Page 120 of Outback Secrets

Then she took the wool Henri had chosen, looped it over the end of one of the needles and tied some sort of knot, before proceeding to create lots more little loops.

‘Hang on … what are you doing?’ Henri didn’t want to sit here watching her mother knit!

‘Relax, I’m just casting on for you. Trust me, you’re not the first person I’ve taught to knit, and this is the hardest thing for a beginner to learn. Once you’ve mastered garter and purl, then I’ll teach you how to cast on.’

Henri tapped her good foot as her mother cast on twenty-five stitches—how hard could it actually be?—and then proceeded to show her how to do garter stitch.

‘Holding the needles like this, thumbs at the front and the rest of your fingers behind, you slip the right needle under the first loop and then behind. Then you bring the wool up and loop it over the back needle, like so. Holding the wool firmly, you pull the back needle down, slip it under the loop and then slip the loop right off the left needle. Voila!’

Voila?!Who even said that?

‘Then you do it again until you get to the end of the row.’

Henri all but snatched the needles off her mother. ‘Okay, my turn.’ Then she stared at them frozen in her hands. ‘What was the first step again?’

She repeated the steps slowly while Henri tried to follow them, but when she finally got the wool to go the right way, she pulled on the needle too vigorously and about five stitches unravelled right before her eyes. Her mother recast and then, gritting her teeth, Henri tried again, but she just couldn’t seem to follow the supposedly simple instructions.

‘Maybe there’s a YouTube video or something I can watch?’

‘Probably, it seems everything is online these days, but give yourself a break. It takes practice to get the hang of it. And patience.’ Unsaid was the fact that Henri possessed very little of the latter, but she suddenly realised that for the last ten minutes she’d not thought once of Liam or the text message.

‘Okay,’ she said, taking a deep breath and trying again.

But it was hopeless. She was hopeless. Legitimately the worst. No sooner did it seem she was maybe getting the hang of it than she’d drop a whole stitch or somehow manage to do two at once. Spitting a word that usually made her mother flinch, Henri hurled her attempt across the room as tears rushed to her eyes. Why had she ever thought she could do this?

‘This is stupid. What’s wrong with me? Why can’t I do anything well?’

‘Oh, Henrietta.’ Her mother picked up her hand and squeezed it. ‘There’s nothing wrong with you. And you’re good at lots of things. I don’t know anyone as good as you at flying.’

Was that actual pride she detected in her mum’s voice? No, she had to be imagining it. And was flying really the only thing her mother could think of? If only she knew what had happened up north, she probably wouldn’t even say that.

Henri snatched her hand back. ‘And we all know what you think of me flying! I’m not good at the things you think matter—I’m not good at people, I’m not good at relationships, or love.’

‘Oh, darling … Maybe it isn’t over between you and Liam. Maybe this is just a hiccup, and you can work it out.’

‘I don’t think so.’ Henri shook her head, losing the battle with tears. If she could have stood up and fled the room she would have, but her crutches were just out of reach.

Her mother stood instead and crossed over to the old piano that nobody used anymore. Its only function now was as a display unit for photo frames, trinkets and a fabric covered tissue box. She picked up the box and brought it back to Henri.

‘Thanks,’ Henri managed as she took one and buried her face in it.

As she tried to pull herself together, she felt her mum’s hand rubbing gentle circles on her back, something she hadn’t done since Henri was ten and crying because a boy had beaten her in the cross country.

‘What happened between the two of you?’ she asked after a while. ‘I thought things were going so well. Why did you break up?’

‘The truth is, Mum, it was never actually a thing in the first place.’

Her brow creased. ‘What do you mean?’

‘It’s a long story.’

‘Shall I get us a cup of tea?’

A bit like soup, her mother thought tea fixed everything. ‘Do you have anything stronger?’

She patted Henri’s knee. ‘I’ll see what I can find.’ And then she headed out into the hall.

‘Hopefully this will do the trick,’ she said when she returned a few minutes later, carrying two glass tumblers that looked suspiciously like they contained whiskey on the rocks. ‘There’s still some of your father’s Jack Daniels, but we didn’t have any soda water.’