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CHAPTER
4
Joey squeezed his moped into a park beside a work truck stacked with a cement mixer and tools. He killed his ignition, took off his helmet, and stepped towards the Clarence Bakery.
A chalkboard easel squatted on the kerb, with its quote of the day blathering about sunshine and fresh beginnings—a new touch since his last visit. But other than that, walking through the swing doors felt like walking back twenty years to his high-school days.
The smell of steak and onion pies. Cracked lino flooring. The swoosh and rattle as he flicked aside the rainbow-strip curtains that kept flies off the bakery’s cream buns and lamingtons.
He’d brought Natalie here for their first date one Friday after school—well, for a fake date, seeing as how she’d been his fake girlfriend—and spent the money he’d earned mowing lawns on chocolate milkshakes for two. That was before she broke his heart of course. Before he let her down.
Before she died.
‘Mate,’ said a voice that he’d heard pretty much every one of those long-ago high-school days but rarely since. ‘Where have you been hiding?’
He grinned at the bloke seated at a white plastic table, who had a half-eaten pie in his hands and was covered in grey dust. Pete O’Connor, his best mate since the age of five, who’d somehow turned a childhood of detention and delinquency into a career as a builder and property developer. ‘Having a day on the tools, Pete? I thought you were the boss, these days.’
‘Damn rain,’ said Pete, finishing his pie and taking a swig from a chocolate milk. ‘Put us behind schedule so I’ve spent my morning laying a driveway. Wombat told me you were back in town; thought I’d have seen you at the pub.’
Joey’s brother Wombat, a.k.a. Will, was number three in the line-up of siblings. ‘I’ve been flatstrap,’ he said, giving the man behind the bakery counter a nod. ‘G’day. Frank, isn’t it?’ He held out a hand. ‘Joe Miles. Long time no see.’
The Frank Oatley in his memory had sported a thatch of black hair, which seemed to have slid off the baker’s head in the years he’d been gone and made its way to his chin: the bloke was now bald with a bushranger beard Mad Dog Morgan would have been proud of.
‘Well, bugger me,’ said Frank, lifting the flap in the counter to come through and grab Joey in a bear hug. ‘Your mum told us you were headed back this way. Jill?’ He craned his head back and yelled into the bakehouse. ‘Jill? Leave that oven alone and come see who’s here.’
A plump woman appeared, her short curly hair the same colour as the cement dust all over Pete’s work shirt. She’d been one of his mother’s friends since the day dot. She’d probably changed his nappies.
‘Joey, pet,’ she said. She held her hands out as she walked forward and he found himself having his cheeks squeezed. ‘How are you settling in?’
‘Fine,’ he said. ‘Keeping busy.’
‘Life on the farm suiting you? It must be a big change from Sydney.’
‘A good change, Jill. My dog’s loving it.’
‘You’ve got yourself a dog,’ she said in an indulgent tone, as though he’d admitted to owning six fluffy bunnies. Had she always been this kooky?
‘Er, yeah. His name’s Gus.’
‘A home’s not a home without a pet,’ she said. ‘Among other things. Did your mother tell you my niece has just moved to Clarence with the New South Wales Police? She’s renting our granny flat for a few months, seeing as how she’s single. And thirty-three. And pretty as a picture.’
‘She didn’t mention that, no,’ said Joey. He’d fancied a pie and a loaf of fresh-baked Clarence Bakery bread to take home, but he’d have been better off grabbing a sausage roll from the servo on the highway. This lunch-buying business had sure gotten complicated.
Pete gave a snicker behind him, which Joey ignored. ‘Thought I might grab a steak and onion,’ he said.
‘Coming right up,’ said Frank. ‘You want sauce?’
‘No thanks, mate.’
By the time Jill had clucked over him a little more, and the pie was bagged, Pete had finished his meal and headed out onto Lillypilly Street beside him. They stopped by the kerb, and Joey picked up the helmet that he’d left propped on the leather seat of his moped.
‘Tell me that’s not your ride,’ said Pete.
‘What? You have a thing against mopeds?’
‘It’saqua.’
‘It’s fuel efficient. Come up to the farm sometime and we’ll grab that beer. I’ve a farmstay project I’m working on; maybe you could give me a little advice.’
