Free The Home Girls by Olga Masters

lot of long letters, the replies brought home by her husband because all their mail went to the Forestry office in the absence of a mailman.
    She rebuilt the garden keeping one of the tanks for garden water and buying potted cuttings from the street stalls that seemed to be held every other Friday by one or another of the numerous local charities.
    â€œYou should join in with us,” said one of the stallholders once glancing at her middle flat under her camel coloured skirt.
    â€œWhen she settles down,” said the other stallholder whose eyes were kind in her ruddy farmer’s face.
    It was Jim who learned that his former fiancée had come to live in or rather near the little town.
    â€œYou wouldn’t guess who I saw today,” he said coming into the kitchen one evening where the smell of quinces lingered. She had lined up her jars of pale pink jelly on a bench top so full of pleasure in her handiwork she could not bear to put them away in a cupboard just yet.
    She waited for him to tell her.
    â€œAnnie,” he said.
    â€œReally?” she said.
    He went into the bedroom to hang up his coat and she waited for him to come back.
    â€œPassing through?” she said as he went by into the scullery off the kitchen which they used to wash their hands because the old-fashioned bathroom was off the back verandah.
    She liked it though after the city home she was reared in with a white tiled sterile bathroom and toilet near the bedrooms.
    â€œNo,” he said taking his place at the table. “She’s living here.”
    â€œMarried?” she said.
    â€œThey bought the farm Craggy Hills had for sale,” he said by way of saying she was, and slipping easily into local jargon in a way she had not yet acquired.
    He ate some of his dinner before he told her more.
    â€œIt was funny,” he said. “But I was driving past the farm a week ago and I started to think about her. I’d just glimpsed these two going up the drive from the front gate. They had their backs to me and I started to think about her. I must have recognized her unconsciously.”
    â€œYes, you must have,” she said dryly.
    If the subject had been a different one he might have laughed his there-I-go-again laugh but this time he picked up a piece of bread she had taken to making lately. His face had reddened.
    â€œHow was your day?” he said after a while.
    â€œOK. A Mrs Henning or Hanning rang and asked for something for a church street stall. How do they know I’m C of E?”
    â€œThey know everything,” he said.
    She took one of her jars of quince jelly—after a couple of days she could bear to part with it—and a crochet cushion cover and was delivering them to the stall and receiving effusive thanks when she saw a woman she knew to be Annie coming out of the bakery.
    She was smallish, slim and quick and she got into a truck and drove off.
    A week later Louisa was shopping late on a Friday—the little town kept a custom from early days of its settlement and stayed open till eight o’clock on Friday evening—and went to Jim’s office to go home with him.
    Annie and a man, her husband obviously, were standing under the roof that extended over the footpath outside the office. Jim had his back to them locking the door. Louisa was on the other side and they unconsciously made a foursome.
    Jim came down the two steps.
    â€œHullo, Annie,” he said.
    She raised a small face framed with fair hair under a woollen cap. The evening was grey with a mist of rain.
    â€œPeter my husband,” Annie said. “Jim Taylor.”
    My God, he’s not going to introduce me, Louisa thought.
    It was Peter who smiled at her. “Mrs Taylor,” he said “Annie, my wife.”
    â€œLouisa,” Jim murmured almost as an afterthought.
    There was a silence only as long as an intake of breath.
    â€œWe could go for a drink,” Peter said inclining his head towards