Tim shrugged. ‘Hey, it’s your call. It’s just that I thought we’d agreed on you wearing the red dress to the awards dinner this Friday night.’
Isla knew the red dress didn’t leave much room for movement. She also knew that the last time his advertising firm had been up for an award he’d had Tori on his arm. Tall, skinny, beautiful Tori, who’d turned heads. He’d dropped his ex into the conversation when he’d asked her what she was going to wear, adding that he thought her red dress was a show stopper. The awards mattered to him. She would be the trophy on his arm, not the fat cow that showed him up. Tori had always made an effort when things mattered to Tim and so should she, she decided, putting the banana back in the bowl. She wasn’t hungry anymore anyway. She had that horrible sick, bloated feeling again that always assailed her after conversations like this. Now, he looked like the cat that got the cream as he turned away.
The sun was streaming in through the window as she watched him disappear down the street, gym bag slung casually over his shoulder, oblivious to the fact that tears were running down her cheeks.
Now, she shook her head. Toad was the past and this was her present. She focussed on her dad swaggering to his Ute and grinned involuntarily. The cowboy ensemble was money well spent. Her hand hovered over the lock. What was the point? She knew she wouldn’t be the one to change the habit of a lifetime. Gran was as stubborn as a toddler who refused to stop sucking her thumb. Isla’s mum had often told Isla in exasperation that this was a trait that had skipped a generation bouncing directly from grandmother to granddaughter. ‘You two are peas in a pod,’ she’d say, shaking her head. ‘I might as well bang my head against a wall when it comes to trying to make the pair of you see sense.’ Isla and Bridget would grin at each, co-conspirators.
She stood in the hallway with its dust motes and red Axminster carpet that did nothing to lighten the hall. Gran was fond of saying it had cost a fortune but would see her out. Isla let the familiar surrounds wash over her. It was like stepping inside a time capsule and she knew, were she to push open the door to the living room, she’d find it just as it had been the day she’d told her Gran that she was leaving New Zealand.
It would be the same with her gran’s bedroom, she thought, unable to resist a peek. She pushed the door to her left open and blinked at the sudden light. Her eyes settled on the colourful quilt spread neatly over the bed. Her gran’s mother had stitched it for her and Grandad as a wedding present. For the sake of her gran’s seventy-something back, she hoped the mattress wasn’t the same one that had serviced their forty-odd years of marriage. Isla frowned, something was missing. The black and white photo of her grandparents on their wedding day was no longer hanging on the wall above the bed. In its place was a watercolour of what looked like Arthur’s Pass. Perhaps it had been too painful a reminder to have it there after Grandad passed, Isla mused.
On the wall to the right of the old dresser drawers were the silver framed baby portraits of her mum and Uncle Jack. As a child, Isla had found it so hard to equate the bonny baby in her frilly dress with her ever unpractical and bossy mum. She supposed that was normal; it was hard to imagine one’s parents having ever been small and vulnerable.
Isla’s nose twitched as she tiptoed out of the room. Freshly baked scones! Gran could be a bite at times, and she wasn’t one for public displays of affection. Her way of showing she loved you was not with grand gestures or declarations, but with her home-baking. As a child, Isla had loved those afternoons spent perched at the old Formica-topped table, with a plate of hot buttery scones between them. It was Gran who had taught her to bake too. Those times had been their special times. She’d been able to talk to her about everything until the day she decided to leave Bibury.
Isla followed her nose to the kitchen, feeling like that child who’d popped in on her way home from school all over again. She called over the top of the radio talkback discussion being broadcast on the old transistor radio on the kitchen windowsill, ‘Gran, it’s me. And I haven’t come empty-handed. I bring you the last of the carrots from Dad’s garden.’
The old woman’s back was to her as she busied herself up at the bench buttering the scones. Isla could see steam rising and blobs of golden butter melting into them, and her stomach involuntarily rumbled, despite not long having had lunch.
‘We don’t have any of that plastic rubbish they call spread in this house,’ Bridget was fond of saying. Now, she stopped what she was doing and, turning around, wiped her hands on her apron. The Union Jack was emblazoned on the front of it, a Christmas present from Isla’s first year in London. It looked at odds with her blouse and slacks.
Looking at the lovely, lived-in face, Isla couldn’t stop the smarting of tears or herself from dropping the bag of carrots and rushing forward. She nearly knocked Bridget down as she threw her arms around her. ‘Oh, Gran! I’ve missed you so much.’ The surprisingly fit figure yielded to the hug and patted her on the back.
‘Me, or my baking?’ She disentangled herself from the embrace. ‘Enough of that carry on now, go and sit down before these get cold.’ She turned away but not before Isla saw that she too was blinking back tears. Isla picked the plate up off the bench, and carried it over to the table that had been laid for afternoon tea. It would fetch a pretty penny these days that table, she thought as she rubbed her hand over its lemon-yellow top. Formica was classed as retro, and therefore it was cool.
Bridget pushed the plate towards her and not needing to be offered twice, Isla reached forward and took a scone. The butter dripped down her chin as she took a bite and Bridget got up to fetch the roll of paper towel. ‘Still a messy Miss I see.’ She ripped a piece of the towel off and handed it to her granddaughter, pleased to see her baking being enjoyed.
‘Gran you make the best scones in the world.’
Bridget sat up a little straighter and helped herself to one before adding, ‘Isla don’t talk with your mouth full. It’s the secret ingredient that makes them so light. Margaret’s always on at me to tell her what it is.’
It was over the second cup of tea that Bridget cut to the chase, ‘Right, enough of the pussy-footing around. What is it that has brought you home?’
Isla’s hand froze with the half-eaten scone midway to her mouth. She’d never been able to pull the wool over Gran’s eyes. ‘I’m home because I’ve missed getting the third degree from you.’
‘Humph, well your mother said that after you had broken up with that Tim you went off to America and had some sort of epiphany that you wanted to come home. I told her she needed to stop reading those self-help books she’s addicted to and talk sense.’
Gosh, she had a way with words, Isla thought, her mouth twitching. ‘To be fair Gran, Mum was right in a way. My time in California helped me realize that I had no work-life balance in London. I’d gone as far as I could go in my career over there, I’m single again and what’s that saying?’ She frowned casting around for it. ‘Oh, you know – you can take a girl out of the country, but you can’t take the country out of a girl.’ Isla wiped the crumbs from her mouth; she was quite pleased with that analogy. ‘So, ta-dah! Here I am.’
‘Who do you think you are? Dolly Parton,’ Bridget said with a snort helping herself to another scone. ‘They’re lonely places, big cities.’
How her gran would know, given she’d never been out of New Zealand, Isla couldn’t fathom, but she did know better than to argue.
‘So my girl, what’re you going