Chapters (50)
- Cover
- About the Book
- Dedication
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Twenty
- Twenty-one
- Twenty-two
- Twenty-three
- Twenty-four
- Twenty-five
- Twenty-six
- Twenty-seven
- Twenty-eight
- Twenty-nine
- Thirty
- Thirty-one
- Thirty-two
- Thirty-three
- Thirty-four
- Thirty-five
- Thirty-six
- Thirty-seven
- Thirty-eight
- Thirty-nine
- Acknowledgements
- About the Author
- Also by Sandie Docker
- Book Club Questions
- Welcome to the Kookaburra Creek Café
- Prologue
- One
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How was it you came to be walking on the beach that night? she wanted to ask. Did you realise what Ivy was doing there? Of course you would have. It would have been plain as day. No silly questions. Charlie wouldn’t answer silly questions. It would be the end of the conversation if it ever got started.
She laid out her tiles and scored eleven points with ‘join’. She didn’t see that she could have made ‘enjoys’ for sixteen.
The bigger question, of course, was how to start the conversation with Charlie in the first place. If she came straight out with it, she’d have to explain not only the fact she knew such intimate details of his first meeting with Ivy, but also how she did. She wasn’t sure how he’d react to that.
But, if she led with a vague, general ‘how’d you come to be living in the boatshed?’ she’d be met with an equally vague and general response.
She stared at the letters on the yellowed tiles sitting before her, which now appeared as random black scratches. They made no sense at all.
Charlie had taken no pleasure in their game. Nicole was clearly somewhere else today. He’d kept an eye on the tiles she’d put out, as he always did, and she was clearly not on form. The ‘y’ she so casually discarded early on could have been held onto for much better use with a later move. Same with the ‘k’ three turns after that. It didn’t even seem that she was looking at the letters she was using, let alone the words he’d placed on the board and how she could use them to her advantage.
What had her so distracted now? And why did it have to make his Sunday morning so sour? It was the only part of the week he looked forward to.
He took no pleasure in winning today. Not like that.
He watched her walk up the path as she left, and once again questioned all his choices that led her here. It was too late now, though. The wheels were in motion for the custodian of what remained of his wasted and wretched life and of Ivy’s legacy.
As Nicole headed home she recalled the letter, the words etched in her mind.
14th May, 1968
My Dearest Tom,