The Briny Café by Susan Duncan Page B

you’re better off keeping your distance. You want a burger? A sandwich? I’m feeling particularly generous today.”
    â€œNo. Just the coffee. I’m on the way home. I’ve had a full week of scrubbing very dirty houses. I want to sit and watch the clean blue ocean from my deck and maybe rack up a few z’s.”
    â€œBook publishing in a bit of a downturn?”
    â€œCould call it that. If it ever had an upturn.”
    â€œYou’re the best there is, Ettie. Remember that. When you draw a seagull, it’s a seagull. Plain as day. Even to a kid who’snever seen one. You’re an unsung genius, love.”
    Ettie smiles ruefully. “Yeah. That’s the problem. Unsung.”
    Â 
    Inside the café, Big Julie takes Sam’s order. Infamous for low-cut blouses known to occasionally wreck a bloke’s concentration, she leans forward on the counter provocatively and gives him a wink. “Nice work with the broom,” she says. “Couple more years and you’ll be an expert.”
    â€œI’m surrounded by critics. Where’s Bertie?” Sam gives the café a quick squiz as though he might find the old bloke lurking in a dark corner. But there’s only Fast Freddy skimming the headlines before he decides whether it’s worth forking out for the newspaper.
    â€œThat lung of his is still playing games.”
    â€œBad?” Sam asks.
    â€œWell, bad enough for him to see a doctor for the first time in a hundred years.”
    Freddy looks up. “Aw, bugger. That’s not good.”
    â€œMakes you wonder if he’s at death’s door,” Sam quips.
    Big Julie’s face turns white. She hands Fast Freddy his coffee, thick and sweet the way he likes it. Freddy raises a thumb and leans across the counter to wipe a tear off her cheek.
    â€œSteam,” she says, dragging her wrist over her face. “From the stupid bloody espresso machine that’s never really worked properly in its lousy bloody life.”
    Fast Freddy pats Big Julie’s shoulder, his head bowed. Sam stares down at his scruffy boots.

CHAPTER SIX
    The next day, on an unseasonally cool Friday afternoon, Ettie packs her waterproof bags and sets off, leaving enough time to call in on Frankie at the Oyster Bay boatshed, a grizzly bear of a man, who has more luck with engines than women. She wants him to fix her navigation lights, and if he has time check out what’s making her engine sound worse than a sick kookaburra. She scans the shoreline for any sign of the creep next door. All clear. She almost skips the last few yards.
    She dumps her bags on the end of the ferry wharf and, feeling as lithe as a gazelle, makes her way across a row of rocking tinnies to reach her own. The engine starts on the first pull. She swoops in to scoop up her supplies without slowing in case the boat stalls. She feels like singing, like anything is possible if lady luck looks her way. The old black dog that visits if she lets down her guard for too long is back in his kennel. For the time being at least.
    Â 
    Ettie is puzzled by Kate’s renovations. She’d expected to see walls knocked out, a state-of-the-art kitchen and one of those fabulous no-glass bathrooms with sloping floors so the waterslides off into the drain without leaving stains. The kind that turn up in the glossy pages of home design magazines and make her spirit soar when she steps in to clean them. But while the house is undeniably transformed, it is essentially unchanged. It is still a dimly lit, turn-of-the-century cottage that’s been shoved slightly off-kilter by the passage of time and the pummelling of storms straight off the Antarctic.
    She wonders if Kate’s insistence on keeping the past intact shows a lack of confidence, a lack of imagination or a lack of funds. Or maybe she just wants to preserve a slice of Cook’s Basin history.
    She murmurs quiet approval after a tour and pats the