“Perfect. How sensible,” said Eleanor massaging the cat’s spine down to his quivering tail. “What a darling he is too. Not like our cranky beast!”
“You just don’t understand him,” Amanda said. “He’s very sensitive. Now go with Clancy, Mom. She can give you the five-buck tour. I’m going to take a shower and get changed. See you in the kitchen?”
Her question was directed at Clancy who nodded and grinned at her in a way that was enraging. Amanda took the veranda steps two at a time and into the house, trying hard not to stomp as she went.
Struggling to control the burst of temper, Amanda slipped through the quiet house to her room. She laid her overnighter on the bed and her laptop on her little desk. The room smelled familiarly of beeswax and lavender. Amanda sniffed the air and her shoulders relaxed. “Damn you, Clancy,” she muttered, then grinned as she said out loud the thought that had just crossed her mind, “Home.”
She took off her shirt and tailored long shorts, kicked off her sandals and walked barefoot into the bathroom. The flagstones were pleasantly cool to her hot, sticky feet; she undressed and dropped her clothes into the laundry basket. Then she peered in the mirror to decide whether she ought to shampoo her hair. Her eyes widened in horror as she saw a bite mark on her breast and the other on the side of her neck. Both were edged purple and blue with bruised skin and blood; she had forgotten them but they instantly reminded her of the soreness and ache of rough sex.
“Oh no,” she whispered, fingering the mark on her neck. “How tacky.” She groaned and looked herself in the eye. “Shit,” she muttered, furious and chagrined. Inevitably her thoughts turned to Margo and the night they had spent together and she shivered.
“Amanda! You decent?” Clancy’s peremptory call from the courtyard brought Amanda thudding back to the present and the immediate problem of hiding the bite mark on her neck.
“Bathroom! Give me a minute,” she called back and began frantically searching through her makeup bag for the tube of heavy foundation that she specially kept for zit crises. She unscrewed the cap with suddenly clumsy fingers and realized instantly that it wasn’t going to work: her skin had lost its northern hemisphere pallor and the circle of pink-beige looked exactly what it was: an inept attempt to hide something. “Shit!” Amanda muttered. “Shit! Shit! Shit!”
“No worries,” Clancy called. “Your mum will be in the room across the way from you, we’ll dump her bags and I’ll show her where everything is.”
Amanda tiptoed back into her bedroom, pulled on the shirt, carefully flicked up the collar, dragged on her shorts and pushed open the screen doors. Clancy and Eleanor were in the courtyard and Clancy and Thomas Cat were watching her mother who had already knelt to pull weeds from the herbaceous border. Amanda took a deep breath, then another, in an attempt to slow her racing heart and made her way across the grass.
“Hi,” she said brightly. “What are you up to, Mom?”
“Hi sweetie, you know me! Australian weeds are just as pesky as our New England variety, I can already see that.” Eleanor stood up and brushed her hands together and looked from Amanda to Clancy.
“I’m going to learn a lot from Eleanor,” Clancy said, looking Amanda up and down. “If it weren’t for Renee the garden would be a sad jungle. I’m not exactly green-thumbed.”
“Me neither.” Amanda grinned. “Mom once told me I had black thumbs. That’s after I’d weeded up a bed of lettuce seedling because I thought they were the weeds.”
“Oh, honey, you were only nine,” said Eleanor reassuringly, but she laid her hand on Clancy’s forearm and continued in low tones, “But don’t ever let her loose with clippers unless you really want to cultivate dead stumps.”
“Mom! I only killed one camellia.”
“And the others are still in shock and that was five years ago.”
The laughter that bubbled between the three women miraculously dissipated the lingering animosity between Clancy and Amanda and once again, they looked at each other with pleasure.
Amanda backed away, still enjoying the sparkle in Clancy’s eyes. “If you don’t mind getting Mom settled in her room I really must shower and change…”
Clancy nodded. “Sure. We were on our way, but I thought you’d like to see Eleanor getting her hands dirty within five minutes of arriving.”
Amanda leaned forward and gave her mother a kiss. “Typical. See you in ten.” And she returned to her room and closed the screen doors before stripping off her shirt and shorts once more.
* * *
Fifteen minutes later, Amanda padded barefoot through the house, listening for voices. She pushed open the kitchen door and saw Clancy at the counter chopping iceberg lettuce into long, crisp shreds.
“Hi, can I help?” Amanda said cheerily.
Clancy turned and looked her up and down, taking in the hand-me-down scruffy denim cut-offs and even scruffier, rust-stained pale blue denim shirt. The sleeves had been removed and the shoulders were wet and dark from dripping, slicked back hair.
“Woo hoo, very chic,” Clancy said, her eyes laughing into Amanda’s. “Something tells me you’ve been in an op-shop.”
“No shit, Sherlock, I got these last week. I figured it was time I quit looking like a visitor.”
“Excellent disguise, or maybe assimilation. Which is it?” Clancy’s sardonic eyebrow rose as she continued giving Amanda her full attention.
“Not a disguise,” Amanda said quietly. “Definitely not a disguise. This is me.”
Clancy nodded. “Okay,” she conceded. “Nice.” She turned back to the lettuce, scooped it up in handfuls and dumped it into the big teak salad bowl. “You want to make salad dressing? This plain iceberg is good with balsamic and olive oil.”
“I’m on it.” Amanda took a china bowl from the cupboard and reached for the vinegar and oil bottles.
“Thought we’d have a barbie, make Eleanor feel at home,” Clancy went on as she began slicing beefsteak tomatoes in thick rounds. “We’ve got a load of prawns and I thought fish would be better than steaks after the plane—lighter and easier on the digestion.”
“Wonderful, that’s really thoughtful.” Clancy glanced at her, her nose wrinkled in her “aw shucks” gesture. Then her expression changed as she noticed the chirpy red kerchief tied around Amanda’s neck. Her gray eyes darkened perceptibly and Amanda saw her calculating its meaning.
“Fun in Sydney?” Her tone was cooler.
Amanda took a deep breath as her heart sank. “It was really productive. Really exciting possibilities,” she said and added quickly, “business possibilities, I mean. And Margo was very hospitable. Fabulous apartment.” She clutched the edge of the bowl and began fiercely whisking the vinaigrette with a fork in a struggle to withstand an overwhelming need to check that the kerchief was still in place.
Clancy’s smile was now as icy as her tone. “Yes,” she said slowly, “Margo certainly knows how to entertain. Good party?”
Amanda’s lips twisted in a grimace. “If you like that sort of thing. Believe it or not, it’s not really my scene. But I did make some serious contacts for us. It was fantastic for that.”
“Really? ‘For us’?” Clancy’s chill was not thawing any.
“Yes. Two Moon Bay, of course.”
“I see.” Clancy’s drawn out way of saying the two words suggested to Amanda that she either did not, or was seeing something else entirely. “So you partied with the power dyke set and somehow found time to network too…”
Amanda could not help feeling like a naughty schoolgirl, caught smoking by the head of house, and it riled her. “Are you going to interrogate me for the rest of the evening or is there something else you want me to do?” Amanda was surprised by her own tart response and from her reaction, so was Clancy. She abruptly stood back to squint at Amanda; this time her eyebrows rose together and the hint of a grin flitted across her face.
“Sorry,” she said grudgingly after a moment of silence that seemed to stretch and contract
the space between them. “It’s none of my business what you do with your time and I didn’t mean to give you the third degree.”
Amanda sighed, and the thought crossed her mind that she didn’t mind if Clancy wanted to know what she’d been up to. That she would like her to be interested, but actually not about Margo; definitely not about Margo.
“Maybe it’s time to say ‘pax’ again,” she said, holding out her hand to Clancy.
This time Clancy’s grin was wide and genuine. “This is as bad as the Middle East peace process,” she said, taking Amanda’s hand and giving it a formal one-two shake.
She got to her feet and peered quizzically at Amanda, head slightly on one side. “Definitely pax,” she said and warmth had returned to her voice. “I really am sorry, but to be honest, I’m not that fond of Margo. She’s just not my type.”
“I know what you mean, I don’t think I’m that fond of her either. In New York I was a banker and you know all about that, but I was never in a power dyke set. They’re pretty scary, that lot.”
Amanda’s words came tumbling out in a rush and her true feeling about her new “friends” was news to her as well as to Clancy. So much so that she reached to touch the kerchief before she could stop her hand as a memory of being fist-fucked by Margo crossed her mind. And that was it, she instantly understood; there had been no element of lovemaking in their coupling—she shuddered at the truth of the word—it had been just sex and nothing more.
“Pleasant daydreams?” Clancy’s wicked eyebrow had risen once more. Amanda tipped the bowl to pour the dressing into a jug and grinned sheepishly.
“No, not really, in fact, no, not at all. Just a passing thought that’s now completely passed.” She shoved her hands firmly back into her shorts pockets, causing the cut-offs to slip even further and reveal her lightly tanned belly and the almost invisible blond hair that ran from below her navel to her pubic hair. She noticed Clancy’s glance and quickly hitched the shorts back up her hips. “Bit big,” she said awkwardly. “But they’re so comfortable. I promise I won’t wear them in public.”
“They’re fine. They look cute,” Clancy said, smiling once again. “In fact, they make you look like a naughty teenager—quite fetching, really.” She turned away and set the salad bowl on a large tray that already held a crusty loaf, a butter dish, a jar of mustard, a bottle of ketchup and cutlery. “Let’s have dinner on the veranda, hey? Malcolm can do the barbecue.”
She took Amanda’s jug of salad dressing and placed it on the tray beside the bowl and picked up the tray. “Will you do the doors?”
“Sure.” Amanda hurried in front and opened and held each door for Clancy on the way through the house. Amanda followed her out onto the veranda, groaning inwardly. The last thing she wanted to look like was a naughty teenager, especially at thirty-two and rising and in the eyes of Claire Nancy Darling.
Chapter Thirteen
A little after ten the next morning Jonny, Malcolm and Eleanor got up from the breakfast table to go into Two Moon Bay and show Eleanor the sights. Amanda felt guilty that she had elected not to go with them, but e-mails from potential investors were waiting in her in-box and she wanted to firmly establish the contacts and their money before Christmas and summer intervened and diverted everyone’s attention.
By the time the breakfast gathering had formed she and Renee had already done the milking. She’d introduced Renee to Eleanor who had severely wounded her pride by warmly embracing her friend and saying, “My goodness, Renee, I don’t know what you’ve done with my designer daughter. I’m wondering whether she’s been abducted by aliens and they’ve left someone else in her place.”
“Thanks a lot, Mom,” Amanda said grumpily. She tugged at the kerchief around her neck. It was really too hot to wear it, but the bite mark was still livid on her skin and she could think of no other way of concealing it.
Clancy laughed as she poured herself another coffee and sat back in her chair. “She’s very good with chickens, Eleanor, did you know that?”
Eleanor laughed along with the others. “Actually I do but I had forgotten, to be truthful. I’m very glad she’s using her real talents these days.”
“I’m outta here, I have work to do,” Amanda snipped. “Malcolm, I’ve ordered pork ribs from Mr. Shearman. If you could pick them up on your way home, I’ll marinate them this afternoon.” She sniffed at him, “If it’s not too much trouble, of course, if you’ve finished laughing at me.”
More laughter followed her out of the kitchen and she grinned to herself as she made her way back to her bedroom and her desk. Despite, or maybe because of, the teasing she felt light-hearted, energized and charged with purpose. It was a good feeling.
She opened the first e-mail, it was from Josie Chandler, the owner of Two Moon Bay’s art gallery.
“Hi,” Amanda read. “Been talking to a mate in Sydney. She’s a graphic designer. She came up with this. (See attachment.) Talked to Renee last night and she’s been in touch with Ralph and Jean Morris. Part of their land is beside the highway and they’re volunteering a site for the billboard. Check it out!”
Amanda opened the attachment and up popped a mock-up of a billboard. It read: “Eat real food in a real place with real people. Visit Two Moon Bay. Take the next exit and follow your nose!”
Amanda laughed happily and wished she could show it to Clancy that very minute. The Two Moon Bay Co-op was almost a reality, she realized.
The motto the town had adopted was Belief, Trust and Faith. A few thought it sappy, but most of those at the town meeting had applauded, there were tears in some eyes, joy in others. Still others looked hopeful and some hugged their children and laughed as if they hadn’t done that for a while.
“And it will work, we’ll get through this,” Renee had said to the meeting. She had grabbed her role of elected chairwoman of the co-op with both hands and was transformed by it. Amanda had sat beside her on the platform and said little. There had been antagonism from some. “She’s a bloody American and she’s responsible for the whole horrible mess we’re in,” one man had said morosely. But Renee gave him the sharp end of her tongue and asked whether the meeting wanted to hear what Amanda had to say or not? She had stared down the open dissenter and the rest of the gathering had muttered until a groundswell of “Let her speak,” filled the School of Arts hall.
Amanda was an experienced and persuasive presenter and her PowerPoint display with its easy graphs and bright colored pie charts had been quickly grasped by most people, especially the kids, as it turned out. Even the dissenter eventually sat up and looked interested in what she was proposing and slowly they began to think she might have something. It had been one of the better nights that Amanda could remember, her feeling about it even better than when she had brought in an $88 million deal for eFrères, she had acknowledged to herself.
She opened another e-mail. It was from a handsome lawyer friend of Margo’s whose opinion it was, in answer to a question from Amanda, that “If you can put up billboards on farmland belonging to sympathetic landholders the fast-food people will be furious, but there’s nothing they can do about it. The council or other authorities could give you a hard time, but as long as you play the media card right, you’ll get away with it. And I’ll make sure you get away with it. Great to meet you BTW. Would love to see you when you’re in Sydney again. Maybe we could have dinner and see a movie, or go to the theatre. Carol.”
Amanda copied and deleted the last three sentences before saving the remainder of the e-mail to the Two Moon Bay file on the desktop. She debated whether or not to paste and save the personal message to a Sticky, but did not.
* * *
At midday Amanda got up from the desk and stretched her arms high, trying to relieve her cramped back. She dropped forward and touched her fingertips to the floor and groaned at the stiffness in her thighs.
“That’s it. Got to have a break,” she muttered. She slipped on her sandals, went into the bathroom to have a pee and check h
er neck covering then went in search of a glass of water and Clancy. A minimal search revealed her to be in her own study and in the middle of stretching the kinks out of her own back.
Amanda stood in the doorway and knocked. Clancy swung round and grimaced. “Ouch, that hurts. I think I need a swim to get the knots out. Is that why you’re here?”
Amanda shrugged and grinned. “I need to do something. I’m stiff as a tomato stake.”
“That’s very gardener-ish,” Clancy commented. “Must be having your mother around.” Her smile was wry and Amanda wondered whether she was thinking of her own mother.
“Well, I hope you’re enjoying her too,” she said gently. “Because she thinks you’re Christmas.”
“Must be the season,” Clancy quipped, but her eyes betrayed pleasure. “Let’s go for a swim and maybe we could get the kayaks cleaned up so we can take Eleanor out—make an expedition of it when the tide and wind are right. What do you think?”
“She’d love it although I think we should put her in the double with someone else for her first go.”
“Of course. Okay, see you out the front in five. Go get your cozzie on.”
Back in her bathroom Amanda plastered her neck with the cover-all foundation and hoped for the best. Wearing the kerchief with her swimsuit would draw more attention to her neck and she decided there was nothing for it but to put up with whatever happened next. She found Clancy on the lawn loading the bird feeder with sunflower seeds. She hurried to join her and followed as Clancy led the way to the track down to the cove and the beach.
“If you feel like helping out, that would be great,” Clancy said over her shoulder. “I checked the kayaks earlier and they’re filthy. If you don’t mind cobwebs and getting dirty, I’d love to take them down to the water and give them a bit of a sluice.” She snorted and added, “Malcolm said he do them but I’m afraid everything’s gone out of his head since Jonny Sparrow came to town.”
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