Wildflower Ridge Read online

  Her legs were still aching from the previous day’s yoga session. She pulled them up underneath her. It was a pleasant sensation, a definite improvement on the headaches and fever that had plagued her the previous few months.

  Diana swept gold and amber oak leaves off the lawn before sitting down, cross-legged, next to Penny and Leo.

  ‘No, look at me, Aunty Penny,’ called Evie from the monkey bars, her skirt falling over her giggling face as she flipped backward off the top of the steel-framed structure. She landed on the lawn next to Eddie, who was making daisy chains, and bowed to her audience before running across to join her cousins on the trampoline. Penny had been surprised to see Eddie join their picnic when Angus and Tim headed out mustering, but the children seemed to enjoy his presence as much as he enjoyed theirs. She gathered that the tableau wasn’t uncommon.

  ‘This is the good life, Pen,’ sighed Diana. She removed her broad-brimmed hat and turned her face up to the late afternoon sun, closing her eyes with a contented smile.

  Penny looked around and took in the deep-blue shade of the Grampians to the east, the array of red, yellow and orange trees lining the yard, the deep shadows cast across the green paddocks by the red gum trees, and the happy laughter of her niece and nephews. The air was still and warm, autumn’s final nod to summer, and bees lazily buzzed their way across the garden.

  Penny closed her eyes and twisted her body into a yoga stretch. ‘It might not be the Cinque Terre or fall in Connecticut, but I guess it’s not too shabby.’

  Diana batted her over the head with the sun hat. ‘Not too shabby? Jeez, you’re a hard one to please.’ Diana laughed, giving her a gentle whack on the shoulders for good measure. ‘But at least you’re looking better. Must be that “healthy mind, body and soul” caper that Dr Sinclair recommended.’

  ‘Maybe.’ Penny caught sight of Diana’s raised eyebrow. ‘Okay, probably. I’m feeling better,’ she conceded, reaching for another lamington. Her strict eating habits had slowly fallen by the wayside, weakening under the temptation of her sisters’ baking prowess and the offence they had taken at her constant rejection of their cooking. It’s just a compromise. I’ll give up the sweets again as soon as I hit the city limits.

  ‘These are good. Did you make them?’

  ‘Course I did. Mum’s recipe.’

  Penny thought about Annabel’s recipe book, still sitting in the farmhouse pantry where she had left it years before. Her sisters had copied down their favourite recipes, leaving the treasured original untouched and lonely on the shelf. The more she became reacquainted with the home cooking she had grown up with, the more her mother’s faded handwriting had begun beckoning to her each time she opened the cupboard.

  ‘So, what’s the latest on Lara and Sam?’

  Diana shrugged. Her beaded earrings jangled as she looked in Evie’s direction. ‘Hard to say. I don’t like to jump to conclusions, but from the sounds of things, it’s heading south again. Getting details from Lara is like squeezing blood from a stone, and Evie didn’t say anything when I picked her up this morning.’

  ‘He was always a bit funny, Sam. Fine on a good day, but other days—’ Penny shrugged. ‘Though I can’t imagine a string of replacements will be knocking on Lara’s door. Aside from her dazzling personality, there’s not exactly a wealth of eligible bachelors around here, is there? My friend Jade is desperate for me to round her up a wholesome country boy, but they’re thin on the ground everywhere, I think.’

  Diana shook her head and cast a look at Penny.

  ‘Your Tim is about the only eligible bachelor in the district and I doubt he’s looking for another girlfriend. Never liked Stella much, anyway. Walked straight past Mum’s roses—in full bloom, mind you—her head bent over her phone the whole dinner. I overheard Mrs Beggs saying she’d gone interstate.’

  ‘He’s not my Tim. Not since the last millennium. Even then, we were barely together for more than a few months. Six at best.’ So Tim was single again. She hadn’t been back on social media since Evie had changed her password, though the temptation to hack into the account was stronger than she liked to admit. She turned and looked at Diana squarely.

  ‘How much responsibility is Dad giving Tim, anyway? I spoke to his grandmother at yoga and she seemed to think he’s running the place. I didn’t realise Dad had virtually adopted him.’

  ‘Why don’t you get over your high school tiff and just ask him yourself?’

  ‘Nothing to do with me, I’m staying well out of it.’

  Penny turned away and watched Eddie crowning Evie with daisies, his movements careful and precise. He clapped at her delighted reaction, then ambled over, squinting into the sun.

  ‘Cake please, Miss Diana?’

  ‘Sure, Eddie.’ Diana handed him a lamington. ‘Are you having a nice time with the kids?’

  Coconut and sponge spilled from his lips as he nodded effusively. He finished his mouthful with a gulp.

  ‘Yep. Nice time with the kids. Tim got the sheep yet? We’re going to have our own farm.’ He smiled and lumbered off without waiting for a reply, to join Evie on the swings.

  Penny shot her sister a look. ‘Before you go all gooey-eyed on me, I’ve already heard the glowing reports from the older ladies at yoga that Tim’s now the town darling.’ She adopted a haughty tone, not unlike Charlotte the Harlot’s accent. ‘Tim Patterson—a pillar of society, a stalwart of integrity. He could almost run for mayor, if only his father hadn’t fleeced half the town.’

  Diana rolled her eyes. ‘Sarcasm doesn’t suit you, Pen. Your friends made such a fuss about it all those years ago—are you ever going to get down off your high horse about that whole thing? Pretty sure everyone else has forgotten all about it.’

  Penny pulled herself onto her knees and stood up. She dusted the grass from her jeans but couldn’t quite brush off the suspicion that she had handled the whole incident badly. She collected the empty mugs and put a lid on the lamington container.

  ‘It’s just the facts, Diana. Everyone trusted his father and look how that ended.’

  Fifteen

  Penny washed the mugs, stacking them on the draining board as the sound of motorbikes filtered in through the kitchen window. She watched Tim enter the backyard, a helmet under his arm. All four children, plus Eddie, ran up to greet him, and he crouched down to their level. Penny set the tea towel aside, ready to head upstairs, when the sound of footsteps creaked across the back porch. She turned to see her dad cradling a tiny lamb in his arms. Its limp form poked out from underneath an old towel.

  ‘This little guy somehow escaped the fox, but he’s going to need a bit of TLC to survive the night. I thought you could use the company? Can you slip your Rossi boots on and grab me a few newspapers from the wood shed?’

  Penny nodded her head without even realising it, despite the fact she’d traded her workboots for high heels a long time ago. Her answer elicited a small smile from her father and a feeble bleat from the lamb. She returned with the newspapers.

  ‘You never could resist the sick ones, Pen,’ he said softly. He shook his head as if to flick away the sentimentality, and his voice was brisk when he spoke again.

  ‘Fetch the laundry basket too, there’s a girl, so I can leave him upstairs with you. We’ll shift him into a pen if he survives.’

  The laundry cupboards were in the same order they had always been. She easily located the basket and a beach towel she had once used for swimming lessons.

  ‘Poor little guy, he looks pretty weak,’ said Penny as she returned. She dried off the lamb’s damp wool, concerned about its lack of movement.

  ‘I’ll rustle up a warm bottle. Don’t get too attached. Don’t name it. You know the old saying—where there’s livestock, there’s dead stock,’ said Angus, wiping his hands on a faded green shirt before lining the basket with the newspapers and towel.

  ‘Sure, I’ll keep an eye on him and throw him on the heap if he doesn’t make it,’ she said dryly.

  A
ngus turned with a grin, shaking his head as Penny rolled her eyes.

  After he left, she turned to look at the tiny creature. It was sleeping and a pink tongue poked out of its mouth. Its chest moved slowly under the towel, the greyish wool tightly curled and long creamy eyelashes fluttering gently. If you make it through the night, I’ll call you Hercules, she whispered to the exhausted lamb with as much detachment as she could muster.

  Tim slung his leg over the quad bike and headed back down the laneway, keen to check one more boundary fence before he called it a night. The tiny crossbred lamb Angus had handed to Penny was an anomaly, the result of a neighbour’s dorper ram breaching their fences out of the main joining period. Tim had been the one to discover the mangy-looking intruder in the paddock last October, and he was darned if it was going to happen again and jeopardise their own carefully coordinated breeding program.

  He scanned the fence lines, keeping an eye out for loose strands, barbed wire adorned with tell-tale clumps of dorper wool, or any of the neighbour’s self-shedding rams among the McIntyre merino flock.

  Tim’s mind wandered back to the farmhouse as he patrolled the southernmost boundaries, wondering how the orphaned animal would fare in the hands of a country-girl-turned-city-slicker. He had tried to convince Angus to put the lamb out of its misery, but there had been no shaking him from the idea when he’d announced it would be the perfect project to occupy Penny during her convalescence.

  Angus is dreaming if he thinks a mongrel lamb will magically rekindle Mac’s country roots. Everyone except him can see she’s counting down the days until she returns to the city. He hadn’t mentioned the calendar squares to Angus, but surely he’d also noticed that she had circled a date a few months in advance, and was consistently marking each day off.

  Tim looked out at the hilly horizon as the wind whipped his scruffy hair across his forehead. He breathed in the dry earth, the fresh air that tasted sweeter than any fancy perfume or air freshener. I’d give anything to have this farm in my family. Mac doesn’t even know how good she’s got it.

  The lamb stirred at the sound of the house phone, bleating feebly and then loudly as if it were competing against the ringing. Penny looked up from the laundry sink, wiped her hands on a tea towel, and left milk powder lumps floating in the half-made bottle.

  ‘Shush, Hercules, you’ll get lunch in a minute.’ She cleared her throat, shutting the laundry door as the lamb continued protesting.

  ‘McIntyre Park, this is Penny.’

  ‘Babe, you sound like you’re still in the office. Swap Boutique Media for McIntyre Park and I’d swear you were back at your desk. Loved the picture of your baby sheep.’

  Penny beamed, delighted to finally catch Vince on the phone. The ongoing game of phone tag between his mobile, his Sydney office number, the farmhouse number and the patchy range on Penny’s mobile was getting ridiculous.

  ‘You sound like the twins; they call him a baby sheep too, instead of a lamb. He’s going great. I’d forgotten how strong the little blighters could be,’ she said, rubbing a bruise on her chin. Hercules had headbutted her in protest yesterday as she was wrestling the empty milk bottle from his foamy mouth. She hadn’t noticed it until Evie had pointed it out last night and had been amused by the way her niece had fussed around looking for an icepack instead of focusing on her schoolbooks. Anything to get out of homework, it seemed.

  ‘Can’t talk long, babe. We’ve got a meet and greet with some overseas clients, but great to hear all’s good.’ His voice trailed off and she heard a muffled laugh.

  Penny frowned at the calendar, realising she hadn’t marked off the last few days, and picked up a pen as he came back on the line.

  ‘Oh, and keep the cute animal pictures coming through. Don’t suppose you’re rearing any baby kangaroos or possums? Charlotte’s very impressed with your versatility. Love you, babe.’

  Penny gripped the phone long after Vince had hung up and chewed on the end of the pen. She didn’t like being patronised. A funny taste formed in her mouth, but she wasn’t sure if it was the blue ink now leaking out the end of the biro or the way Charlotte’s name cropped up so often in their sparse conversations.

  A rap at the door jolted Tim from his laptop screen full of spreadsheets. He ran a hand through his hair, glancing at the clock. Not often they had visitors at 9 p.m. on a Tuesday night. The knocking came again, accompanied by a belated bark from Bones. Tim stood up, pressing save on his budget and finances forecast.

  ‘Coming,’ he called softly. His back cricked and crunched as he walked to the door. He switched on the porch light and groaned at the sight before him.

  Sam wavered on his front step, rocking back and forth in his worn-out workboots, with a backpack hoisted over his shoulder and a bottle of bourbon in one hand. His face was as rumpled as his clothes, as if he’d just stepped off the bus from an end-of-year footy trip. Tim pulled the door open.

  ‘Lara’s bloody well kicked me out. C’n I crash at yours?’ he slurred.

  Tim looked into the dim evening. Moths flocked to the bright light, undeterred that Sam smelled like he’d been swimming in a football field of spirits. Bones sat at their visitor’s feet, his tail thumping against the brick path, looking up at him with faith and loyalty. Tim looked away from his dog and up at Sam, wary of being a halfway house or becoming embroiled in Sam’s marital dispute. His gaze flickered to the dusty station wagon still idling in the driveway, windscreen wipers going and the driver’s door wide open, despite the rain.

  ‘Jeez, mate, don’t suppose I can send you back out in that weather. You’ve had a skinful by the look of it.’

  He stepped to one side. Sam staggered through, thumping his backpack on the ground. It sounded like it held more bottles than clothes.

  ‘Bloody women, not worth the trouble they cause,’ he mumbled, launching into a maudlin rendition of their old footy team song.

  ‘I’ll change my mind if you don’t put a sock in it, Sam. Eddie’s asleep,’ said Tim, shrugging on a jacket. He jogged out to Sam’s car, turned it off and slipped the keys into his pocket. Bones nudged his hand, giving it a lick for good measure.

  ‘It’s the least we can do, Bones. And it’s only for a night or two.’

  Sixteen

  Penny laughed as the lamb wobbled on its spindly legs, the little tail wriggling and ears flicking back and forth as it bleated.

  It circled the wooden playpen at the far end of the kitchen, impatient for its morning feed. Hercules had grown even stronger after a fortnight of regular feeding, thriving under Penny’s care. Angus had shaken his head at the creature spending more than the first nail-biting few nights inside, but after the rocky start, when it looked like it wouldn’t survive, he’d softened. Penny liked the animal’s company.

  ‘It’s more fun looking after you than thinking about my own health,’ she told the lamb as she mixed up the formula. The lamb bleated insistently as she walked over to the pen, bottle in hand. She tucked him under her arm, offered him the teat and sat down with the feeding animal on her lap.

  Dust swirling along the driveway caught her eye, and she watched two cars approaching the house. Angie’s red hatchback pulled right up at the lavender hedge. Bees and butterflies raced for cover as her bumper nudged the grey foliage.

  Diana guided her four-wheel drive closer to the house, giving a generous berth to all the surrounding obstacles. Penny smiled at her sister’s foresight as the twins flung open their doors and bounded out from both sides, hitting the ground running.

  She watched both sisters convene in close discussion, their quick glances towards the house setting Penny’s alarm bells ringing. It reminded her of the conversations she and Jade used to have when they were two single ladies scoping out wine bars and discussing their game plan for the night. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say those two were cooking up trouble.

  ‘Erk-lees, Erk-lees.’

  A tornado of twins rushed in through the back door, their rubber boots tr
acking freshly cut grass clippings and mud across the floorboards.

  Two pairs of dirt-covered hands reached up and petted the lamb before completing the lap of the island bench, narrowly avoiding their mum.

  ‘Harry! Elliot!’ Diana bellowed from the doorway, Leo on her hip, Angie right behind her. ‘Outside, outside, you’ll get Grandpa’s floor all dirty,’ she said, walking into the kitchen and shooing her sons out the door like a flock of chickens.

  Their yahooing was like an Indian war cry. It had filled the large room and was most noticeable in its absence.

  ‘And shut the door,’ called Diana, but to little effect, as cold air rushed into the kitchen. She muttered as she closed the heavy door herself: ‘If I had a dollar for every time they did that …’

  ‘I’d be a rich woman,’ finished Penny and Angie in unison, remembering their mother’s favourite refrain.

  Diana sat Leo down on the floor with a jam drop and looked wearily at Penny as she pulled out a chair. Penny noticed lines around her eyes, dark circles that would have challenged any brand of concealer, had she been wearing it.

  ‘Those two will give me more grey hairs than Cameron or Leo combined. And if you keep worrying me to death, then I’ll be completely grey before I’m forty,’ she said, sneezing into a crumpled handkerchief.

  ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘You don’t have a monopoly on illness, you know.’

  Angie gestured silently behind Diana’s back, scrunching up her face and forming her fingers into bear-like claws. Penny stifled a laugh, turning it into a cough as Diana fixed her with a grumpy glare. She softened after a series of sneezes.

  ‘Sorry, I’m feeling terrible with this cold, and a teething baby doesn’t help.’