by Cathryn Hein
Contents
About the Author
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-one
Twenty-two
Twenty-three
Twenty-four
Twenty-five
Twenty-six
Twenty-seven
Twenty-eight
Twenty-nine
Thirty
Acknowledgements
About the author
Cathryn Hein was born in South Australia's rural south-east. With three generations of jockeys in the family it was little wonder she grew up horse-mad, finally obtaining her first horse at age ten. So began years of pony club, eventing, dressage and showjumping until university beckoned. Armed with a Bachelor of Applied Science (Agriculture), she moved to Melbourne and later Newcastle, working in the agricultural and turf seeds industry. Her partner's posting to France took Cathryn overseas for three years where she finally gave in to her lifelong desire to write. Cathryn’s previous novels include Promises, Heart of the Valley, Heartland, and Rocking Horse Hill.
cathrynhein.com
ALSO BY THE AUTHOR
Promises
Heart of the Valley
Heartland
Rocking Horse Hill
For Jim
The entrance should have told her this was no ordinary property. Teagan brushed a lock of lank hair back from her sweaty forehead and checked the lettering again. Falls Farm was spelled out across the open wings of the gate in beautifully formed wrought iron. Definitely the right place. Two kilometres from the village shops, as Ness had directed.
It was the stock grid and the ‘Beware of the Ram’ sign nailed to the brick column to her left that had Teagan confused. As far as she knew, Aunt Vanessa didn’t run stock. She owned a couple of hundred or so acres overrun with kikuyu and God knows what else. Probably feral goats or hobby-farm escapees. A nightmare, in other words. But apparently that was normal for the Falls Valley. The once rich grazing land was now home to even richer Pitt Street farmers from Sydney and horsey types who had no idea about pasture management. Or much else, given the state of some of the properties Teagan had passed. Perfect post and rail fences, sweeping tree-lined entrances, enormous mansions, and bloody awful paddocks.
With a shrug, Teagan put the LandCruiser into gear and followed the steep bitumen drive upwards. So what if everything was a mess? She wasn’t here to be a farmer.
At the top of the slope, the road took a last curve before opening on to a large brick-paved yard. A pale lemon-and-grey timber cottage with a wide, welcoming verandah fenced by a single rail and dotted with armchairs occupied the very peak of the hill. A matching grey post and rail fence surrounded a capeweed-infested lawn and garden, yellow flowers bright in the late-afternoon sun. From an open wrought-iron gate, decorated in the same pattern and lettering as those at the entrance, a paved path ran towards a set of timber steps. Teagan turned off the car and studied the front door, expecting her aunt to walk out at any moment and greet Teagan with spread arms and a smile that always made the world seem to glow with her special brand of personal warmth.
It was good to be here.
And heartbreaking.
Teagan closed her eyes and rested her forehead against the steering wheel as another wave of hurt threatened to overwhelm her. Twelve hundred kilometres from South Australia’s lower south-east to the rolling rural fringes of Sydney that tickled the Blue Mountains’ feet and the loss and betrayal remained as strong as when she’d left Levenham the day before. Maybe even worse.
Hot tears prickled. She swallowed them away. Teagan might be a complete headcase but that was one piece of her screwed-up life she’d prefer to keep to herself. She squeezed her eyes closed and pressed her head harder against the steering wheel as she felt the dark slick of despair begin its oily, insidious creep.
Not now. Please not now.
An almighty crunch shot her upright. Teagan released a high-pitched yelp and attempted to scramble away from the driver’s door only to be jammed in place as the seatbelt locked. The ute shuddered from whatever had crashed into it. Her ears rang with the hideous noise of the impact. The aftermath sounded even worse: her breath ragged and heartbeat pounding against the sudden stillness.
Quiet reigned, broken only by the metallic pings of the cooling engine and resettling ute. Teagan stared at the driver’s side window as, with a rattle and scrape, one corner of the glass dropped a centimetre in its frame and caught. A light wind brushed the triangle of space, freshening the car’s stale interior with a waft of eucalyptus. She blinked and blinked again, her lips parted in disbelief.
Movement had Teagan refocusing. A broad behind appeared, followed by more rust-tinged fleece as the sheep backed away. A set of thick curled horns were next, followed by an extremely ugly head. Vacant blue-grey eyes lifted upwards, and for a moment Teagan thought she saw the ram’s mouth quiver as though attempting to smother a smile.
Her jaw tightened. She was grimy from the long drive, exhausted and fractious thanks to a nervous night camped in her swag in the tray of her ute at a Hume Highway truckstop, and furious with a universe that seemed intent on swindling her out of everything she’d ever held dear. A psychotic ram was it.
She pulled the door handle and gave the panel a kick. The ute door swung open with a groan. The ram backed up a couple more steps and lowered its head.
‘Oh, no you don’t, you little shit.’
The ram charged, but Teagan had been around sheep and cattle all her life. She dodged to the side and snatched at a horn, hooking her hand around the rough surface and gripping tight. Her stiff muscles protested at the force of the ram’s fightback. It shook its head in fury and released a deep bleat, then attempted to butt her leg.
Teagan jerked on the horn. ‘Cut it out!’
They eyed one another, panting. Mongrel merino cross, she guessed. Likely hand-reared and feral because of it.
Keeping a forceful grip on the ram’s horn, Teagan fired a look at her ute. A large round dent hollowed the driver’s door. To her horror, her throat thickened at the sight. Heat began to needle her eyes. She swallowed and breathed hard, forcing the approaching tears away. She would not cry over her ute. And she certainly wouldn’t cry over anything some stupid pet ram had done.
As if sensing her fury, the ram made a deep guttural noise that it probably thought sounded tough but made Teagan wish she had a castrating knife. Although it was far too late for that. The ram had balls like the pendulum of a grandfather clock. Only hairier.
‘Oh, shut up,’ she said instead, kneeing its head aside.
Teagan glanced at the house and frowned. Where the hell was her aunt? She stared at the large, open-bay machinery shed to the right of the main yard. A sporty-looking Alpha Romeo occupied the middle bay, a ride-on mower and other junk another. The third housed a battered aluminium horse float. Where the paving ended, a fissured red-clay-and-gravel track cut past the main yard and house before disappearing down the far side of the hill.
The ram yanked against her hold but Teagan maintained her grip. She hunted for a pen to house the animal while she searched for Ness, and spotted what appeared to be a horse enclosure behind the shed.
‘Come on, you,’ she said to the ram, steeling her legs for the haul ahead.
‘Teagan! Darling!’
It was five years since Teagan had last seen he
r aunt, and if it was possible for someone to become more womanly with age, Ness had achieved it. She skipped across the front lawn in a voluptuous display of curves, cleavage and legs, all set off magnificently thanks to a tight-bodiced cobalt-blue dress with a sweetheart neckline, and weirdly, a pair of thick pink socks and boots.
Ness radiated against the muted eucalyptus background of Falls Farm like a lit-up show ride. Gloriously rich, dark-red curls bobbed around her lightly freckled face. Her full lips were parted in a wide welcoming smile that added becoming crinkles around her delight-filled blue eyes. Rounded hips seemed to swing with each step.
‘Darling!’ She spread her arms to expose a creamy and very full décolletage, spiking envy into Teagan’s less-endowed chest. It was as if buxom beauty had flowered on Vanessa’s side of the genetic tree and spread no further. ‘You made it!’
Teagan adored her aunt, but seeing a woman over twenty years her senior skip towards her like Sophia Loren on steroids when she felt like utter crap plummeted her already fragile mood to rock-bottom.
She pointed towards her ute. ‘Your ram attacked my car.’
Ness halted at the sheep’s side and rolled her painted lips together as she surveyed the damage. She regarded Teagan sideways from under mascara-darkened lashes, eyes still sparkling. ‘Well, yes. He is, you know, a ram.’
‘Not funny, Ness.’
Her aunt leaned across the sheep and quirked a finely plucked eyebrow. ‘Not even a little?’
Teagan rubbed her face and tried to find her sense of humour, but it had been stolen away along with everything else she’d once loved.
Ness touched her arm. ‘I’m sorry about your car, darling. I was so excited about your arrival that I forgot to lock Merlin up.’
‘Merlin? His name is Merlin?’
‘Merlin the Magic Ram.’ Ness placed a hand on the sheep’s head and gave him an affectionate rub. ‘So named by the family who bottle-raised him after he was abandoned by his mother. They thought him cute until he started bowling over the children. Then it was either the chop or here, and I couldn’t stand by and let the poor thing be slaughtered for doing what comes naturally. It’s hardly fair. He has his moments, I admit, but I’ve grown quite fond of him.’
The ram sniffed Vanessa’s knee, lifting the skirt of her dress slightly to expose more smooth white leg. His nose wrinkling, Merlin raised his head and curled his top lip before releasing another throaty bleat.
‘Oh, be quiet, you stinky old goat. Here,’ Vanessa said, grabbing a horn, ‘let me sort him out. You look like you could do with a wash and a drink. There’s a fresh jug of margarita in the fridge. Help yourself.’
Leaving her bemused niece, she marched the ram towards the yard Teagan had spied earlier, Merlin bunting and bellyaching the entire way.
Not for the first time, Teagan wondered how Ness and her mother could be sisters. It wasn’t just the difference in their ages – twelve years thanks to Vanessa’s unplanned arrival – it was their completely different perspectives on life. Teagan’s mother was a typical conservative farmer’s wife. Penny Bliss wore practical clothes, kept her hair short and nails blunt, applied makeup only on special occasions, and buried any sensuality she might possess somewhere Teagan had never seen. She hadn’t even been able to confront her husband when she’d suspected him of spending hours trawling internet porn sites. The shame had been too much for her.
Ness, on the other hand, dressed and acted like an Italian film siren, albeit with dark-red hair and pale, Celtic skin. She liked good food, wine and cocktails, enjoyed foreign films, spoke French and Italian, was rarely seen without makeup, and dressed in ultra-feminine clothes. She was also a double divorcee whose mysterious past in Europe made Teagan’s mother’s lips purse in disapproval at any mention of the subject. Which had naturally left a teenage Teagan completely in awe of her aunt and her exotic life.
Now, as a twenty-nine-year-old adult whose own life was exotic only for the mess it was in, she couldn’t help feeling envious. But she was also grateful. Ness was nothing if not big-hearted. When Teagan had learned the truth about the disaster her father had brought on her family, Falls Farm had seemed the perfect place to run.
Teagan just hadn’t counted on a horny, fat-headed ram to spoil the welcome.
A hot shower and a tumbler of soury-sweet margarita did wonders for Teagan’s mood. Suddenly, the late afternoon seemed to brighten, and even the sunny swathes of capeweed flowers across Vanessa’s lawn looked pretty instead of rampant. Following her aunt’s cue she rested her feet on a cushion-topped cane stool and settled back to sip her drink while the day dipped towards evening.
The view from the verandah was nothing special, but what it lacked in beauty it made up for in serenity. The steep hill on which the house was perched kept them above the racket of the busy road below. A dense plantation of eucalypts running the length of the slope added another layer of screening. Bellbirds populated the branches, their sweet song filling the atmosphere. Occasionally, a male whipbird would split the air with its distinctive long whipcrack call, his partner following with her choo-choo. West of the house, where the land tumbled down a ragged paddock to a line of lush scrub that followed a rambling creek, even more birdcalls echoed.
Teagan closed her eyes and thought of Pinehaven, the only home she’d ever known, now lost to her, and how it would sound without her there. Whether the land would be weighted and hollow with failure the way she was. Its fauna made mute by the burden of sorrow. The rustle of grass and trees a melancholy, tuneless whisper.
They were stupid thoughts, for their pointlessness more than anything. Yet the questions remained in Teagan’s mind, mingling with the ever-present anger and grief.
Ness seemed content to let her enjoy the quiet. They’d chatted about her trip as Ness had helped cart her pathetic possessions to the house, the subject of Teagan’s parents only briefly touched on. Halfway through the second trip an overweight fluffy mutt, shoulders and back stained and reeking of something very dead, had bounced from the back of the house and bounded around Teagan with her tongue flapping. Ness had shooed her away, but the dog – a labradoodle called Saffron, or Saffy for short because of her golden coat – had kept up her welcome dance, retreating only when Ness had dumped Teagan’s suitcase on the top step of the verandah, plucked up a hose and jetted it at the dog.
At which point, Ness had announced there was also an amiable and most definitely unstinky cat hovering somewhere for Teagan to make friends with, two female guinea pigs named Betty and Wilma, and a piebald horse called Claudia. All of which had come into Vanessa’s care because they’d been dumped by their owners, were strays, or, in Claudia’s case, rescued from cruelty.
The parallels between her own desperate arrival at Falls Farm and her aunt’s menagerie, Teagan didn’t wish to contemplate.
To Teagan’s surprise, the house had proved much larger than it appeared from the front. Thanks to a modern extension, the cottage opened up at the rear into a vast living area, featuring a modernist, scallop-shaped fireplace kept hanging in space only via its flue, around which three well-padded two-seater sofas were arranged. Two large bedrooms, one with full ensuite, and an office, ran off the main area, along with another bathroom and toilet. Parallel wings extended the house outwards to more rooms. Between the wings and beyond ran an inviting deck, accessed from the living area by a set of glass-and-timber concertina doors. The deck ended in an infinity-edged pool that offered a soothing view over the small valley and densely canopied creek below.
Noting the outdoor lounge, gas heaters and hooded stainless-steel barbecue, Teagan had expected Ness to settle into that comfortable area for drinks. But when she’d padded into the kitchen after her shower, her aunt had directed her to the cushioned cane setting on the front verandah.
‘It’s peaceful here,’ said Teagan, opening her eyes and taking another sip of her drink. ‘Very quiet.’
Ness gave a secretive smile. ‘For the moment.’
Teagan threw her a sideways look but Ness didn’t elaborate.
‘Did you want to ring Penny?’
Teagan shook her head.
‘Teagan, darling, she’s your mum.’
The sympathy and concern in Vanessa’s voice made Teagan look away, breathing through her nose with her mouth held firmly shut. ‘I don’t want to speak to Mum. Or Dad. Not yet.’
‘Do you mind if I call? They’ll want to know you arrived safely.’
Teagan turned back, anger igniting. ‘I’m not sixteen.’
Ness gave her a raised-eyebrow look that intimated Teagan may no longer be a teenager but she was definitely acting like one. ‘Sixteen or sixty, age doesn’t stop parents from worrying about their children.’ When Teagan remained mute, Ness stood and rested a hand on her shoulder. ‘You can’t blame your parents forever. People aren’t perfect, they make mistakes.’
Something Teagan knew too well. ‘I know. I just . . .’ She shook her head. Maybe later. Now was too soon. The way she felt, forever would be.
Her aunt squeezed her fingers and let go. Teagan listened to the creak of floorboards as Ness made her way inside, and swallowed another gulp of margarita. Her aunt’s soft voice drifted from the house. She thought of her mum, the pathetic way she’d stood at the door of the tiny renovated timber worker’s cottage Teagan had occupied at Pinehaven, wringing her hands as she apologised again for her husband’s deeds and her own ignorance, while Teagan had dumped clothes into duffle bags and seethed with fury.
After multiple warnings, most of which Teagan was unaware of, the bank had foreclosed on Pinehaven, her beloved home. Not because the property couldn’t sustain a family or be profitable. But because her father, for reasons no one could understand and that he would not deign to explain, had been suckered into buying a program for trading in a share derivative that Teagan had never heard of. For hours he’d shut himself away, monitoring, tapping, following his path to riches, while her mother had done nothing and the scam artists who’d sold him the program had shared high fives and clapped their greedy hands with glee.