The Tying of Threads Read Online Free PDF

tried to. But how could someone who for years had claimed to be your friend, who’d made constant claims on that friendship, how could she marry one of her supposed friend’s rapists?
    She had married him. She’d sent a postcard from the Gold Coast and signed it Lila Macdonald. And how, after what she’d done, had she found the nerve to send that card?
    Weeding allowed Jenny to vent her anger, the ripping, the pitching, and the cursing of thistle, nettle and Lila. When that card arrived, she’d thought it was from Georgie – then she’d seen the signature and tossed the thing into the stove and watched it burn.
    Nothing was the same without Georgie. Jenny had been able to talk to her about anything. And Elsie, stuck in a bungalow that would have fitted inside Vern Hooper’s sitting room, wasn’t the same Elsie. She’d been accustomed to the freedom of Granny’s fifteen acres, to fruit for the picking, to chooks clucking and a paddock of vegie garden. Now a prisoner of Teddy’s bungalow, in the weeks since Margot’s death she’d aged ten years. Harry and his kids were worried about her, as was Jenny – when she found time to worry about her. She had no time for anything. She spent her days playing shopkeeper and didn’t have a clue how to play the game, and Emma Fulton, now Watson, knew little more.
    They had Georgie’s invoices. They had the names and phone numbers of the suppliers. There was money in the shop’s account to pay for new stock, but it was money Jenny couldn’t get at without Georgie’s signature, and last week they’d barely made enough to pay the electricity bill, plus Emma’s wage.
    Those twin green doors closed since Christmas, shoppers had altered their habits – and Willama’s two big supermarkets encouraged them by offering weekly specials – and how could Coles supermarket afford to sell large tins of canned fruit for what Jenny paid the supplier for those same cans? Jenny’d sent Jim down to Coles to buy a dozen cans, which saved her ordering them.
    She had no time to sew. The material for a bridal gown was still waiting on its roll on the cutting table, and she was running out of time to get that gown done. She had carrots going to seed, onions she couldn’t see for the weeds. There was light enough in the evenings to weed by, but by the time she locked those green doors, by the time she tossed something easy on the table for dinner, she was ready to sleep, and usually did, in front of the television – a sign of old age, or exhaustion. Went to bed exhausted. Woke too early, still exhausted.
    The inquest into Margot’s death was being held in April – not that she wanted to be there, but had she wanted to, who would mind that shop? Jim wouldn’t.
    Her fingers delving into damp earth, she removed twin foot-high milk thistles and pitched them as far as she could. Why bother? She’d been at it for an hour and had barely made a dent in the carrot patch.
    Weeds would be growing on Margot’s grave. She had to do something about ordering a stone. Should have done it already. She’d meant to. Couldn’t make up her mind what to put on it. She had trouble sticking to any one thought long enough to make up her mind. She’d be thinking about a tombstone and remember what she’d forgotten to order yesterday. She’d be thinking about Georgie and start remembering that last game of cards they’d played with Margot the night she’d died.
    Wished she’d let her win that game. That kid had never won much from life, not in the looks department or personality. Georgie had won the lot, as a tiny kid, a teenager and a woman.
    When those girls were small, Jenny had tried not to lean towards Georgie. Every item of clothing she’d made for one, she’d made for the other, determined to do the right thing – as Amber had never done with her and Sissy. Shouldn’t have bothered. What had looked good on lanky, happy-faced little Georgie, hadn’t done a thing for pale, pudgy Margot. Was