“What do you mean? For a job, or a holiday, what?”
“Anything, what’s the first thing that comes to mind when I ask you what you’d like to be doing now?” Meg glanced at him. He was gazing at her with those glassy eyes like he really cared about her answer. She wasn’t about to tell him the first thing that came into her mind.
She sighed, returning her attention to the road. “You don’t think that way when you know you can’t do anything about it.”
“Why not?”
“It just reminds you of everything you’re missing.”
“Why do you have to miss anything? You should make a list of all the things you’d like to do.”
She groaned.
“What?”
“I’ve made too many lists in my lifetime.”
“I’m not talking about a shopping list! Call it a wish list.”
“Wishful thinking list, you mean.”
Jamie shook his head in frustration but he was smiling. “Meg, you’ll be old before your time with that attitude.”
They drove down into Bondi, which was a little quieter than usual in the middle of a weekday.
Meg slowed up. “Where to?”
“You could just pull up over there, thanks,” said Jamie, indicating a spot somebody had just vacated.
Meg parked the car but left the engine running. Jamie looked a little hesitant.
“You sure you don’t want to get a coffee? Or lunch?” he asked.
Meg eyed him dubiously. “You’re game. Harrison’s not really fit for adult company these days. Besides, he has to have his nap.” She glanced into the back seat. Harrison’s head was nodding precariously and he could barely keep his eyes open. “In fact, if I don’t get him home soon, he’ll fall asleep, and then he’ll wake up when I try to carry him into the house.”
“He can’t miss a nap?”
“You really don’t have much to do with kids, do you? If he misses his nap, I’ll pay for it. He’ll grizzle all afternoon, and then probably crash about four anyway. Which means he won’t go back to sleep until maybe eleven tonight.”
Jamie looked as though she’d given him more information than he cared to have.
“I’m glad I bumped into you today,” he said. “I’ve been thinking about you, Meg.”
“Oh?” she said, trying to act as though that had no effect on her at all.
“Would it be alright to call you again?”
Meg sighed. “Why?”
“I don’t know. We could do something different. Get you out of your rut.”
“Who said I was in a rut?”
“Aren’t you?”
Meg felt flustered. Lucky Harrison was too young to be repeating any of this back to his father. She already felt conspicuous enough, parked here, talking to him. Anybody might see them.
“Why do you want to hang around with an old chook like me, Jamie?”
He laughed. “You’re not an old chook!”
She looked at him, waiting for an answer.
“You’re interesting, Meg.” He paused. “And I like your face.”
Flattery. Works every time.
“What did you have in mind?”
He shrugged. “Don’t know that yet.”
“When?”
“Don’t know that either.”
Of course, the man without a Filofax.
“Well, call me when you know. I’ll give you an answer then.”
“Fair enough.” Jamie opened the car door. “Where should I call you? At work?”
Meg remembered her last pathetic effort, hanging by the phone at the office.
“No…” she said, reaching into her bag for her wallet. She took out a business card and handed it to him. “You can always catch me on my mobile. Or leave a message.”
He smiled broadly. “I’ll do that,” he said, climbing out of the car and closing the door. He stood on the footpath watching her while she pretended to be waiting for a break in the traffic.
What was she doing, handing out her phone number to a younger man she barely knew because he said he liked her face? What was wrong with her?
She pulled out into the traffic, noticing Jamie wave out of the corner of her eye. It was okay, she’d just given her phone number to a friend.
Which did not account for the faint shiver that ran through her body when she felt his eyes following her as she drove away down the road.
April
“Please come with us!” Nic persisted. “We’ve packed enough food.”
“But it looks like rain.”
Ally didn’t know how else to get out of this politely. Nic had invited her to join her and Rob for a picnic. They were only trying to be nice, she knew they were worried about her. Ever since the auction they had been constantly asking her what she was going to do, and she still couldn’t answer them. Finally it had become obvious that all she really could do was go back to Sydney, where at least she had a job. But she was reluctant, and she couldn’t work out why.
“There’s shelter.”
“What?”
“In case it rains,” Nic explained. “Ally, you are coming, I’m not taking no for an answer.”
She looked at Nic, all four feet something of her, standing defiantly, her arms crossed.
“Nic…” Ally drew the word out plaintively. “Three’s a crowd.”
“Oh bollocks.”
She sat quietly in the back of Rob’s car as he pulled out onto the highway, toward Moss Vale. They’d only been driving for a few minutes when he turned off the main road and into what appeared to be a private driveway. He stopped the car in front of the gates and Nic jumped out to open them.
“Where are we going?” Ally asked curiously.
“Just up here farther,” Rob murmured, manoeuvring the car through the gates and stopping to wait for Nic.
She jumped in again and turned around to Ally. “Nice spot, eh? You know what they say, ‘location, location, location!’”
“What are you talking about? Where are we going?”
“You’ll see!” she grinned, turning back around in her seat.
Ally looked out the window. As they passed a windbreak of trees, a house came into view. It was a sprawling, early Californian bungalow, probably built before 1920. All the original detail appeared to be intact, though it was a bit shabby and worse for wear. Rob pulled the car up at the entrance and turned off the engine.
“Well, come on,” Nic said impatiently. “What are you sitting there for?”
Ally wondered what this was all about, all the more as she watched Nic skip up the steps onto a covered portico and open the door with a key.
“What’s going on, how did you get a key?”
Nic didn’t answer as Ally followed her into a broad hallway that appeared to lead through to the center of the house. There were two doors off to either side.
“Is this for rent? Are you thinking of renting here?”
“No, it’s not for rent,” Nic said offhand as she flung open all the doors up and down the hall.
Ally walked into the first room on her right. It was huge, the ceilings must have been three meters high at least. There was a marble fireplace that had been boarded up, and a bay window facing the front of the house. There wasn’t a stick of furniture, and the windows were bare, but there was carpet on the floors. Thin, threadbare, ugly carpet. Ally wondered what was underneath it. If the floorboards were in good order …
“Ally! What are you doing? Come on through!”
There were double doors joining this room to another, equal in size, also boasting a marble fireplace. The skirting boards were probably thirty centimeters deep, and the doors were heavy solid timber, cedar most likely, or maybe oregon. Everything was original, as far as Ally could make out, but it looked like nothing had been touched in years. Paint was peeling off the walls in thick jagged sheets, and the pressed metal ceilings were spotted with mildew. There was a strong, musty odor in the air. Ally wondered how long it had been since an
yone lived here.
She came through another set of doors into a vast room, spanning the width of the house. This was where the entrance hallway led to, and it appeared another hall branched off to the left, perhaps to an entire wing. A series of doors on the opposite wall must have opened to the rear of the house, the kitchen and so on, Ally guessed.
Nic and Rob had spread a picnic blanket out on the middle of the floor and were laying out the food.
“So, are you going to explain to me what’s going on?” Ally asked.
Nic was kneeling on the floor, pulling the cork out of a bottle of champagne. She filled three glasses and Rob handed one to Ally.
“We’ve been so excited, and we wanted to share it with someone,” Nic blurted out. “Let’s make a toast.”
Ally dropped to the floor to clink glasses with them. “I don’t understand. What are we toasting? Are you’re buying this place?”
Nic nodded excitedly.
“To live in?”
“No, silly, we’re going to open a restaurant!”
Ally looked at Nic’s beaming face, and then Rob’s. He was smiling too. In fact, he looked the happiest Ally had ever seen him.
“But how, when?”
“I know, it’s amazing! I can hardly believe it myself!” Nic exclaimed.
“We’ve had an eye out for quite a while,” Rob explained. “You know, well before Lillian…”
He was still not over Lillian’s passing. None of them were. But it had brought them closer together, and maybe that was why Ally found it difficult to imagine leaving right now. Rob and Nic were Ally’s only link to Lillian’s memory, just as Lillian had been her only link to the memory of her grandfather.
“Anyway,” Rob continued, “I was never going to leave Lillian in the lurch, but we were looking to the future.”
He glanced at Nic as he said “we.”
“Rob has always dreamed of having his own restaurant, we just had to find the right place.” Nic’s face was almost bursting with pride. “And we did! Don’t you think?”
Ally nodded, still bewildered. “But don’t you need licenses, and approval and that?”
“All done!” said Nic. “Seven hundred forms later,” she added wryly.
“But how can you manage all this? I mean, I know it’s rundown, but it must be worth a bomb.”
“Oh, the bank’s throwing money at us, what with Rob’s reputation and everything. It’s all very complicated, bridging loans and whatnot, and I doubt we’ll make any profits for a year.”
“… or two,” Rob added sagely.
“And we have to get a full commercial kitchen installed. You won’t believe the shemozzle of rooms tacked onto the back out there.” Nic rolled her eyes. “But we’ve got this huge overdraft to play with, quite daunting really.”
“So we have to be careful not to waste it,” Rob said seriously. “We’ve got to do up the rest of the place and start operating ASAP.”
“Nothing like a challenge!” Nic grinned, taking a gulp of champagne.
“We’ve already booked the kitchen contractors, and we’re getting Matt out to see about pulling down some of these walls.”
“No, don’t pull down any walls!” Ally jumped up and started circling the room.
“But we have to maximize our tables, we’ve got a big debt to work off.”
“But how many tables could you fit in here alone, Rob? Maybe twenty?”
“Maybe, but only small tables,” he said, looking around.
“So this could be your main working room, every night, taking the bookings for twos and fours.”
“But what about big groups? We want to be able to cater for everyone.”
“Not a problem. Look at the size of those rooms at the front, and they’re adjoining.” Ally dashed up the hall. “What about on the other side?” She poked her head in the first door. “Even better! They’re separate. So you can have big groups, even small functions like a birthday party, over here,” she said, indicating the double room, “and still fit a couple of large bookings in these individual rooms.”
“She’s right, you know,” said Rob. They had followed Ally up the hallway. “Or if there were a lot of group bookings, like at Christmas, we could put them all out in the main room and give the couples somewhere quieter.”
“That means we could close different sections on slower nights,” Nic added. “So it doesn’t look all half empty and pathetic.”
“And not only that,” Ally enthused, “but you could do each room up in a whole different style. Like in here,” she enthused, bursting into the double room. She paused for a few seconds. “Deep Brunswick green on the walls, and all the woodwork white. Strip the floor and stain the boards really dark, but highly polished, and white cloths on the tables with padded velvet chairs.”
Nic and Rob just stared at her.
“Then out here, in the main section,” she went on, striding out to the other room, “you could even go all trendy bistro style. Have those little aluminium tables and chairs, polished floors again, and…” She thought for a moment, looking around. “White, all the walls white, but a wonderful warm white so it’s not stark. And you could strip back all this timber, doors and all, and bleach it, or maybe lime it, that would work too.”
Nic and Rob looked around the dingy, dilapidated room, imagining the bright open space Ally had described.
“And halogen trapeze lights, with these high ceilings. They’re cheap, and you won’t have to muck around up in the roof installing new wiring. Though I suspect you’ll have to replace all the wiring anyway, given the age of the place.”
“Have you done this before?” Nic asked, bemused.
“What?”
“Refurbished a restaurant?”
Ally laughed. “It’s only ideas.”
“But you’re an artist, aren’t you? I’d nearly forgotten.”
“Hardly! A second-rate art teacher is all. The only things I’m good at painting are walls!”
Nic’s eyes were shining. “Ally, you can’t go back to Sydney!” she blurted out. “You have to stay and help us! Work with us, no, for us.”
“Nic,” Rob interrupted awkwardly. “You see, Ally, I don’t know that we’ve got enough money to keep ourselves, let alone—”
“Oh, Rob, do you have to be so … practical all the time?” Nic said impatiently. “We have to do the place up, don’t we? Why can’t we pay Ally?”
“We have to use tradesmen for the building work, and the kitchen fit-out, and the exterior. I thought we’d be doing a lot of the painting inside ourselves.”
“Come on, Rob, we can’t do it all ourselves,” Nic complained. “I’m sure along the way we’d be employing some painters.”
“But that wouldn’t be enough for Ally to live on.”
“Unless,” Ally interrupted. She had been listening to them, her mind ticking over. She couldn’t believe what she was about to suggest. “How tight is your budget?”
“Think of a number that sounds enough, and then halve it,” Rob said.
Nic dug him in the ribs. “You’re being so negative. The bank’s given us a huge overdraft.”
“And it’ll all be used in the kitchen. Nic, you’ve got no idea how much it costs to set up a commercial kitchen.”
“He’s right, Nic, you can’t eat into that money or there’ll be no restaurant.” Ally hesitated. “But … how would you feel about someone investing in the business?”
Nic frowned. “What do you mean?”
“What if someone was to invest enough money to finance all the cosmetic work, and maybe that same someone could save by doing a lot of the work themselves, and they could even work in the business, when it first gets going, because they’ve got a little experience waitressing, and maybe…”
“Ally!”
She looked at Nic.
“What are you talking about? Are you the ‘someone?’” Nic cried.
Ally smiled. “If you’ll have me,” she shrugged.
“
Where would you get that kind of money?”
“My grandfather’s property, I’ve been trying to sell it, remember?”
Nic frowned. “That’s right, I’d almost forgotten.”
“No one has been too interested in the place because it needs a bit of work. I’ve had one or two offers, but the agent said they were a joke.”
“I don’t understand,” said Rob. “You’re not going to take one of those offers? I wouldn’t want you to do that, not to help us out, Ally.”
“No, I think it’s about time I actually just got the work done,” said Ally firmly. “And I know this really good carpenter…”
The next day
“So what do you think?”
Ally looked expectantly at Matt’s face, trying to decipher his expression. Amusement probably, she decided.
“I think,” he said slowly, “that your grandfather had a pretty good sense of humor.”
Ally winced. They were standing in the main room at Circle’s End. It was seven in the morning. When she’d called Matt the night before, he’d seemed a little taken aback, probably because of her reluctance to let him anywhere near the place before.
But Ally felt they were friends now, she hoped they were. And the urgency of the situation made her put aside her phobia of asking for favors, at least for the moment. She had about three weeks left at Birchgrove until the new owners took over. Circle’s End needed to be on the market by then, with the repairs well under way, to reassure any prospective buyer. After she’d blurted out the whole story to Matt, he’d agreed to meet her first thing, before he started for the day.
“Just tell me, is it doable?”
“Anything’s doable,” he grinned. “But it has a lot of character, don’t you reckon? Just look at this staircase—people spend a lot of money to get an effect like that.”
James had built the stairs to the loft out of rough-hewn logs and had used actual tree boughs and branches for the balustrade.
“No, people spend a lot of money to get someone professional to do it properly,” Ally retorted. “It’s not legal, is it?”
“Well, the police won’t come around and raid the place,” he laughed.
“Oh, you know what I mean!”
“They’re ‘non-compliant.’ Treads are too close together, and the risers are too deep. If you want it done properly, it’ll have to be ripped out and rebuilt.”
Call Waiting Page 18