Free Gone Fishing by Susan Duncan

you’ve noticed.’
    â€˜You’re up to something, Sam Scully. Duplicity is hanging off you like a bad smell.’ Ettie leans forward on the counter, ignoring his order.
    â€˜Kate around?’ he asks, avoiding the subject.
    â€˜Upstairs with Marcus. They’re setting a few rat traps,’ she says. She goes pink, looks around for a chair. Heat builds from her toes like a tidal surge. She has the weird sensation the ceiling is about to crash down on her head. Her heart thumps loudly in her ears. She could be drowning.
    â€˜Rats?’ Sam’s voice is an underwater echo. His worried face swims in front of her. ‘Settle, Ettie. It’s no big deal. Couple of traps and you’re as sweet as a nut.’
    â€˜Want me to tell Kate you’re here?’ she says, feeling steadier by the second, wiping a sudden eruption of perspiration from her brow, her upper lip. The impulse to rip off her clothes is abating.
    Sam visibly swallows. He makes a point of looking at his watch. Feigns surprise. ‘It’s getting late. Make it a take-away. I’ve got a job on. What’s the damage?’
    â€˜Fixing two chairs on the deck,’ Ettie says, realising Kate still hasn’t called Sam and he hasn’t called her.
    â€˜Done!’
    Sam grabs his tucker and skedaddles like a man who’s mislaid his backbone. He makes it into the Square where the luscious scent of pastry and tender beef wins out. He rips open the package and takes a bite, leaning forward to spare his going-to-town clothes a gravy hammering. Sauce. Not gravy. Gravy, Ettie tells him, is old-fashioned even though it’s basically one and the same. He checks out the blackboard. Sees the Cook’s Basin Community Residents’ Association has called an extraordinary general meeting at the community hall to discuss the plans to develop Garrawi Park. Volunteers needed: tea and scone duty . Sam toys briefly with the idea of offering to make his world-famous sausage rolls and then comes to his senses. It will be a full house. Two hundred irate locals equal four hundred sausage rolls. His knees go weak and he feels a light sweat break out on his forehead as though he’s had a narrow escape. He scoffs the last of his pie, wipes his chin with his forearm and heads for the communal tap, where he rinses and refills a dog water bowl wired tightly to the pipe so neither a king tide nor a thieving bastard can whip it away. Washes his hands. He catches sight of the two Misses Skettle, octogenarian twins resplendent in starched pink cotton shirts and skirts, deep in conversation with the Three Js – Jenny, Jane and Judy. All of them born and bred Cook’s Basin women. Tough as nails. Soft as mush. Depends on the day and the circumstances. They look cool in loose cotton dresses and sandals, despite the heat and the meagre shade from the casuarina. He joins them in the far corner of the Square, where they’re seated around one of several scabby picnic tables carved with the initials of four generations.
    â€˜Ladies,’ he says, mock bowing. ‘Sorting scone duty, are you? What do you reckon about cheese scones for a change? My mum used to make the lightest cheese scones in the world in her kero stove. Fairdinkum magic, they were, with enough hoist to see you through to dinner time.’ He breaks off. The five women are giving him hard looks. Too late he remembers the unwritten Cook’s Basin rule: Never question a volunteer. You risk scaring them off. And landing the job.
    Jenny slides closer to Sam, a sweet smile on her face that instantly makes the hairs on the back of his neck shoot up. He waits for the crunch moment. ‘You need a job too, Sam. How about whipping the cream?’ She cracks that killer smile again. Sam scrabbles to suss the catch that he knows is hurtling towards him like a locomotive. She adds: ‘The cream has to be good and stiff or it makes the scones go soggy.