Time Will Tell (19 page)

Upon seeing it he'd turned up his nose and said it was girly. But she'd managed to convince him it looked good. And it had.

Sadness threatened to overwhelm her again as she dragged the shirt off the hanger. It looked clean, but not freshly washed. He'd clearly worn it and then put it away again. Emily deliberated on adding it to the washing pile. Or would Thora appreciate smelling his scent again? Like she had?

Looking around, she noticed Barbara had left the room. Soon she heard the vacuum cleaner start up in another part of the house.

She put the shirt on the bed and set about finding John's charcoal dress pants. Would he need underwear? He'd need shoes – his shiny black shoes were right there – but would he need socks? Unsure, Emily put together a whole outfit, including a pair of boxer briefs and dress socks. She was careful to choose the best, least worn. For a brief moment she considered buying a new pair of each, but dismissed the thought as utterly ridiculous. Thora would have enough on her mind without worrying about him wearing brand-new underwear.

She carefully folded the clothes and put them on top of the shoes in the shopping bag they'd set aside for the purpose. She then stood back and did an inventory in case there was anything she might have missed.
His dress watch.

She opened his bedside drawer. There sat the heavy stainless steel watch she'd given him as a wedding present. The lump in her throat swelled and tears filled her eyes. He'd loved that watch. Emily carefully placed it on the top of the pile of clothes. She took the bag out into the hall so she wouldn't have to look at it again, swallowed back the emotion and set to work on going methodically through the rest of the bedroom and his things.

Slowly they worked their way from the east side of the house to the west, tidying up and occasionally putting aside an item to take with them. Emily had paused in the lounge room. She so badly needed more seating over at her house. And a TV that was made in the twenty-first century and had a remote control would be nice. No, it wouldn't be right. She'd reluctantly torn herself away. They were there to clean up the place, not clean it out.

All this belonged to Thora and Gerald, other than her few things and the wedding presents. Most of the furniture had been in the house prior to her arrival and whilst none of it was particularly valuable, it was old and most likely Stratten family heirlooms.

Thora and Gerald had a houseful of lovely things and there was probably nothing here that would be of any interest to them. But that was for them to decide when they came out after the dust and emotion had settled.

When Barbara and Emily finished, the place would be able to be left for a few months without any problems and electricity wouldn't be wasted running an empty fridge and freezer and appliances left on standby.

Barbara had thought of everything, right down to bringing three huge eskies. Why let perfectly good food go to waste? There would be nothing worse for Thora and Gerald than to be greeted by the smell of rotting meat if the power went off at some point.

When they opened the chest freezer, they found it well stocked with lamb. Someone – Stacy? – had bagged and labelled all the cuts and carefully stacked them. The writing wasn't John's. As she and Barbara stared into the space, Emily knew they were both thinking about the same thing; the message John had given Barbara the day Emily had left him, reminding her to get freezer bags on her way home once she was ‘over her little hissy fit'. That day seemed so long ago.

‘Lucky you like your lamb,' Barbara said with a kind smile as she shut the lid. They discussed ‘borrowing' the freezer to store the meat, but decided Emily could probably fit everything in the freezer part of the old upside-down fridge her father had found her, which was currently almost empty. If not, there was plenty of spare room in Barbara and David's chest freezer.

Emily was surprised at how much she found that she wanted to keep – they had been given so many lovely things for their wedding. On the awful day she had walked out, she'd only had her car boot to carry things in – and no home to put them in anyway.

Feeling so down at the time, she couldn't imagine ever bothering with fine dining again. But seeing it all now, Emily quite liked the idea of getting out all the finery next time Jake came to stay. Not to impress him, but just because it added a nice, civilised touch to dinner.

I really hope he comes back soon.

Opening another cupboard, Emily ran her hands over a set of thick forest green Egyptian cotton towels that had never been used. She looked forward to relegating her parents' thinning mismatched hand-me-downs to rags for washing Grace and wiping her muddy paws, and mopping up spills.

Every now and then she got quite excited about finding something she'd completely forgotten about. But the feeling was always bittersweet; brief bursts of pleasure replaced soon after with guilt. How dare she enjoy this when a life had been lost?

Well, it wasn't like she'd offered to pick through the spoils; Thora had practically insisted, Emily mentally countered. More than that, she thought, pausing while wrapping a lovely white oval platter with raised, scrolled detail around the edge, she'd
expected
her to do it; like it was her duty.

A heavy, slightly nervous sensation settled in her stomach. Did Thora and Gerald really not know they had split up, or was Thora perhaps just in denial like her own mother seemed to be? Could she, like Enid, have spent the past month or so assuming it was just a tiff and that they'd be over it and back together soon? She might even be pretending nothing had happened at all.

Surely John had called them. Surely he'd been in touch with them for Christmas. He
must
have told them then. Or in the unlikely case that he hadn't, surely they would have heard something on the grapevine. If not about their separation, then about John's dalliance with another woman. No, they
had
to know. Emily tried to shake aside the sickening feeling of disbelief. Talk of the split had gone through the town like wildfire. She sighed. They absolutely had to know.

Suddenly slight relief swept through her as she realised how ridiculous she was being; Thora knew she wasn't living at the farmhouse because she'd asked her how she'd settled in. Hadn't she? Now, what had she said exactly? Emily racked her brain.

No, she had said it was nice to hear from her – nothing about settling in. She took a few deep breaths.

If Thora thought she was living there still, there would be a message for her about John's death on the landline's answering machine. Shit! She had seen a red flashing light when they'd been in the kitchen. She'd ignored it. Emily's heart rate suddenly increased.

She unfolded her crossed legs, got up, and rushed back out to the kitchen. Her finger shook as she pressed the button to play new messages. She waited for the twangy female American voice to tell her there were five new messages and to get to playing the first. The wait was excruciating and she was rocking on her feet, urging the machine to hurry up when Barbara appeared beside her.

‘What's going on?'

The first message began to play. Emily put her hand up to silence her friend. As they listened, their mouths dropped open and they stared from the machine to each other and back again:

‘Emily, it's Thora here. We've just had the police here about John. I'm calling to make sure you are all right; I'm sure them turning up must have been a shock for you as well. You must be devastated. Please let me know if there is anything we can do. We'll contact the funeral director first thing in the morning as he's a family friend, so please don't worry about that, or the death certificate or anything of that nature. But if there's anything specific you would like to include in the service, please let me know.' At that she let out an, ‘Oh Gerald,' and whimpered for a moment before the message ended with a click, the phone clearly disconnected.

The American voice came back on saying the message had been left on Sunday at 7:00 p.m. The second message was from Enid and said she would try her mobile. At this Emily shook her head and wondered if it was wishful thinking or forgetfulness on Enid's part, or if she might in fact be showing the first signs of dementia.

The third and fourth messages were just hang-ups and the fifth message was again from Thora. She sounded concerned, but said that she presumed Emily had gone to stay with her parents, that she and Gerald were there for her if she needed anything, but that they would give her her space.
Oh God
,
poor Thora
. Emily put her hands to her cheeks.

‘Bloody hell,' Barbara said quietly. ‘She
does
think you and John were still together.'

‘Now what am I supposed to do? How could she not know – it's been right around town and back again?'

‘And he's had at least one other woman staying out here since you left,' Barbara said, staring at Emily with disbelief. ‘Haven't you spoken to her at all in the last month and a half?'

‘No. We never saw much of them.'

‘So John wasn't close to his family?'

‘No. So what do I do?' Emily said, dragging a chair out from the nearby table and plonking herself down on it. ‘I can't exactly tell her now – she'd be devastated.'

‘Well, maybe she knows, but was telling herself you'd get back together.'

‘But we did the financial settlement – that's pretty final.'

‘That's true. Maybe they didn't know about that either.'

‘But John was tied up with the family business – surely they would have discussed it. He would have had to, wouldn't he?'

‘He was pretty underhanded with you; perhaps he was with them too.'

‘I wonder what Thora and Gerald would make of it all,' Emily said.

‘You're going to have to tell them, you know,' Barbara said solemnly. ‘Not now, though. Not before the funeral. It would be too much.'

Emily looked at her friend.

‘God, I'm going to have to stand up there beside them at the funeral and pretend to be the dutiful wife, aren't I?' Emily put her head in her hands.

‘I'm afraid so.'

‘And just when I've decided to finally get a backbone and stop kowtowing to my damned mother.' The implications began to sink in. ‘Not to mention the whole town thinking I'm a complete bloody hypocrite and that I'm sidling up to Thora and Gerald to benefit from his death or something.'

‘Well, you'll know the truth. It doesn't matter what everyone else thinks. You'll be doing it for Thora and Gerald, and that's all that matters. After the funeral, when things have calmed down a bit, you can tell them.'

‘I just don't understand. How is it that the whole town can know we'd split up, and about his floozy, but his parents didn't?'

‘Same way the wife is usually the last to know her husband is having an affair.'

Chapter Twenty-one

They laid Barbara's plastic-backed red and black tartan picnic rug out on the patch of overgrown lawn under the Hills Hoist rotary clothes line.
I suppose I'll have to mow the bloody lawn as well!
Emily thought as she sat down heavily.

She watched Barbara methodically unpack the large esky and lay everything out. She was trying not to look across at the bones of the new shed and at what lay beyond. Every time she saw the pile of rubble where the old cottage had been, she felt a stab of disappointment and annoyance. This patch of lawn had once been her favourite place to sit at the house, but she'd forgotten the enormous changes to the landscape that had recently taken place.

Soon they were feasting on egg sandwiches – straight from the square plastic box, because thanks to the long grass they were sitting on, the only way to keep their narrow-bottomed cups of apple juice upright was to stand them on the plates.

Emily remembered the once breathtaking scene; a pale stone cottage with red-brick quoins, topped in blemished corrugated iron speckled with rust and pinholes.

It had been flanked across the back and on the western side by a selection of tall, thick-waisted gum trees, all the same species and possibly hundreds of years old. Beyond the trees to the west, a safe distance away, snaked a creek. It now only ran in the wettest of winters or during summer flash floods, thanks to dams which had been dug in the nineteen fifties in the small range of hills at the back of the property. Even still, it was a gorgeous setting. Emily sighed. Well, it had been.

Now there was no cottage. Instead the gums flanked an unfinished steel structure – the damned hayshed – which without its cladding looked more like an uninspired first-year industrial design student's sculpture.

‘It's neither here nor there, is it?' Barbara said, following Emily's stare.

‘No. I guess he did need the space to build on after all. I must say, I feel a bit guilty about thinking what I did.'

‘Why? Because he's dead?'

‘Probably.'

‘Not that it really matters now, but he clearly
didn't
need the space. Look where he's started the shed. It's right next to the road. There's about fifty metres between it and the cottage.'

‘Hmm.' Emily frowned. Barbara was right. ‘Perhaps he really did pull it down out of spite.' She remembered her scrapbook, her dream of turning the little place into a B&B, a studio or gallery. And John's smirking words, the afternoon he'd knocked it down: ‘Maybe now you'll stop with all this bed and breakfast nonsense.'

‘Well it doesn't matter now. You can forget all about it. You've got a great new house – well, an old one, but you know what I mean – that you'll one day turn into a showpiece.'

‘Yeah in about a million years,' Emily said, rolling her eyes before taking another triangle of egg sandwich from the plastic container.

‘You just have to have faith.'

‘In what; the universe, you reckon?'