The Turnaround Treasure Shop Read Online Free PDF Page A

you’re all on your own. How do you cope with the cleaning and cooking?’ The younger ones, like Charlotte Bradford and Sammy Granger, were much less coy, smiling at him as they dropped off cakes and biscuits they felt he needed, wandering through his workshop, picking up tools and teasing him with ideas about setting him up with a blind date.
    He liked their blatant feminine questioning and prodding. They weren’t gossipers, they were simply trying to do something good for him, providing something they thought he might want. Well, they weren’t far wrong about the wanting, but wanting something didn’t mean the wish would be granted.
    Nick came out of this reverie and pulled the ute over to the verge.
    Janie-Louise Johnson struggled towards him, her body tilted awkwardly to one side as she walked down the road while holding the front wheel of her bicycle off the ground.
    He might not seek Lily’s company, but he was on good terms with her children. He rolled the window down.
    â€˜Looks like hard work, Janie-Louise.’
    The kid grinned. ‘Hi, Nick.’ She lifted the buckled front wheel higher. ‘Mum’s going to kill me.’
    Nick smiled. Lily didn’t have a kill-zone in her body. ‘Are you hurt?’ he asked, getting out of the cab.
    â€˜Scraped my knee.’
    Nick ran a quick one-two over the graze on her leg. It didn’t look too bad. ‘We need to get it washed. Then I’ll run you home.’
    He’d never been to the Johnson house. A five minute drive from town. Or a 20 minute walk, he thought, knowing Lily had been walking to and from work every day the last month because he’d seen her arrive in town for her working shift, and walk out of town when she’d done tidying the old shop or the library. He’d thought it might be because she wanted the exercise. But perhaps something had happened to her vehicle?
    Nick opened the passenger door and got Janie-Louise to sit on the seat. He pulled a first-aid kit out of the glove box and took out saline to wash her knee, tweezers, and a large square plaster to cover the scrape.
    â€˜Your bike’s in a worse state than your knee,’ he told her as he carefully used the tweezers to remove a couple of bits of gravel from the wound.
    â€˜Ow.’
    â€˜Sorry, trying to be gentle.’
    â€˜My bike is my lifeline,’ she said. ‘And it’s died on me twice this week.’
    Nick smiled, head bowed so Janie-Louise couldn’t see his amusement. Then he stopped smiling. Lifelines. How many had he had? Enough to know he wouldn’t be alive today without a couple of them. ‘Where’ve you been?’ he asked.
    â€˜Sammy and Ethan’s place. I promised to look after Edie while they were packing.’
    â€˜That was good of you.’
    â€˜I love going up to Burra Burra Lane. I play with Edie and Lachlan a lot. They’re cute little kids. Sammy bakes biscuits for us all, and if he’s not called out to farms or somewhere, Ethan lets me look at the animals in his surgery. They’ve got a lost budgie who’s just had babies. So cute. Do you know how impossible it is for budgies to live in the wild? They’ve named it Jammy.’
    â€˜Where’d they find it?’
    â€˜At the stables. Must have got out of its cage. Ethan’s trying to find its owner. He said I might be able to take one of the babies, if the owner doesn’t want them.’ She paused.
    Janie-Louise spoke faster than water ran down a drainpipe. Nick reckoned she had to pause on occasion before her second thought became the third and she forgot to voice the second out loud.
    â€˜Ethan’s got a cage I could have cheaply,’ she said. ‘One he doesn’t use. Because of course, I couldn’t afford to buy a new one.’
    â€˜There y’go.’ Nick packed up the first-aid kit as Janie-Louise hopped off the passenger seat and went for her bike.