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CHAPTER
20
Kirsty slipped into a routine so busy and full that a week passed by, at the end of which she decided she’d recovered from her carbon monoxide poisoning. She felt … sunny. Like rain clouds only hovered over staid, predictable people, and adventurers like her lived every day in golden light.
In the mornings she had a quick wash—with a bucket filled from the tap for the first few days, before the shower was waterproofed and tiled—then she ate a bowl of cereal and fruit in the stable while she checked out the day’s tasks.
Dobbin had proved himself to be a willing recycler of her apple cores, and her rusty-eyed landlord had made himself scarce after that scorching ride on his moped. She’d see him in the distance from time to time, trundling about the farm on the tractor, sporting a bewildering array of wildly colourful shirts, but the closest she was getting to Farmer Joe personally was his handwritten scrawl across the whiteboard.
Mount Barney is ready for architraves on southern windowsthe whiteboard might say one morning.Second coat of polyurethane needed in Mooball & help yourself to the chocolate-macadamia bickies in the tin next to the drop saw (homemade … I know, I’m awesome)it might say the next.
She’d tool up for the morning, fuss about with brushes or measure lengths of skirting board or whatever was needed, then spend her allotted hours pottering away at the day’s tasks.
It was fun. Her muscles had protested the first few days, but she was in the swing of things now. And luckily the work was pretty physical, because her landlord’s apparent mission to find the best chocolate-macadamia biscuit recipe ever had meant a lot of taste-testing.
The guy could cook. Almost as well as he could get her blood rushing through her veins.
She’d been wondering how that near-kiss moment after the pub was going to unfold, but she needn’t have; either it hadn’t been a blip on his radar, or he’d been too busy with the plantation side of his farm to hang around and flirt.
Pity. She’d kind of missed it.
Whatever work he was putting in at the cottages—those bathroom tiles hadn’t laid themselves—he must have been doing it in the afternoons, when she’d clear off to the Wirraway.
Her restoration project was going gangbusters. Yesterday she’d got the plane’s tail flaps working, and Carol had given her the details of a bloke in Queensland who ran a New Guinea war museum out of an old military donger in Wacol. First chance she got, she was taking herself on a road trip to find out more.
She glanced down at Gus, who was on a rope tied to the front steps of Station Cottage to ensure he didn’t leave pawprints all over the enamel paint she’d just applied to the front door. ‘What do yousay, Gussie boy? Think the boss will give me a day off?’ Maybe Carol could come, too.
The dog yawned and rolled onto his back so she could give his pink belly a rub.
‘Sorry, my man, but you are filthy. What have you been doing? Rolling in chook poop?’
The dog’s tongue lolled happily. Poop-rolling, renovating, tractoring, sleeping … Gus loved it all. Oh for a dog’s life to be so happy. ‘Want to help me make some lunch?’
He woofed, so she unclipped his lead and he pranced around her as she headed for the stable. She made sandwiches—ham and salad for her, ham and cheese for the dog—then filled her thermos with hot tea and settled down to enjoy her lunch on the bottom step with Gus at her feet. Her backpack was beside her, so she pulled out the battered copy ofThe Muddle-Headed Wombatthat had been in Mary Bluett’s suitcase.
She opened the book, but the front page had been torn in half and a childish hand had drawn the wordsProperty of Trevorin fat orange pencil.
Huh. So her father had drawn his Rs backwards as well.
She flipped through the opening pages, which looked in good nick other than the brown specks from insect damage, and a thin square of card fell out. When she bent down to retrieve it, she saw that it wasn’t a postcard but a faded photograph. A couple stood, formal but smiling, the woman loosely held in the man’s arms as though they were about to dance. Her great-grandfather, perhaps, by the uniform. Was he off to war? Was this their goodbye?
She flipped the stiff card over and there, in a neat cursive, was her answer.Bill and Doreen, the honeymoon paddock, 1940.
The honeymoon paddock? Kirsty studied the picture again, turning it away from the glare of the sun. She inspected Doreen’soutfit more closely. A long, swirling dress, with a train displayed in a half moon on the ground, definitely pale enough to be white or cream, and she wore a neat little hat with flowers pinned in above the brim. Could this have been taken on their wedding day? No sign of a church, or tables; there was nothing much else in the photo but them and an old, gnarled fence post with rough chunks missing where a hinge must have once been attached.
Wait.
She’d seen that dress, that high lace collar … it was the one that had been wrapped in tissue paper in the suitcase. But she’d also seen that fence post.
She looked up. The homestead’s chimney was just in view, beyond the old orchard where Joe kept his tractor under its lean-to of old galvo. Right in front of her was the grass clearing where the farmstay cottages had been stumped, each of them turned to face a pretty aspect: Station Cottage to the creek, Mount Barney to the smudged peaks of the Nightcap Mountain Range, Mooball to the patchwork of farmland dipping towards the Clarence River to the south.
This farmstay area had once been a paddock. And at its entrance, where rusted wire strung through ironbark posts fringed an ancient cattle grid, was an old, weathered post.
She jumped to her feet with the small book in her hand, dislodging Gus, and hauled her workboots back on so she could go and inspect it.
The post wasexactlyright.
She rested her hand on it, feeling the parched grain of the old timber. Her great-grandparents had stoodexactlyhere when this photograph was taken.
The honeymoon paddock. A nickname, surely? Maybe they’d not been able to afford a proper honeymoon. Maybe Bill had beencalled up and the wedding was a hasty affair, with sandwiches and cups of tea shared with family and friends at the farm the only honeymoon they could afford.
She stood there a moment, the noon sun warming her back. She tucked the photograph carefully within the leaves of the book, then flipped through the pages to see if it held any more secrets. Any answers. Any reason at all that might explain why she was learning more about the long-ago past of distant relatives than she knew about her own past.
What was she looking for—a letter from the grave?Dear Kirsty, the real reason that your mother didn’t stay in contact with the Bluetts after your father died was …
Of course, there was nothing like that. And … why wasthatwhat she was hoping to find?
She knew why her mother hadn’t hung around. Sheneverhung around. And she’d had that darned handy curse ready as her excuse every time.
