The Right Time (22 page)

‘So you'll be right for a car this weekend then?' Tim was saying, after she told him about the loaner. ‘Because I probably could have arranged for you to have my car.'

She would have liked to correct ‘my' car, but she couldn't be bothered arguing with him. ‘No, I'm all set.'

‘So,' he said, obviously cutting to the chase and the reason he was calling, ‘I was just checking to see if it was okay if I popped round to the house and grabbed the camping gear?'

‘Oh.' Ellen wasn't expecting that. ‘Sure. You're going to take Sam camping? That's a great idea. I don't know how you talked him into tearing himself away from the computer, but it'll do him good, get him out into the fresh air. It'll be good for the both of you. Male bonding and all that.'

She was met with deafening silence.

‘Oh, well, yeah, that is a great idea,' Tim finally spoke. ‘And I'll do that, I'll organise to go camping with Sam real soon. But I need the gear for this weekend, and you know, I don't have the kids this weekend.'

‘No, that's right,' Ellen replied. ‘So where are you going?'

Another silence. Or was it hesitation?

‘Just to a jazz festival, up the coast.'

‘Jazz? You never liked jazz.'

‘I don't mind it,' he said defensively. ‘Depends on who's playing it.'

Hm. ‘So who are you going with?'

There was that hesitation again.

‘Just friends, I'm going with friends,' he stammered. ‘No one you know,' he added quickly.

Ellen shrugged. ‘Well, fine, of course you're welcome to the camping gear. I'm not sure where everything is. It's been ages since we used it.'

‘I'll find it. Is it okay to go to the house when you're not there?'

‘Sure, but I'm never home much later than five, so I should be there anyway.'

‘I'll probably go round tomorrow during the day.'

‘Oh?'

‘Taking a few days off work, might as well make a real break of it,' he said with an awkward laugh. ‘Better get going, bye then.'

Zoe plonked down in her chair, and Ellen stirred, flipping her phone shut.

‘He doesn't even like jazz.'

‘Huh?' said Zoe, jiggling a tea bag in her mug.

‘He doesn't like jazz, and he never takes days off work.'

Zoe frowned. ‘Is this some kind of riddle?'

Ellen turned to look at her. ‘That was Tim,' she explained,
holding up the phone. ‘He wants to borrow the camping gear to go to a jazz festival. And he's taking a few days off work.'

‘Okay . . .' said Zoe, waiting for the significance of that piece of information to be illuminated.

‘The thing is, Tim never takes time off. I mean
never
. He works for the local council, for godsakes, and okay, he is senior, but he acts as though the whole place will grind to a halt if he's not there. He wouldn't even take rostered days off to come to the kids' school functions.' She shook her head. ‘Something's going on.'

‘So, he's trying new things,' Zoe shrugged, ‘reinventing himself. Trying to be cool. It'll be the red sports car next.'

‘I don't know,' Ellen shook her head. ‘He gets this weird tone in his voice when he's awkward and he's trying to hide something – he sounds like a teenage boy whose voice is breaking.'

‘What would he be trying to hide?' asked Zoe. ‘That he's seeing someone?'

Ellen pulled a face. ‘I can't imagine it.' She paused, trying to do just that before wincing and shaking her head. ‘I really can't imagine it.'

‘Does it bother you that much?'

‘No,' she scoffed, waving her hand. ‘Why should it? We're separated. And we were separated a long time before it was official.'

‘Then what is it?'

‘I genuinely just cannot imagine it,' she explained. ‘I mean, you'd hardly call Tim a ladies' man . . . he'd be so awkward!'

‘The voice-breaking thing would be a feature?'

‘Absolutely,' Ellen snorted a laugh. ‘Anyway, if he is seeing someone, I don't know why he'd keep it secret.'

Zoe shrugged. ‘Maybe it's not serious, so there's no need to mention it.'

‘That's true,' Ellen nodded with some relief. ‘You're right, if he is trying to hide it, that means he's obviously not planning on involving the kids. We haven't really discussed how we'll handle dating, you know, with them. So this is good,' she decided. ‘I don't care what he does in his own time.'

Liz walked up the three steps to the front door. She gave the old brass doorbell a turn, before opening the door herself. She loved that they still had the kind of handle you could open from the outside if it wasn't locked. It didn't feel right somehow having to knock on the door of your own home, the place where you'd grown up . . . Oh no, she was getting maudlin already.

As she stepped inside, Emma and her dad were coming from the other end of the hall. ‘Oh, hi Em, you're here,' said Liz.

‘Just leaving,' she chirped, snapping open her handbag and taking out her keys.

‘Not on my account, I hope?'

Emma smiled. ‘Don't be silly. No, I have to dash and make myself beautiful. Blake has a dinner with important clients, and I'm the eye candy for the night.' She leaned forward to touch cheeks with her sister and kiss the air somewhere near her ear. ‘I can expect you on Saturday?'

‘Of course. I did confirm.'

Emma turned to her father. ‘Just a tick or a cross, okay, Dad?'

‘Whatever you say, love,' he said, giving her a kiss on the cheek and a quick hug.

‘Must run,' she said, and then she was gone, her heels clacking on the tessellated tiles as she hurried down the front path.

‘Lizzie, this is a lovely surprise,' her father said, taking her by the shoulders. ‘Now, you look all right, you haven't been bedridden with a terrible debilitating disease? Or perhaps held hostage in your apartment, unable to leave?'

‘Very subtle, Dad,' she chided, giving him a kiss.

‘Really? That's funny, I didn't think I was being subtle at all.'

They started back down the hall, arm in arm. ‘What was that about?' Liz asked. ‘The ticks and the crosses?'

Her father had a chuckle, shaking his head. ‘Your sister, I love her dearly, but she's a force of nature.'

‘She certainly is.'

‘She brought over a selection of the finger food she's thinking about having at the wedding. She wants your mother and me to
try them, tell her what we think.' He grinned. ‘What would we know?'

‘Well, you know what you like, Dad.'

They arrived at the kitchen. ‘Yes, but come and have a gander at this.' He crossed to the bench and opened a matt black cardboard box, like a cake box but not as deep, and almost as wide as the benchtop. Inside, arranged in a grid, with neat cardboard separators, were row upon row of delicate canapés, each one apparently different to the next.

‘Wow,' Liz murmured.

‘Wow is right. I said I don't know what they are, love, how will I be able to tell you which ones I liked? So then, look at what she did,' he said, ‘just now, while she was here.'

He produced a piece of A4 paper, on which Emma had ruled a grid and written a code in each square, which Liz assumed corresponded to the contents in the box.

‘Do you know what each code stands for?'

‘No,' he dismissed. ‘She said, don't worry about what they are, she knows what the code means, so just give them a tick or a cross. I said to her, what if I don't love it or hate it? She thought I was having a dig, but I wasn't, it's a genuine conundrum.'

Liz smiled, imagining Emma trying to keep her cool.

‘Then she rattled off some nonsense about me being a Pisces and not being able to make up my mind, while she's a decisive Virgo and a perfectionist, so would I please just do as she asked.' He shrugged, holding up his hands. ‘So that's what I'll do. Wanna help?'

‘Shouldn't we wait for Mum?'

‘She'll be along, she's been lunching with her old school crowd. But I say let's get started before she comes home and tells me they're bad for me, and that I'm not allowed to have any more.' He glanced at the clock on the wall, which Liz was glad to see was still where it had always been. For now. It was probably one of the last things left on the wall in the entire house.

‘It's after five,' he said, a mischievous twinkle in his eye. ‘We need to have a glass of wine with these, don't we?'

‘Absolutely,' said Liz. ‘We won't get the right sensation otherwise.'

‘I like your thinking!'

They moved everything to the breakfast table where there was a view out to the garden, and began to sample the appetisers.

‘Now, see,' her father said, with a slight grimace, ‘this one has anchovies, and I'm not keen on anchovies.'

‘Oh, which one is that?' asked Liz. ‘I love anchovies.'

‘This is where the system breaks down,' he said. ‘I don't like anchovies, doesn't mean other people won't. Should I make a note of that?'

‘Just do what she asked, Dad.'

He patted her hand. ‘It's good to see you, Lizzie. Your mother will be so pleased when she gets home. We've missed you.'

‘What can I say, it's eczema season, busy, busy.' She looked out the window at the garden. ‘It's so beautiful in the autumn,' she murmured. She had toyed with the idea of setting up camp out in the backyard till the very last day, so she could enjoy it to the very end. But it was too sad knowing it was going to be bulldozed. ‘I have to say it, Dad, it breaks my heart that this will all be gone. Aren't you going to miss it?'

‘Of course I will, I love this yard, though I can't say I'll miss mowing it. You know, if I calculated the number of hours I've spent looking after that grass alone.' He shuddered. ‘It doesn't bear thinking about. The books I could have read, for one thing . . .'

‘I told you we could have got a gardener in, Dad.'

He gave her a sideways look.

‘All right, all right,' she said. ‘I know it's too late, it's done. Get over it, Liz.'

‘Is this why you haven't been coming to see us?'

‘No,' she denied, but he gazed at her steadily. ‘Maybe a little . . . Okay, yeah.'

‘Elizabeth,' he chided gently, giving her hand a squeeze. ‘Now you're breaking my heart. Does this mean you won't come and see us at all after we move?'

‘Of course it doesn't mean that. It's coming to the house that's hard, Dad, not seeing you and Mum. Don't ever think that.' She paused. ‘I can't imagine it won't be ours any more. I always dreamed I'd get married in this backyard.'

He cleared his throat. ‘You didn't expect us to wait around for that, did you?'

‘Cheeky!' she declared, giving him a nudge. ‘It's just, this feels like the only home I've got, Dad. I don't even like my apartment. It's a place to sleep and store my stuff. It doesn't feel like a home.'

‘Well, it's about time you made it into a home, Lizzie.'

She shook her head. ‘You can't make an apartment into a home. At least I can't. A home has a front door facing the street, and a yard, and probably a dog.'

‘Well, why don't you sell the apartment and buy a home? You can afford it.'

Liz shrugged, screwing up her face. ‘It doesn't feel right without a husband and kids.'

Her father shook his head as he finished off another canapé and ticked the appropriate box. ‘Dear oh dear, Lizzie, seems to me you're going to have to stop waiting around for someone to give you a life, and get on with what makes you happy.'

‘I know. Sometimes I find it hard to believe that I've planned my whole life around an imaginary husband and children that have never materialised.'

‘They will one day.'

‘That's the problem growing up in a not-broken home, you know, Dad,' she said. ‘You end up believing in true love, and then you plan for it, expect it. But just because you and Mum were happy, doesn't guarantee I'll find conjugal bliss. In fact, all evidence is pointing rather indisputably to the contrary,' she lamented. ‘Now, if I'd had an absent father, an alcoholic mother,
some
kind of dysfunction, I could pin it on that.'

‘Sorry we let you down,' he said. ‘If I polish off the rest of this bottle and give your mother a backhander when she gets home, will that help?'

Liz just laughed.

‘You've got to move on, Lizzie,' he said. ‘Like your mother and me. This house is a good example. You stick with something for so long, you want to hang on to it because you've invested so much into it, somehow it feels all that time is a waste if you leave. But it's not a waste, it's all life experience.'

Liz was frowning. He was getting a bit close to the bone, but her parents had never known about Andrew, and never would. Well, not until they could be together openly.