bag. ‘It’s just . . . impossible.’
Nina lowered her arm. ‘. . . bust,’ she sadly concluded the salutation.
The screen door on the van was wrenched open, banging hard on aluminium. Nina winced at the tinny clang and turned to see her son Anton in the doorway. He was shivering, despite the towel draped around his shoulders. Water was dripping on the black rubber doormat from every angle of his skinny frame.
‘Geez, Mum, what are you doing?’ he whined. ‘You’ve been in here for ages. I’m hungry.’
Five
Meredith regarded the pile of items she had gathered on the front counter next to the cash register and, once again, saw that her instinctive good taste had not failed her. There were three queen-size doona covers in plain white with a taupe grosgrain ribbon trim; two single covers, contrasting, in the same taupe with white trim; and six oversized continental pillows with cotton covers in a subtle fallow.
Meredith liked the name fallow. It was a colour a few shades darker than ecru—and ecru (from the French meaning ‘raw’ or ‘unbleached’) had been done to death. It was also lighter than bole (rhyming with ‘mole’), the shade Meredith had once championed in her interior decorating business.
She had been pleased to inform her clients that bole was one of the oldest colour names in the English language, dating from 1386. When children were presented with various shades of brown and were asked to paint the trunk of a tree, the shade they invariably chose was bole. Meredith liked knowing these sorts of details. Even if, secretly, she thought bole was the ugliest colour on earth.
All her life Meredith had been creative and artistic, and she could often divine what a person’s true emotions were through colour. For example, clients would come to her and say they wanted their room decorated in their favourite colour pistachio, but Meredith would just know that they needed to let go of the past and embrace something more nourishing, like moussaka.
Despite what some people thought, however, she wasn’t fixed in her opinions. She could always be swayed by intelligent and rational argument. Actually, for some years Meredith’s favourite grey had been slate. She had abandoned the shade late last year for granite—a shade of flinty determination—and felt the better for it.
Fallow was the hue she was entranced with now. She fingered the soft cotton of a pillowcase and rubbed it against her cheek. There was an honesty here—she could feel that. A rustic energy which demanded a genuine response. Meredith needed to know exactly what she was dealing with. She turned to her computer screen and consulted the dictionary.
‘Fal-low adj: 1. left unseeded for a period of time after ploughing in order to recover natural fertility; 2. currently inactive but with the possibility of activity or use in the future.’
Meredith was jolted by the description—it was exactly how she felt about her life. Not that Meredith could ever contemplate the idea of being inactive. But, looking past that negative connotation, she had to agree that, when her latest home renovations had finished, a cycle of intense and rewarding productivity had come to an end. And now, with Donald gone, she had to imagine how the rest of her life might unfold.
Many women would have felt depressed about all this, but not Meredith. A friend had once described her as ‘indefatigable’—as if she would keep on going when others might fold or fail—so she was looking forward to her regeneration. She would pop up through the soil reborn, in a youthful shade of pod or tendril.
Next came the crockery and cutlery, all chosen from a new range of summer holiday wares she had imported from Finland. None of it was plastic, which Meredith could not bear to see set on any table, no matter how casual. ‘Honestly, Paul Bocuse himself could serve la Mère Fillioux—Bresse chicken in a bladder—but if it was on a plastic plate, it might as well be a Big Mac,’ Meredith had said more than once.
The china she had picked out was white and chunky, embossed with leaves and berries. These same motifs of plentiful summer bounty were repeated on the cutlery handles and, in a triumph of coordination (which Meredith knew only she would truly appreciate, but then she was used to that), she had discovered a Danish glassware setting for four etched with stalks of wheat.
Meredith turned down the dimmer switch on the store lighting. What could she take with her that might be suitable