That summer of his twelfth year had been sweaty and sticky, and in more ways than one when he discovered what it meant to have the hots for one of his SES mates. The day he’d hinted at his feelings, he’d braced himself for a good ribbing. Instead he secured an ally, one with whom he’d always shared a special bond. Oddly amused by Aiden’s admission at first, rather than giving him a hard time she’d made a confession of her own, further cementing their friendship—a kind of mutual understanding—even though Aiden figured the confession was most likely a lie, made up to make him feel better. That was the kind of relationship he shared with Rory. Nicknamed Trouble from an early age, she’d worn the title with pride, the moniker becoming more pertinent when puberty hit. With their connection sealed tighter still by their shared confessions, Aiden knew if there was one girl who could straighten him out, it was Rory. He wished she’d try.
Like he could get that lucky!
From that moment on the daring duo got themselves in more and more trouble. Over the years they ignored safety warnings, entered flooded causeways to ride rapids, and generally tested every boundary. If ever the kids at school played ‘Truth or Dare’, Aiden would play truth while Rory always chose the dare. For some reason the tough girl had a need to prove herself to everyone. Aiden discovered she was more than capable of matching half the blokes in school when it came to the physical stuff, earning herself a new nickname in the process; Butch Bitch was not one Aiden ever used, not unless he wanted a mouthful of abuse and a smack over the ear.
Once old enough to complete their SES training, the need to risk their lives for fun changed to risking their lives to save lives: any lives—especially wildlife—repeatedly ignoring SES protocol to do so. If Aiden wanted to refuse, she would sucker him in with the water works and act all soft and needy.
At sixteen, his hormones remained confused. The other girls at school considered Aiden Egan cute, while the boys taunted him, calling him a sissy for getting on better with females. Riley Tubbs was a constant source of agitation, one time bullying Aiden into playing matchmaker for a school dance. Aiden had refused. ‘You’re no different to a street dog on heat, Tubbsy,’ he’d mocked. ‘As if any of the girls would be interested in you sniffing around.’
‘Well, you’re clearly not interested in any of them. I could die of old age if I waited for you to make a move on one. What’s wrong with you? You queer or something?’ Aiden had refused to react until Tubbsy laughed and said, ‘Besides, I didn’t say I wanted a date with a girl. I said I wanted to go with Rory.’ That smart-arse comment had earned Riley Tubbs a punch in the nose, Aiden breaking it good and proper too. The next week, once word got out, Tubbsy had squealed like a pig upon finding a dead red-belly black snake in his schoolbag. Aiden could guess who might be brave enough to carry out that stunt. From that day, the sound of a squealing pig made Aiden think of Rory and he’d smile with smug satisfaction.
At school, mostly to make themselves popular, some snotty-nosed kid would blurt out the latest rumour they’d heard about the way Aiden’s mother had deserted him and the family. Jibes about his mum hurt. To protect himself, he turned his attention to protecting the girl who didn’t need his protection, and risking life and limb to rescue any dim-witted creature she had to save, because she was the only one who seemed to understand and accept him for what he was—warts and all.
Whatever happened to Tubbsy? Aiden didn’t know and didn’t particularly care.
And what had happened to the girl they’d nicknamed Trouble? Aiden had stopped wondering about Rory years ago after she ran off to the big smoke and left him behind.
Bloody women!
All going well, if the heavens held back the rain for a few more days, the pub would empty and this city trio would be out of here and back in their comfortable lives sooner than he could say . . .
‘You what?’ Aiden narrowed his eyes to a death stare.
‘I told the ladies that the cottage has no one in it,’ Banjo said, as if he’d done no wrong. ‘It’s safe, on high ground, and better suited than the pub, especially with that mutt of theirs. Only until they get the roads in order. That way the Newtons over there will have a room in the pub rather than bunkin’ down in an uncomfortable car while their van’s gettin’ towed and fixed up.’
‘The Newtons?’
Banjo pointed. Aiden hadn’t noticed the couple behind the growing sea of orange overalls. ‘They lost a wheel and buggered their suspension. Had to abandon the lot,’ he said. ‘Was Sharni’s idea to offer the cottage to the ladies. I say it’ll be good for Liam to have a young friend for a while, and you know the pub’s no place for little Matilda, Aiden. I also don’t think it’s a good idea to send the three of them off to Saddleton in this weather. Plus—’
‘Okay, okay, I get it, I get it.’ Aiden relented. Banjo always had a solution; he was an eternally glass half-full type. Nothing fazed him, not even all the trouble on the other side of the family after Aiden’s mother took off when Aiden was a baby.
‘You’d be best to make sure the lady gets what she needs in Saddleton. I know you’ve got a load of that stuff you grow to get into town.’
‘I don’t grow stuff.’ Aiden cringed anytime Banjo used those words around people who didn’t know him.
‘You know what I mean. We could be isolated a few days, so best you stock up at the same time.’
‘That was the plan, Banj. Sorry, I’ve got a lot on my mind this morning.’
‘I know, lad, but from what the boys are sayin’ you’d best get a wriggle on.’ He nodded towards the table of rural emergency service volunteers, all currently eyeing Aiden, probably wondering what stuff he had growing and where.
‘All organised,’ Banjo’s booming voice announced to the ever-increasing rabble of locals looking for updates. ‘My nephew, here, will go to Saddleton straight up. If there’s anything any of you be needing, you’ll find Honey in the main bar. She’ll add your needs to the list. I suggest you don’t keep her waiting, neither; you know our Honey! Sharni, lass, let the ladies see the cottage and unload their gear. You, Aido, can call by and collect Paige after you collect The Beast.’ Banjo tossed Aiden the keys to his truck. ‘Tank’s full, but take it easy, okay? No cowboy nonsense. You know the rules. You hearin’ me, lad?’
‘Yeah, yeah.’ He wanted to say it had been a while since he’d been any sort of cowboy, but there was no use arguing with Banjo. Besides, everything his uncle had just said made sense, as usual. ‘I get the message.’
The Beast would get them to Saddleton and back.
No worries.
6
Paige
‘Whoa, that is one heck of a country house,’ Paige said, glancing at Alice in the passenger seat. Alice had been quiet the entire trip, staring out the side window with only the occasional, vague nod and some unintelligible noise to every one of Paige’s childish exclamations:
‘Oh, look, it’s a horse!’
‘Oh, listen, can they be bellbirds?’
Followed by several generic ‘Oh, wow!’s thrown in for good measure.
With the road out of town flanked by paddocks, Paige had remained vigilant, slowing to pass the occasional wandering cow, or steer around birds flocking to the numerous water-filled potholes. Partway up the mountain the landscape had changed from flat to rock-strewn waves of green that rose up and fell away to create shadowy gullies. The higher they’d climbed, the narrower the road had become, until they were navigating around jagged rock faces cloaked in moss and ferns, the occasional miniature waterfall creating small ponds on the road’s shoulder.
Ragged rocks jutting out on one side of the road, and an equally steep ravine on the other, should have unnerved Paige. Instead she’d smiled, confident in her driving ability, the car’s safety features, and in the delightfully overwhelming sense of This is going to be perfect. Buoyed by this feeling, when the bends had ended and a patchwork landscape in hues of green and brown plateaued before her, she let herself breathe.
L
iam had accompanied them in the Audi, having attached himself to Matilda over breakfast—much like the vegemite clinging to the corners of his mouth. He’d insisted his directions would stop them getting lost, even though Sharni’s royal blue demolition derby-ready Datsun 180B in front had set an easy 70 kph pace most of the way, slower on the steepest inclines and bends.
So much for Banjo’s: ‘Better get a wriggle on.’ If this was an example of hurried, Paige could get used to the lifestyle.
‘Oh, look—lambs!’
‘You’ve seen a lamb before, Paige,’ Alice said dryly.
‘Not recently. Not one that isn’t trussed and in a baking tray.’ She laughed, refusing to let Alice’s mood ruin the moment.
Brake lights up ahead indicated they were slowing.
‘Look over there, Mati.’ Paige pointed out the higgledy-piggledy row of containers remodelled as make-do mailboxes—one resembling a cow—each box perched on a pole, each pole jutting out at odd angles from between long roadside grasses.
When the car rumbled over the cattle grid in the driveway entrance Matilda startled, then giggled. Wrought iron gates, no doubt swish in their day, were lost under a creeping vine of giant purple flowers, and the colonnade of pine trees they drove under doubled as a guard of honour. The trees were home to squawking white cockatoos, busily carpeting the driveway with pine needles and broken bits of branch. When a chewed pinecone missile landed on the Audi’s bonnet, accompanied by Liam’s explosive sound effects from the backseat, Paige smiled and pictured Robert’s horrified expression.
When the trees thinned, the grand size of the property spread out before them.
Liam, in a very grown-up voice said, ‘You’ll live over there. That’s the guest cottage. It’s for guests.’
Paige tried to recall Liam’s age from her conversation with Sharni last night. Such a bright-eyed, well-spoken boy. Today he was wearing an oversized Stetson-style cowboy hat that accentuated the spindly body and spaghetti-like arms he was waving about excitedly in the back seat. ‘I live over there in the big house with Mum.’
‘Everybody out,’ Paige said after stopping behind the battered car with the patchwork paint job. ‘And no one walks away empty-handed. Mati, you’re in charge of Mummy’s handbag and carryall.’
‘Liam, baby,’ Sharni called as she approached them on foot. ‘You take Alice and Mati to the cottage. I’ll take Paige on a quick orientation tour of the main house while we wait for Uncle Aiden to arrive.’
Uncle! Paige reflected on the terse, tattooed chef, trying to picture him in loving uncle mode.
‘Let’s start over here.’ Sharni hooked Paige’s arm, looping her wrist through the crook of her elbow in the way old friends do. ‘The entire place, including the cottage, is hooked up to electricity, but water is pumped from tanks and from the creek down the back. So if a storm brings the lines down, there’s no electricity. No electricity means no pumped water.’
‘I have plenty of bottled water left over,’ Paige said, sounding pleased. ‘I’m prepared.’
‘No water also means no flushing toilets, no taps and no showers.’
‘Oh.’
‘Don’t sound so worried. Power failures don’t happen a lot. Figured I should warn you, that’s all. Plus, we operate on a self-managed sewerage system. Fancy talk for an absorption pit in the ground. All this rain might make the toilets gurgle a little. It’s only ’cause the ground’s so wet. Nowhere for any of it to go.’
It? Okay, so this cosy, country experience was losing its charm, while Paige’s failed olfactories were likely to be a blessing.
‘I’ll be sure to pass on the information,’ Paige fibbed, deciding such facts were better kept on a need-to-know basis.
Cosy reappeared as they made their way along the veranda lined with chairs—lots of chairs in lots of shapes and sizes: slatted Cape Cod loungers, armchair recliners, wooden rockers, short, three-legged stools. There was an ugly swing seat, most likely from the seventies, with an insipid paisley pattern in yellow, complete with mouldy awning and bordered by a tatty white fringe. Strung between two upright veranda beams was a more modern-looking multi-coloured hammock, and entwined along the entire length of the railing was a pink and white flowering vine Paige couldn’t identify.
Cosy however was not the word to describe the interior of the main residence. Rambling? Yes. Or quintessential perhaps, with the wide front entrance framed top and sides with leadlight glass. The door opened onto a commodious living area with fireplace and velvet flocked wallpaper in bold stripes of maroon and gold running vertically below the beige picture rails. Aside from the exposed wall hooks and the faint outline of pictures long gone, the place was as neat as a pin. Surely no one lived in this house, especially not a young boy. It resembled a museum more than it did a home.
The instant her words, ‘You live here?’ slipped out, Paige hoped the incredulousness didn’t offend.
‘Weird, I know, but we never use this part of the house, or half the bedrooms; there’s six all up. I get hives thinking about cleaning that many rooms. We live quite happily in the back section. Everywhere else is out of bounds. I tell Liam unless he wants to clean it he’d better not use it. Through here.’ Sharni led Paige into the kitchen, past the wooden butcher’s block with an undulating surface from years of use, through the sunny living area that was very lived in, and onto the back part of the wrap-around veranda that overlooked several fenced paddocks.
‘How much land do you have?’
‘Not me. I’m kind of renting. I keep the place lived in, care for the animals, keep everything ticking over, that kind of thing. Can’t tell you how much land is left.’
‘Left?’
‘The property used to be much bigger.’
‘There’s a river down there?’ Paige assumed from the distant line of lush green trees dotted with white birds that a watercourse meandered beyond the paddocks, although she was unsure how she knew that fact.
Maybe you did learn something from four years of high school geography!
‘Close Enough Creek,’ Sharni said.
‘That’s its name?’
‘Not sure it’s the official name. Locals around these parts invent their own names for most things—including people. Sometimes they stick. Whenever there’s a major rain event the river becomes the big topic in the pub. The usual answer to every enquiry about water levels is always the same: “Close enough.” She was getting a little too close to the horses last night so I moved them up near the house. One property boundary runs along that waterway.’ Sharni pointed. ‘Nice on a hot day and swimming’s normally good, only I wouldn’t try at the moment, not with the under-current. There’d be a fair bit of debris in there, washed down from the ranges. Liam knows it’s out of bounds and he’s a strong swimmer. Make sure Mati gets the message.’
‘I will, thanks, although I might take a wander down at some stage. I find watching the water can be restorative, don’t you think?’ Paige didn’t mention that this trip was supposed to be, in part, therapeutic.
Sharni shrugged. ‘I’m not a water person. Horses do it for me.’
‘I need to thank you and your dad for suggesting we stay here. I hope we won’t be too much of an inconvenience or outstay our welcome.’
‘Good to have some female company, and Liam and Mati seem to have hit it off.’ On cue and in unison their squeals rang out from the smaller cottage—about fifty meters away, down a gently sloping paddock—where another swing seat, set to one side of the front porch, seemed to be the source of the excitement. ‘Let’s face it,’ Sharni laughed. ‘An amused kid can be therapeutic, too. Plus, I might get to spend a bit more time with these beauties.’
Three horses grazed in nearby paddocks, muzzles lost in sprays of long summer grasses. One horse was close by, while to the left in the distance, two animals faced each other, like neighbours nattering over the side fence.
‘I haven’t been around horses much.’
‘Just try and keep me away.
’ Sharni smiled and shaded her eyes to look beyond the cottage. ‘That’ll be The Beast. Cargo’s non-stop barking gives it away,’ she said, already hightailing back inside the main house. ‘Tell Aido to wait while I grab something for him to drop into Saddleton post office.’
‘Oh, sure.’ Paige hovered conspicuously on the well-trodden dirt path and pretended to watch the horses, their fly-swatting tails swinging, ears pricked. As one turned away, cutting a lazy path through the grass, Paige noticed a fourth horse alone on the far side of a separate, smaller yard. The animal’s back was bowed, its head drooped, a tatty tartan coat hanging limp and a mask shielding the horse’s face. While the masked horse remained motionless, the nearby stallion ambled over to Paige for a pat, its gender abundantly clear. While keen for her daughter to experience the country, she hoped to avoid explaining that to Matilda.
‘Aiden’s not here?’ Sharni was back, mounting the paddock fence with ease and throwing one leg across so she straddled the top rail.
‘Not yet,’ Paige said, delighting in the tangle of horsehair in her fingers.
‘Be careful of him. He’s old, crotchety, stubborn, and won’t be tethered for too long. You know what I’m saying?’
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