Water under the Bridge

by Lily Malone

  ‘Whatever. I’m done with it, Jake. Maybe Bob will have better luck with you. Maybe Bob will do a better job.’

  ‘That’s giving up.’

  ‘That’s facing facts.’

  ‘I never wanted to sell Nanna’s house.’ Jake pushed himself up and off her chair. ‘I was only going through with it because I needed to find out why Abe was pushing so hard for the sale—why he needed the money. Abe and I thrashed it all out yesterday. He’s selling up his businesses and moving back to Chalk Hill. We’re going to renovate Nanna’s house and Abe plans to open it as a restaurant. So you see? Bob won’t have more luck. I told him I’m withdrawing it from sale. I told Bob I don’t want to waste his time.’

  ‘You don’t want to waste Bob’s time?’ Ella put her tea down. She didn’t need it to bolster her courage anymore. She had courage coming out her ears in the form of steam. ‘You wasted my time for months … and you can’t waste Bob’s time for three more days till the listing expires? Do you have any idea how chauvinistic that sounds?’

  ‘You’re making a mountain out of a molehill.’

  ‘A molehill?’ Now she was seething. ‘Wasting my time when you never intended to sell no matter how much of a result I got for you is not a molehill, thank you very much. But at least you got what you wanted, Jake. You know what Abe’s problem is. Bully for you. Whoopy-damn-do.’

  ‘Ella—’ He reached out for her.

  ‘Oh, bugger off.’

  ‘Maybe when you’ve calmed down, we can talk like adults.’

  ‘And maybe when you act like an adult, I’ll calm down. Till then, bugger off. Leave me alone.’

  A muscle in his jaw worked as Jake struggled with what he might say. Perhaps his lack of sleep and the alcohol fogged his brain, because no words came out.

  ‘I’ll let you cool down,’ he said, turning his beautiful big solid shoulders on her and leaving the room. ‘I’ll call you.’

  The front door opened, and it felt like a very long time before Ella heard it close, long enough for the first tears to trickle down her cheeks, long enough for her to have to wipe her eyes when they wouldn’t stop.

  She mumbled to herself through tears, ‘That’s the last time I fall for a man with a cockatiel.’

  CHAPTER

  28

  It wasn’t so hard to stay away that first week after his fight with Ella.

  He had a lot to do. Abe stayed and the two of them talked plans and mapped out ideas for the restaurant. They talked to surveyors, council’s planning department, commercial building designers and to Abe’s bank.

  They talked with business brokers about selling out Abe’s restaurants, and working out how much cash he could stump up.

  Not a lot, Jake thought privately, given how hard Abe had worked to build up those tapas bars.

  He rang Ella on the Sunday night of the first week, got no answer and left a message.

  She never returned the call.

  Still grumpy at him, obviously. He could handle that. He deserved that.

  The second week wasn’t too hard either. There were sheep to sort and draft. He could raise some cash to lend Abe if he sold the two-year-old wethers, even though the timing wasn’t as good as it could have been. He had some savings, and he’d been saving the stack of Wesfarmers shares he’d kept hold of for years, for just this kind of rainy day.

  He rang Ella on the Sunday of the second week, got no answer. Left a message.

  She never returned his call. Not over it yet, obviously. Fine. He could be every bit as stubborn. Watch him.

  By the third week, Abe had his bad mood pegged.

  They’d been moving furniture most of the day, all Abe’s stuff from his Perth flat that he couldn’t—or didn’t want to—sell in a garage sale or online, and he and Jake had to lug it from the hired removalist truck into one of the sheds.

  ‘This bookshelf weighs a tonne,’ Jake grumbled, because it was hot in the sun, his hands kept slipping and he was certain Abe had gifted him the heaviest end.

  ‘You got the heavy end, mate,’ Abe grunted, shuffling backwards into the shade. ‘Least you get to walk forwards.’

  Then it was a king-size jarrah bed. The bedhead on its own must have weighed more than a small car, and Abe wouldn’t pull the thing apart to make it lighter because he’d lost some of the screws or the key he needed to get it all back together … and seriously, how much could two blokes and a sack-truck be expected to do?

  ‘Looks like you got the heavy end again, mate,’ Abe said.

  ‘Yeah, right. Either I’m fucking unlucky or you pick up the light end every bloody time.’

  ‘Least that makes one of us lucky.’

  ‘Fuck off, Abe.’

  They spent another twenty minutes of hefting boxes and bits in the sun, dust kicked up in the shed, and Jess getting under their feet until Jake had to yell at her to get out of it and lie down.

  ‘Sooo,’ Abe said, with the tone of a bloke venturing a terrifying risk. ‘Have you heard from the lovely Ella of the lovely black item of underwear?’

  ‘Fuck off, Abel.’

  ‘Thought that might be the answer,’ Abe said.

  * * *

  So the month came and went.

  Not seeing Ella was like a weight in Jake’s chest every bit as heavy as Abe’s jarrah bed, only this weight never lifted, and Jake never got to put it down.

  He heard about her a lot though.

  She was in the local paper what felt like every second week. The first time she was photographed with Harvey Begg, Shire President Calder and their local Member of Parliament. They’d taken the photo at the old town pool with Ella sitting on the top step and the three blokes huddled around the silver rails, all of them smiling. Rose between three thorns.

  In fact, Jake was pretty sure he was the only man in Chalk Hill who didn’t smile when he saw that picture.

  The second time, she was interviewed with Pickles; yet more newspaper columns with blurring print he didn’t care about. The story was all about community efforts to bring back the Chalk Hill swimming pool, and more about Pickles’ water ski park. That photo was taken out at Pickles’ farm where the blue of the water matched the sky and the rich brown earth, dug from the dam by the mountain-load, matched Ella’s hair.

  Obviously, she was keeping herself every bit as busy as him. Fine.

  Was it any wonder that photo found its way to the front page? She looked so beautiful and confident there, unless he really, really looked deep in her eyes. Did he imagine there was sadness there, staring back at him? Or was that just his own brand of wishful thinking?

  How had he stuffed things up with her so monumentally?

  Without Nanna Irma’s house to connect them, Jake drifted.

  He could have called in to collect Maz’s mirror ball. But that would have felt like The End.

  If he could have known that Percy would fly to visit Sam, he would have let the bird out of the cage, thrown him in the air and told him to fly.

  * * *

  The sale of Helen Nillson’s place to Henry Graham settled at the end of April, which meant Ella collected her first ‘proper’ pay since she’d started her new career. That was something worth celebrating, but she missed having people to celebrate with.

  Erik was in Melbourne with his swimming squad.

  Helen Nillson brought her a bunch of flowers to mark the occasion, and as she handed the flowers to Ella, she said Mick would like her to call him in six weeks’ time because now that she’d sold Chalk Hill, Mick could move to the city too.

  Gina had gone and made her mother-in-law the happiest Italian mamma on the planet by getting herself pregnant.

  Ella settled Helen’s flowers on the postage stamp-sized piece of desk in her space, and forked delicious mouthfuls of chocolate orange cake with cream cheese frosting, and wondered why she wasn’t feeling it?

  She put the mirror ball up that night—Jake never did call by to collect it—and spun Bad Girls on her record player and the music
was awesome as always, but bopping around the verandah with Sam didn’t feel the same.

  Nothing felt the same.

  After Sam went to bed, she spent an hour staring at the photograph on the front page of the newspaper, studying the picture of her with Dylan Fields (she didn’t know him well enough to call him Pickles) and listening to Boogie Wonderland and You Sexy Thing, trying to feel all the bountiful happy that smiled out of the page, wanting the music to take her away like it always did and always had. But didn’t.

  That’s about when she gave up being so bloody stubborn and admitted it.

  She was head over heels in love with that cockatiel-loving, infuriating, resourceful man who was good to her son, unveiled a mirror ball at eight o’clock at night and gifted her a flower called Moonlight. The man who kissed like kissing was an Olympic sport and he was the gold medal winner.

  She hadn’t let Jake go. She’d told him to stay away.

  Ella let out a sigh that could have picked her photo up off the front page of the newspaper and blown her clean away.

  CHAPTER

  29

  Nanna Irma’s old house was busy as an ant hive.

  Tradies crawled all over the roof. Carpenters banged away out the back.

  They were building a new space for the commercial kitchen back there, and Nan’s old kitchen had been hauled out. Jake kept it, Nan’s kitchen. Couldn’t bring himself to give it up, or dump it, or sell it. That was something else he now had stored out at the farm: shells of cupboards and drawers, Nan’s sideboards, the old table.

  Jake attached the crane cable to the stack of timber on the back of the Honeychurch Hardware delivery truck and was about to get it moving when he heard Ella’s name mentioned on the radio, and he stopped with his hand on the timber so he could listen.

  ‘Some people say that you’re a bit like Shane Gould, the way you disappeared out of swimming after 2006,’ the interviewer said to Ella.

  ‘Shane Gould was a legend. I was never that good,’ Ella said.

  ‘We know you had a baby, and then you were working with your husband’s swimming team in Perth. Didn’t you miss competitive swimming? Did you want to try again?’

  Jake could picture Ella’s pause as if she was sitting right there in front of him. She’d be sweeping her hair from her cheek and holding it at the top of her ear so it didn’t fall back. He could see the shape of her lips as she prepared to speak.

  ‘I had new priorities then, I guess. I had my boy to look after. The Beijing Olympics kind of came and went … and I didn’t really think about swimming then. I kind of thought maybe I could do something in time for London, but I was just … I’d been out of it for too long. I got too old.’

  Both women laughed.

  ‘So I know some of this must be a bit painful to talk about, but tell us, Ella: you’re not with Erik Brecker now, and you’ve moved to Chalk Hill where you’re selling real estate. How have you found that?’

  ‘My gosh real estate is a learning curve!’ she said with a laugh.

  He could see the laugh too, lighting up her face, making the interviewer, and probably every listener, laugh with her.

  ‘What are you standing there grinning about, Jake?’ Abe called from the porch where he’d been studying sets of plans with the electrician.

  ‘Ella’s on the radio,’ Jake called back, and his brother got one of those smug smiles on his dial.

  Jake missed what she’d said, but they’d moved on to the pool.

  ‘We got approval from council last week, so it’s all systems go. The bowling club is going to own and manage the pool, with the community, and work has started on the pool house—I don’t really have a better word for it than that—the seats and roof and walls, all the structure that goes around the pool to keep it secure. We’ve had incredible support from the local community, and businesses. Friday night, May 12, at the bowls club, we’re having a disco night as a fundraiser, so I hope everyone can come along. All proceeds go to the pool.’

  ‘A disco night?’

  Ella laughed. ‘You can blame me for that. I’m a bit of a disco nut.’

  ‘Freak Out?’ the interviewer said.

  ‘John Travolta. Saturday Night Fever. The whole box and dice,’ Ella said. ‘So dress up in your sequins and sparkles, everybody. I’m breaking out the mirror ball, so come along for a night of fun.’

  He’d been a stubborn dick.

  He missed her. He missed Sam. It was very simple, really, and hadn’t he always said he was a simple bloke?

  * * *

  ‘Are you ready, Sammy?’ Ella shouted while she clipped on the earrings she’d borrowed from Gina for the fundraising dance.

  Sam emerged from his room and Ella got a jolt of pure mother pride. Getting a jolt of any description was a rare thing these days. Ella hadn’t felt a good jolt for weeks; since the last time she’d pressed the button on her answering machine and heard Jake apologise again for being a dick.

  ‘You look like you’re in the old movies, Sammy.’

  He’d slicked his hair back. He wore his one and only collared shirt—white with blue checks—black jeans and boots.

  ‘You look cool, too.’

  ‘Thanks.’ Ella’s smile was the real deal.

  She’d been faking it with the people who didn’t know her well, like the journalists, the councillors and the business folk who wanted to chat about the pool and tell her what a great thing she was doing getting involved in the town.

  ‘Come on, Mum,’ Sam urged her towards the door.

  Ella grabbed her handbag, keys and a box big enough to fit the severed head of the mirror ball, and made to follow Sam, except she could see he’d baulked with the door open and seconds later she heard him say, ‘Hi, Jake.’

  Jake?

  She peered over Sam’s slicked-back blond head before she let herself get too excited.

  There he was. Prowling through the side gate and up the path, in black jeans and boots and a black t-shirt that did incredible things to his abs.

  He ruffled the top of Sam’s head. ‘Nice hair, buddy.’

  ‘You must have been a very long way away,’ Sam said, ducking his head to keep his precious hairstyle intact.

  ‘I’ve been busy, mate. But I’ve been around,’ Jake said, a bit puzzled.

  ‘We’re going to a dance,’ Sam announced. ‘But Mum says I don’t have to dance if I don’t want.’

  ‘I’m going to the same dance, and your mum definitely has to dance, hopefully with me.’ His gaze clicked with hers, and Ella got her second jolt in ten seconds. This jolt wasn’t pure mother pride. This jolt was pure let-me-at-him lust.

  Heat swept from the toes of her knee-high pink boots to the scooped neck of the seventies-style dress at her throat.

  ‘Will Ollie be there?’ Sam was asking.

  Ella had no answer. Ella was having more than enough trouble inhaling.

  ‘Pretty sure his mum and dad are going, and they’d take him, mate.’

  ‘Good. Can we go now, Mum?’ Sam begged.

  ‘I’ll just be a minute.’ Ella finally unravelled her tongue enough to speak.

  ‘You always say that and you’re never just a minute,’ Sam grizzled, but he went, and Ella could see him leaping cracks in the pavers, jiggling his way to her car.

  ‘You look gorgeous,’ Jake said, hooking his thumbs in the pockets of his jeans. ‘Nice boots.’

  Ella licked her lips to get some moisture to her mouth. ‘Lovin’ the boots.’

  ‘I need to apologise for all that stuff to do with Nanna’s house,’ Jake said, without preamble. ‘I’ve been a dick. I hate how we left things last time. It was a shitty thing to do and I put you in the middle of my own issues with my brother. It wasn’t fair on you and I’m really sorry, Ella.’

  ‘Okay,’ she said, a little stunned.

  Jake raised an eyebrow. ‘That’s it? You’re okay with me being a shit?’

  ‘No. But I accept your apology.’

  ‘I should
have brought you something to say sorry. Flowers. Chocolates. Another mirror ball. Your own this time. Not borrowed.’

  ‘It’s fine.’

  ‘It doesn’t sound fine,’ Jake said.

  Couldn’t he see that flowers or chocolates wouldn’t make any difference? ‘It’s not about the grand gesture, Jake.’

  ‘You’re right. It’s not.’

  They stared at each other in the dim light of Ella’s porch with Sam bouncing from foot to foot in the background, but nothing else daring to twitch. Waiting.

  ‘Can you look past the stuff with Nanna’s house and concentrate on the rest of it, Ella? Because that was real. That was me and you. In your backyard, in my office, when we swam in the dam that day. It was good between us, and it was real. I want more of that.’

  ‘You only asked me to sell the Honeychurch house because you thought I couldn’t do the job.’

  He could have hung his head, but he didn’t. His eyes never left hers. ‘I know. I didn’t know you when I listed the house with you, but you’re right. I used you and I wasted your time when you’re trying to start off this new career with Harvey Begg. Big fuckin’ mistake.’

  ‘You thought I couldn’t do the job.’

  ‘Yeah, and you proved me wrong. Over and over. You were right to yell at me. You brought those three offers to me in one week and any one of them was enough for me to sell. You did your job, Ella. You did it real good. Don’t let me or anyone else tell you different.’

  Ella swayed in her hot pink boots, leaning into him with her body and the mirror ball box, and suddenly she was shaking like she’d got out of the pool and the winter wind wanted to break her bones.

  ‘I don’t care about your nanna’s house,’ she whispered. ‘Not anymore. I’m glad you’ve got things sorted out with Abe. Maybe that’s what you had to do to find out what was going on with him. Maybe it’s the only way he would have let it out? We all do things we regret.’ God, isn’t that the truth. ‘We all make mistakes. It’s being messy messed-up humans.’

  ‘Come here, beautiful messed-up human,’ he said, and whether she dropped the box with the ball, or he took it from her and put it at his feet, Ella couldn’t say.