‘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
