Free The Party Line by Sue Orr

wouldn’t be going. Any other woman would intuit the hesitation as reluctance, and quickly backtrack on the asking of a favour. Audrey said nothing.
    Joy listened to breathing down the line. Her own breathing fell into time with her neighbour’s. Behind her, on the hallway wall, the clocked ticked. Audrey would wait forever.
    ‘I’ll pick you up at quarter to,’ she said finally.
    ‘See you then,’ Audrey replied.
    Audrey was waiting on the side of the road, by the letterbox. A bright yellow dress marked her clearly from a distance. It belted at the waist and flared from the hips. She was clutching a book and at her feet was a large hamper basket. For a terrible moment, Joy thought it was Audrey’s washing basket, but it was smaller than that. Audrey pulled open the car door and slid into the passenger seat, putting the basket at her feet and clutching the book to her chest.
    The car sped along the road. Audrey hadn’t shut her door properly and it rattled. Joy imagined Audrey leaning, leaning, falling out the swinging door of the speeding car, bouncing like a discarded apple core to the side of the road and landing, eventually, upright in the long grass. Her book still in her hands, her expression unchanged.
    ‘What sort of a morning have you had, Audrey?’
    ‘Not too bad. Got the washing done.’
    ‘That’s good. With the weather the way it is. What’s in the basket?’
    ‘A cake … I’ve brought a cake for afternoon tea.’ Audrey’s chin was high, she blinked evenly and stared at the road.
    She was a tiny woman, not much bigger than Nickie. Like Nickie, she wore the battle marks of a tomboy; bruises and scars marking her arms and legs. Joy glanced down at her own limbs, heavy and bloated. Childhood scars had long disappeared.
    Joy knew very little about Audrey — where she’d grown up, who she was, and the time had long passed for asking. Jack Gilbert had turned up with her on his arm at a district dance about a year afterNeville had died. Joy remembered that night; she was dating Eugene by then. Unlike her friends, she’d refused to make Audrey welcome; she simply ignored her. Eugene, sensing her agitation, had stayed by her side for the barest time before joining the men at the bar.
    Joy’s friends had reported back. They’d said, taking sidelong glances at the newcomer, that although Audrey might be easy on the eye, she wasn’t quite the full quid and that explained a lot, didn’t it? It explained everything.
    Nickie, too, sometimes said that Audrey was beautiful, like her namesake Audrey Hepburn. Like a pixie. Joy had always scoffed at that, but now she saw the fine angle of the woman’s jaw, the deep clavicle, her cheekbones defining her triangular face. Unlike any other woman in Fenward, Audrey always wore layers of make-up; powder and rouge on her face, bright eyeshadow, deep red lipstick. It was applied heavily, reminding Joy of a child made up for a pantomime. The childless Audrey could be the mother of the embossed, glittering Gabrielle Baxter.
    ‘What’s that book, Audrey?’
    ‘Recipes. It’s Jack’s. Well, not Jack’s exactly, it was his grandmother’s.’ Audrey placed the book in her lap and stroked the hard cover. It was brown and stained. The spine was fraying, pages were slipping out of place, protruding from the edges. ‘She left it to Jack.’
    ‘It looks like a precious thing,’ said Joy.
    Audrey shrugged. ‘I don’t use it much. But there’re one or two good recipes.’
    Audrey smoothed out imaginary creases on the cover. Joy didn’t like to say that it was too late to be submitting new recipes for the fundraiser, if that’s what Audrey was thinking.
    It occurred to Joy — for the first time — that Audrey might not know about Neville’s death. Who knew what Jack Gilbert had shared with her? It wasn’t as if Jack had shown remorse for the part he’d played in the accident … perhaps, by the time the strange and waiflike Audrey had crossed his path,