Jake clinked his glass to hers. ‘Cheers.’ He didn’t add the bit about selling the house.
Ella took a long sip, then sniffed the wine in the glass and gave it a swirl. Her intensity made him chuckle.
‘What? It’s what I’m supposed to do, isn’t it? Swirl and sniff?’ she said, staring up at him, all big brown eyes in a pale face. He was close enough to count a set of four dark freckles making a lopsided Southern Cross on her neck.
‘Sure. If we’re at one of my brother’s wine shows, maybe. Me? I just drink the stuff.’
‘I drink it too. I just like to appreciate it.’
‘Fair enough.’ Jake took a sip.
‘So you have a brother who’s a winemaker?’ Ella said.
‘I have two brothers. Brix makes wine over near Margaret River. Abe runs restaurants in Perth. He has a few actually, a new one in Broome. One in Dunsborough.’
A car cruised past. First car in ten minutes. Ella tensed as they watched it. Recognising the car, Jake waved. Lenny Balding.
‘So you still haven’t told me why having a Home Open on a Friday is a bad idea,’ Ella said, relaxing as the car passed.
Jake shifted his booted foot to get his leg more comfortable. ‘Most of the town goes to the bowling club on a Friday afternoon in the summer. It’s scroungers night.’
Ella screwed up her face. ‘What’s scroungers?’
‘Lawn bowls. Well, dunno how much bowls actually gets played, but it’s supposed to be the chance for a drink and a social game of bowls. Most of the locals go along and have dinner after at the club.’
‘Oh.’ Ella’s top lip tightened. Then she shrugged it off, picked up a cracker and a knife, and coated the biscuit with cheese. ‘Oh well. More for us, I guess.’
A magpie warbled from across the road, and another flew to the verge to join it. Next door, Helen Nillson turned on the tap to her rainwater tank and shifted a hose through her vegetable patch.
Ella checked her watch.
‘What time does scroungers finish?’ she asked.
‘Not before your Home Open does.’
‘Oh.’ Ella took another cracker.
Jake wondered where he should start, and when he realised he was contemplating how to draw her out in conversation, that made him wonder too. These weren’t things he consciously thought about.
When you knew almost everyone in town, you had common ground. He knew nothing about Ella outside of her being the real estate agent he didn’t want, and being a fan of swimmers, Kieren Perkins in particular, and that she had a young son who reminded him of a bolshy ram.
‘So what’s Sam up to tonight?’ he asked.
‘He’s home, I hope, and keeping out of trouble.’
‘You don’t mind him being home alone?’
She gestured with her wine. ‘It’s not like I have a choice. I can’t drop him with … my mum or anything.’ She hesitated, swallowed, and started again. ‘I don’t have that kind of support network here. It’s not for long. I’ll be home in half an hour and he has chores to get through after school. Homework.’
‘Homework on a Friday arvo is a bit rough on a kid.’
He’d meant it as a throwaway line, but Ella met his eyes and maybe she thought he was judging. Her gaze returned to the wine in her glass and her fingers twisted the stem.
‘Sam hasn’t really started off on the best foot at school.’ The admission came like it cost Ella an arm, and possibly a leg.
‘That’s just till he makes friends and gets used to the place.’
‘I hope so.’ She wouldn’t look at him. ‘He says there isn’t anything to do in this town. You’ve lived here most of your life. What did you do for kicks when you were growing up?’
‘I had two brothers. We made our own fun,’ Jake said.
The response didn’t satisfy Ella. ‘Kids who get bored get into trouble. That’s what his teachers said. That’s what was happening before we left Perth. He’d got caught up in a bad crowd. I wanted things to be different here, but they’re turning out the same.’
‘I grew up on a farm. There were always jobs to do. Sheep to move into a different paddock, lambs’ tails to dock, drenching, shearing, fencing. Hay to throw out off the back of our trailer, or the lucky one of us who got to drive the tractor towing the hay-trailer. We had chickens to feed, eggs to collect. The kids in town had BMX bikes, but we had dirt bikes. Never lacked for kids who wanted to come out to our place for a play … the motorbikes were cool. Dad made a track.’
Both of them glanced to their left as a white tradesman’s vehicle rumbled over Chalk Hill Bridge. Ella tensed again and Jake waved. Brent Mitchell, coming back from Pickles’ farm. There’d been a whole heap of tradies coming and going on Pickles’ farm. Word was he’d been expanding his dam.
‘Do you know every car in town?’ Ella asked, amusement a glint in her eyes.
‘Pretty much.’
‘Wow.’ She shook her head, smiling, and they listened to the magpies warble again.
‘So—’ he began, at the same time as Ella said, ‘So how—’
They both stopped whatever it was they’d been going to say.
‘You first,’ Jake said.
Ella ducked her head in that apologetic way. ‘I was going to ask, how is Perkins III?’
It threw him till he realised she meant Nanna Irma’s bird. ‘You make him sound like royalty. Percy is fine, thanks. Little bugger hasn’t got out again.’
‘Sam loved it the day we found him.’
‘He can come check him out one day, if you’d like.’ Quickly, he amended, ‘If he’d like.’
‘Oh, I couldn’t impose.’
‘It’s not an imposition. Cockatiels like company. I’ve been a bit grumpy lately.’
She laughed. ‘Why have you been grumpy?’
Because my brother needs money, a lot of it, and I don’t know why. ‘I’m a farmer and a businessman. That means I have sheep and my hardware shop staff to worry about and I can tell you that sheep are less
