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‘Enjoy your journey — and remember, always follow your bliss!’ Evie called after them.
‘She was nice,’ said Archie as Bec strapped him into his booster seat.
‘Kookie more like,’ she said.
‘No, she wasn’t, Mum,’ Ben retorted. ‘You should think more good thoughts, like the lady said.’
As she shut the car door, Rebecca stood in the sweltering heat. Her son had a point. When she was younger, she had believed she could achieve anything, but the more life had moved on, the more and more she had been steered by others and life no longer lit a fire in her belly. How could she rekindle it? She looked down at the book and CD she had just bought. They said books landed in your lap for a reason, didn’t they? This one looked way out of her comfort zone. She flipped open to a page that told her that it might take some time to adjust to the notion that she was creating her life through her thoughts, not her actions.
‘Huh?’ she said out loud before reefing open her door and throwing the book on the front passenger seat with a huff. The CD slid from the back sleeve of the book and dropped to the floor.
‘Bugger it,’ Bec said and started the engine.
By the time they’d passed the Cranky Chicks sign, both boys were asleep. The shopping will be almost roasted, she thought. She should’ve left the groceries until last and she shouldn’t have spent thirty bucks on a book and audio she never wanted in the first place.
‘Get over yourself, Rebecca,’ she muttered crossly to herself. ‘Think good thoughts. Not bad ones.’
Maybe she could pass the CD and book onto her city sister-in-law, Trudy, so it wasn’t wasted. She glanced at it, taking in the swirling cover art of outer space. There was no way known that Trudy would like it. Maybe her mother, Frankie, would be interested. With all her veterinary science knowledge, she might find something in the pages. Didn’t all this New Age spiritual stuff have physics and other science at its heart? She was again distracted by her phone.
There were already two missed calls and two voice mail messages to retrieve and now a video call was coming in from Charlie.
Video call? she wondered, frowning. He’d never made one of those to her. She rolled her eyes again. He was probably trying out things on the new phone that he’d so proudly scored in the tractor deal. Being married to Charlie felt like she was mothering three boys, not two, most days!
She pulled over onto a roadside verge, the Cranky Chicks sign still in sight in her side mirrors. Her index finger pressed the answer button. ‘Hello,’ she said.
There was a rustling noise and Charlie’s breath, then the blurred and darkened image of what looked like the inside of his jeans pocket.
‘Hello? Charlie!’ she yelled at the phone. ‘I think you’ve accidentally called me. Charlie! Char … lie! Charlie?’ Behind her in the back seat, her boys stirred, but did not wake. She smiled at them. Shearing-shed babies, she thought. They would sleep through a hurricane. She looked back at the phone and called Charlie’s name again.
It sounded like he was walking up a hill, his breath coming fast. He must be out ploughing again, she thought irritably, and he’d be out checking the sods of earth, where she knew billions of soil micro-organisms would have been butchered.
She pressed the end button, not wanting to waste money. Not wanting to think of the Waters Meeting soil she knew they were buggering with bad farming practice. He’d been going off lately about the high phone bills. Never mind that he spent bucketloads on fertiliser that she hated and fuel to run the machinery that he brutalised the landscape with. She sighed, glad the no-till cropping and holistic grazing night was tonight and she could get a good dose of Andrew and his positivity. She so badly wanted Charlie to click with Andrew, so that things on Waters Meeting could begin to change.
She was about to pull the vehicle onto the road when a video call came in from Charlie again.
‘Hello!’ she said, this time crossly.
In the palm of her hand, the iPhone screen lit up, revealing a glimpse of dry grass and again what was the edge of Charlie’s jeans pocket. She could now not only hear Charlie’s breath, but also his voice.
‘Oh yeah,’ he half whispered. ‘Oh yeah, baby.’
A faint smile arrived on Rebecca’s face. After their early morning attempt at love-making and his peace offering in the sheep yards, was he sending her a naughty message? Her heart skipped a beat. She glanced back at the boys to make sure they were asleep. In an instant, she felt elation. The possibility of a rekindled relationship flooded her with hope. A marriage at last back on track. This iPhone could be fun for them …
Then Charlie’s phone must have taken a tumble onto the ground and all she could see on the tiny three-inch screen was the tanned dimpled thigh of a woman and what looked like a part of Charlie’s backside pumping up and down. Then she heard the woman moan and Bec felt sick. Shock punched pain throughout her body. Winded.
She dragged her eyes from the screen, tears blurring her vision. With the horror of the moment crawling into her mind and body, she turned to take in the sight of her beautiful sleeping boys in the back seat. Their faces unguarded. The perfection and innocence of their youth giving them the aura of angels. All the while she heard the moans of the woman. She looked back at the screen to witness the thrusting of flesh, raw and ugly in the sunlight. Her husband’s breath coming fast, the way she’d heard it in her ear in the early hours that morning, before he had withered so quickly with lack of desire. She ended the call and sat for a time, gulping in air, holding the phone in the palm of her hand. Then slowly she steeled herself as she dialled the message bank. The first recording cut out almost instantly, but the second revealed the rustle of clothing and the same moaning of the woman and heavy breathing of her husband. Rebecca shut her eyes and felt her entire life as she believed it to be dissolve. With shaking hands, she pressed the end button.
Nine (#ulink_81a305b0-df25-52bd-a9a0-79af484cab7b)
Rebecca stood at the Rivermont front door and rang the brass bell. She barely registered the presence of a blonde Cardigan Corgi and the elegant auburn German Short-haired Pointer sniffing at her weary, just-woken boys, who were standing beside her. She clutched the bag containing the baby-doll nightie, wondering what on earth had possessed her to turn into the Rivermont driveway.
The Stantons were strangers. Having only met Yazzie the previous night, why wasn’t she seeking out Gabs as a friend to share her despair? Wouldn’t she be better to crumble at Gabs’s doorstep with the news of what she had just seen? And heard? Her husband’s sex-breath, matched with that of another woman. Something deep within her, a shame, a sense of failure, wanted to keep the grubby knowledge of her husband’s infidelity away from Gabs and out of the loop of gossip that permeated the district. Gabs seemed at this time too close to home, whereas Yazzie was virtually a stranger.
Rebecca knew that shock had brought her here to this massive glossy white door, and maybe it was something else too? Maybe it was Yazzie herself. A hope that somewhere left inside her was a way of being, similar to Yazzie’s vibrancy and enthusiasm for life. The hope that the young jillaroo she once had been still remained. But that was stupid, Rebecca reasoned. Maybe she should just bottle up all her feelings and shove them deep down inside? Put up and shut up. Get on with it. Thousands of men had done this to thousands of women over the ages. And vice versa. Maybe she was overreacting? And everyone grew old and down and disappointed, didn’t they? She could sort this out herself, couldn’t she?
She was about to turn away when the door was reefed open by Yazzie, looking gorgeous in a little floral rose-print dress teamed with Ariat work boots. Her loose hair was casting a long straight silky curtain of blonde over her ultra brown, slightly streaky but definitely tanned shoulders.
‘Geez! You scared the pants off me! I didn’t hear the bell. I thought it was the Rivermont ghost and the dogs were after him. Oh, hello,’ Yazzie added when she noticed the boys behind Rebecca. ‘Tell Wesley and Ruby to go away if they’re annoying you, boys. But they are very friendly dogs! They love children.’
She barely glanced up at Rebecca, continuing with her bright monologue. ‘Are you as hungover as me? I tried working my horse, but no good. No good. And those tans! Mine is so bad … I look like a caramel slice. Can you believe we did that?’ she said, lifting the hem of her already short dress. ‘Ah! I see you’ve brought back my nightie.’ She took the bag from Rebecca’s hands. ‘Thanks. I suppose you washed it,’ she giggled, ‘I expect you did. There’s nothing of it so it takes no time to dry. So tell me, did it work with your Charlie? Will there be another little farmer for Waters Meeting in nine months’ time?’
‘Yes, I did wash it,’ Rebecca said, finally able to get a word in. ‘And … no. No babies. Charlie’s not capable. You know … he’s had the snip …’ stammered Rebecca.
Yazzie was about to giggle some more, but her face clouded with concern as she noted the strain in Rebecca’s voice, then fully took in the sight of her red-rimmed eyes and hunched shoulders. ‘Oh, Rebecca. God, sorry, I’m gibbering. What’s up? Tell me. What’s happened?’
‘It’s Charlie … It’s …’ Rebecca cut herself off, looking at the boys. Sensing their mother’s upset, they were sidling closer to her, Archie putting his little hands about her legs and burying his face in her thigh. She stooped and swooped him up in her arms.
‘Come in,’ Yazzie said gently. ‘Boys, would you like a milkshake? Yazzie makes the best milkshakes! With blueberries. I’m Yazzie Stanton, by the way. I’m new here. What’re your names?’ she asked, glancing over her shoulder at them, laying a caring hand on Bec’s shoulder as she ushered them into a grand entranceway.
As Yazzie got busy making milkshakes, Ben and Archie gazed at the giant house with gobsmacked expressions on their faces. Their eyes kept tracking back to the beautiful, friendly lady. A huge black-and-white French Provincial clock ticked quietly on a stone wall in the kitchen. Giant white lilies in a clear glass vase sat on a simple wooden dresser. Striking artwork of a galloping horse, created by swathes of black dribbling paint, hung on a pure white wall. A long wooden kitchen table that had enough seats to host the entire Australian cricket team was decorated with summertime flowers arranged Country Style in a glass bowl beside a white china bowl filled with lemons. The dogs still hovered, dropping chewed teddy bears and slobbery balls at Archie’s and Ben’s feet.
Rebecca perched on a stool at the kitchen bench. Yazzie had plonked a box of Kleenex near her and Bec was now gradually making a small pile of scrunched tissues in front of her like a wedding-day meringue as uncontrollable tears silently slid down her cheeks. She fixed what she hoped was a smile on her face so the boys wouldn’t notice her distress. The blender roared as blueberries were mushed into milk and ice-cream.
Soon Yazzie settled Ben and Archie outside with their drinks in a shaded, picture-perfect courtyard beside a fenced swimming pool, the dogs lying panting at their feet, waiting for the ball action to commence. Bec watched them sadly from behind the white wooden wall-to-ceiling bi-fold doors that made up one entire side of the kitchen.
Inside, after Bec had hastily sketched out her story, Yazzie ushered her to one end of the monumental table and they both sat staring at the now silent iPhone that lay between them. They eyed it with suspicion, as if the thing would come to life and jump up and bite them. It had already bitten Rebecca today, savagely.
‘Are you sure it was him on the video call? Could he have lent his phone to someone else today?’
‘I’m sure it was him. He accidentally called me too and the phone went to message bank. Listen.’
Yazzie’s eyes lit up. ‘No, don’t play it!’ But it was too late. The kitchen filled with the muffled moanings. Rebecca let the recording play longer and suddenly the voice of Charlie said, ‘You wanna play tennis? Do you? Huh?’ Then there were some scuffling sounds and a woman began to moan, ‘Oh yes. Oh, Charlie!’
‘Yuck! Turn it off!’ Yazzie said, grappling for the phone. They sat staring at it once more until she eventually spoke again. ‘Maybe he was just tossing off. You know, blokes do. They are, after all, most of them, just apes. Wankers, quite literally.’
‘Yuck. No. You heard. There was a woman there.’
‘Maybe they were actually playing tennis and it was a really hard game?’
Bec shot Yazzie a look.
‘Sorry.’ She passed Bec another tissue. ‘Did you see on the video call what she looked like?’
Bec shrugged and wiped her nose. ‘I don’t know. Does it matter who?’
‘What are you going to do?’
She hunched her shoulders up and down, then hung her head and devastation swamped her. Life as she knew it had just ended forever. ‘I don’t know. I just don’t know.’
Outside Sol Stanton pulled into the garage and collected a giant box of groceries from the back of his Kluger. He whistled to let the dogs know he was home, but already he could hear them barking from the other side of the house. There was a strange vehicle in the drive, and he wondered which local had dropped in with some trivial excuse for a sticky beak. Yazzie had often complained in her emails of the fine balance between building their dream and not offending ‘the natives’.
As he went to the back door, Sol almost dropped the box; he swore in Spanish, as was his habit. He was having trouble adjusting to the time zones. He’d woken far too early, his body clock still geared to the Northern Hemisphere, and now the day was dragging. He still had the seminar evening to get through tonight and badly needed a coffee.
He thought briefly of the trouble he’d left behind in Paris. The delicate lead violinist with her shocking English but sexy accent screaming at him and hurling a bunch of flowers. Her extreme Italian behaviour was a parody of itself and even though at the time Sol was laughing on the inside at the clichéd Mediterranean tantrum, he also could feel her pain. Not so much the pain of his leaving, and his going home to Australia, but the pain caused by his indifference to her.
He had bedded so many women like her. Ones he could be indifferent to. Ones who left his heart still closed off and hard like a stone. The European orchestra scene was far too abundant with women who were both beautiful and volatile. Maybe it was time to settle down? He decided there and then, as he leaned the box against the door and grappled for the doorknob, that he ought to go on the fidelity wagon for a time.
Settle back into a domestic existence. Just him and Yazzie. He was looking forward to at least six months in Australia if his workload would allow, mostly based at Bendoorin, working to get the racing stables up and running. It was just the thing he needed.
No more women, he vowed.
Sol at last swung the kitchen door open and walked in juggling the giant box of groceries. He stopped momentarily when he saw a pretty and curvaceous blonde woman at the table. He couldn’t stop his eyes running over her tight jeans and the slightly torn, checked blue cowgirl shirt that hugged her curves. Pearl press-stud buttons nearly popped at her breast line and her décolletage was tanned deeply. So different from the thin pale Italian girl he had recently bedded. There was something about her … Then he realised with a start that it was the same woman he’d met the night before.
In the light of the kitchen, even with Yazzie’s terrible spray tan blotching the woman’s skin and no makeup, she looked prettier than he’d remembered. One of those natural earthy types, he concluded. And such blue eyes! Eyes that had been crying. There was no vanity in her as she stared back at him. A contrast to his Parisian orchestra women, all dolled up, looking stunning, but with ice-cold agendas inside them. Ones who still tried to look attractive even when they cried. He knew the women played him for his wealth and connections ahead of his Spanish-born soul.
Sol realised as he looked at … Rebecca, that was her name … that she still held the same aura of sadness and uncertainty she’d carried with her the night before, only today the sadness seemed deeper. Maybe some teasing to cheer her? Sol thought.
‘I see you’re a little more clothed than last time I saw you,’ he said as he set the box down on the kitchen bench. ‘Get any business last night? How’s the hangover? As bad as the tan?’
‘Leave her alone, Sol,’ barked Yazzie.
He shrugged and began unpacking all the contents of the box onto the island bench.
‘What are you doing?’ Yazzie said, irritated. ‘Do you have to do that now, Sol, honey? We’re having a very important girls’ chat.’
He cast her a dark look with his intense brown eyes. ‘I’m sure it’s infinitely important. Earth shattering in fact.’ Sol steadily laid out flour, eggs, vanilla essence and an array of cookbooks.
‘Sol,’ Yazzie growled.
‘Shush!’ he said loudly so that Rebecca started, her nerves frayed. ‘I’m on a mission to make a “Man Cake” for the Home Industries section at the Bendoorin Show. I saw a poster at the store.’
‘You have got to be kidding,’ Yazzie said. ‘Spare me.’ She put her head in her hands.
‘The theme of the show is Prime Lamb, so my plan is to work in and around that theme,’ Sol said. ‘There is a comedian who promotes Aussie meat who will be judge of the cake competition. It’s the first of its kind.’ He waved his arms around as if conducting an orchestra.
Bec frowned, momentarily distracted from her plight with Charlie and slightly annoyed by the arrogant man who had burst into the room. No matter how good-looking he was or how endearing his Spanish accent, he still spoke to his wife far too haughtily — and was he serious about the cake cooking? How insensitive and rude! Couldn’t he see that she was distressed? Could he do nothing but think of himself and bang on about baking cakes? She concluded Yazzie was married to an arsehole, and all men — no matter what nationality — could be selfish and thick at the worst possible times.
‘You do know the show isn’t until October,’ Bec said coldly.
‘Yes, of course I know, but I want to perfect it now,’ he said with a theatrical sweep of his hand.
Yazzie let out a frustrated scream while Bec thought, what a pansy! A piccolo-playing pansy!
‘He’s always like this, Rebecca! Mr Pedantic Pants!’ Yazzie turned to him. ‘Just because you didn’t get your orchestra gig doesn’t mean you can slip back into being Mr Slack-arse-I-do-bugger-all around here other than bake cakes for shows. That’s bent! You’re bent! There’s a tonne of work to be done out there. Dad would be livid. Get out of my kitchen.’
‘Your kitchen? Shut up, Ms Vocal Velocity. I briefed the staff this morning before I left for town. You seem to forget I’m the one with the jetlag. You are the one with the hangover.’ He cast another dark gaze at her and Yazzie poked her tongue out at him like a child.
Rebecca shut her eyes, not wanting to witness the strain in other people’s relationships. Yazzie picked up on Bec’s discomfort and dropped her tone to one of gentleness. ‘Please be nice, Sol. Rebecca’s not had a good day.’
‘You make your bed, you lie in eet,’ he said, his accent thickening with his theatrics.
Rebecca knew Sol was referring to her hangover, but she felt a twinge of deep upset. She had made her bed. She had tried so very hard to create a life on the farm with Charlie. But nothing seemed to work. She had tried to be everything to everyone. A good daughter to her father as his body shut down with illness. A good daughter to her mother, even though she was always absent. A good mum to her boys, tending to their every need with as much grace as she could muster. A good wife to Charlie.
Even when the boys had been tiny babies, she had still summoned all her mental and physical strength to both work the farm and put a meal on the table. She had strived to be a good workman beside Charlie in the paddocks, despite the internal drag of depression within her. She had mixed memories of those times, some of them fond, some of them forlorn, of having to pull up in the paddock or the yard to breastfeed the baby or change a nappy or both, either on the seat of the ute or on a blanket that picked up thistles from the barren paddocks. Sometimes she felt strong and empowered like women of the ages who had worked in the fields, but other times she felt completely uncherished and used up.
There were days when all she wanted to do was fall to her knees and cry with exhaustion. She had been everything to everyone, but nothing to herself. And it had all come to nothing. Or at least not nothing. It had all come to a ten-second vision of Charlie humping into a bare and moaning woman via an iPhone. It was Rebecca who felt stripped bare. Punished as a witness.
At that moment bickering between the boys could be heard coming from the courtyard. Rebecca groaned and stood up.
‘Leave it to me,’ Yazzie said. ‘I’ll fix them. Now, Sol, please get out of the kitchen. I’m not used to having you in here, hulking about with icing sugar and food colouring. It’s just plain wrong. And take Rebecca with you. Give her a tour. Cheer her up for me.’
‘But the information night at the pub with Andrew is on soon,’ Sol protested, ‘and I’ve only just got in.’
Bec glanced at Sol. So he knew Andrew Travis? The fact startled her. They were so unalike. From different worlds.
‘There’s time,’ Yazzie said, glancing at the clock. ‘Rebecca can come with us. You were going, weren’t you, Bec?’
Bec shook her head. ‘I’m not sure I can. Not now —’
‘Rubbish,’ Yazzie interrupted. ‘I have a plan. After your tour, give me thirty minutes and I’ll transform you into a diva to die for. Charlie won’t know what’s hit him when he walks into the pub. If he’s cheating on you, then he deserves to be shown what he’s so carelessly destroying and throwing away.’
Rebecca glanced at Sol, who was still busy unpacking his ‘Man Cake’ ingredients, his dark eyebrows pulled down over his broody eyes in a frown. Should he also know all her business? ‘I really better get going,’ she said, trying to block any more involvement with the Stantons, regretting the fact she’d come here. ‘The information night starts at six-thirty and I have to get the boys’ dinner. It’s almost five now!’
‘Stay,’ Yazzie implored. ‘I insist.’
Bec looked at the other woman’s pleading blue eyes. She noticed they were not only filled with compassion but also, perhaps, a hint of loneliness. It was too late. She had a brand-new friend. Yazzie was now heavily involved in the grubby secrets of her life. And so too was Sol Stanton, whether she liked it or not.
‘Why go back to him right now? Give yourself some space and time for reflection. I’ll fix the kids something. After Sol’s shown you around, you can go have a soothing bath and then I’ll do your hair and makeup. I’ll pick out a dress for you to wear.’
‘A dress? To the pub? The Dingo Trapper?’
‘Yes! A dress. Oh, there’s strategy in what I do!’ Yazzie said. ‘We’ll show him. Beauty, if used correctly, is strength. And strong you shall be. Sol, don’t just stand there. Take her for a tour. Get her mind back to the place where it should be.’
Sol set down the packet of flour and looked at both women, unimpressed. Just when Bec thought he would refuse, he abruptly said, ‘OK. Follow me.’
As uninviting as his tone was, Rebecca followed in the wake of his expensive cologne.
‘You have a way of cheering up ladies, don’t you, Sol?’ Yazzie called after him in a voice that sounded a little too sarcastic for Rebecca’s liking. Not at all wanting a farm tour, but not knowing what else to do, she followed him meekly.
Ten (#ulink_d7959dd4-8fb2-5914-97d2-26f898ae4eb6)
Sol ate up the distance of the long glass-faced hallway with his stride. He wore classic navy shorts, his legs fit and handsome with skin a delicious-looking milk-chocolate brown. He barely slowed for Rebecca, who had to jog to keep up with him, feeling pummelled by his tail wind. He flung open a door at the end of the wing and held it for her, letting her pass. But then he was off and racing again towards another stone courtyard, this one flanked by rows of beautifully crafted stables of deep red wood, made even more glorious by shining brass latches and hinges.
Giant wine barrels spilled with red and white geraniums, the Rivermont racing colours if the flag flapping in the wind was anything to go by.
At the centre of the yard was a stone horse trough that had a small bronze fountain at its heart. The sound of trickling water soothed the stable courtyard, giving it an aura of tranquillity and opulence. At the other end of the long line of stables, one man was unloading feed bags, another trudging a wheelbarrow filled with stable waste out a side gate and yet another was scraping water from the sides of a deep bay gelding in a washbay. A tiny pasty-faced girl, clearly a trackwork jockey, waved as she carried a saddle pad and disappeared into a stall.
Surprising Rebecca, Sol whistled low, then called out in a deep voice, ‘Hello, my beautifuls! Come talk to me!’
