A Home Like Ours by Fiona Lowe (feel good books .txt) 📕

‘Remember your hands and start with a dead hang.’

Focus. She hoisted her body’s weight upwards. Her chin rose above the bar once, twice, thrice. Her arms screamed. Searing pain branded every cell, stealing oxygen and depositing burning lactic acid. ‘Can’t … do … Argh!’

Her fingers unfurled and she dropped, bending her knees to more easily take the fall. ‘I hate chin-ups!’

‘I never said they were easy.’ Zac promptly did ten.

She watched his biceps bulge and the rise of blue veins as thick as rivers on his smooth olive skin and allowed herself to wonder what it would feel like to run her fingers along those strong toned arms. Then she imagined it.

He dropped to his feet and grinned. Her head spun.

‘Show-off Gen Z brat,’ she managed.

‘Nah. Motivation.’

Tara struggled to cobble together a semblance of concentration. ‘I think you’re confusing your terms. How is me watching you do something I can’t possibly do be motivation?’

‘Inspiration then.’

She snorted. ‘I don’t think so. You know you’re young, fit and buff and you enjoy flaunting it.’

‘And you like watching me.’

The words hung there between them, like a line waiting to be crossed.

She wanted to hurdle it—say the words that would propel her onto the other side—but her mouth dried, sticking the sounds to her tongue.

‘When I started chin-ups I couldn’t even get my chin over the bar,’ he said, the teasing glint in his eyes fading.

An ache throbbed under her ribs. ‘That sounds like more schtick from the personal trainer’s handbook.’

‘Truth. I sucked at them, but your first time you did three.’ He looked straight at her. ‘You inspire me to inspire you.’

Her cheeks were suddenly wet, tears coming out of nowhere. She didn’t know who was more shocked—her or Zac.

‘Shit, Tara. Sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you.’

She shook her head and, without a tissue, breathed in a rattly sniff. ‘You didn’t upset me. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.’

But she did know. The lukewarm distance that had entered her and Jon’s marriage bed months ago was now cold and unambiguous. Jon didn’t want to have sex with her and the pain of it threatened to swamp her.

Zac gave her a sideways look. ‘I’ve got sisters …’

Wiping the tears away with the back of her hand, she laughed. ‘Is that code for “Are you premenstrual?” And if it is, I can’t decide if you’re brave or foolish.’ She sighed. ‘I’m just tired.’

And sad. And angry. And frustrated. And I can’t stop thinking about jumping you.

‘Did you go see the dietitian I suggested?’

‘Not yet.’

‘Tara!’

‘It’s on my list.’

‘Well, bump it up. It’s serious. You have to eat the right amount of calories for all the running, and the right food to help your post-exercise recovery.’

For a moment she envied his life. How simple it must be to focus solely on himself.

Her watch beeped. ‘I have to go or I’ll be late.’

‘No worries. I’m teaching a class in fifteen. See you tomorrow.’

Tara whipped home to shower before heading to school. Each week she spent an hour as a classroom helper listening to children read. She was halfway down the hall when the piercing siren of the security system slammed her heart against her chest.

‘Bugger!’

She raced back to the controls and plugged in the numbers, silencing the alarm. Slumping against the wall, she tried to slow her racing heart, but when her phone rang it added to her jangles. It was the security company.

‘Sorry! It was my fault,’ she said. ‘I totally forgot we had one.’

‘No worries, Mrs Hooper. Everyone forgets at least once in the early days.’

‘I won’t forget again. It gave me a hell of a fright.’

Delaying her shower to make herself a steadying cup of tea, she was sipping it when she saw a black woman in the garden. Still under the control of adrenaline, she whipped open the door and marched out onto the deck.

‘What are you doing?’

The woman glanced around, clearly startled. ‘I heard the siren.’

‘The alarm’s supposed to keep people away not invite them in.’

The woman’s hand rose to touch the colourful turban on her head before falling back to her side, but she kept her gaze on Tara. ‘I am Fiza. Your new neighbour.’

Tara couldn’t decide if the woman’s lilting accent was French or something else, but it really didn’t matter. What mattered was the fact she was standing uninvited in the garden.

‘What were you planning on doing if the house was being burgled?’ she said. ‘Blind the thieves with your hot pink headscarf?’

Fiza’s chin lifted. ‘I would telephone the police.’

Tara scoffed. ‘That’s the point of the security system. Thank you, but we don’t need your help.’

Fiza hesitated a moment, clearly debating whether to say something else. Tara was about to ask her to leave when she turned and crossed the garden to the old stile the Tingle children had used fifty years earlier.

Heritage listing be damned. Tara would ask Jon to dismantle the stile tonight.

CHAPTER

14

Jade carefully placed a box under Milo’s pram, trying not to spill the contents. Bob had suggested she ‘strike’ some plants by shoving cuttings into jars of water and he’d even lent her his secateurs. She’d hidden them in case Corey came home and used them for cutting duct tape or prising open lids. She needn’t have bothered—Corey hadn’t been home in over two weeks.

Just as she was leaving for the garden, Macca arrived, marching into the unit as if he owned it. She’d never liked him. Once, he’d cornered her at the pub in Finley when Corey was in the men’s, dropping his head in close and telling her what a slut like her deserved. Fear and fury had moved her, ducking her under his arms and away.

‘Say stuff like that again and I’ll tell Corey,’ she’d hissed. ‘He’ll pistol-whip your skinny arse.’

Whether it was because she’d got pregnant soon after or Macca knew Corey was a crack shot, he’d never tried it on again. But he always treated her like she was a problem or she existed to