“What do you think she’ll be like?”
“No idea.”
“Have you spoken to her?”
“No. Brian said he chatted with her via Skype. She’s from Cessnock. In her sixties.”
“What’s her name?”
“Belinda Merritt.”
“Never heard of her.”
“Speaking of people you may know…” Beth paused. Dylan looked up. “I met a girl in the Woolies car park the other week. A woman. A…a younger woman. Younger than me, I mean. Not all that much younger than you.”
“So we’ve established that she’s young?” Dylan teased.
Beth’s cheeks reddened. “Holly says to tell you that she hasn’t forgotten her promise.”
Grinning, Dylan dropped her gaze to her plate.
“What was her promise?”
Dylan looked up at the question. Beth’s eyes burned. Dylan’s stomach leapt. “That if I didn’t make a move on you, she would.”
“Oh.” Beth looked like she hadn’t been expecting that. Her surprised expression blanked as she seemed to replay the rest of her encounter with Holly, joining up the dots.
“She would’ve just been mucking around,” Dylan said. “She thinks you’re gorgeous.”
Beth raised her gaze. “Yeah, well…I’m not interested in anybody else,” she said bluntly.
Dylan looked out at the driveway, watching the rain pelt down. She knew Beth was waiting for her, and she’d been absolutely patient, respecting Dylan’s boundaries. But to see the want so brazen in Beth’s eyes made Dylan as anxious as it did excited. Was she ready for this? Had she stopped hurting?
All that she knew with absolute certainty was that she couldn’t lose Beth again. She couldn’t stand to think of anybody else’s hands on her—of anybody else loving her. But what if she wasn’t enough for Beth? Beth had left the Lakes before, and there was nothing to keep her from taking off again—especially if Dylan continued to keep them in this holding pattern. Time and time again, Beth had said that friendship was enough, but Dylan knew that wasn’t true. Even if Beth didn’t leave, she wouldn’t stay single forever.
She could feel an impulse bubbling, and she knew she had to remove herself from the situation before she did something reckless. Collecting their bowls, she went back inside. In the candlelight, she heated a pot of water to wash up.
As they cleaned up their mess together, the storm eased outside to drizzle. Beth took the last bowl from Dylan’s sudsy hands. “It’s my birthday today,” she said softly.
Dylan’s gaze shot up. She watched Beth swirl the chequered tea towel over the back of the plate. “It is?”
Beth nodded, refusing to meet her eye.
“You should have told me.”
Smiling softly, Beth shrugged.
Dylan pulled the plug and let the water drain from the sink. She’d been so swept up in herself that she’d barely given thought to Beth’s new life. Other than Rose, Beth probably didn’t have anybody in the Lakes. She’d had to resort to calling Dylan when her car had broken down. She was all alone. It was simple to imagine Beth’s daily routine, going from Rose’s house to the homestead every day. Rinse, repeat.
It was Beth’s birthday and her family was back in Sydney. On Dylan’s birthday, her family always took her out for dinner, and Elma had come along, too. When she’d moved into the homestead, her mum had always shown up for breakfast before she started work. But Beth…Beth had nothing like that.
Her throat tightened as she remembered Beth’s letter. Beth had made it very clear—she’d traded a life in the city for a chance with Dylan, knowing full well that there were no guarantees that they could ever move past their fall out. But Beth was willing to have her heart broken just for a chance, and she seemed okay with that. That somebody like Beth would do that for her…it was as ridiculous as it was brave.
The silence stretched, drew long and warm like the evening. Catching Beth completely off guard, she leaned over and pressed her lips gently to Beth’s cheek. “Happy Birthday, Lizzie Borden,” she whispered.
When she pulled back Beth’s gaze was soft and tender.
“Night,” Dylan whispered. She left Beth standing there, the plate loose in her hand, and hope tight in her grip.
Dylan rang the doorbell and watched her mother’s silhouette slip into the hallway and hover hesitantly. She had every right to be concerned. It was late, and with a dead phone battery, Dylan hadn’t called in advance to warn her that she was on her way. “It’s just me, Mum, don’t worry,” she called out.
Her mother opened the door. “Dyl…it’s almost ten thirty, we’re about to go to bed.” Her expression tightened in confusion as she looked down at the freezer bag in Dylan’s grip.
“I know, I know, I’m sorry. I just…I don’t have power at my place. And I need to use your oven.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Beth placed her cooler bag on the kitchen table. “Did you have power last night?”
Hovering behind the opened fridge door, Dylan shook her head. “You?”
“No. I did, however, have a candlelit bath.”
It was hard not to notice how Dylan’s cheeks coloured at Beth’s cavalier comment. Dylan scratched at the back of her neck and twisted one of the souvenir magnets above the handle. “So we got power back here about twenty minutes ago,” she deferred.
“Perfect timing.” The fridge beeped in protest at being left open for too long. “Did we leave something in there?” Beth asked. Had something gone off overnight? She couldn’t smell anything… She moved closer.
Dylan shot up straight. “Oh, no, no,” she said. “Nothing went off.” Why did she look so alarmed?
She reached over the door between them and swiped Beth’s lunch container from her hands. She slid Beth’s container into the fridge with a forced smile.
At the sound of tires on gravel, they both looked out the kitchen window. A car was already pulling into the parking bay. Belinda.
“Will you come out in a sec so I can introduce you to each other before the guests get here?”
Dylan nodded. “Give me five minutes.”
Just before lunch, when Beth led her tour group down the back stairs to stumble upon Dylan’s group of five in the kitchen, her first thought was that she’d gone through her script too quickly. She been making reasonable time, but somehow, they’d collided. Then, her eyes landed on the cake on the table.
A dozen candles burned in a half-moon around a chocolate plaque—Happy Birthday Beth. Her cheeks flamed as, at Dylan’s orchestration, a kitchen full of strangers sang her “Happy Birthday.” She tried to meet Dylan’s eye, but she wouldn’t look her way, fussing with finding a knife. Dylan had done this for her. She’d gone out of her way to order Beth a birthday cake to make sure her special day was acknowledged.
With a lump in her throat, Beth blew out the candles and made her wish.
“What should we do about it?”
“We could just leave it in the fridge for tomorrow…”
Dylan raised an eyebrow at her. They returned their gazes to the opened cake box on the counter and appraised the remaining sixth of the cake. “Or we could just eat it.”
Beth nodded. “We could also do that.”
With a smile, Beth divided the sixth into two large pieces. She took the offered fork from Dylan’s hand.
“That didn’t take much convincing.”
As Beth leaned back against the counter, she squinted against the sunset streaming through the kitchen window. “You’re one to talk.”
“Belinda was a bit offended about all the wheat in this,” Dylan said, her tongue swiping out to lick vanilla icing from her lip.
She chuckled at the memory. When Dylan had cut the cake, Belinda had squinted down at the cake. “I’m gluten-intolerant,” she’d said. “Is there a substitute?” Dylan had blinked, smiled empathically and offered a simple apology. It had been hard to miss the way Belinda rolled her eyes before she headed back to the gift shop.
“Who cares?” She took another bite. “More for us. This is delicious.”
“Thanks.”
She looked up at Dylan. Slowly, she chewed her strawberry. Thanks.
Dylan frowned. “What?”
“Where did you get this?”
“I made it.”
“Dylan!” She spun and looked down at the empty box, her blurry reflection staring back at her in the silver cardboard platter. “But it was in a cake box…”
Dylan cackled. “People can buy cake boxes.”
Beth couldn’t believe it. The fondant was the perfect thickness, the three layers of sponge remarkably even between the light chocolate filling. And the carefully piped cursive of her name on the plaque… She’d honestly thought it was a store-bought cake. “This is amazing. How did I know you for three months and not know you could bake like this?”
She shrugged. “Neither of us had a birthday.”
It must have taken Dylan hours. She must have been awake until some ungodly hour. As it was, she’d left late, after the storm had finished, and that had been… “Hang on,” she said, “I thought you said you didn’t have power?”
“I didn’t.” Her cheeks glowed. “I went to Mum and Dad’s and used their oven.”
Her pulse raced at the thought of Dylan driving all the way across town in search of an oven just to bake her a birthday cake.
I love you, she thought. “Thank you for going to so much trouble,” she said.
* * *
Just two weeks after Belinda joined them at the homestead, it was clear to Beth that there hadn’t been a feud like Dylan and Belinda’s since Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? Beth couldn’t pinpoint exactly when it had started. There was no obvious catalyst. Perhaps it was her gluten-heavy birthday cake that had done it. It had to have been something that first day Belinda had arrived, Beth thought, because World War Three had been declared on her birthday and neither side was prepared to surrender.
Dylan turned the aircon up. Belinda turned it down. Dylan turned it up again. Belinda turned it down again. Beth turned it off. When Dylan set up the float each morning, she would pour the coins into the till in an unorganised mix so that Belinda would have to traipse back to the homestead for her reading glasses. Dylan left containers of food in the fridge that she “planned to eat later.” Belinda took it upon herself to clean out the fridge and bin Dylan’s questionable sandwiches and pasta dishes.
When Dylan went overtime with her tours, Belinda made a point of “picking up her slack,” taking on Dylan’s waiting school group tours regardless of the fact that nobody had asked her to take them. Belinda’s “proactiveness” disrupted the allocation system so much that Beth had to ask her to stop taking on guests that weren’t assigned to her.
One afternoon, Beth was heading up to the office when she passed by Dylan’s tour in Sarah’s bedroom and caught her deliberately trailing her fingers across the Perspex cover of Sarah’s bookcase—the cover that Belinda had vigorously cleaned that morning. Their eyes met across rooms. Beth arched an eyebrow; Dylan grinned. When Dylan’s tour was finished, Beth handed her the Windex.
On a daily basis, Beth worried that the house was about to get its second show of murder. And if they didn’t kill each other sometime soon, Beth was going to kill the both of them.
Chapter Twenty-Five
With her last tour before lunch finished, Dylan caught up to Beth in the hall. “Hey, Blondie! We need a new globe for the floodlight on the east wall,” Dylan told her. “Do you want to piggyback my twelve o’clock tour on yours so I can go into town to get one?”
“Sounds like a plan.” Beth’s smile fell. “Oh. I’ve left the company credit card at home. Look, just take a fifty from the till and I’ll get cash out tomorrow and repay it.”
“Cool.” Dylan headed into the kitchen. “I’m starving. Need some energy before I go.”
Beth’s laugh was light. “It’s a ten-minute drive.”
“Ten minutes too long.” Dylan opened the fridge and looked inside. Bingo. Beth had always been the Julia Child of sandwich-art. She peered over the fridge door at Beth. Her eyes were glued to her phone screen. “Can I have half of your sandwich, Lizzie?”
“Sure,” Beth said distractedly.
Dylan took a bite. The bread clogged in her mouth like wet cardboard. She analysed the half in her hand. Beth had really lost her touch. Had she ever heard of butter? Was she on some kind of diet? She binned it. “Your bread is off, tastes like shit. Dry as all hell…”
Beth looked up. Her eyes went wide. “That wasn’t my sandwich!”
“What? There’s only one in there—”
“I’m sorry.” A gasp. “I spaced out for a second. I didn’t bring a sandwich! It’s Belinda’s!”
Dylan bit her lip. “Shit!” She looked back into the bin. “Fuck!”
“Oh my god, Dyl!”
“Stop laughing! It’s not funny! She already hates me! She’ll think I did it on purpose!”
As she watched Beth press a hand to her mouth in an attempt to stifle a laugh, she thought for a second. “Okay, okay. How long do you think it’ll be until she comes in for lunch?”
Beth looked down at her watch. “Well, she just took her morning tea break so…an hour and a half, probably.” She could hear Belinda down the hall in the parlour. Ninety minutes. She still had two-thirds of a tour to go, and then another.
Dylan lifted the sandwich from the bin.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Beth gasped. “You can’t put that back in the container!”
“Relax,” Dylan laughed. She pried the bread open. No butter, obviously. Tomato, ham, cucumber…was that pepper? She licked the bread.
“Dylan!”
Definitely pepper. Simple as A B C. She grinned up at Beth.
Beth’s forehead creased. “What are you up to?” she asked.
“I can remake this,” Dylan said conspiratorially.
“She’ll know!”
“She won’t. Woolies only stocks two kinds of gluten-free bread.”
“You can’t!”
“Watch me.” She snatched her keys from the drawer. “I’ll be back soon.”
Beth caught her wrist lightly. “Get us pies at the bakery? It’s on me.”
Dylan grinned. “At a time like this? I’m on a mission and you’re worried about your stomach?”
Beth was trying to control her smile. “You’re on a mission because you were worried about your stomach. Ask Belinda what she’d like, too.”
Dylan groaned. “Do I have to? I’m going to all this effort to remake her sandwich, she can eat that.”
“Play nice.” She winked. “She’s gluten-intolerant anyway, she’ll say no.”
Dylan was taking the fifty from the till when Belinda stepped into the gift shop. As Dylan placed the yellow note in her wallet and closed the till, she didn’t think anything of Belinda’s calculated stare. “I’m going into town, Belinda. Would you like something for lunch?”
“No, thank you.” Belinda pursed her lips and clutched at the ugly blue beaded necklace below her collar. “I have a sandwich in the fridge.”
“’Course you do.”
By the time Dylan returned, she’d been gone a full hour. Reluctant to disturb Belinda if she was still finishing up in the kitchen with her first tour, Dylan went around to the north face of the homestead and entered through the original front door.
Big mistake.
Belinda was heading out of the parlour with her second tour, guiding them through the hall with remarks about the Association locating identical wallpaper to the Blaxlands’ decor. Buzz. Incorrect, Quiz Master. Found it myself in a shop in Newcastle three years ago…
Dylan held the grocery bag behind her legs and forced a smile as the group crossed to the sitting room. When Belinda finally noticed her standing there, making way for the tour, her glare shot daggers. Bright red lipstick was smeared across her crooked canine, and her round face was pink with exertion. She l
ooked like she’d just run a lap around the homestead. God, those eyebrows are the stuff of nightmares.
Striding past to follow her group, Belinda clicked her tongue.
Yikes.
Beth was in the kitchen. “She knows, doesn’t she?” Dylan asked.
“Nope.”
“Well why did I cop a Ms Trunchbull glare just now?”
“Don’t call her that.”
“We’re both thinking it. She’s like Ms Trunchbull and you’re Miss Honey—terrified of her.”
“I’m not terrified of her.”
“Yes, you are. So if she doesn’t know, why the glare?”
“She saw you take the fifty from the till and she told me.”
Dylan threw the grocery bag onto the table. “She has it in for me.”
“At least we know she’s honest.”
“She doesn’t trust me. She’s got a bad attitude. Easy to see why the Association’s shifted her from museum to museum for the last five years.”
“Yes, well, you be careful with your little games…”
“I don’t play games.”
Beth rolled her eyes. “I’m serious. The moment she uses the word ‘bullying’ on an HR report, you’ll be in a world of trouble and I may not necessarily be able to help you if it’s out of my hands.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Eating her pie, Beth stood beside Dylan, watching with jittery enthusiasm as she remade the sandwich. “She had the ham right to the edge,” Beth interjected, pinching the rind further across the slice of bread.
Dylan gently swatted her hand away. “Stay out of this.”
“I may as well help. I’m already going down as accessory to the fact. You need to hurry up. You’ve been at this for fifteen minutes. She’s almost finished with her tour.”
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