She felt she was talking to a different man. She felt different too. He was listening to her ideas, asking for her suggestions. He’d been watching her at work the entire time, she realised.
‘Our core business is fast, cheap, wholesome food in unfussy surroundings. That’s what’s worked in the UK and what we think will work here too.’
They were looking beyond Hobart already. He’d already made enquiries about setting up their base in Sydney.
‘Your base?’
He nodded.
‘You’re not going back to Manchester?’
‘Just for a few months to finalise things, but then I’ll be coming back here. Well, coming back to Sydney, anyway.’
Sydney was only a two-hour flight from Hobart, she thought.
‘Would you come up and see me there, Juliet?’
‘I’d love to,’ she said.
He smiled at her. ‘I think Mum was right. We make a great team.’
She didn’t blush. She didn’t contradict him. She just smiled back. ‘Yes, we do.’
‘I’m not just talking about work,’ he said.
‘Nor am I,’ she replied.
They’d talked in a rush after that. She didn’t know how to play games and she didn’t want to. She told him, outright, that she had fallen in love with him. He told her that he felt the same way about her. He’d stopped the car then and kissed her. For a long time, until a truck driver going past honked his horn at them.
They hadn’t been able to get to their cabin quickly enough.
She felt him wake beside her. She turned in his arms and smiled.
‘Good morning.’
‘Good morning.’ He sat up, looked around and then went under the covers again, pulling her close to him. ‘I like it here,’ he said.
She was glad. ‘I hoped you would. It’s one of the most beautiful parts of the State,’ she said. ‘There’s a fantastic walk that goes right around the lake and if we time it right —’
‘That’s not what I meant.’ He kissed her. ‘I meant I like it here, here. Here in bed with you here.’
‘You don’t want to go out sightseeing?’
‘Do I have to? Can’t you describe it to me, as I do this,’ he kissed her again, ‘and this?’
She closed her eyes. His fingers started to move across her body. His kisses followed. She realised she couldn’t even begin to describe it.
It was on their way home on Sunday night that she asked him the big question. The one that had been hanging over them since they met.
‘Myles, would you like to meet my family?’
He laughed. ‘At last. I’ve been longing to meet your family. They sound fantastic.’
‘They do?’ Uh-oh. ‘What about lunch next Sunday?’
‘I can’t wait.’
The dining room couldn’t have looked better. Everyone had dressed up. Miranda had left off the more dramatic elements of her make-up, wearing only a little blush and a pale-pink lipstick. All four of her sisters and Leo looked suspiciously bright-eyed, but Juliet could handle that. She had given everyone a talking to that morning.
‘Please, everyone, just behave. This is important to me. If any of you say anything stupid, or try and ruin it, or embarrass me, or make a smart remark —’
‘That’s me mute for the afternoon,’ Miranda said.
‘— I’m going on strike. Never cooking another meal, ever again.’
Myles arrived at five to one. They were all looking through the living-room window at him. He was carrying a bottle of wine and a box of chocolates.
‘Punctual. That’s worth one point,’ Miranda said. ‘A bearer of gifts too. Two points. A little excessive, but noted for its range and generosity.’
He greeted Juliet warmly, kissing her, touching her arm. Five pairs of eyes noted that. He shook Leo’s hand. (A good, firm handshake, Leo reported later.) He said hello in a friendly way to the others. Even more impressively, he remembered their names throughout the lunch.
He was nice to Maggie, ‘but not creepily nice’, as Clementine put it. He was polite. He asked everyone questions. He complimented Juliet on her cooking, three times. He complimented Miranda on the table decoration. It was a pot plant. He asked Eliza for advice on running spots in Hobart. He did his best to find a book that he and Sadie had both read.
After lunch he and Leo disappeared out into the shed together. Pleased as she was that they were getting on so well, Juliet began to worry. What if it was Leo he wanted to meet and spend time with from now on? If Myles ever did come to visit again, he would spend all his time out in the shed…
They all looked out the window, towards the garden.
‘I like him,’ Miranda said firmly. ‘He’s a real man. All man. He’s Manly Myles the Manly Man.’
‘I like him too,’ Eliza said.
‘Me too,’ Sadie and Clementine agreed.
‘Me too,’ Maggie said. She was standing on a chair, also looking out the window.
‘But?’ Juliet asked.
‘But what?’ Miranda asked.
‘What’s the catch?’ Juliet said.
She looked at her four sisters. They all looked back.
‘No catch,’ Miranda said. ‘I approve. And if I approve, so do the others.’
They nodded. Maggie nodded too.
‘Really, Juliet, what do you take us for?’ Miranda said. ‘We’re your sisters, you have lured your potential mate into the house, we have given you our approval. Prithee, what more dost thou ask of us?’
‘They’re coming back,’ Clementine hissed.
The two men were greeted with six innocent smiles.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Sadie had never been busier. Looking after Maggie filled five days a week and the occasional weekend. The scrapbook took up any other time she had to herself. That was nearly finished. She’d prepared more than forty pages of drawings, photographs, notes and scraps of memorabilia. There was just the cover to do now. In the meantime, she’d discovered she had another project to look after, this one just as secret. The hiding of the Moonstruck.
The purple bottle had turned up suddenly three weeks ago, hidden inside her pillow case. Since the first time she’d found it in her library bag, more than four years earlier, it had appeared out of the blue in her room or hidden in her belongings more than a dozen times. It had never been spoken about among them, not since that very first day Leo had handed it to Juliet so solemnly. There was no pattern. Sometimes weeks went by without her seeing it. The longest period had been four months, but she’d guessed it was moving back and forth between her sisters during that time. The previous winter she had found it hidden in her things three times in less than a month.
It still thrilled her to come across it. She found it in the bottom of her bed one cold winter’s night, hidden inside her hotwater bottle cover. Whoever had done it had been quick. She’d only been in the bathroom brushing her teeth for less than a minute. She received it once in a parcel delivered by their postman, her name and address typewritten, the postcode Hobart and no clues about the sender inside. In turn, she had come up with some inventive hiding places of her own. Tucked deep in the lining of Eliza’s all-weather coat. In the bottom of Miranda’s ‘touch at your own peril’ box of organic muesli that she kept in her bedroom should anyone steal so much as a bran flake. She engaged a school friend to deliver it to Juliet in the café one afternoon, in the guise of a large tin of coffee. She’d had fun the past week or two trying to decide who would get it next and when.
The following Saturday afternoon she had the house to herself for once. There had been a clatter of activity that morning, shouts and conversations and doors opening and slamming. Sadie lay in bed, pretending to be asleep, until they had all gone and the house was quiet.
She ate a quick breakfast – plain toast and tea as usual – eager to get started. She began with a little poke around each of her sisters’ rooms, ostensibly looking for hiding places. Juliet’s was always worth a look, especially
now she had a boyfriend. Miranda’s was usually the most interesting, with new perfumes and creams cluttering her dressing table and new decorative items appearing every few weeks. Sadie sprayed on a bit of scent, then ran her fingers along the new lamp on the bedside table. The shade was made from strings of beads in blue, red and green. Sadie turned it on, admiring the multicoloured light it sent out into the room. She put her hand inside and noticed the shadow it cast on the wall. The perfect shape of her hand, in three colour hues…
It was trickier than it looked. She tried to rest the Moonstruck bottle inside the lampshade but it kept dropping out. Sticky tape would melt in the heat. String would be too obvious. She needed fishing line or something invisible. Leo would have some in Shed Land, surely. It was out of bounds when he wasn’t there, but he’d never know, would he? She’d be in and out in less than a minute.
The shed was locked but they all knew where the key was kept. The door opened smoothly. It was funny to be in there on her own. Scary and exciting, all at once. There was no fishing line in sight. She tried the door of the wooden cupboard that took up one wall. It was locked. She tried the second key on the keyring. It worked. There were five shelves, each as tidy as the other. The first held files. There were pieces of metal, tiny bottles of liquid and soldering material on another shelf. Bundles of Leo’s notebooks, boxes of test tubes, an old-fashioned weighing scale on another. On the bottom shelf was a bright-red basket with a lid, made from woven straw. It stood out against all the grey files, plastic boxes of wire, screws and unidentifiable objects on the shelf beside it.
She knew even before she reached for it that the basket had belonged to her mother. She remembered seeing it in her parents’ room, on the bedside table on her mother’s side of the bed. Why had Leo kept it in his shed, though, instead of in the wardrobe with the rest of their mother’s belongings? Did any of her sisters know about it? Should she wait until they came home? Tell them, so they could ask their father about it together? Or be first at something for once? She hesitated for only a moment. She checked the windows of the house. No sign of life. She still had time.
She slowly took the lid off. On top were three glossy magazines: Woman’s Owns from the UK, still in their wrapping, dated 1971, the year their mother had died. They must have kept coming for a few months before someone cancelled the subscription. Sadie moved them to one side, resisting a temptation to open and read them. She found a scrapbook, just like the ones their mother used to fill. Sadie opened it. The pages were blank. Underneath the scrapbook was a coloured plastic box. She picked it up. It rattled. She prised off the lid. Inside were glue, scissors and coloured pens. All the items their mother had used to create her scrapbooks and recipe books. Sadie didn’t take them out. She just touched them gently, thinking of her mother using those scissors, those pens.
There was another cardboard box at the bottom of the basket. She lifted it out, her heart beating faster. She didn’t know how or why, but when she thought about it afterwards, she realised she knew in that moment what was in there. She was right. Inside were two bundles of small blue notebooks. Her mother’s diaries.
Sadie looked at them for a long time. Perhaps she was mistaken. Perhaps these were blank ones that her mother hadn’t started writing in yet. Wiping her hands on her jeans first, she lifted out a bundle and slid one of the diaries out from the rubber band. ‘Tessa Faraday’ was written in curving writing across the front. Sadie opened the cover and turned to the first page. There was her mother’s signature again. She flicked to the first page. To a second page. A page at random in the centre. Her mother’s distinctive writing sprawled across each page, words jumping out at Sadie. She shut that one, opened a second one. Another year, each page filled to the edge with writing. She did a quick count. There were nine diaries. She checked the dates on the inside cover. Each one covered a two-year period, the earliest from 1953, the last one the year she died, 1971. Eighteen years of her mother’s life documented in these pages, here in front of her.
The dog that lived two houses down started barking. It meant someone had walked past the front fence. As swiftly as possible Sadie put the diaries back into the cardboard box, replaced the lid, the plastic box, then the magazines, moved it all back into the cupboard, shut and locked it. Her hands were shaking. It took three tries to lock the shed door.
She was down at the end of the garden, pulling dead leaves off the lemon tree in what she hoped was a purposeful-looking way, when Miranda appeared on the back verandah.
‘Is Dad there?’ she called out.
‘Haven’t seen him,’ Sadie called back.
‘It’s your turn to do the washing, remember.’
‘I was going to do it later.’
‘Don’t forget.’ Miranda went back inside, slamming the door behind her.
Sadie stayed where she was for a few more minutes, thinking hard. She had intended to tell Miranda what she’d just found. To tell all her sisters. But in that moment she decided not to. Not yet, anyway. She pulled off a few more leaves, then joined Miranda in the house.
The others came back later, Leo last of all. Sadie was sure they could tell from looking at her. It must have been obvious. She imagined standing in the middle of the room and shouting, ‘I’ve found Mum’s diaries! They’re in Dad’s shed!’ Just as strong was the feeling that it was her discovery, her secret, and that it was best she didn’t say anything at all.
She lost interest in the Moonstruck and the fishing line after that. The next time she was in the house on her own she pushed the purple bottle inside one of Eliza’s drink bottles, zipping up the gym bag. She then hurried down to the shed. Her hand was shaking as she unlocked the doors. She had barely taken the diaries out of their hiding place in the cupboard when the dog began barking. Cursing under her breath, she put everything back as quickly as she could, locked up, ran through the garden, onto the verandah, through the back door and into her room. She had just landed on her bed, pulling down a book at random from the shelf, when Eliza came in.
She took one look at Sadie’s face. ‘What have you been up to? You look guilty as hell.’
‘Nothing. And it’s none of your business anyway.’
‘You’ve been snooping at something, Sadie. You always get exactly the same look when you’ve been up to something you shouldn’t have.’
Sadie nearly told her. It was on the tip of her tongue. But then what would happen? Eliza would tell Juliet, who’d tell Miranda, who’d tell Clementine and then they’d all go in a delegation to Leo who’d say no, they couldn’t read them. Perhaps this time he really would burn them. Sadie would get into trouble – huge trouble – for being in Leo’s shed without permission. She knew in that instant she couldn’t tell Eliza. She also didn’t want to tell her. She wanted to be the one to read their mother’s diaries first.
‘Tell me,’ Eliza said, pinching her.
Sadie looked, very obviously, at Eliza’s gym bag, back at Eliza, then at the gym bag again. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ She thought about adding, ‘You’re carrying on as if you’ve been moonstruck or something,’ before deciding it was too obvious. Eliza got the hint anyway. Sadie slipped off the bed and went into the living room, turning on the TV.
Eliza was quite different when she came and joined her a few minutes later. Sadie knew the look. The secret, amused look they all wore now and again, whenever the Moonstruck had changed hands.
‘Cup of tea, Sadie?’
‘Thanks, that’d be great,’ she said.
Over the next days Sadie returned to the shed as often as she could. The opportunities were rare. She was minding Maggie full-time during the week and couldn’t risk taking her in with her. Her niece was talking so much these days – and noticing just as much. She was sure to say something over dinner about her and Sadie being in Tadpole’s shed together looking at the old books. On the weekends Leo was there most of the time.
She didn’t dare take the diaries out of the shed. She barely dared to
read them. But once she started it was hard to stop. It gave her great comfort to touch the pages her mother had touched. It was even more exciting to read the words her mother had written. Fate must have brought her to the cupboard that day. She had started reading from the first diary. It had been an odd feeling to realise she was older now than her mother had been when she was writing those first entries. Tessa was writing about her work as a secretary, nights out in London, outings with girlfriends, shopping expeditions. There were little quotations Tessa must have loved. A theatre ticket stuck on to a page. Some of it was a little uncomfortable to read. Tessa was obviously the prettiest girl in her group of friends, and there were lots of references to her looks and her clothes, alongside occasional dismissive remarks about her friends’ outfits. Sadie guiltily enjoyed every word. Her mother had a very good turn of phrase, whether she was describing a dress or being a little mean about someone she knew.
Sadie allowed herself ten pages each visit. It was a little like reading a novel when she already knew the plot – the last pages she had read had been descriptions of Tessa getting ready to go out dancing with friends, about a crush she had on a boy in her town. Sadie had done the calculations and worked out her mother was about twenty years old. It meant she was only eight months away from meeting Leo. Even though Sadie was dying to read about that, she kept herself to the ration. It was her own lovely secret.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
In later years, Leo referred to the family meeting held the day after Maggie’s fifth birthday as the Night of the Bombshells. It was as if a giant had come stomping along, he said, picked up their house and shaken the contents until half of the family flew out of the windows and landed hundreds of kilometres away.
Miranda told him that was a bit fanciful.
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