‘But Sam’s never ridden one before,’ Ella protested. And Sam might be silly about it.
‘Bet he’s never picked up sticks before either. Sticks are dangerous things too. Bet your mum always told you not to play with sticks because you could poke another kid’s eye out.’
‘It’s not the same and you know it.’ She would have marched straight off the flagstones like a mother bear on the search for her cub, but the sound of the quad bike engine was all over the place and she couldn’t get her bearings. She had no idea which way to strike out.
‘He’s got his bike helmet. He was already dressed for riding. He’ll be fine. Can I give you a piece of advice?’
‘No,’ Ella snapped, turning to face him. ‘You can take me to wherever Sam is, thanks very much.’
Jake unfurled his body from the outdoor chair, straightening to his full height. ‘There’s no point taking you anywhere, Ella, he’s almost here.’
The whine grew to a thrum, then a roar, and it came from the back of the house. Ella started a skipping run across the flagstones.
‘Ella?’ Jake called above the noise from the engine.
She swung around. ‘What?’
‘Don’t make a big deal of the bike, okay? Take it as a word of advice from a bloke who was a boy once.’
Don’t make it a big deal? This man had let her baby ride a roaring monster of a machine, a farm machine that killed people!
‘Trust me on this one,’ Jake said.
She nodded once, and resumed a far more leisurely skip-run to where the engine noise was. Big deal, or no big deal, she was still Sam’s mother and she was going to check he’d come back to her in one piece with no blood.
It took Ella a few moments to navigate through the gardens that hemmed the rear of Jake’s house, until she found a narrow-bricked path that led out to a wider gravelled area and a host of big machinery sheds beyond, eventually feeding into the central laneway of the farm.
There, the quad bike idled and Sam was in the process of pulling off his helmet.
He got the helmet off, turned off the engine and swung his leg over the bike—doing it every bit as smooth as the trademark move of every biker hero in every biker movie she’d ever seen—and he looked so very proud. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen such a sense of achievement in Sam’s eyes. He walked taller towards her.
‘Hi, Mum.’ His smile showed a muddle of two big front adult teeth, plus the baby teeth that reminded her he really was just a boy.
Ella remembered Jake’s advice, bit down on her fear and smiled too. ‘Since when did you know how to ride one of those?’
‘Jake showed me. He let me do it all by myself.’
‘He took to it like a natural.’ Jake’s voice rumbled from above Ella’s right shoulder and she shifted her stance to meet his eyes. He stood straight and tall beside her, and she caught his outdoors scent, all shearing sheds and summer grass.
Jake tousled Sam’s mop of bright blond hair. ‘Did you pick up all those sticks like I asked you? And put them on the burn pile?’
‘I did.’
‘Good on ya. Thanks for doing that, mate. Saved me a job. Now your mum and I are just talking for a bit longer and, if your mum says it’s okay, do you want to visit Percy while we do that?’ Jake turned slightly to Ella, the only hint he was asking permission. ‘You can let him out for a fly if you want.’
Ella nodded. ‘That’s fine. Sam would love that. Make sure all the doors and windows are locked when you fly him, Sammy.’
‘I will,’ Sam shouted, running for the house, and it struck Ella as strange that Sam had made himself so at home at Jake’s place, when he felt like a fish out of water everywhere else in Chalk Hill.
‘Everything will be closed inside, don’t worry,’ Jake said, eyes creasing with humour.
Ella held Jake’s gaze. She remembered thinking his eyes were like the blue of a pool at midnight. They were lighter now, more like the ocean under an afternoon sky.
‘Thank you for looking out for Sam. I really appreciate it,’ Ella said. She’d been fiddling with her fingers without realising it, and she stopped that now by interlocking her hands. ‘I don’t know what got into him to try that stunt at the bowling green. I can’t sweep that under the table but at least maybe when I get him home he’ll be in a better frame of mind. He’s been so angry these last few months.’
‘He’s a good kid.’ Jake put his hand on Ella’s arm above her elbow, turning her towards the house.
His fingers were firm, work-roughened, and his grip gentle, and the touch lingered long enough for Ella to miss it when the path narrowed to the point where Jake held back to let her go first and his touch was gone.
* * *
Four pages.
That’s all it took for Henry Graham to offer Jake $429,000 for Nanna Irma’s house.
‘It’s not enough. Sorry.’ He gave the pages back, enjoying the way Ella’s hand opened and closed around the paper. She had elegant fingers, long fingernails and a shade of pale pink polish that made him wonder about things he shouldn’t. Like, were the nipples he could see bumping out that sweet shirt the same colour as her nails? Or darker? Less pink, more plum?
She didn’t take the papers from him which meant their hands, through the common link of the contract, stayed poised above the table like an odd-shaped bridge.
Jake gave a small push. Ella smiled and pushed the pages back. The contract eventually crinkled at a weak spot nearest Jake’s thumb.
‘Maybe you’d
