Free The Break by Deb Fitzpatrick Page B

young tree. He yanked the stake out of the ground. ‘I’ll see you this evening,’ she called out, watching him stride over to the truck, rummage in the tray and locate a mallet.
    â€˜Yep,’ he said, not looking up.
    The dull sound of Ferg thumping the stake into the earth echoed around her as she walked back to the house.

10
    When the boys were small, Pip carried them over to the orange tree in baskets, and left them under there in the shade like babes in a bible story while she pottered among her fruit trees. Pip could remember, vividly, talking to Fergus and Michael from over in the apples, as she snipped and yanked at the perfect shapes; how she’d hear the boys’ little gargles and squeals, and go over and pick them up, both at once, one in each arm. Fergus was bigger than his brother, but there wasn’t much between them, just a little more than twelve months. Her two boys and her orchard — how they’d helped her to survive those early years, those long cold winters, those twelve-hour days of Jack’s.
    Strolling past the dormant lavender, Pip wondered when she’d let the gardening slip away. She cast her mind over the number of decades she’d lived, the way her joints tweaked when she moved around too fast, and how Fergus and Liza stopped her and said,
Sit down and relax, Mum
, when they thought she was doing too much. Now they did most of it. When had those things become too much? One day? Just too hard? Those salvias needed their old flowering stems cut back. Pip fought back the disturbing thought that actually she might still be capable of these things but had given in to the weakness of age, the laziness of afternoon television and ladies’ bridge, of being someone’s grandmother, and in so doing, had lost something of herself. She reached down and pulled hard on a clump of lovegrass, releasing a spray of sand as it came up.

11
    In the fading hour before dinner, while they were waiting for Ferg to come home, Sam stood by Liza as she read the paper, peered over her shoulder.
    â€˜Whatya doing, Mum?’
    â€˜Reading.’
    â€˜
Yeah
, but what?’
    â€˜The world’s bad news. That’s all they put in here. Terrible stuff. We’re better off without it, it’s depressing.’ Liza flopped the broadsheet over.
    Sam said, ‘That’s like the stuff we do in Social Studies. About other people. They have bad lives, don’t they? Poor people in India and places, they don’t even have enough
water
.’
    Liza looked at Sam. Kids, she thought, know everything, and nothing. ‘Come here,’ she said, reaching out for him, and tickling him into a cuddle. ‘That’s true, we are really lucky. We have our health, food on the table, a lovely house, and each other.’ She grinned into him. ‘Shame about the last one, hey?’
    â€˜Yeah. You’re
horrible
. You guys are lucky to have
me
. I could be someone else’s son, you know.’ He poked her in the side.
    Liza felt it, would feel that poke for a long time afterwards, and she tried to keep her voice light as she said, ‘But we wouldn’t let anyone else have you, Sambo.’
    There was a small pause then, before Sam got her a beauty while her defences were down, working his wormy little fingers into her ribs. She hoisted him off her, crying, ‘Dirty rules!’ and he scooted out the door and ran, all the way to where Mrs Perry was watering the hibiscus along the fence.
    â€˜Safe!’ he called.

12
    Rosie went into the hotel to get an idea of whether or not there was any part-time work going, and came out with a full-time position, and heat creeping up her back. She wasn’t even sure if she wanted to work there, and now she was completely roped into it: uniforms, tax forms, bank account details.
    They could do with the money, though, what with the bond and rent in advance they’d had to pay for Greys Bay. And the folks