Each Way Bet (11 page)

‘Not likely,’ Adam laughed, shaking his head.

Megan glanced over at her aunt and rolled her eyes expressively. Then they both watched as Cruella, now better known as Sybil, settled herself at the island bench beside Adam and proceeded to engage him in conversation. Emily smirked because she knew something that Sybil quite obviously didn’t and she wondered how long it would take the woman to find out. For now, though, it was obvious that she wasn’t moving anywhere.

‘Hey!’ called a gruff voice from the lounge-room. ‘Ever going to be any coffee offered round here?’

‘On the way,’ called Emily loudly, before muttering under her breath: ‘Just like I wish you’d be on yours, you nasty old bugger.’

‘Now, now,’ said Sybil, tearing herself away from Adam long enough to raise an eyebrow at Emily. ‘Isn’t that the terribly interesting old guy that you said I should get to know?’

‘And you shall,’ promised Emily. ‘In fact, I think you’re just what he needs.’

‘Flapjack!’ yelled Matt, bursting into the room with Kate close behind him. He was carrying a polished-pine game box that Emily recognised vaguely from the year before at Corinne’s. She had managed to avoid playing most of the games then, and figured she should have a similar degree of success this year now that she had been promoted to co-host. Matt held up the box to get everybody’s attention, and then placed it carefully down on the bench. It was a square contraption, lined inside with green felt, and had a row of numbers from one to ten against one end, each with an individual hinged flap hovering over it. In a corner sat a pair of dice.

‘I’m winning,’ Kate announced proudly, leaning against the bench. ‘Three to beat.’

‘So who’s first?’ Matt pushed the box over towards Megan without waiting for an answer. ‘C’mon, Megs, do your best.’

‘
Don’t
call me Megs.’ Megan tossed her plait back, picked up the dice and cupped them within her hands, shaking them several times before releasing them into the box, where they tumbled across the green felt and came to rest against the far side.

‘Four and six makes ten,’ announced Kate as her sister, after musing for a minute, lowered the flap over the number ten and picked up the dice to go again.

Emily watched carefully as the game continued, just in case she was called upon to take part. It appeared that the object was to cover, with the little flaps, any combination of the numbers at the end of the box, as long as they added up to the total of the two dice thrown at each turn. Thus, the lower the number left at the end, the better. Each of Megan’s throws was accompanied by much advice from the onlookers on which combination of flaps to lower, and a fair bit of jostling as
everybody strained to see what was going on. Finally, with only a three and a two visible, Megan threw a combined total of seven and was declared ‘out’. She pushed the box over to Matt in disgust and turned back to the platter of pikelets.

‘Still winning!’ declared Kate gleefully, a lot more animated than Emily had seen her so far. ‘Still three to beat!’

‘Can I have a go?’ Sybil, who had been watching the game intently, moved over towards Matt. ‘It looks like fun.’

‘Me first.’ Adam already had the box before him and was shaking the dice exuberantly. ‘Come on, lads, do your stuff! Come home to Poppa!’

Emily turned away as Adam threw a double six and then played with his chin thoughtfully as he decided which flaps to lower. She filled the kettle, placed it on the stove and started assembling a line of mugs.

‘Anyway, who won the first race?’ asked Megan, taking her platter over to the table. ‘Did my horse come anywhere?’

‘Nuh,’ said Kate, without taking her eyes off the ongoing flapjack game, ‘but I won.’

‘Sixes again!’ Adam looked at the dice with disbelief. ‘I’m out! With, let me see . . . twenty-one still left. That must be the worst one so far, surely.’

‘True,’ said Matt obligingly. ‘Who’s next?’

‘I’ll have a go.’ Sybil moved over, picked up the dice and then gave Adam a smile that had already lost the flirtatiousness she had shown earlier. ‘I was going to ask for your help, but I think I’ll do better without.’

‘I think you will too.’

‘Still three to beat!’ called Kate, in case anybody had forgotten.

‘Hey, where’s Dad?’ Matt took his eyes off the game long enough to look questioningly at Emily. ‘He’s going to miss his turn if he doesn’t step on it.’

‘I have no idea.’ Emily found a coffee plunger at the back of
a cupboard and pulled it out. ‘But I’m beginning to get pretty annoyed with him. I mean, how long does it take to put a couple of bets on and collect one little old lady?’

‘And where’s Mum?’

‘That I also don’t know. But if one of them doesn’t turn up soon, I’m going to declare the lot of you officially abandoned. Matt, you’ll have to make yourself their legal guardian and take over.’

‘Fat chance.’

Right on cue, the front door could be heard opening and then Jack’s voice greeted his parents in the lounge-room. The low, indistinguishable rumble of his father’s voice continued for a while and then, shortly after it wound down, Jack appeared in the doorway. He gave Adam a cursory wave and looked at Emily apologetically.

‘Christ – sorry, Em. You should have seen the queue at the TAB. Went right out the door and down the pavement. Every man and his bloody dog,
and
–’ Jack rolled his eyes and shook his head with exasperation – ‘the women! Christ almighty!’

‘Oh,’ said Emily sarcastically. ‘You mean there were
some
women who weren’t stuck at home with the kids?’

‘You sound like Jill.’

‘I do?’

‘Yep.’ Jack nodded at her and then turned to Adam. ‘Good to see you, mate! About time you turned up to one of these!’

‘How could I refuse your persuasive invitation?’

‘Huh! So – what are you drinking?’

‘Just a coffee for now, thanks.’ Adam gestured towards the kettle. ‘Brought some champagne but I’ll save it for later. Where’s Jill?’

‘Good question.’ Jack turned to Emily. ‘And speaking of my dear wife, she’s going to flip when she sees what Cricket’s wearing. Who dressed her?’

‘I think that’s flapjack!’ called Sybil as she lowered the last flap on the game. ‘You know, when you get all of the numbers down? Well, well, lucky me!’

‘What’d you throw?’ asked Matt with a rather distrustful glance at the game box.

‘And her hair looks electrocuted,’ Jack continued to Emily, who was blithely ignoring him. ‘It
never
usually looks like that.’

‘I had a three and a five left, and I threw a double four. That’s eight.’ Sybil smiled at him. ‘All perfectly legit. You can ask the little girl here, she was watching my every move.’

‘She did,’ said Kate shortly as she walked back towards the lounge-room, looking darkly through her fringe at Sybil with an expression that didn’t bode well for her chances of surviving the afternoon intact. ‘Hopefully, Dad’ll beat her.’

‘So, isn’t anybody going to introduce me?’ Sybil, ignoring Kate totally, edged herself forward and smiled invitingly at Jack. ‘Well, well, things
are
looking up again. My name’s Sybil. Sybil Simons.’

‘Hello,’ said Jack stupidly, involuntarily glancing down at Sybil’s legs and then dragging his eyes back to her face and flushing.

‘And your name is?’

‘Um . . . Jack.’

‘Jack –’ Sybil took one of Jack’s hands between both of hers and shook it slowly – ‘how lovely to make your acquaintance.’

Jack pulled himself together and tried to extricate his hand politely. ‘Oh, the pleasure’s all mine.’

‘Don’t bet on it.’

Emily caught Adam’s eye and grinned, then she turned to Megan, who was sitting at the dining-table, to see what she was making of this little performance. But, amazingly, she didn’t seem to have noticed anything at all. Instead, with her back towards her father, she was playing with her silver bracelets and
staring at the wall, quite obviously lost in thought. Now and again she would abandon the bracelets in favour of dipping her finger into a dollop of cream atop a pikelet and licking it absentmindedly.

‘Your turn for flapjack, Dad.’ Matt shook the dice and held them out to his father.

‘Hey, Jack.’ Adam leant forward and tapped his brother-in-law on the shoulder to get his attention. ‘Weren’t you supposed to be picking up my mother?’

‘I did!’ Jack looked around as if she was hiding somewhere and then ran his hand through his hair. ‘She was right behind me a minute ago. Matt, you have my turn for me while I find your grandmother.’

‘Sure.’ Matt closed his hand over the dice and, taking the flapjack box with him, headed back into the lounge-room, his father following close behind.

‘Nice,’ Sybil said approvingly as she watched Jack leave the room.

‘So you’re throwing me over already,’ sighed Adam with a grin.

‘I
never
bet on long shots, darling,’ replied Sybil, running one manicured fingernail lightly down Adam’s cheek. ‘Waste of time and energy. And I’m beginning to think that you, cute as you are, might be most definitely a long shot.’

‘True,’ agreed Adam, nodding, ‘and very astute of you. What gave me away?’

‘Nothing in particular, just my sixth sense.’ Sybil smiled at him regretfully before turning to Emily. ‘So, is Jack yours, darling?’

‘
What
?!’

Sybil pointed towards the doorway that Jack had just passed through and opened her mouth to repeat her query. But she didn’t get a chance as the new object of her desire chose that
moment to re-enter the room, this time gently ushering an elderly lady before him.

‘Good heavens, it’s a tea-cosy!’ Sybil stared at the apparition in front of Jack and then belatedly realised she was still pointing, as if accusingly, in that direction. She dropped her hand quickly.

Emily found herself in total agreement with Sybil – even if she was a trifle surprised that the woman had even known what a tea-cosy
was
, let alone been familiar enough with them to use one as an item of comparison. Regardless, her mother
did
look like a tea-cosy – a large, multicoloured, totally crocheted, mobile tea-cosy. Her head was dwarfed by an enormous lime-green tam-o’-shanter with an obscenely huge pom-pom that dangled on a string and kept bouncing off one eyebrow. Below that she wore a colourful, crocheted poncho as a top and – unbelievably, unless you knew her – another colourful, crocheted poncho as a skirt. The skirt poncho had a fringe of tiny, dangling pom-poms along its bottom edge and an
awful
lot of holes patterned across the diameter – so that less than tantalising glimpses of plump, elderly flesh could be seen all the way from the tops of her ugh boots to the bottom of her snow-white cottontails.

‘Emily! Adam!’ Mary Broadhurst spread her arms out towards her children, thus causing the uppermost poncho to spread itself out like bat wings. ‘How lovely!’

‘Mum.’ Emily came forward first and gave her mother an affectionate hug. Then she stepped back and suppressed a grin as her brother followed suit, trying his utmost to embrace his mother with minimal poncho contact. Adam took clothing
extremely
seriously, and had very fixed ideas about accessorising.

‘And Megan!’ Mary turned to her grand-daughter with delight. ‘I didn’t see you hiding away over there.’

With her cream-laden finger poised halfway to her mouth,
Megan looked up from her reverie at the sound of her name, and her face broke into an unaffected smile when she spotted her grandmother – and her outfit. Mary hobbled over to the table and, as she did so, displayed the matching crocheted handle-cover she had fitted to her walking stick. Emily snorted rudely while trying to stifle her laughter, but by now she was fairly used to her mother and her fondness for crochet because that, at least, had always been there. In fact, Emily’s earliest memories involved playing with the wool as she watched her mother placidly crocheting on the couch, or the bed, or the kitchen chairs, or indeed anywhere Mary happened to be stationary for any length of time. In those days the designs had been fairly low-key and the colours reasonably muted – and Mary herself rarely wore the finished products. Instead she created an unending stream of cushion covers, bedspreads, throw-overs and beanies, and doilies, tablecloths, and the odd poncho for a child too young to object. But a gradual slide into senility, starting rather unobtrusively a decade ago, had somehow released a dormant inventiveness that would have put Ken Done to shame. So the vaguer she had become, the more outlandishly creative she had also become – and now her cushion covers were a riot of mints and pinks, splashed with puddles of blood-red, and her doilies were intricate stitches of emeralds and opals and aquamarines. Her beanies glowed in the dark, and her bedspreads actually hurt the eyes. And even children too young to object whimpered when Mary Broadhurst approached bearing the gift of a multicoloured poncho.

And the Twilight Haven Nursing Home had been transformed from a fairly sterile, though comfortable, home for the aged into a veritable riot of clashing colour – in couch-throws and curtains, table runners and tray liners, wall-hangings and wind-chimes. Residents parked momentarily in the sunshine
were draped with crochet within minutes and those somewhat removed from reality, and therefore unable to protest, were used as living mannequins for brilliantly stitched, flamboyant creations. Even the wheelchairs were softened with pads of vibrant colour, the in-trays lined with crochet, and the nurses wandered around with their name-tags edged with colourful stitches and delicate, dangling pom-poms.

‘What’s that smell?’ Jack wrinkled his nose and looked across at the stove. ‘Emily! You’ve turned the gas on but you didn’t light it! Quick – turn it off!’

‘Damn!’ Emily turned the knob off and grabbed the gas-lighter from a hook by the stove. ‘I
hate
gas stoves! Why don’t you guys get electric? They’re much easier.’

‘
Don’t
light that, you fool!’ Jack reached across and grabbed the end of the gas-lighter firmly. ‘You’ll blow up the whole kitchen. You’ll have to wait till the gas dissipates now. Turn on the fan.’

‘Okay, okay.’ Emily tried to tug the lighter back. ‘Calm down.’