‘Well, should we get the bill?’ I say, before Anna has to.
It’s almost eleven but I don’t want to go home. Anna hugs me briefly but fiercely before she slips into her bright red Fiat and drives off. I exit the car park and head towards Main Street. The sleeping shops give nothing away while streetlamps cast sloppy puddles on the paths. Brush-tailed possums shriek from the rooftops. I pause the car in the middle of a U-turn and look up the stretch of empty road, watching stray leaves skitter low to the ground, the possums still carrying on. But there’s nowhere else to go, so I put my foot down and head for home, catching a glimpse of the old shot tower peeking out from above the trees as I drive past the lake.
Chapter Twenty-six
Friday, 18 December, 7.37 am
Reggie Hope swipes at her brow with a tea towel as she pours the frothed milk carefully into a glass, making sure to flick her wrist up right at the end to create a perfect leaf shape. That is one fine coffee, she thinks as she weaves around the tables to present it to the shy man sitting in the window seat.
The café is bustling and noisy this morning despite the heat. Luckily, coffee is popular all year round. ‘Caffeine is one of the most socially acceptable addictions of our time,’ her son is fond of telling her. Jackson is always saying interesting things like that now that he is at university in the city. Reggie rinses out the silver jug and pours in some fresh milk as she pictures his face. He has grown into such a man now with his neat beard and fancy shirts. He was even wearing a pink one the last time she saw him! Wendy, one of the casuals, assured her this was all the rage these days. Reggie can hardly link this tall dark stranger to the little boy in the Batman pyjamas who used to cry out for her in the night. She shakes her head. Time is indeed a strange thing.
The bell above the door jingles. Every time someone steps into the café, a blast of oven-like heat hits her face. Reggie doesn’t mind the heat usually but this current onslaught is starting to become a little tedious. Molly isn’t sleeping well and has been in a mood for weeks. The days feel long and by around midday Reggie’s head feels heavy, as if she’s one of those kitsch toy dogs people put on their car dashboards with the bobbing necks. Hopefully the weather will settle down by Christmas. Reggie’s entire family is coming from Malaysia to stay for almost two weeks and she can already imagine the arguments without the heat-induced claustrophobia. Sunny pleasant days with her family are barely manageable. Forty-degree days with her nosy sister, her sister’s kids and their elderly mother might just tip her over the edge.
The door opens again and the heat pours in. It’s that girl detective: Woodstock. She’s in the news sometimes. Reggie knew she would be coming when she saw the man that Woodstock always meets tucked away in the far corner. Reggie watches as she quickly scans the room and then makes her way over to the table where the man is. She is very boyish. No hips to speak of and sort of bouncy, like she’s about to break into a run. She sits down opposite the man and he smiles up at her broadly. They have been coming here for almost a year now, heads bent close as they talk and laugh in the early hours before the eyes of the town are on them. Woodstock orders skinny lattes when he’s here but if she gets here first she has them with regular milk and adds some sugar.
Reggie laughs to herself under her breath: people are odd creatures. You see all sorts of things working in a place like this. She pushes the long black and the cappuccino onto the serving shelf and dings the little bell again. She refills the front display and wipes down the bench. She needs to get more muffins into the oven. And Matt is still not here. He’s a sweet kid but a little hopeless. The young ones these days just don’t quite have the work ethic she had at their age.
She glances over at the couple again. The man is looking at the woman detective and nodding as she talks. He grabs her wrist briefly and she looks around and then pulls it away. He is an attractive man, Reggie thinks. Tall and strong with that nice dark hair and those striking green eyes. Even from here she can see his wedding ring, but she is not the type to judge. Who knows what goes on in other people’s lives? Plus, they are good customers. In this climate it would be foolish to turn up your nose at any kind of business. Since the Carling plant opened, cafés have popped up everywhere, putting a dent in her weekday profit. And half the Carling people fly home to Sydney or Melbourne for the weekend anyway, spending their money anywhere but Smithson. She remembers Wayne Carson at the bank telling her that the plant would see them all rich and retiring early, but Reggie feels like it’s made everything more confusing. Life was simple when it was just her place and Café Cha Cha around the corner. Just good old friendly competition back then. Now it’s a haze of loyalty cards and two-for-one deals and imported coffee beans. Reggie sighs. Retiring early, my arse.
The detective girl looks very serious this morning, even more than usual. She toys with a thin silver chain around her neck as she speaks. Maybe they are talking about the murdered teacher, Rosalind Ryan. Wendy told her recently that the man is a detective too, and he and the girl work together. Like on the TV cop shows. No wonder they are in love: those partners always get close when they are working cases. Reggie has been watching the stories on the news about the Ryan woman. She came into the café once or twice. A real dreamer. She was with a young boy the last time Reggie saw her—perhaps a little brother? He looked about Jackson’s age. They talked in low voices and took turns writing things down in a notebook. They smiled a lot. Maybe he was her boyfriend, Reggie thinks. He seemed pretty smitten. Poor fella. She had very pretty eyes, the Ryan woman. Like toffee.
Reggie shuts her eyes briefly, trying to imagine how terrified the Ryan woman must have felt out there in the middle of the night. Alone and dying.
Reggie’s daughter Molly was set to attend Smithson High, but St Mary’s is closer and, in the end, it was where all the kids from the primary school had decided to go. Reggie is glad that she doesn’t have to deal with Molly having a dead teacher right now. Her moods are hard enough to navigate as it is.
Reggie taps out the used coffee from the portafilter and washes it with a blast of hot water before snapping it back into place. She thinks briefly about Molly dying like the Ryan woman did and then forces the terrible thought right out of her head. Probably the poor woman was caught up in something sinister to be killed like that. Maybe she had a bad ex-boyfriend or there were issues with drugs. Nothing that Molly would ever be involved in. Reggie flicks on the bean grinder and mops at her brow again, pinging the bell so that Matt, who has finally arrived, knows to come and collect the fresh batch of coffees.
Chapter Twenty-seven