Two
The sound of the front door opening and voices chatting drew Jenny’s gaze to the living room entryway. She smiled as a small human cyclone came running across the room towards her.
‘Nanna!’
‘Sophie!’ Jenny gathered the grinning toddler in her arms and hugged her until she squirmed and wriggled to be put down. It was hard to believe that in, three short months, her only grandchild was going to be two.
Brittany, Jenny’s eldest daughter, had moved back home six months earlier when rental prices skyrocketed in the area after Covid sent the real-estate market through the roof. As a single mother who worked as a teacher’s aide in a small school, it had become impossible for Brittany to afford rent. While most of Jenny’s friends looked forward to their children moving out so they could redecorate their empty nest, Jenny was happyto have hers living at home again. The house had been quiet with only herself and her youngest, Chloe, living there.
Shortly after Brittany and Sophie had moved in, Savannah had come home from backpacking overseas to pick up a bit of work before meeting up with some travel friends. The six weeks had turned into an open-ended kind of arrangement. Now, with her three grown daughters back home, it felt like a bunch of flatmates living together, only Jenny still had to play referee and break up arguments over who was hogging the bathroom in the morning. But most of the time she enjoyed this new adult companionship.
‘Leave the cat alone!’ Brittany called after the toddler, who was gleefully chasing the cranky old tabby that simply wouldn’t die. The damn thing had to be close to twelve and was still going strong.
‘How was your day?’ Jenny asked as Brittany dropped a bright pink Bluey backpack on the table followed by her own huge tote bag. She often wondered where her girls had gotten their height from—certainly not from her. Brittany, dressed in a flowy maxidress that would have bunched on the ground if Jenny was wearing it, her long black hair pulled back in a thick ponytail, always looked so graceful—something Jenny had never been able to pull off.
‘Long. How about yours?’
‘Yep. Same.’
‘One more day to go till Friday,’ Brittany said, coming to a stop beside her as Jenny stretched her arm out and fist-bumped her.
‘We got this,’ she said with a determined nod.
‘You’d better go and get ready,’ Brittany said.
Jenny fought back a sigh. Damn it. She’d forgotten.
Once a month, they went down to the markets. Jenny loved the night markets—they were breathing fresh life into Barkley and always had such a great vibe—but she was finding it difficult to summon up the energy to get dressed and leave the house again. Once upon a time, between kids’ activities, work and sport, she’d barely stayed at home. Nowadays, however, nothing gave her more pleasure than an early night curled up in her PJs, watching a chick flick with a glass of wine. But that was not going to happen tonight.
Jenny got out of the shower and wrapped the towel around herself as she walked into her bedroom, noticing Savannah sitting on the end of her bed, curly blonde hair cascading over her shoulder, wide blue eyes studying her mother thoughtfully. Her middle child was the most outgoing of her three children. She was Jenny’s little adventurer. And the one she seemed to worry the most about. She’d left university—or rather, ‘put it on hold for a bit’, as Savannah described it—to go and travel for a year. That had been about five years ago and, other than the compulsory return home after her visas ran out, she’d pretty much been working and backpacking the entire time.
‘What were you planning on wearing tonight?’ Savannah asked as she leaned back on her arms.
Jenny raised her eyebrows at her daughter’s sudden interest in her fashion choices but shrugged nonchalantly. ‘Jeans and a top, I suppose.’
‘That’s what you always wear,’ Savannah said dismissively, then pushed herself up and walked across to her wardrobe. ‘How about this?’ She held up a teal and brown dress. ‘With those tan boots you bought. And maybe a belt.’
‘Don’t you think that’s a little dressy for the night markets?’
‘You should start dressing up more. You don’t want to become one of those women who let themselves go.’ Savannah draped the garment on the bed and bent down to place the boots on the carpet beneath it, giving it a firm nod of approval.
‘I hardly think my seventy-odd dollar jeans and the ninety-nine-dollar blouse I just purchased is letting myself go.’ She’d recently found an online boutique she loved and had been splurging a little more than usual on new outfits.
‘Oooh,’ Savannah said, her eyes brightening as she ducked into her mother’s walk-in wardrobe and produced a garment. ‘This denim jacket you got would look awesome over the top.’
Jenny shook her head wearily, giving up trying to protest. Part of her wanted to see what the outfit looked like. She’d had no idea what she was going to wear the jacket with, wasn’t even sure why she’d bought it in the first place, only that it had looked too nicenotto buy. Maybe she did need to cut back a bit with the online shopping.
‘Okay, fine. Get out and let me get dressed,’ she mumbled, snatching up the clothing from the bed.
‘And do your make-up,’ Savannah threw over her shoulder.
‘Make-up? It’s just us and Beth going to the damn night markets,’ she said, exasperated by this sudden bossiness. They tried to do something with Beth every few weeks when her husband, Garry, a fly in, fly out worker, was away.
‘Will it kill you to wear some make-up once in a while? Seriously, Mother.’
I’ll give youseriously, Motherin a minute, Jenny thought, but eyed her reflection in the mirror critically. Lately she’d been ignoring the faint crinkles in the corner of her eyes. They were laugh lines, she reminded herself, before reaching for the foundation she hardly ever bothered wearing. Maybe she could go and get her eyelashes and brows tinted again soon. It seemed like a waste of time and money when she rarely went anywhere, but if the kids were beginning to notice she was giving up on the maintenance, did that mean her age was starting to show?
She was fifty. Fifty! When the hell had that happened? When she was a kid, fifty had been ancient—incomprehensible, really. Suddenly, though, she was staring down a very confronting barrel. She was a fifty-year-old divorced woman with adult children … and a grandchild, she reminded herself. Crap!She was a divorced grandmother!God, that sounded even worse.Stop it, she told herself firmly as she applied eyeliner and eyeshadow.You’re being ridiculous.
