Read Online The Break by Deb Fitzpatrick - Free Book Online Page A

woman was walking towards the front door, almost singing: ‘Perfect for a young couple.’
    They went in, their voices echoing in the spartan, over-white interior. ‘Right, right,’ they murmured as they were shown around.
    â€˜Could we see the other places?’ Rosie finally said. ‘Just to get an idea of what choice there is before we make any decisions.’
    Ms Shoulder Pads took them to a fibro house on a nearby street, with an overgrown front garden, three wonky wooden steps leading up to the front door and a fireplace in the lounge. Inside it was freezing and smelt of wood smoke.
    â€˜How much is this?’ Rosie asked.
    â€˜Well, it’s one-forty. It’s had awful tenants in the past. Of course, it really isn’t as nice as the villa,’ she said, eyeing them.
    Isn’t it?
Rosie thought.
It’s much, much nicer.
She couldimagine people
living
in it. The street was lined with places just like it, fibro and weatherboard cottages painted light pink, pale green, pale blue.
    â€˜Well, it’s got a bit of character, and a garden. I prefer it, actually. It’s a bit dark and cold, though …’
    Shoulder Pads seemed disappointed that they liked it. ‘I’ll show you the other one, but it’s not in town, it’s a few kilometres out, at Greys Bay — do you know it?’
    Cray’s pupils dilated. Greys Bay, did he
know
it? He surfed it every time they came down this way, discovered the town with Marty when they were teenagers, when they came down with a few mates one summer, years ago. Edge Point, Surge Point, Hut’s, Lefthander’s. The place was idyllic, tiny, with a beautiful bay curving into the coast.
    â€˜May as well just have a look,’ he said.
    They swung around the road, past the general store where surfers warmed themselves in the sun like geckoes and topped up on energy with pies and choc-milk. The car headed up the steep hill where the people of Greys Bay perched like birds on a cliff, their nests weatherboard shacks sheltering them from the elements. At the highest road — one of only four or five carved into the hill like rice terraces — they turned, houses down to their left, ocean an endless spectrum of blues at the bottom, and to their right land, sprawling wildly away. The hill was a patchwork of coastal greens, yellow, grey, and, where it could, the scrub working its way between the houses. Cray couldn’t believe it.
    â€˜How much is it?’ He tried to sound only lightly interested.
    â€˜This one’s one-fifty. Greys Bay’s real estate is quite extraordinary,’ Shoulder Pads said. ‘People buy these places over the phone, sight unseen — and they’re only fishing shacks,mostly. Hardly comfortable. They’re all on rainwater tanks. It amazes me.’
    The wooden house was at the bottom of a steep, downwards driveway. On stilts, on tiptoe, the house faced the ocean; the bay curled at the bottom like a foetus, Hut’s Beach nestled calmly between Surge and Edge points. When they walked in, Cray passed straight through the house to a set of sliding doors that were moist and misted with salt air. He opened them to a verandah perching over a view so wide that it would need four or five photos, side by side in panorama, to do it justice photographically. He could almost make out the earth’s curve at the edges of his vision. The water reached out ahead of him and away to the sides in infinite directions.
    Rosie came out, stood beside him.
    â€˜Cray.’ He knew she was grinning. ‘Don’t you want to see the rest of the place?’

6
    Liza looked surreptitiously at the couple at the next teller.
    They were unfamiliar faces, and the bank was one place you didn’t get tourists, not inside, anyway. Most visitors just queued up outside at the machine in the wall, even when there were tellers leaning against their section of counter inside, serving no one,