Water under the Bridge

by Lily Malone

  ‘I wish.’ She thrust her hand towards Irma’s house. ‘I can’t even get anyone to show up at a wine and cheese Home Open.’

  ‘This is not a customer here?’ He flicked an eyebrow towards Jake.

  ‘He’s the owner.’ Ella stepped out of Erik’s arm. ‘Come and meet him.’

  ‘Umm, no. He is giving me the hairy eye.’

  ‘Hairy eyeball, or evil eye, Erik,’ she corrected out of habit, because Erik always got lines like that mixed up. She twisted to get a look at Jake. He was in shade in the verandah, but he didn’t look evil to her. ‘He doesn’t look anything of the sort. That’s silly.’

  ‘You never did have much clues what the man is really thinking when he looks at you,’ Erik said.

  ‘He probably thinks you’ve come to buy his house and he’s checking you out to see if you can afford it,’ Ella laughed. ‘You should have driven the Jag.’

  ‘If I could manage to change gears …’

  They laughed together, overflowing with the familiarity in it.

  ‘Coo-ee, Jake? Is that you I see over there?’ The holler turned Ella to the Nillsons’ place, and at the same time Jake shoved up from the verandah and ambled down the steps. He cut to his right towards the fence where Helen Nillson half hung over the pickets, balancing a basket of freshly picked vegetables on Irma’s rosemary bushes.

  ‘Bet she wants a glass of wine,’ Ella muttered, not nastily. There was plenty to go around. They weren’t exactly being inundated.

  ‘Neighbours want to know how much the property is selling for … gives them a dream about their own place, what it is worth,’ Erik said.

  ‘Her place isn’t worth what they’re asking here.’ She leaned towards Erik and whispered, ‘This place isn’t worth what he’s asking but don’t tell a soul.’

  ‘I do not tell,’ Erik said, motioning zipping across his lips.

  She could hear murmurs from Jake and Helen, but she couldn’t discern any of the words. Funny thing was, she could feel eyes on her, she was certain, and from time to time as she chatted under the trees with Erik, her skin would prick and when she turned she’d catch Jake’s gaze, before one of them would glance away.

  ‘I think they’re talking about us,’ she said.

  ‘And, Ella, are we not used to that?’

  Which was true, but it didn’t mean Ella had ever got used to it and not in Chalk Hill. This was her new life, remember?

  ‘Sam is home?’ Erik asked.

  ‘If he’s not, he’ll be grounded for a week. He knows you’re coming.’

  ‘Is he being good?’

  ‘Good if you don’t count the fist fight over handball—that’s the one I told you about—and we ignore the little talk I had with his teacher yesterday afternoon.’

  Erik groaned. ‘What happens yesterday afternoon?’

  ‘She said he isn’t listening in class. He’s taking too long to finish whatever he’s been working on and when Miss Redmond tells the class to stop, Sam keeps going.’

  ‘Wanting to get your work finished is not a bad thing,’ Erik defended.

  ‘I know. I do know.’ Ella’s fingers scratched at her hair. ‘But he can’t just bowl along in his own little world. When the teacher tells him to do something, he needs to do it. When I tell him to do something, he needs to do it. He’s exhausting me. I hate starting the day being angry with him. It makes a hell of a long day and I’m really trying here. I’m trying so hard to sell this house. It’s the only house I’ve got to sell.’

  ‘I will talk with him.’

  ‘Thanks. That would be great. I knew I could count on you.’ Ella stood on tiptoe and kissed Erik’s cheek.

  ‘So I will get out of your hair. Where do I find Sam and your house?’ Erik asked.

  Ella gave him directions and checked her watch. ‘I’ve got twenty minutes to go here, then I’ll be home and we’ll get some dinner started. Okay?’

  ‘I cook spaetzle. I have been shopping.’

  ‘You don’t know how much I’ve missed your spaetzle.’

  Erik climbed into F and executed a wide circle on Chalk Hill Bridge Road, slowly revving the lumbering Troopie back towards the highway.

  Knowing Erik was here for the weekend made her feel lighter already. She’d missed him. He’d been part of her life for longer than anyone except her parents, but they’d taken years to get over their disappointment at Ella ‘throwing away’ her Olympic dream. It was only after Ella told them her marriage was over that her parents had started to thaw.

  When she’d told Jake earlier that she didn’t have a support network here, she’d failed to mention she hadn’t had that support network anywhere. Her parents had made that clear.

  Ella pulled open the gate and walked up the garden path.

  ‘See you later, Jake,’ Helen said. ‘Bye, Ella.’

  Ella looked up and waved at the old lady now retiring to her own side of the rosemary, but her step hitched at the sight of Jake striding across the dry expanse of summer lawn. His long legs outpaced her own, t-shirt all tugged up at the front, and it meant she got an eyeful of flat, lean abs, muscles moving slow and easy with each stride.

  His face wasn’t easy, though. There was a tension in his jaw that made Ella worry. Had Helen told him some bad news? Maybe Helen had recognised Erik.

  Stop assuming the worst. ‘Everything okay?’

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘No one’s hurt?’

  He looked properly at her then. ‘Why would anyone be hurt?’

  ‘You look a bit … like you have things on your mind.’

  ‘Just thinking about stuff.’

  The house probably, and why she hadn’t sold it. ‘Looks like people just can’t stay away from scroungers night, like you said.’ She made her voice bright and confident. ‘I’ll stay on a bit longer, Jake, just in case someone comes late. You don’t need to wait around, though. I can pack up from here.’

  ‘No problem,’ he said, stopping short of the steps to let her go first.

  Ella got a glimpse of tomatoes and eggplants tucked in the fold of Jake’s shirt before her mouth went dry. Directly south of the tomatoes, a smattered line of fine dark hair vanished into Jake’s work pants.

  It was silly to feel self-conscious when she stooped to pick up the empty wineglasses and the plate of crackers and cheese, but she hadn’t counted on how her skirt would ride up her thighs, showing a little more leg than she’d intended, and she hadn’t counted on Jake staying at the base of the steps, which put her stooped bottom and thighs closer to his eye level, and she hadn’t counted on any of it, really. Skin. Abs. Jake.

  She took a few deep breaths to steady herself before she rose, balancing the crackers on the plate. She’d come back for the wineglasses in a separate trip because the way her head was spinning now, she’d be sure to drop them.

  ‘You’re a bit of a dark horse then, aren’t you, Ella Brecker?’ Jake said behind her, and Ella whipped around.

  CHAPTER

  8

  Hiding in plain sight.

  Jake couldn’t get the phrase out of his head.

  According to Helen Nillson, his overly-determined, overly-enthusiastic and way-too-pretty property consultant, Ella Davenport, was half of one of the biggest scandals in Australian swimming in the last decade. Mr Erik and Mrs Ella Brecker. The coach and his protégé.

  To think he fancied himself as a guy who paid attention to detail.

  ‘Don’t you remember the story, Jake?’ Helen said, eyes twinkling at the pure joy she got in passing on gossip, especially fresh gossip.

  ‘Can’t say I do.’ He watched Ella and Erik out on the verge and decided there was nothing old about Helen’s eyesight. It was Jake who’d been blind.

  ‘Ella Davenport was a freestyler. She came out of nowhere in the 2006 Aussie swimming titles to make a couple of finals, and everyone was saying she’d be a big chance at the Beijing Olympics. But she got pregnant and then she married her coach. There was a huge hoo-ha at the time, I
remember it from my magazines, but she kept saying they were in love and they must have been married, lordy it must be ten years at least now. That’s pretty good going this day and age if you go by the statistics.’ Helen touched a plump finger to her chin and stared at the sky. ‘I wonder if he’s moving here too? Maybe they’ve split up?’

  ‘She’s not wearing a ring,’ Jake said. Yep he’d noticed. So had half the single blokes in town. Plus she was using Davenport, not Brecker.

  ‘Anyway, he’s coached a heap of big names and I always remember him because he’s only got the one arm.’ Helen prattled on, glancing skyward again. ‘I’m trying to think how he lost it? I don’t think it was a shark or an accident, or anything like that. I think he was born that way. What do you call that? You can’t call it disabled these days.’

  ‘Person with a disability is the politically correct term, I think, Helen,’ Jake replied.

  ‘He won a heap of medals in the Paralympics over the years for Germany, and then he moved to, like, coaching in the proper version of the Olympics—whatever you call that.’

  ‘Able bodied, I think,’ Jake gave her.

  ‘Hmm. Anyway, he coached that Marshall Wentworth. He’s the guy you see on TV now. Or did he coach him? Actually, I’m not sure. I think he coached him for a while when he was younger. Then there was Sally Conneely? Ella Davenport, too, way back then and he still coaches now. Any of this ringin’ any bells?’ Helen clapped her hands to her ruddy cheeks. ‘I should have put two and two together. I’m getting old. I’ve heard a few people in town say that they thought they recognised her from somewhere but the minute you go put her with him, I see it straight away!’

  Jake remembered Marshall Wentworth. That guy was a torpedo the way he churned down the lane. Last Olympic games, the Rio ones, Wentworth was a commentator. The guy’s wife and young baby had been in the stands and the camera had spent almost as much time on the bloke’s happy family in the bleachers as it did on his interviews with the breathless dripping swimmers emerging from the pool.

  ‘I reckon her dark hair is what fooled me. She was a little blondie in the pool, and then when she was doing those breakfast cereal adverts, and of course, she was Brecker then.’

  ‘You knew more than me, Helen. I sure didn’t have a clue,’ Jake said, when she stopped to take a breath. ‘Still don’t. Not really.’

  Helen started up again, but Jake lost most of the next bit because he was trying to match up his own memories. Olympics had always been a busy time on the farm. Late July to August. Prime lambing time, always keeping an eye out for disease in the growing crops, never any hours to spare glued to the TV.

  In 2006 Jake was out of the country. That was the year he met Cassidy, when they’d gone trekking in Nepal and then in a tent through Scotland, and later Wales. Cassidy had been all he could think about that year. That year, and for at least the twelve months after she, after she … got rid of (how else could he think of it) their baby and left him with no one.

  He glanced towards Erik and Ella again, paying more attention to the man this time.

  Brecker towered over Ella in height and build. Jake judged him in his mid-forties. He’d have to be a fair bit older than Ella. Looked like he kept himself fit. German-born, craggy-faced on pool deck, legendary for the iron-firm way he had with his swimmers. All that didn’t match the way the big guy looked at Ella now. All the iron and craggy in Erik’s face was butter-soft.

  Jake got that twist in his gut again.

  Jake had been suckered by a name and by context. Away from a swimming pool and a one-armed husband, he hadn’t had any reason to look harder.

  No wonder Sam said his mum liked swimmers.

  ‘Jake?’ Helen blinked at him from her side of the fence.

  ‘Sorry, Helen. What did you say?’

  ‘I asked did you want any tomatoes?’

  ‘Sure. Thanks.’

  If Ella was using her maiden name—Davenport—that meant they must have split up, didn’t it? Divorce? Trial separation?

  She’d told him she needed a change. That was why she tried this real estate sales gig.

  So what was Erik doing here? Come to see his son? Or Ella? Or both? What went wrong with the two of them to make trouble in swimming pool paradise?

  ‘Having any luck selling the place?’ Helen asked, leaning even further over her basket of vegies, bruising the rosemary into releasing its sharp tang.

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘Ah well. You get that much for your place, I reckon I might give your young saleslady a go at selling my place too.’

  A vehicle door slammed to his left. Seconds later, the old Troop Carrier lurched away from the kerb and Ella turned to come back into Nanna’s property.

  ‘Night, Helen.’

  ‘Here, take some of these with you.’ Helen held out a handful of red tomatoes and eggplants with the deepest purple skin. ‘See you later, Jake. Bye, Ella.’

  He got a last hit of rosemary as the old lady waved towards Ella and picked up her basket.

  A guy looked at a girl differently when she was a famous swimmer, he decided, watching Ella navigate the path. Those long lithe arms became ‘famous swimmer’s arms’ and her slim, toned legs became ‘famous swimmer’s legs’. What should he say to this new famous Ella?

  Should he ask her why her husband had left her alone in Chalk Hill for three months? Should he tell her he thought her son needed his father around? Should he ask why she didn’t want to try selling houses nearer the ocean, or a lake, or a river, somewhere she could swim every day?

  He stood aside so Ella could climb the steps to the verandah and watched her stoop to pick up their empty wineglasses and the plate of crackers and cheese. Her skirt tightened over her lovely famous swimmer’s bottom.

  He should just shut up. He really should.

  He really shouldn’t say what he was about to say. It would be all kinds of stupid. But, he was a bloke. Blokes did stupid things when they were around a pretty, famous swimmer girl.

  So, he thought, stuff it.

  ‘You’re a bit of a dark horse, aren’t you, Ella Brecker?’

  Ella whipped around so fast, crackers dove off the plate and broke in a wave all over the cement steps.

  * * *

  Those broken crackers made it very hard for Ella to play it cool, but she gave it her best shot as she tried to stop the cheese cartwheeling after the crackers. ‘I beg your pardon?’

  Jake waved, like it didn’t matter that he’d just shattered her afternoon. ‘You obviously don’t want people to know you’re famous.’

  ‘I’m hardly famous,’ Ella said, picking up crackers, heart in her mouth. ‘Was that what Helen and you were just talking about? Me?’

  She didn’t blame the old lady for her interest. A town the size of Chalk Hill took its drama when it was offered. More important to Ella was what this gossip meant to her new career. She could just imagine Bob Begg telling Harvey that a failed swimming star newly separated from her one-armed swimming coach husband hardly had great credentials for the rookie real estate rep in their office.

  ‘Seriously, Ella. Sorry, I didn’t mean to blurt it out like that. Here.’ Jake took the plate in one palm and her hand in the other. ‘Sit down before you fall.’

  Numbly, Ella sat on the verandah boards.

  ‘What’s the big secret anyway? If I’d been a famous swimmer, I think I’d want the world to know.’

  ‘I’m not famous.’ Ella pulled her hand from Jake’s. ‘Erik is the famous one. Erik always was. I’m just the has-been who got herself knocked up and knocked out after Nationals. Everyone would have forgotten me like that,’ she clicked her fingers, ‘without Erik.’

  ‘Helen remembers you. I can kind of remember you doing ads for cornflakes or wheat flakes or something.’ He said it smiling, trying to make her feel better.

  They sat in opposite positions to how they’d shared the wine earlier, Jake on the right verandah post, Ella on the left, glaring at him, the plate of
broken crackers between them.

  ‘I hated those ads. I stopped doing them.’

  ‘Why? They weren’t so bad.’

  ‘They were fake,’ Ella burst out. ‘They were so fake. Me playing happy families. God—’

  She could have kept going. She could have let the last three months of loneliness, fears and hopes pour out, because Jake had a look on his face like he was ready to listen, and she had months and years of frustration ready to overflow and there was something about him that made her feel she could talk, but there was a vehicle rumbling over Chalk Hill Bridge. A late-model silver four-wheel-drive, slowing to a stop on the opposite side of Chalk Hill Bridge Road.

  Through dark tinted windows she couldn’t see the driver, but she had the sense of a face peering out at the house, and beside her, in the same breath as the driver’s car door opened and the driver stepped out, Jake tensed.

  ‘Do you know him?’ Ella asked, because Jake knew everyone. Even Erik, now.

  ‘Yeah. I know him,’ Jake said, pushing up to his feet. ‘Get your game face on.’

  Ella stood to dust off her skirt. Was there time to sweep crackers from the step? She decided ‘yes’ and leapt for the broom. At the same time, Jake back-pedalled towards the sander and the extension cord, and the two of them bumped like clumsy penguins chasing the same fish. Ella, being lighter, rebounded harder with an audible ‘oomph’.

  Jake reached out to steady her, catching her lower arm. His muscles worked to halt her momentum, and Ella looked down to where his hand curled protectively about her wrist. Next to his arm, dark with summer tan, covered with a smatter of hairs, her skin was white, soft and smooth.

  ‘I’m not too late?’ The visitor’s cultured drawl carried to Ella from the path, and it tore her attention from the differences between Jake’s wrist and her own.

  ‘You’re not too late at all. Please come in. I’m Ella. Would you like a glass of wine?’

  ‘Sure. Only I might skip the crackers and cheese.’ He opened his hand towards the crumbs and biscuits scattered across the steps and the grass.

  Ella ducked her chin. ‘I’m sorry about that. There’s more inside if you’d like. This packet came a bit of a cropper.’