The Vet from Snowy River

by Stella Quinn

  Lawyers in suits, batting words back and forth in some musty old courtroom, and her future on the line. She’d known it was coming. She’d known it would be a burden. What she hadn’t factored in was how hard it would be to stay strong for her aunt, for her employees, for the sake of the café’s bottom line, when the world was conspiring to bring her to her knees.

  ‘Vera? You still there?’

  ‘Yes, sorry. I was just brooding for a second.’

  ‘You’re going to want to give me a decision on your plea in the next couple of days. We don’t want to mess the court around, and we want time to work on our arguments depending on which way you want to go.’

  Time for her to worry. Spend her last cent on legal fees. Be so distracted she messed up her new business. She sighed. ‘Thanks, Sue. I’ll think it over and let you know.’

  Sue made a long breathy noise through her phone receiver, and Vera could almost smell the gush of nicotine. ‘I thought you’d given up smoking?’

  ‘My lungs did too. But then my ex-husband rang and enraged me so much, it was a cigarette or an aggravated homicide charge. I figured a cigarette wouldn’t ruin my career.’

  Vera laughed. ‘You’re a funny girl, Sue. Sorry I got a bit antsy before, I appreciate your hard work, really I do. Thank you.’

  ‘You won’t be thanking me when you see my latest bill. I just emailed it to you.’

  ‘Yikes. I better get the hell off this call,’ she said, only half joking.

  She said goodbye and hit the end icon. Those meringues had better be ready. She might need to comfort-eat a dozen or so before she headed home. Tidying up the table she’d been using to sort through her paperwork, she stood up and made for the kitchen. Meringues, home, wine, bath. Maybe she’d have the wine in the bath.

  The oven door felt cool when she rested her hand against it, so she chanced opening it and had a look inside. Ah. Dozens of baby meringues winked back at her, their creamy tips just blushed with brown colour. She smiled. No matter how crappy things got, there was always something to be glad about in the kitchen. She hauled out the trays and began lining them up on the stainless steel bench, then frowned as a noise caught her attention.

  Crying? She listened, then heard faint scuffling—not in the café, but out in the back alley.

  She drew back the bolts and opened the door, and there was the cat, perched on the step as though it had just knocked and was awaiting a butler to grant it entree into a grand home.

  ‘Can I help you?’

  She really must be tired if she was speaking to stray cats. She went to shut the door, then hesitated. For all its attitude, the cat was thin. ‘Wait there,’ she said. ‘Not a paw is to come inside. This kitchen is run by the anxious owner of a safe food handling certificate, and cats are strictly forbidden.’

  She rummaged through the cupboards until she found a saucer, then poured a liberal dollop of milk into it from a bottle in the fridge.

  ‘Here,’ she said, and sat the saucer down on the step. ‘But don’t think this is going to happen again. I’ve no time for relationships, not even with half-starved cats.’

  The cat looked up at her with wide grey eyes.

  ‘Do you have a name?’

  Its eyes blinked, and her thoughts drifted to the other name she’d heard that day—Josh, at the wake, who’d introduced himself again just before Marigold dropped her bombshell—as though she’d needed to be reminded who he was.

  Her head knew she’d sworn off men for eternity, but her hormones were clearly still adjusting. Maybe she should have a cold saucer of milk herself.

  The sniffling started up again, but the cat had hunkered down on the step, helping itself to a drink. If not the cat, what …

  While all she could see were the skip bins that lined the dark recess of the alley—one for each of the storefronts that faced Paterson Street—since the sun had disappeared behind the mountain range to the west, the back alley was just a little creepy.

  Another noise. Definitely crying.

  ‘Who’s there?’ she said, staying within the doorway so she could leap back inside the kitchen and bolt the door shut if she had to.

  ‘Nobody. Go away.’

  Hmm. Young, female, stroppy. Sounded like a teenager having a crisis. She should leave her to it; god knows, she was no good at fixing a crisis. She’d learned that lesson.

  Her eyes fell to the cat who was staring up at her from lopsided eyes. Well, do something, its expression seemed to say.

  She rolled her eyes. Cats, crying teenagers, and craft groups for lonely widowers all in the one day. She was turning into a one-woman charity shop. ‘Would “nobody” like a meringue and some milk?’

  There was a long pause. So long that Vera wondered if the crying girl had scampered away in the shadows, then a voice sounded from nearby.

  ‘You got a Coke?’

  The girl stood just outside the pool of kitchen light spilling into the alley.

  Vera’s vision of herself reclining in her bath with Mozart in her ears and a glass of deep velvety shiraz in her hand evaporated. ‘Sure, I’ve got Coke inside. Come and sit in the kitchen with me while I box up my batch of meringues.’

  The girl stepped closer, and Vera tried not to raise her eyebrows at the outfit. The boots alone must have weighed as much as bricks, and her skinny legs didn’t look strong enough to lug them around. Plaid skirt the colour of a school bus, eyeliner stripes making her look like a sad fairy penguin … so this was the modern-day version of teen angst. How well she remembered her own.

  ‘Just step over the cat,’ she said. ‘It’s easier than trying to encourage him to scram.’

  The girl dropped to her knees. ‘Your cat’s a she.’

  ‘Oh. He … I’m sorry, she isn’t mine.’

  ‘British shorthair. Expensive cat to be a stray.’

  Vera followed the girl inside. ‘You know your cats.’

  The girl stiffened as though Vera had just said something horribly offensive. She replayed her words in her head. What was so bad about suggesting someone knew something about cats?

  ‘There’s Coke in the big fridge. Bottom left, hiding behind the organic stuff. Help yourself,’ she said, and started rummaging in a drawer for storage boxes. ‘You any good with scissors?’

  ‘With scissors?’

  ‘Yep. I need to layer these meringues into these boxes, and if I don’t put a square of waxed paper between each layer, the tops get ruined.’ She handed over the roll of paper and a set of kitchen scissors. ‘Actually, might want to wash your hands first. That back lane isn’t the cleanest place in Hanrahan.’

  She paused, hoping the prompt would push the girl into saying why she’d been lurking there. Nothing came, so she tried another tactic.

  ‘I’m Vera.’

  ‘Poppy,’ the girl said as she dried her hands on the handtowel.

  ‘Uh-huh. You live here?’

  ‘No freaking way.’

  ‘Oh! Are you lost? A runaway? A time traveller from another dimension?’ She watched the girl’s face as she plucked a waxed paper square from the pile stacking up on the bench. The girl was neat, fast, and totally adept at snipping. ‘Only, I’m just wondering why you were crying in the alley.’

  Poppy’s fingers slipped on the roll of paper. ‘I wasn’t crying.’

  Denial. Okay, that was a defence she recognised. ‘Good to know. Only, I’m new in town. If you’re having a full-on teenage crisis, I don’t know who to call. Your mum?’

  ‘She’s in Sydney.’

  ‘Dad?’

  ‘Like he’d care.’

  Aha. She must have had a fight with her dad. ‘Sisters? Brothers? A cool unmarried auntie who drives a moped and wears men’s clothes?’

  The girl’s voice was quieter than it had been before. ‘I’m new in town, too, sort of, but don’t worry because I am not staying. Six hours in Hanrahan has been six hours too long. And get this … everyone here seems to think they know more about me than I do myself. An
d they don’t! They haven’t even met me before! And I do have an auntie here who’s kinda cool, but she works with my dad.’

  Vera sealed off a box then reached for the last few meringues on the baking tray. Okay, that was hopeful; the girl had family in Hanrahan. Maybe Poppy just needed to cool off some, then she’d be happy to go home. A little like her meringues. She picked one up, offered it to Poppy. ‘Want to try one?’

  ‘I guess. I’ve made a few meringues myself, you know, back in Sydney, where everything used to be great until Dad wrecked my life.’

  Vera popped one in her own mouth as she studied the girl. She dodged the wrecked-life comment and focused on the other bit. ‘Oh, you bake too? No wonder you’re such an expert with food storage.’

  Her guest gave a little snicker, which encouraged her to think Poppy was feeling a little less blue. ‘Anyone can cut paper.’

  Vera smiled. ‘Maybe. You know, Poppy, as fun as this is, we can’t stay here all night. I bet your dad’s missing you and wondering where you are.’

  Poppy sighed. ‘Can you keep a secret?’

  She frowned. Sure she could, but she was out of her depth here in teenager land. What if the girl told her something that shouldn’t be kept secret?

  ‘I can, yes,’ she said. ‘Except if it’s a personal safety issue. Then, sorry, I’ll have to blab it to someone who can help.’

  The girl frowned. ‘Ew. It’s nothing like that. Okay, the reason I was in that dumb lane was I got mad with some dumb kid called Braydon. Like that’s even a name.’

  ‘Why? What happened?’

  ‘I’m surprised you didn’t hear it from here.’

  ‘Hear what?’

  ‘The yelling. Dad’s business is just across the park. He was trying to be all friendly and cute and “you’ll love it here, Pops”, but really he just wanted me to do some dumb chores, but then this woman with big hair and her kid got all up in my face and it all went bad. Epically bad.’

  ‘And there was yelling? Your father shouted at you?’

  ‘What, at me? No way! Dad’s the best.’

  Oh, this was so confusing. ‘I thought your dad had wrecked, um, your life and everything.’

  ‘Well sure, he has, but … whatever. It’s complicated.’

  ‘Poppy, maybe I’ve eaten too many meringues and my brain’s clogged up with sugar, but I still don’t understand.’

  ‘It all happened when I was looking at the guinea pig and the Braydon kid asked me if it was true what he’d read in the paper and what everyone was saying about my mum.’

  ‘In the newspaper?’ Vera tended to avoid the Snowy River Star, as well as the national papers. Part of her survival strategy was pretending her old life hadn’t existed, and journalism was part of that old life. ‘What’s everyone saying about your mum?’

  ‘Yeah. Good question. And I was just about to ask him that, but then my dad went apeshit crazy and told Braydon to watch his mouth, and then his mum went even crazier and told Dad it wasn’t her son’s fault if Dad chose to bring his mistakes back into town and he should have kept his trousers on back in high school even if his science teacher was a cougar and a hussy who should have gone to prison not Sydney, and then Dad went all green-looking and stiff and said in this cold voice my daughter’s not a mistake, and I was like, what the hell, does she mean me? I’m the mistake? And then Dad says Kelly Fox, I think you’d better take your son and your guinea pig and your vicious bitchy self the hell out of my office, and she started crying and then I started crying and I ran out of there and hid in the alley and wished I was dead. Or maybe in Sydney.’

  ‘I see.’ Well, that was a lie, because she didn’t see anything at all after that impassioned outburst. Mistakes? Trousers? Guinea pigs?

  Poppy shrugged. ‘It doesn’t matter anyway. I’m just here because Dad made me come see for myself what this stupid town is like. I’m not staying, I don’t care how many puppies he bribes me with.’

  ‘That’s too bad. My café manager was just telling me we should hire some casual waitstaff to help us. You know, in school holidays especially.’

  ‘You mean, you’d hire me? Like, if I was up here in the holidays I could work in your café and bake epic meringues and stuff?’

  Vera shrugged. Underneath all that mascara and angst, Poppy seemed a sweet kid. And washing dishes and clearing tables was bound to be more fun than crying in dirty access lanes. ‘Yep. Here in my café, although maybe the work would start off with kitchen duties and waitressing and we could work our way up to baking. It’s not every day I meet someone who can cut such a neat square of paper.’

  The girl almost grinned. She looked shyly up at Vera, then took a big breath in, let a big breath out.

  ‘I’ve got to be back in Sydney for school at the end of next week, but I’ve got, like, weeks off at the end of fourth term. When can I start?’

  CHAPTER

  9

  Josh pulled his truck into the narrow car space at the back of the clinic and killed the ignition. Wherever Poppy had run off to, he hadn’t found the place. He’d checked the movie theatre, the narrow strip of pebbled beach down by the lake, the park, the old cemetery, the shops around the town square … she was nowhere. Only bars and restaurants were still open now, and no barman in town would let Poppy in. Despite the pierced eyebrow and eyeliner fetish, she looked younger than fifteen. Way younger.

  Crap. He may as well just get it over with. He pulled his phone out of his pocket, sat there in the dark with it a second before punching in the number.

  ‘Josh, hi. Everything okay? Poppy texted earlier and said she’d arrived.’

  Beth Horrigan. His one-time high school science teacher and mother to his daughter Poppy and, more recently, a five-year-old set of twin boy hellions, courtesy of her husband Ron Seeto.

  ‘Hi, Beth.’

  ‘Riiiight. I take it from that tone you’ve seen the eyebrow.’

  ‘It’s not that. She’s run off. She hasn’t called you by any chance?’

  ‘No. Hang on a second … Ron, honey? Have you heard from Poppy?’

  Josh listened to the rumble of a deep voice in the background, then Beth was back.

  ‘No, nothing here. It’s getting late, Josh. And is it cold up there? Did you check the bus depot? Maybe she’s trying to get back to the city.’

  Hell. No, he hadn’t thought of that. ‘Good idea. I’ll go there now.’ He had a sudden mental image of her standing by the Monaro Highway thumbing a lift from some old guy in a beige sedan who looked like a dad but was really a pervert with a secret room under his toolshed.

  He dropped his head in his hands. ‘This is all my fault. I pushed her to come here, Beth. She’s lived her whole life in the city, I don’t know why I thought this was going to be a positive change for her.’

  ‘Hanrahan is your home, Josh. There have been Codys there for generations. You didn’t want to leave that town; you left for me.’

  He did. And he’d do it again in a heartbeat. ‘I’m not ashamed of us, Beth. We are good people.’

  ‘We were young and stupid people. You were just a bit younger than me, that’s all. And that town was never going to forgive me for destroying the future of their golden boy. First University of Sydney scholarship ever awarded to a student from Hanrahan, thrown away when that same golden boy knocked up his high school science teacher.’

  ‘Trainee teacher. And I’m pretty sure I’d graduated before you let me get my horny teenage hands under your sweater.’

  ‘Bloody hell, Josh. Try and remember I’m on speakerphone, would you?’

  Oops. ‘Hey, Ron.’

  ‘Hey yourself,’ said Beth’s husband. ‘Speaking of teenagers with, um, hands, you want me to drive up and help you look for Poppy?’

  ‘Give me an hour or so, Ron. There’s a few places I haven’t checked yet.’

  ‘You got it. Call me if you need me. I can drive through the night and be there before morning.’

  ‘Thanks, man.’

  Bet
h’s voice came in over the family room ruckus he could hear in the background. ‘What happened? Why did she run off?’

  He pulled himself together. There’d be plenty of time for cataloguing his mistakes once Poppy was safe. ‘You remember Kelly? My age, curly hair, cried in class whenever she broke a nail.’

  Beth’s voice was wry. ‘I blanked out every face in that town the day they ran me out at the end of a pitchfork.’

  He would have grinned if he wasn’t so worried. ‘Well, unfortunately she hasn’t blanked you and me out. She was at the clinic this afternoon with her kid and an overweight guinea pig. Asked Poppy how she felt about everyone knowing her dad got seduced by his teacher and got her knocked up and—’

  ‘Oh my god.’

  ‘Yep.’

  He heard Beth’s long drawn-out sigh. ‘We should have told her.’

  He should have. He was the one who’d come back to Hanrahan, stirred up all the old gossip, all the busy eyes wondering just when had his and Beth’s affair started. He was damned if he’d give them the satisfaction of setting them straight.

  ‘I’d forgotten how occupied everyone got here with other people’s lives.’

  ‘Mmm,’ said Beth. ‘That’s small towns for you. And they never let the facts get in the way of a good story.’

  He heard a crash followed by high-pitched screaming and wondered if one of the Seetos had just fallen through a plate glass window.

  ‘Boys! Cut that out. Nick, give Toby back his lightsabre. Toby, get your foot off Nick’s head. Josh, I’ve got to go before they kill each other. Remind me again why I had more children.’

  He smiled. ‘Because you’re a great mum, and Ron was born to be the King of Dads.’

  ‘What a charmer. Call me after you’ve been to the bus depot, all right? We can call the police together, and either Ron or I will get in the car and drive up tonight. I’ll call her friends here in Sydney in case she’s made contact, or posted anything online.’

  ‘Will do. Talk soon.’

  ‘Bye, Josh.’

  Bus depot. Now why hadn’t he thought of that? He reached for the ignition then paused. The depot was up the hill on the main road out to the Alpine Way. He could go on foot, check the streets on the way in case Poppy was loitering somewhere. All he’d need would be a torch; plenty of those in the treatment room.