The Briny Café by Susan Duncan

hesitate. “Sounds perfect. What are you cooking?” The moment she asks what is a ritual offshore question meant to indicate interest and appreciation, Ettie worries she’s come across as impolite or, worse, critical. Kicking herself for being tactless, she rushes outside to shoo away a flock of white cockatoos that regularly swoops onto her deck, screaming abuse, tearing at the timber window frames andsidestepping along the rail like linedancers. The noise is so horrendous she almost misses Kate’s reply.
    â€œI hadn’t thought that far ahead. Maybe a chop. A sausage as well.”
    Ettie’s lusty foodie heart shrivels. She is certain she won’t find echoes of garlic, lemon and rosemary on the chop and that the sausage will be a basic butcher’s special pork banger presented with a bottle of tomato sauce on the side. Fair enough fodder if you’re in a rush, but not the stuff of traditional Cook’s Basin entertaining where home cooks do their utmost to dish up top nosh because no one wants to risk losing a car space by going to a restaurant. The genuinely hopeless cooks – and Ettie wonders if Kate might turn out to be one of them – get lumbered with the dishes.
    â€œHow will you cook the sausages?” Ettie says, once again without thinking before she opens her mouth. Since turning fifty, it’s become a habit that she can’t seem to break.
    â€œGrilled, maybe, like the chop,” Kate says, uncertainly.
    â€œAnd then sliced into inch-long pieces and folded through a slow-cooked pot of spicy homemade baked beans with plenty of capsicum, carrots and onions?”
    â€œEr …”
    â€œI’m joking, love. But seriously, living offshore, you might want to learn a few basic recipes that work for two or fifty-two.”
    â€œI can assure you, Ettie, I will never invite fifty-two people to dinner.”
    â€œAh but that was before you fell down the rabbit hole and your world turned upside down. Who knows what’s ahead?” And then, because she can’t help herself, Ettie plunges inagain. “How about I work out a list of ingredients and come over late in the afternoon to give you your first cooking lesson? Got plenty of wood set aside? We could have a go at Granny’s scones if you can get the oven hot enough to fire a brick kiln. I’m thinking … a lamb curry?”
    With a massive effort of self-control, she closes her mouth and cuts off the nervous babble.
    â€œCurry. My favourite. You’re sure?” Kate says after a long pause.
    â€œGot a pencil? I’ll tell you what we need.”
    Two minutes later, with the phone back on its cradle, Ettie pulls on her rubber gloves to finish the windows, already planning a medium-hot lamb curry served amongst a gaudy array of tempting side dishes. It takes her mind off the grind.
    She is certainly curious to see what Kate’s done with the house. Curious to know how a city girl, living alone, is coping with the bloodcurdling night-sounds of the bush. Powerful owls on the hunt. Sneezing bandicoots, so human-like it’s impossible not to imagine a stalker lurking in the darkness. The rhythmic thump of wallabies bashing through the bush. The isolation, too. So intense that it vibrates in the over-wrought pre-dawn hours when every tiny rustle feels full of deadly threat.
    The dark side of Oyster Bay, where Kate lives without a soul in shouting distance, is no place for the faint-hearted.
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    Outside The Briny Café, which he feels has an even stronger than usual lean to the east, Sam Scully finds himself with time on his hands. He sweeps up leaves droppedby a straggly paper bark and a stringy casuarina, both of them struggling to survive against the constant battering of sand, salt and the icy westerlies that hung around until the end of September this year. A stray tan mutt, with a bowling ball torso, a flattened snout and an authoritative rear end, glares at the