Weekends with the Sunshine Gardening Society

by Sophie Green

Genres: General Fiction; Friendship; Small Town & Rural; Women's Fiction

Synopsis

Noosa Heads, 1987: Newly divorced Cynthia has returned to her home town from Los Angeles to reconnect with her 19-year-old daughter, who is pregnant and determined not to listen to her mother's advice. Cynthia's former best friend, Lorraine, has been stuck mowing lawns as part of a business she shares with her husband - his dream, not hers. When Cynthia convinces Lorraine to join the local Sunshine Gardening Society, they meet young widow Elizabeth, and rootless, heartbroken Kathy. They soon discover the society is much more than an opportunity to chat about flowers. Between pulling up weeds and planting natives, the women learn from each other that some roots go deep, and others shallow; that seeds can lie dormant for a long time before they spring to life, and that careful tending is the key to lives and friendships that reach their full potential.

Release date: July 26, 2023

Publisher: Hachette Australia

Print pages: 432

Sample

Noosa Main Beach is the same yet not. Eternal but changed. There is still the view that takes in Fraser Island on a clear day; the shoreline still curls around towards the national park on one end and is truncated by the breakwater at the other. Over that breakwater there are rougher waves and braver surfers. Here, hugging into the lee side, there tend to be more gentle, rolling waves that can turn vigorous on certain tides but usually welcome timid swimmers.

The beach has been fortified by rocks and sand has been pumped in from the river that empties beyond the breakwater. If this hadn’t been done erosion would have caused this beautiful, bright stretch of sand to disappear. Noosa Heads, locals say, is being loved to death. Everyone wants it to look perfect so they can have their perfect holiday. Time and tides – and some people’s opinions on the form the shoreline should take – have other ideas. So every now and again the beach washes away, the rocks are exposed, and the tourists ignore that because sand will be brought in to cover up those rocks and everything will look perfect again. But the locals know what it used to look like. Cynthia knows. Or, more truthfully, she remembers. Because she hasn’t been home – not properly – for fourteen years. Even though she was twenty-five then she thought she may never return. Not because she doesn’t love the place but because she wanted to leave it behind. She had a new life and it wasn’t in Noosa. Or Australia, for that matter.

A child squeals close by and seagulls bustle around the sand. One of the lifesavers folds his arms and squints as he regards two swimmers between the flags who look like they’re about to be outside the flags. His mouth opens; there’s a warning coming. The swimmers, as if intuiting that they’re about to be told off, change course and move back between those flags that promise safety, protection. Lifesavers. Life savers. What a concept. It would be nice, Cynthia thinks, if someone could come along and save her life. Or, rather, rescue her from it because it feels like her feet have been pulled from under her.

She digs her toes into the sand and waits for the wave that’s coming towards her. When it arrives the water is warmer than she expected. It’s reassuring. These are the waves she grew up with. This is the sand she knows.

She hadn’t expected to feel reassured when she came back. She’d thought she may feel disappointed in herself for scurrying home from Los Angeles instead of staying to deal with the end of her marriage. She suspected she’d feel superior to the Noosa locals who’d stayed put while she went off to have the sort of life – and lifestyle – she’d always believed more suited to her than anything on offer in the fishing-shack town she’d left behind. Noosa isn’t that town any more, though. It’s busier and has the patina of a place that is well loved: lots of smiling visitors, rotating frequently, and the wear and tear that comes from so many different humans passing through, along with the new coats of paint on buildings that signal that the town is being tended.

As a child and teenager and young mother here Cynthia never quite understood what Pat, her first husband, called ‘Noosa magic’, and she still didn’t understand it all those years she was away. Now, though, with this sea foam on her feet and these gulls and this breeze, with those rocks leading the way around the coast to the bush beyond, and the sky that is the most gentle shade of blue she’s ever seen, she wonders. Perhaps there is magic here. And if there is, she needs to find it. Along with some fortitude and forbearance.

Cynthia jumps as a hand is placed on her shoulder.

‘Missed it?’ her father says, his voice croakier than it sounded on the phone during their long-distance calls.

‘No,’ she says, and it’s both a lie and the truth, because she has and she hasn’t at differing times.

Her father peers at her and nods slowly, like he’s figured her out. Then again, he always has.

‘Sure,’ he says. ‘Well, the house missed you.’

‘You mean the house misses Mum’s housekeeping,’ she says wryly.

The state of the three-bedroom, one-storey dwelling at Little Cove, almost within sight of where they’re standing now, suggests her father hasn’t lifted a finger since her mother died five months ago. Not that Cynthia knows what he’s been doing or not doing, because she couldn’t come back for the funeral.

She had visited, once, after her mother was diagnosed and before they knew how serious her illness was. No one told Cynthia it was terminal; if they had, she would have come home and stayed until her mother died, then dealt with the mess of her life in Los Angeles later. For as much as she and her mother weren’t close, they were connected, and while Diane always seemed to live at one remove from everyone around her, Cynthia loved her. Loves her still. Yes, everything else could have waited because, as Cynthia knows now, we have so few chances to stand witness to the biggest changes in the lives of those we love.

‘Could be,’ her father admits. ‘I’m not that good at keeping things tidy. Doing washing.’

‘How would you know?’ she says playfully. ‘You’ve never tried.’

‘I don’t expect you to do it,’ he says gruffly.

‘Course you do.’ She pats his hand. ‘I don’t mind, Papa. I came back to spend time with you.’

He peers at her again. ‘Uh-huh. And Odette, of course.’

‘Yes, of course,’ Cynthia smiles tightly.

Odette, her daughter, had been the ever-present witness to the unpleasantness – to put it mildly – of Cynthia’s second marriage and, as soon as she turned sixteen, she told Cynthia she wanted to move back to Australia to live with her father. It wasn’t as if Cynthia could claim that life in Los Angeles wasn’t worth leaving. She’d wanted to leave it too, but sometimes marriages aren’t that straightforward.

They had been so close. But Cynthia failed Odette, or she felt she had, by not protecting her from what was going on, so she didn’t call her that often. Didn’t write. She wanted Odette to be happier than she had been all those years away from her father. Except those years of living apart made Cynthia unhappier than she has ever been, and now she feels so disconnected from her daughter it’s as if they’re former colleagues who shared a terrible boss and all they have in common are war stories they don’t wish to repeat. She doesn’t know how to talk to Odette any more, let alone how to be her mother.

Cynthia has to reacquaint herself with that role, however, because what has really brought her back to the place of her youth is that Odette, still in her own youth, has announced that she’s two months pregnant and planning to keep the baby. Cynthia plans to disabuse her of that notion. Odette has so much life ahead of her – and Cynthia is more aware of that than most. She was nineteen when she became pregnant with Odette.

Her father probably knows Odette better than Cynthia herself does these days. He also probably knows that while his daughter is pleased to see him, the real motive for her return is to try to talk his granddaughter out of becoming a mother. He won’t say anything about that, however. Minding his own business has been Wilfred’s life credo.

‘I suppose I should call her,’ Cynthia says.

Her father nods slowly. ‘Yep.’ He glances out to sea then back to her. ‘But first I have some fresh prawns and some bread from the junction.’

‘Don’t tell me Sid’s bakery is still there?’

‘No. But the bread’s good.’ He pats her shoulder. ‘Come on. Time to go home.’

Cynthia takes one more look at the sea and thinks about coming back for a swim later. Those LA beaches just weren’t the same as this glorious expanse. She wants to plunge into the salt water just so she can turn around and look at the shore, revel in the beauty of it, and try not to think about how many years she could have been enjoying it.

‘Yes, Papa,’ she says. ‘It is.’

Lorraine slams the Wettex down on the sink and exhales loudly. ‘Terry, I have told you a million times that when you go to the shops you need to take Simon with you!’

‘I don’t want to,’ her eldest son replies.

‘I don’t care. I don’t have time to watch him all day, every weekend – I need your help. Plus he loves going with you.’

‘Yeah. That’s the problem.’

Terry glowers at her. He’s fourteen and riding the messy wave of puberty, alternately loathing her and wanting her to tell him that life will turn out okay. Ha! She’d like someone to tell her that too.

‘Mike, say something,’ she mutters as her husband enters the kitchen.

‘Mate,’ he says, ruffling Terry’s hair.

‘Dad, stop it!’ Terry looks mortified then mildly pleased.

‘Why?’ Mike chuckles and winks at Lorraine. ‘It’s too much fun seeing your reaction. Darl, did you hear about Howard sacking Andrew Peacock? Can’t believe it – I thought that bloke had nine lives.’

‘Why – because he’s had an affair with Shirley MacLaine?’ she mutters.

Mike chortles. ‘Yeah, probably.’

‘Terry, where’s Simon now?’ Lorraine turns fully away from the sink and puts her hands on her hips.

Terry shrugs. ‘Dunno.’

‘Could you find him?’

‘Why do I have to hang out with that little creep?’ Terry says just as his brother walks into the room.

Lorraine sees Simon just in time to also see his face crumple. ‘Darling.’ She yanks off her rubber gloves and throws them on the kitchen bench before going to her youngest and giving him a hug. ‘Terry didn’t mean it,’ she says softly, kissing the loose curls on the top of Simon’s head then glaring at her teenager.

‘Yeah, I did,’ Terry snickers. ‘He follows me around. It’s embarrassing. My friends think he’s a loser.’

Mike chuckles again.

‘Michael, it’s not funny,’ Lorraine says just as Simon starts to sniffle.

When she waited five years after Terry was born to have another child it was because she needed to get used to the idea of one kid before she added another. She didn’t stop to think that her eldest child would be a teenager while her youngest was still in single digits, which is like parenting two different species instead of one.

‘What is happening?’

Mike’s mother, Cora, has joined them, wafting through the doorway. Cora likes to waft. She once told Lorraine that she’d read in a magazine that a lady should look elegant when she walks; her interpretation is to waft all over the house, day and night, until she finally retires to her bedroom. Although she probably wafts in there too. Lorraine wouldn’t know. Cora keeps the door closed unless she wants the room vacuumed, when she leaves it open. Presumably as an invitation to Lorraine to do that vacuuming.

Cora’s all right, really. She just used to have a maid or a cleaner or something back when Mike was growing up in Toowoomba. Now that she’s living in Cooroy with grown-up Mike and his wife, she thinks Lorraine is that maid. And Lorraine, not wanting to rock the boat or her marriage, goes along with it. So she probably only has herself to blame. She shouldn’t have let Cora move in when Mike’s father died. That was the original mistake.

‘It’s fine, Cora,’ Lorraine says, stroking Simon’s head as he continues to sniffle.

But Cora has spied the tears on Simon’s cheeks and is now wafting in his direction. ‘My poor baby,’ she murmurs, kissing his cheek. Simon’s her favourite. Which Terry knows. It hasn’t helped with Terry’s attitude towards his brother.

‘Honestly, Cora, it’s fine.’ Lorraine looks pointedly at Mike, who is, inconveniently, looking in the fridge.

‘Where are the snags?’ he asks, presumably of her.

‘In the freezer,’ she snaps. Where he put them when he brought them home from the butcher.

The ringing phone on the kitchen bench gives her an opportunity to step back and observe the scene playing out before her: teenage son looking at her like he wishes she’d disappear into a hole; husband’s head swivelling from side to side as he continues to look in the fridge, not the freezer; nine-year-old son sniffing as his grandmother squeezes him into a hug.

‘Hello,’ she says curtly into the receiver.

‘Lorraine?’

‘Yep.’

The voice on the line sounds vaguely familiar, which means it’s probably one of the school mothers wanting her to make toffee for the fete or whatever it is that’s coming up. There’s always something. Fundraiser, fete, dance, teacher leaving.

‘Hi,’ the voice says.

Lorraine frowns. ‘Yeah. Hi.’ Who does this joker think she is?

‘It’s me.’ The voice is meek now.

‘Who’s me?’

‘Cynthia.’

That makes Lorraine pause. Cynthia Scheffer used to be the best thing in her life. The funniest, smartest, trendiest person she knew at school; the most daring of them all even after she had Odette. So daring she up and left for Los Angeles with that surfer she met after he caught a wave off Tea Tree Bay and found her sitting on the rocks, almost as if she was waiting for him. Because she was. She’d spied him waxing a surfboard in the car park nearby and decided he was a better prospect than her husband. Or maybe she just wanted to force a change. Either way, Pat never saw it coming.

Now that Lorraine has been a mother for fourteen years, she understands the desire to force a change. But that change took Cynthia far away from everyone who loved her and, after an initial letter-writing spree, she stopped contacting Lorraine, and eventually Lorraine stopped trying to contact her.

And the clincher was that the surfer didn’t last but Cynthia stayed over there, with Odette, and married some film producer or whatever. So Cynthia’s dad told Lorraine when she saw him fishing round at Noosaville one day. After that they started catching up for tea every now and again; they’d always got on when Lorraine was a teenager. Less so Lorraine and Cynthia’s mum, who was a little stand-offish. Wilfred hasn’t said a word, though, about Cynthia coming home. Which, given the lack of STD pips or international dialling noise, she must be.

‘Hello, Cynthia,’ Lorraine says in the most formal voice she can muster.

She glances at Mike, who was privy to her tears when Cynthia stopped writing back. Now he’s shut the fridge door and has that look on his face he gets when he’s worried that the dog has pooed on the neighbour’s lawn. He leans his head to one side, holding her gaze. She knows what it means: Are you all right? He can be sensitive sometimes. Usually when it counts. That’s why she puts up with having his mother in the house.

She smiles at him. Yes, she’s all right. Cynthia may have broken her heart but Mike and Terry and Simon glued it back together.

‘How … how are you?’ Cynthia says, her voice soft.

‘Fine. You?’

‘I’m … back.’

‘Yep. Gathered that.’

Lorraine hears a sigh. ‘I haven’t been a good friend.’

Lorraine makes a face into the phone. Useless but satisfying.

‘You’ve been no kind of friend,’ she says, although her voice is calm. She’s just saying the truth, isn’t she? No need for drama.

Silence for a few seconds. Then another sigh. ‘No, I haven’t.’

More silence.

‘But I’d love to see you,’ Cynthia goes on.

Lorraine thinks about that. What would it be like to see Cynthia again? Would she want to kick her in the shins? Or would she – more likely, she believes – want to wrap her in a hug then go back to the way things were? Because she’s never had another friend like Cynthia. No one who has encouraged her to be herself as much as Cynthia did. Lorraine knows now that friends like that are so rare that a person needs to be prepared to overlook some dodgy behaviour from time to time. Because we all make mistakes. Which doesn’t mean she’s going to let Cynthia off the hook straightaway. Lorraine isn’t a pushover. Much. Not in this case, anyway. She still loves Cynthia – you don’t stop loving someone when you’ve been as close as they were – but she’s not just going to forgive and forget. That’s for people who watch daytime soaps and think life is as easy as saying a few nice words.

‘I’ll have to think about it,’ she says, even though she already has. ‘I have a lot on.’

‘Of course.’ Cynthia sounds relieved. ‘I’m at Dad’s if … you know … you want to call.’

‘Yeah, all right.’ Now it’s Lorraine’s turn to pause. How do you end a conversation like this?

‘I’d better go,’ she says eventually. ‘Things to do.’

‘Okay.’

‘Ta-ta.’

She hangs up in time to see Simon stick out his tongue at Terry and she braces herself for whatever’s coming next.

The garden is a mess. Elizabeth knows this. It’s impossible to not know it because she sees it every day. This medium-sized back garden that was once ordered and cared for – that was loved – is now unruly. There is leaf litter in the beds. There are sticks on the grass. The bushes that need pruning haven’t been pruned in a while. Flowers have fallen and started to rot.

Jon wouldn’t approve. ‘Never let a weed go unremoved,’ he liked to say. She can only imagine what he would make of what his beloved project has become. But he’s not here. He hasn’t been here for three months. Is it three months? Maybe it’s four. Maybe it’s two. Maybe it’s an eternity.

That’s something Elizabeth has discovered about grief: it causes time to change shape. Grief this profound, this paralysing, is not something she’s had to deal with – not in such a major way. At thirty years of age she’s lost grandparents and she’s grieved them. But they weren’t people she spent every day with, or had a child with. There’s a special kind of grief for those people.

She’d lived such an ordered life until this; no doubt that’s one of the things Jon liked about her when they met, as he was a man who liked an ordered garden and a pressed tie and a clean shave. He never said and she didn’t ask, and now she can’t ask because he is dead. And because he’s dead he can’t see the disorder in his garden and in his wife.

‘Mum-my,’ comes Charlie’s singsong voice from the back door.

Elizabeth turns her head towards it. ‘Yes, darling?’

‘What’s for lunch?’

Lunch. Elizabeth hasn’t thought about it. That’s another thing about grief: it sucks up all the other functions of life, like eating. If it hadn’t been for her mother regularly appearing with crustless cheese sandwiches and chicken vol-au-vents at key times, Elizabeth wouldn’t have eaten for weeks. Her mother seems to have developed a predilection for cocktail food – or perhaps it’s that she thinks Elizabeth will only eat things that can be picked up in one hand. It’s surprising cabanossi hasn’t made an appearance.

So while Elizabeth hasn’t thought about lunch, her mother will have. There will be something covered in Glad Wrap in the fridge, because her mother dropped round this morning, as she does every morning, sometimes with Elizabeth’s father in tow. They have both helped her more than she knew she would need to be helped.

In the week after Jon died, for instance, her father was brilliant: capable, commanding, helping to organise the funeral and making sure guests at the wake were looked after while Elizabeth sat limply in a chair and tried to remember the names of people she hadn’t seen in years. She and Jon had known each other since high school but they’d lost touch with most of their high-school friends – those same people who drove up the Bruce Highway from Brisbane to kiss her on the cheek and pat her hand and say they were so very, very sorry. She wanted to ask them why they weren’t so sorry that they didn’t visit Jon in the two years he was sick; years in which Charlie was discovering the world and Elizabeth tried to manage a boy looking outwards and a husband whose illness made him turn inwards. If her parents hadn’t packed up their lives in Brisbane to live nearby, Elizabeth would have faced it all mostly alone.

It had been Jon’s idea to move to Noosaville when he took up a job at the council. Being a civil engineer would take him places, he told her, and it took them up the road to the Sunshine Coast. They both loved it and chose Noosaville as their home, with its charming houses and the river so close they could hear the swish of boats. Elizabeth walked Charlie in his pram by the river, over to Hastings Street in Noosa Heads and back again. Long walks, soaking in the sun, looking at birds, enjoying the slow pace of this small community.

Her parents chose Sunshine Beach as their home. Not too much of a drive from her, and she couldn’t blame them for preferring the ocean to the river. A lifetime in Brisbane has probably inured them to rivers. But she still likes them.

Except Elizabeth hasn’t walked by that river in months. Not since Jon started ailing and she had to spend her time by his side. Not had to. Wanted to. Or sometimes had to. Caring for someone who is seriously ill, then terminally ill, is an act of love but often, too, of service. There are minutes, hours, days when you have to take a breath and rededicate yourself to the task. For task it becomes. Even love can be a task. Ask any parent.

Elizabeth smiles weakly at her son. ‘Lunch, um … I’m sure Granny left us something delicious. Would you like to go and check?’

He looks at her as if he’d rather she go and check, his little nose wrinkling, his thick titian-coloured fringe almost covering it. She needs to take him for a haircut. Something else to add to the list of things she’s been neglecting.

Charlie’s glance moves to the garden bed over Elizabeth’s shoulder and now his forehead is wrinkling along with his nose. ‘What’s wrong with that?’

He points to something and Elizabeth turns to see a wilting hydrangea.

Another weak smile. ‘It just needs a bit of attention.’ Don’t we all.

‘Is it dying?’

His eyes are bright and she sees only innocence there, but what he has said makes her breath catch. The plant is dying. Because his father, the garden’s caretaker, has died. There’s a parable or something in that, isn’t there? Or there should be. If she reads her Bible again, the way she’s been meaning to ever since Jon died – all the way through, knowing there will be succour in it if only she can sit down and focus – maybe she’ll find it. But for now there’s only a dying hydrangea and no way to explain it other than neglect.

That’s what she told Reverend Willoughby when he stopped by to see her last Sunday. She hadn’t turned up to church again that morning and he was worried about her, he said. He has been very kind to her since Jon died, even though she’s been slack about her church attendance. She supposes it’s his job, but she appreciates it nonetheless. He’s checked on her and his wife has brought food. Small gestures that have meant a great deal.

When he visited he glanced around the garden and raised his eyebrows, then muttered something about sending someone to give her a hand. But Elizabeth doesn’t expect anything. That’s something else about grief: even an expectation of getting out of bed in the morning seems grandiose.

‘Maybe,’ she says to Charlie and stands. ‘But I’ll give it a water and see if it recovers.’

‘Okay,’ he says cheerfully and smiles at her.

Charlie’s good humour has been the one thing that has brightened Elizabeth’s days. He’s old enough to know his father has gone but young enough to still live in the moment. Events are measured in how many sleeps away they are, and Charlie has no concept of dwelling in the past. That’s a punishment Elizabeth gets to keep to herself.

‘Come on,’ she says, holding out her hand to him. ‘Let’s go and see what’s in the fridge.’

He grins and takes it, swinging on her arm.

‘Mu-um,’ he says.

‘Yes, darling?’

‘Can we go to the park?’

Elizabeth closes her eyes and inhales. He’s been asking to do this every day for weeks now. But outside, beyond this house, is a world she’s not ready for yet.

‘Maybe,’ she says, as she does every day, and his smile tells her that the answer is good enough for him. For now.

The din of a restaurant kitchen as service ramps up is something Kathy is used to. That slight nervous anticipation of the hours ahead – not knowing what sort of people are going to walk through the door, whether they’ll be pleasant customers or the sort who complain at the drop of a hat, the tightrope walk of making sure all the meals come out on time and to the right people – is also something she is used to. What she is not used to is being answerable to someone else about how the restaurant runs. Kathy’s been in charge of staff for so long that she no longer knows how to obey. Which may turn out to be a problem because, despite her years of experience and her most recent job being that of restaurant manager, the only job she’s been able to find at short notice in the supposedly burgeoning hospitality industry of Noosa Shire is as a waitress with occasional bartending duties at a nice little establishment by the river.

The restaurant has a view. That’s something. There are houses on the opposite bank, and boats between them, and pelicans most days, all of which they can see through the glass that forms the entire front of the restaurant. The view can be seen from the banquettes too, which are new enough not to show signs of wear and tear, and from the tables that are large enough to accommodate main meals and side dishes – not something Kathy takes for granted after working in tiny Melbourne establishments where they were lucky to fit the bread basket on the table along with the meals. What she didn’t have in Melbourne were the biting midge things that manifest at sunset for anyone who decides that a stroll along the riverbank would be a good idea. This isn’t the lifestyle Kathy aspired to when she left Melbourne and moved here two weeks ago.

Two weeks of scrambling to find a decent place to live and a job that pays her enough to cover the rent. She supposes she could have allowed more time but time isn’t usually a component of snap decisions.

A year ago, in a flush of romantic love, she and her beloved, Jem, had decided that the Sunshine Coast seemed like the ideal place to live with its eternal summer. Or, rather, not-Melbourne weather. Kathy had visited once and found it bright and bustling with promise: there were businesses opening, and homes with front and back gardens. At that stage Kathy was living in a narrow place in Carlton North with some paving out the front, a couple of square metres of fading lawn out the back, and a huge deciduous tree that covered everything with leaves in autumn. It was her former marital home, which was likely a factor in her daydreams of living elsewhere.

A month ago, Jem had announced that Kathy was no longer wanted as another paramour had been found. A younger, firmer individual whose breasts still bounce and who may, one day, want children. At fifty-four and with two grown-up offspring of her own, Kathy is beyond having babies. She’d been pleased about that, for a while. Until the point where her inability to have more children became the rationale to break her heart.

She knows that wasn’t the real reason, though. It was the convenient reason. There were others, hinted at earlier when Kathy hadn’t been prepared to up-end her life to do what Jem wanted to do, which was to move to Warrnambool and farm sheep. Freezing bloody Warrnambool, where the winds come in off the Great Southern Ocean and everyone is pleasant and community-minded to make up for it. Kathy used to have holidays in Warrnambool, back when she was married and her children were young. A long time ago. So she hadn’t wanted to make that particular change, yet here she is with an up-ended life anyway. At least this version is the one she chose.

‘Hmm, only half-booked,’ Hans, the restaurant’s co-owner, says, scrutinising the reservations book.

‘It’s a Tuesday,’ Kathy says lightly. ‘I think a lot of the tourists go home on Tuesday.’

He nods and narrows his eyes at her, like he’s trying to work out if she really knows anything about it. True, she isn’t familiar with the area yet. But she knows hospitality and its rhythms. How there are certain weeks of the year that are dead quiet, and it’s the same weeks each year and has nothing to do with school terms or full moons or even the weather. They’re just quiet. Sometimes she wishes a scientist or someone would do research on it so she can find out why it happens.

‘If we were to close one day a week,’ Hans says, looking at her sideways, ‘which one would you choose?’

Kathy wonders if this is a loaded question: if he’s about to ask her to cut back on a day of work. Or maybe he genuinely wants her opinion.

‘Wednesday,’ she says, because she’s been chatting to the kitchen staff about the busy and quiet times. ‘That’s the dead day in the week.’

Hans raises his eyebrows. ‘You would not do this in Melbourne,’ he states.

‘No,’ Kathy agrees. ‘But that’s a completely different scene. Melbourne has a lot of business lunches throughout the week. From what I understand of this place, the tourists go home on Tuesday and the next ones arrive on Thursday. It’s all about long weekends.’ She smiles to show that she’s trying to be helpful.

He didn’t have to hire her, this young man with slicked-back hair a