Time Will Tell Read Online Free PDF Page B

houses to rent in town. Plenty for sale, but I’m not ready to make that sort of commitment.’
    â€˜I thought the bank had houses for their managers.’
    â€˜Unfortunately, not for the assistant .’
    â€˜There’s no way you’d want to live here though,’ Emily said, staring at him.
    â€˜Why not?’
    â€˜It’s a dump, for a start!’ And what would people say? she wanted to add, but stopped herself in time – doing so would sound just like her mother.
    â€˜Em, if you’re not interested in having a boarder, you only have to say,’ he said, putting a hand on her arm.
    Emily stared at his hand while going through the pros and cons. A bit of cash, some company; versus losing her solitude, the gossipmongers’ assumptions.
    The money . She so badly needed money.
    â€˜You don’t need to decide right away, but please Em, at least think about it. Seriously. My only other option at this point is living with my parents and I’d rather camp in a paddock than do that. As much as I love them, I just don’t want to move back in with them at my age. But there will be no hard feelings if you decide you want to be alone.’
    â€˜Okay, I’ll think about it. I can’t promise anything though. How much rent do you think would be fair?’
    â€˜There’s an allowance of one hundred and fifty a week on top of my salary, so you can have that.’
    Wow, that’s great , Emily thought.
    â€˜That’s way too much!’ she said.
    â€˜We could say it includes utilities then.’
    â€˜Hmm.’
    â€˜Well, I’ll leave you to ponder it.’ Nathan suddenly glanced down at his watch. ‘I’d better get back!’
    They headed back down the hill and Emily walked him to his car, a sporty-looking sedan.
    â€˜Thanks for the hospitality. I think the house is great.’
    â€˜Thanks for saying so, and for dropping by,’ she said, despite still feeling a bit irked.
    â€˜Well, have a merry Christmas,’ he said.
    â€˜And you too.’
    She allowed him to peck her on the cheek, and then stood watching as he drove off.

Chapter Four
    Emily prepared slivers of fresh garlic and tiny sprigs of rosemary and then poked them into the slits she’d made in the lamb. She did all this on autopilot while the pros and cons of Nathan’s proposal ran through her head. She kept coming back to the same point – she needed the money.
    As she washed her hands and dried them on the hand towel from the bench, she decided that she was being ridiculous. The ball was in her court. She didn’t have to make a decision right now. And he’d said there would be no hard feelings if she declined. So why was she feeling so pressured?
    No, she said to herself after taking a deep breath, she had to take the time to really think it through. No point making a quick decision and then living to regret it. No point deciding a couple of weeks in that she really didn’t want company and making Nathan move again just after he’d become settled. Or worse, not having the guts to tell him, and then living in silent angst and retreating to be alone at every opportunity.
    Not unlike her marriage, really.
    She suddenly realised all the parallels were there; a decision made for the wrong reasons, before all angles were considered and because of feeling pressured – by herself, yes, but also by her mother. The spoken and unspoken, the subtle and not so subtle.
    All the references to so and so’s lovely wedding, the news that such and such’s daughter had just blessed them with their third grandchild and weren’t they lucky? The barely disguised comments about her age. In Wattle Creek, any woman not married by twenty-three was considered ‘on the shelf’, and would be for life. Still unmarried at twenty-eight was a definite cause for panic. And panic was what Enid had done, right up until Emily and John had said their