed to run a quick eye down the length of his tall, well-muscled body, though. Fantastic. Damn it. She’d clocked his clothes too. Exceptional man-in-the-country tailoring. Expensive.

  She moved from the door. She couldn’t hide—there was work to be done.

  She switched on the lights in the shop, casting her eye over all her favourite sections. The reading area with child-sized table and chairs. The banks of shelving along the walls, full of toys grouped by a child’s age. The beautiful old polished counter and the majestic glass-door display cabinet that Josh had made for her mum back when he was training to be a carpenter. Gem kept the doors of the cabinet unlocked, the shelving inside home to gifts for grown-ups: jewellery boxes, trinket boxes, hand-painted wine glasses and china.

  She punched in a code on the till. The drawer pinged open and she began the morning cash reconciliation. The shop was doing well at the moment. Winter brought the tourists; stopping to fill up with fuel, sustenance from the smart modern grocery the twins ran or browsing and buying from the few other shops available: artefacts from Turnaround Treasures, camping supplies from the hardware store and toys or gifts from Gem’s little emporium.

  Not your shop, she reminded herself, it’s his. But her brain and her heart refused to listen. How she’d loved him—and it had been love, from the get-go. From the moment he plucked her from a fight she’d been having with two boys. She’d been seven, the boys had been eight, although she’d given as hard a punch as they had.

  She closed the till and kicked off her football boots. She’d been so desperate to get away from Josh and any magnetism he still had, she’d forgotten she was wearing them. Now she’d ruined her brand-new studs. She grabbed her day clothes from the chair behind the counter. Time was at a premium on a Sunday and she was already five minutes late opening the shop. She pulled off her soccer kit, stuffed the shorts and top in a bag and put on black velvet pants and a pink hooded sweatshirt with green and pink ribbons hanging from the zip. She traded the boots for slip-on sneakers and readied the shop for opening, lifting the blinds on the window alcove and then on the doo
r, flipping the sign to Open. It bounced against the glass the same way her heart had bounced against her ribs when Josh had walked towards her on the sports field. She’d annoyed the man who had the power to take the shop away from her. Shouldn’t have been so flippant with him. Not a good move.

  ‘I saw you talking to him,’ Lily said, coming into the shop. ‘He’s so tall and handsome. Very smart. Where’s he been?’

  Gem breathed deeply and zipped up her heart and all its shocks and pains in the pink sweatshirt. ‘He didn’t say.’

  ‘I haven’t got the courage to say hi to him yet,’ Lily said. ‘Where’d he get the tan?’

  Lily and Josh had worked together at Kookaburra’s before it had been turned into a hotel. Of course she’d be pleased to see him.

  ‘I missed him like crazy when he first left,’ she said, then peered at Gem. ‘He didn’t say where he’s been? What he’s been doing?’

  Gem shook her head. ‘Don’t know.’ But damn it, she cared. Where had he got the tan? Australia was in the middle of winter, most states freezing cold. He could have been up in northern Queensland, or the Northern Territory, but something about his tan—and the city-boy look of him—made Gem think he’d been wandering the elite and exclusive playgrounds of the world.

  She turned from Lily and concentrated on stacking early childhood games into a colourful pyramid on one of the round tables she’d bartered Lily for. Lily was expert at rejuvenating old bits and pieces of furniture and bric-a-brac and made huge profits selling them in Turnaround Treasures.

  Gem had poured her artistic nature and talent into Cuddly Bear. But she didn’t own it. Why had she done that—pretended it was hers and showered it with love and care? She glanced around, her gaze resting on the cabinet Josh had made, then blurring as tears threatened. If his trustees had agreed to her proposals, the toy shop would be turning a higher profit than it currently did. She’d had to use her own money to do up the shop front after Josh had refused. How could he do that? How could he not care that his shop was doing well, and that with a bit of the old golden input—dollars—it would turn an even higher profit? In which case, he could have charged a higher price for the lease.