Ella flared every bit as hard and fast. ‘What friends? Those ones who kept getting you in trouble? Those great friends who threw rocks at cars on South Street and the police got called out? Those same friends who broke the window on Mrs Magnusson’s car down on the corner? Mrs Magnusson always used to have a lolly or a muffin, or something for you when you were a little boy. Always. So don’t talk to me about those friends! Those were not your friends, Sam.’
‘I said I was sorry about Mrs Magnusson’s car. You don’t have to go on and on about it. You didn’t have to make us leave home.’
‘I do have to go on and on because you just don’t get it.’
Sam’s lip didn’t quiver like it would have done when he was seven or eight, or even nine, but he couldn’t hold her glare and his chin lowered.
All the anger leaked out of Ella. ‘The school called me today.’
His hand stopped midway to throwing a fistful of sultanas in his mouth.
‘They said you pushed a boy in the playground over a game of handball.’
‘He was yelling at me that I was out. I wasn’t out,’ Sam said.
‘Why do you have to make it so competitive? It’s supposed to be fun. You’ve got to learn to let it go, Sammy. It’s only a game.’
‘All the kids were in my face, Mum. All the kids. They were yelling at me that I was out. I saw it and the ball didn’t bounce twice on my side. It didn’t.’
‘It doesn’t matter whether the ball bounced twice. You can’t push a boy because he doesn’t agree with you. You have to find a way to work it out without using your fists.’ Ella leaned forward, trying to will Sam to understand. ‘Otherwise you’ll hurt someone one day. You have to learn to control it, Sammy. If you can’t control your temper now over something in a playground that really doesn’t matter, how are you going to control yourself when you’re older and things get so much more important?’
‘They make me so angry. It upsets me when they yell at me and it wasn’t my fault.’
‘I know it’s hard, Sam, but please can you try? Just try to let things go when they don’t really matter. Don’t get so angry over the little things. Okay? Can you do that for me? I’m trying so hard to make a go of this new job. I want things to be better for us. I’m trying, okay? I’ll try to be a better mum and not get grumpy if you can try to be my best boy. The best boy you can. That’s all I’m asking for, okay?’ She swiped at the tears that were trying to sneak down her cheeks.
‘Okay.’
This time Sam crumbled towards her and Ella wrapped his skinny body in her arms, tucking his head into her breast. She inhaled the scent that had been her son’s since she first sunk her nose into his skin when his hair was wet and scrawly in the hospital the day he was born, and Erik held her hand, panted with her and hugged them both.
Why couldn’t Sam be more like Erik and less like his father?
CHAPTER
6
‘It’s too expensive, Harvey,’ Ella said, when her licensee asked her how things were going at the Thursday sales meeting. ‘I haven’t had anyone come through who isn’t a neighbour or a tyre-kicker or a distant cousin or a bloke who can remember when his kid sister fell out of the mulberry tree. I haven’t had a single call off the website. Nothing from the ads in the paper.’
‘You got the price on the website?’ Harvey asked, sipping the cup of tea Ella made him, rocking on his chair.
‘Yes.’
‘Take it off. Have it price on application. That might get some calls.’
‘Can I do that without speaking to the owner?’ She didn’t want to admit to Harvey how hard it was to get Jake to answer her calls.
‘Technically, probably not, but I don’t think Jake would mind.’
‘You know and I know it’s overpriced to bu-blazes.’ Ella wanted to say buggery and had to stop herself.
‘It’s a development lot zoned commercial on a prime street, Ella. Be a bit positive,’ Harvey’s son Bob said from the meeting room door.
‘I am being positive, Bob. I’m positive it’s about two hundred thousand dollars over my appraisal,’ Ella said.
Bob tilted his chin at her. ‘You want my advice?’
No. Ella gritted her teeth. ‘Sure.’
‘Hold a Friday night Home Open and offer wine and cheese.’
Ella wasn’t sure if Bob was pulling her leg. ‘Why would that bring along anyone different who hasn’t come Saturday or Sunday?’
‘Not everyone likes muffins and cookies. Wine and cheese is a richer crowd,’ Bob said, before he walked away. Bob didn’t always attend the weekly sales meetings. Ella was sure he thought they were beneath him.
‘Was he serious?’ she asked Harvey.
‘Why wouldn’t he be? We’re a team here. We want you to succeed.’
Ella bit her lip and thought, Team, Schmeem. Robert (myfriends-call-me-Bob) Begg hadn’t wasted any opportunity to let her know he was top dog around here.
‘Do we have a budget for things like wine and cheese?’ she asked Harvey. ‘Nice wine and cheese.’
‘How nice?’
‘Oh … like twenty bucks a bottle, maybe?’
Harvey went a bit pale.
‘Fifteen?’ Ella offered.
Then Harvey brightened. ‘How about we meet you 50:50. Company pays half. Ten bucks each.’
Crikey. ‘Thanks, Harvey. That would be great.’
Ella took her coffee and went back to her space to ponder. She refused to call her space an office. What she had was a chair and a bit of the bench near the kitchen, where she argued for elbow room with a stack of under offer stickers, sold signs, presentation folders and a printer that hadn’t worked for years, but that no one was game to throw out in case they needed it one day.
Harvey and Bob each had a glass-fronted
