“Have you got lots of friends?” Cliff asked.
“Yeah. Nev is my second-best friend, after Miss Gwen.” Joelle re-tied her apron as she considered the question. “If I had to say who my third-best friend is, I would probably say Alfred Cheng from the green grocer’s, because he is so kind. He looks after his dad. That’s what people should do . . . they should do nice things for their families. That is the point.”
“I thought the old man was dead,” Cliff said. “I never see him.”
“Well, Alfred Senior has a weak heart so now he only ever comes downstairs for funerals. It was love that nearly killed him,” Joelle remembered. “His wife ran off with a lantern lighter from the circus.”
“The circus?” Cliff said doubtfully.
“Mate, it might be true,” Jack said. “Several circuses came through town in the 1930s and ’40s.”
Joelle continued. “Alfred’s dad is so mean and that’s why Miss Gwendolyn twice refused to marry Alfred.” She stopped herself. “Miss Gwen says that is confidential. It’s not my business to talk about it. Brian thinks it’s good to save some topics for the next conversation.”
“Who’s Brian?” Cliff asked. “Is he your fourth-best friend?”
“No, silly. Brian is my husband. Brian Smithton. He’s very tall with black hair and his hands are bigger than any T-bone steaks we sell, and we get the big ones from Cape Grim.”
“You’re married to the butcher, are you?”
“Twelve happy years, the best years of my life.”
“That’s lovely,” Jack said.
Joelle grinned. She recalled something else to tell him.
“You know your mum came into the butchery one time last summer. She was with another old lady. They couldn’t agree on what to buy,” she said. “Your mum wanted quail and the other lady said, ‘Don’t be silly, the little girls prefer chicken.’”
“I remember,” Jack said. “It was my birthday. That was Celia’s mother, Martha. She’s the only person brave enough to take on my mother. We had quail.”
“They both wanted to pay but Mrs. Lily insisted. Martha wanted to know about the best cuts of meat to freeze. She wanted to take some home because you can’t get meat like ours in Launceston. And Mrs. Lily said, ‘Make your mind up, Martha.’” Joelle remembered Mrs. Lily rapping her hand on the glass counter. “And Martha said, ‘Don’t rush me, Victoria.’”
Jack stared at her. “That sounds like them.”
The air smelled delicious with barbecuing sausages and onions, cotton candy, and waffles. Her bones felt rigid with cold, but the sun was starting to warm things up. She sipped Sprite through a straw and tidied up the stall table. She was actually having fun, she realized; it wasn’t so bad after all. She served some children, who took a long time to decide what they wanted. By the time she had finished with them, a crowd of people were clustered around the serving table, shoving one another, trying to be the person at the front. One lady even used her handbag to block the woman next to her. That woman, in turn, used her elbow to knock the bag away.
“Calm the farm,” Joelle announced cheerfully. She pointed at an elderly man. “Everyone line up behind him. Don’t worry; we are not about to run out of sausages.”
Later, when the queue had reduced, Jack said, “Good work. I was worried we would have to call security.”
“I’m happy with how this is going,” she said. “It’s a good fair. Even though it’s probably going to rain later. But I love the rain. I could watch it for hours, running down my windows, making the fields all wet and mushy.”
She had said too much then. She could tell by the way the two men looked at each other, then back at her. Neither knew what to say in reply. That was the trouble. People wanted to hear something they were expecting. It wasn’t easy trying to remember what those things were.
“Sausages are burning,” she said, sniffing the air, and they turned back to the grill.
The mist had almost lifted when Celia Lily arrived. She held the leash of a giant black dog. Behind her came her friend and lots of children holding balloons, cotton candy, and buckets of popcorn. Joelle stopped cutting tomatoes so she could stare.
Celia Lily didn’t look like the other townsfolk. She was like a Hollywood movie star. Her hair was golden and tumbling over her pink fluffy sweater. She wore brown leather knee-high boots and she was tall and thin, not skinny like the scabby-faced people always smoking in the park rotunda, but nicely thin. Athletic was the word—Joelle often saw her jogging along the trail on the forest side of the creek.
“Cliff and Joelle, it looks like our relief has arrived.” Jack pretended to take off his apron.
“No chance.” Celia laughed.
Joelle chuckled too, pleased to be included in the joke. There were customers waiting to be served but Jack and Cliff ignored them as they greeted Celia and her friend and talked to the children. Jack kissed Celia’s friend on the cheek. She ducked her head shyly.
“Not in front of my face, mate. Kim is my wife,” Cliff’s voice cut through.
There was a hardness to his tone. Kim hung back, tugging her tracksuit jacket down over her bottom. Joelle felt sad for her.
Joelle was extra careful as she squeezed the ketchup onto the sausages Celia bought for the children. Celia paid with a fifty-dollar note, shaking her head at Kim, who was counting silver coins out of a battered red purse. Joelle double-checked the change before she handed it to Celia.
“Thank you, Joelle,” Celia said.
Buoyed that Celia knew her name, Joelle leaned across and pointed at Celia’s French polished nails. “I had it like that for my wedding. So nice.”
“Thank you.” Celia looked Joelle over. “I like your sweater. Kim, have you seen how cute this is?”
“I made it. It’s just appliqué. So easy.”
Joelle explained the process of appliqué—how she cut out the butterfly and flowers from different pieces of floral fabric and sewed them onto her sweater with the sewing machine using a zigzag stich. Celia was very interested. Kim stood quietly by, watching and listening but not saying anything. As they wandered away, their arms linked, Joelle wondered if Kim felt lucky to be friends with Celia. People talked about Celia a lot—the mums in the canteen, customers queuing in the butchery. They talked about the parties Celia held in her beautiful Calendar House and how they often saw her children cantering their horses along the river path. Joelle had heard that Celia shopped for her clothes in Melbourne twice a year. She wasn’t sure if that was true. Once, Joelle had overheard someone saying that Celia didn’t mix well with ordinary people. That definitely wasn’t true—she was on Miss Gwen’s Apple Queen Tribute committee. If an Apple Queen got to be crowned today, it would be Celia for sure.
“You didn’t grow up here,” Cliff said. “Where were you before?”
Joelle froze as she tried to think of how to fill the awful silence.
“I lived with my flatmate. It was a group home and I answered an advertisement.” She could probably remember the ad word for word. “They wanted someone who was neat and tidy, who put their things away when they’re not being used, who turned the lights off when they went to bed. It described me perfectly. What else? I’ll try to remember. It was more than twelve years ago but I’ve got a good memory. You had to like cats, be friendly, wash your own dishes . . . Let me see . . .” She wasn’t sure if he was smiling or smirking.