General Store by Hazel Edwards

Author:Hazel Edwards
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Ligature Pty Limited
Published: 2021-11-09T07:16:29+00:00

8 · MIDNIGHT WATCH

A strange one, Henrietta. Offering to walk all the way down to the store just to sit in the dark, waiting … for something.

‘Sh, shhh,’ cautioned Henri.

Josie glanced sideways at the shape like a black question-mark which was Henri slouched against the wall at the back of the store.

You couldn’t really call us friends, thought Josie. Not the way she and Isobel had been friends. Henri was different. Besides, she was too bossy. Josie liked to be the quiet one in a friendship, but at the same time the one who made most of the decisions and came up with the ideas. That’s the way it had been with Isobel. Isobel was pretty with long, ash-blond hair and lots of personality, but it was Josie, plump, short Josie, who made most of the decisions in that relationship. Isobel needed her. In another way, she needed Isobel.

Perhaps that was why she sometimes liked Henri a lot and other times she didn’t. Henri seemed to make all the decisions. Still, it had been her own idea to wait here tonight. Friendships were hard to explain even when you were on the inside.

She and Isobel had sworn to write every week and be friends for life. Isobel said that she was going to call her first baby Josephine. Secretly Josie was curious about marriage, but she insisted that she was staying single and not having children. Inside, she wasn’t sure.

Josie sighed.

It was hard to stay awake. Thinking clearly at this time of night—or was it morning—was almost impossible. Marriage was a sort of friendship really. Oh, she knew all about sex, but she couldn’t imagine her Mum and Dad acting like some of those diagrams in the biology book. They were too old. Besides, they were still mad at each other at the moment …

She sighed again.

Although they did hold hands at times, and Dad would smack Mum on the bottom as he went past. But that wasn’t sex. Not like the R movies that Isobel’s sister told them about.

Josie’s mind wandered off on to another tack. She wondered if she would ever have a boyfriend. She hadn’t seen Adam since the football dance, although she watched for him. He never came into the general store … well, not when she was there. She was too embarrassed to ask if he came at other times. What if no one ever asked her out? After all, she wasn’t good-looking like Isobel, or some of the others in her old class. Brains were useful for report cards, but Josie couldn’t see how brains helped get dates. Well, not the sort of brains which could produce A essays on the Australian Goldrushes, or read lots of books faster than anyone else in the class. Having a high score in an IQ test didn’t seem much of an asset yet.

Henri wasn’t much good at reading but she could do lots of practical, useful things—like riding a horse and milking cows and running a farm.

Henri stirred, shaking her left leg.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.