Matts puts my drink on the windowsill and stands close but not touching. From the corner of my eye, I see the rise and fall of his chest. ‘He was meant to come tomorrow.’
I cross my arms around my middle. ‘So you said.’
‘I was going to warn you tonight.’
‘I shouldn’t have yelled. I’m sorry.’
When he places his hand on my forearm, my heart skips a beat. ‘Robert is a manipulative bastard, Sapphie. You owe him nothing. But if you refuse to do as he asks, you lose the farmhouse.’
‘If I give him the name, others will get hurt.’
‘What others?’
Matts has lost his mother once. If I tell him the truth he’ll lose her—his innocent childhood memories of her—all over again. Mum understood that. So should I.
When I turn and lean into his chest, he wraps his arms around me. ‘Robert was wrong, Matts. I wasn’t blaming Inge. I never would.’
He buries his face in my hair. He runs his hands down my sides. His touch is lighter on the left than the right. He knows the scars on my body. He knows the scars in my heart.
‘I missed you, Sapphie.’
I don’t even open my eyes. I simply lift my face and find his mouth. Our lips are happy and sad and sorry and hungry all at once. I stroke his hair and the stubble on his jaw. I trace the line of his ear. I burrow under his shirt. Skin against skin.
I need him.
But what does he need?
He lifts his head. Cups my face. Looks into my eyes. ‘What’s wrong?’
I love you and I trust you. ‘I don’t want to hurt you.’
He kisses a trail from my lips to my cheek to the pulse at my throat. He puts his tongue against it. He mumbles, ‘Long term.’
‘But—’
He lifts his head. He runs a finger down my nose. ‘Why do you trust this man?’
I step cautiously back. ‘He was telling the truth.’
His arms drop to his sides. ‘How do you know?’
I wipe my hands down my dress, the soft, clingy fabric. ‘I just do.’
‘Tell me about him.’
‘What? Why?’
‘I won’t say anything to Robert.’
‘That’s not what—No.’
‘When did you speak to him the second time?’
‘Monday afternoon.’
‘You knew something on Saturday morning, didn’t you?’ His eyes are troubled. ‘I asked what had scared you.’
‘He’d sent an email.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me about it?’
I press my lips together.
‘Talk to me.’
To one side of the stables are bins with different coloured lids. Red. Blue. Yellow. The primary colours. The Wiggles. I swallow the lump in my throat. Leon is good with his recycling. He won an award from the committee and proudly displays the trophy in the bar with his premium bottles of whiskey.
‘Sapphie?’
I drag my eyes from the courtyard. ‘I didn’t expect to see my father tonight. I thought it would just be you. I didn’t …’ I shake my head. ‘I need to think things through.’
‘You said that last weekend.’ He puts my glass on the table. His expression is shuttered. ‘When we slept together, what did it mean to you?’
‘You know what it meant.’
‘Do I? When you don’t trust me with other things?’
‘You think if I tell you what you want to know, it will prove that I trust you.’ I link my fingers together. ‘It’s like a test.’
He stills. ‘What if it is?’
‘If you don’t have faith in my judgement, it means you don’t trust me. That’s unfair.’
‘Unfair?’ There’s a ring of condensation on the sill. He runs his thumb through it. ‘Unfair is assuming I set you up. Unfair is telling me you do things on your own. Unfair is ignoring my calls.’
‘Don’t.’
He draws another line through the condensation, making a cross. ‘Unfair is having sex with me—and then giving up.’
A wave of sadness drowns out my words. I swallow. ‘Are you done?’
‘Unfair is denying the truth. Denying we were friends. Unfair is forcing me to lie.’
I shake my head. ‘Please don’t.’
‘You said we were strangers. Cassie, Gus, Luke, Hugo. Even Chambers. They praise you for what you do, but mostly they value your friendship. And then they warn me, “Sapphie won’t talk about her past.” I’m your past, Sapphie. How do you think that makes me feel?’
My father left the door open. The jukebox hums. ‘Raspberry Beret’. ‘Purple Rain’.
I blink back tears. ‘I’d lost you. I couldn’t rely on Mum. Gran was dying. I had to start from scratch.’
He opens his mouth and slams it shut. He walks two steps and turns. The swirls on the carpet swim before my eyes.
‘You’ve given up on the farmhouse. And on Kate. Tell me why.’
I shake my head.
‘Give me a name.’
‘Or what?’ My voice breaks. ‘Will you threaten me?’
‘Like your father? Is that what you think?’
‘No.’ I hold tightly to the back of my chair. ‘That was unfair.’
At the threshold, he turns. ‘You know what else is unfair?’ He’s in the shadows. His eyes are black. ‘You never lost me, Sapphie. You never could.’
CHAPTER
44
His message comes through in the early hours of Sunday morning.
From: Matts
To: Sapphie, Chambers, Cassie, Luke, Gus
Leaving tomorrow for Finland, then Switzerland. Back in Canberra late November.
Gus thought Matts might be warning us that he wouldn’t be able to respond to our messages. But he continues to contribute, bluntly but usefully, to our group chats. He thanks Mr Chambers for supporting additional funding for Rory’s wetlands project. He introduces Cassie to a government minister so she can lobby him about koala habitat rehabilitation. He sends Gus a link to a Swedish environmental group that records farmer’s recollections of their land. He supports Luke’s push for a new inquiry on the Murray–Darling river basin.
For so many years, I tried not to think about him. Now I read and re-read every word that he writes. I use an app on my phone to keep up to date with the weather.
Horseshoe: Low of 21 degrees. High of 32. Clear and dry.
Geneva: Low of 3 degrees. High of 7. Morning drizzle; overcast.
Helsinki: Low of -3 degrees. High of 1. Rain and sleet. Snow/slush.
Matts left almost two weeks ago, on the second of November.
Ten weekdays. One weekend.
Soon it will be summer.
‘Miss Brown!’ Mary’s sister Millie, who usually plaits her hair, has been away on camp. Mary’s wattle coronet sits at a jaunty angle on her head, but keeps most of her hair off her face. Standing at the workbench at the back of the classroom, she’s waving a wad of scarlet crepe. ‘We’re ready to make poppies!’
When I raise my brows, Mary bites her lip. She raises her hand.
‘Yes, Mary?’
‘Can me and Amy make poppies like you made for Remembrance Day?’ She presses her hands together. ‘Please?’
‘You may cut out the templates for the petals.’
Archie, sitting at a desk covered with small timber puzzle pieces, raises his hand. ‘The guns and bombs killed all the plants, but then it rained and poppies grew on the battlefields.’
‘They did.’
‘Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae wrote a poem called “In Flanders Fields”.’
‘Yes, Archie. The poem was about the World War One poppies.’
Archie picks up a piece of the puzzle. ‘I’m going to be an engineer.’
Matts liked to know how things worked. And he liked to look into a microscope. What is he doing in Finland and Switzerland? Thinking about dams and weirs and catchments? Working out the different requirements of gaining streams and losing streams for water distribution?
Modelling ideal conditions for marshes, mangroves, bogs and swamps?
He said the flow of the river was fucked.
He said I’d never lost him. That I never could.
Our pasts and futures all mixed up.
A few days before she died, Gran was propped up in a reclining chair in the nursing home. I was sitting on an upright chair next to her with a rickety table by my side. Its surface was covered with paper and the other things I’d need.
‘Roses and gerberas,’ Gran said, her words soft with memory, ‘baby’s breath and delphiniums.’
I laid out crepe paper and templates. ‘I like to make native flowers best.’
She leant over the arm of her chair to have a closer look. ‘What are we working on today?’
‘One of the flowers you taught me how to make.’
‘What a lot of paper you have. All those different yellows.’
Flaxen, amber, canary, gold. Acacia pycnantha. Golden wattle.
Kultainen kotka. Golden eagle.
Kultsi. Gold.
I use glues to join the petals of my flowers. What do I use to join the pieces of my heart?
By the time the last of the children have left the classroom and I’ve organised my materials for Monday, it’s well after four o’clock. I walk through the side gate to the schoolhouse. A car, clean, large and white, is parked on the verge at the side of the road.
When the driver’s door opens, Jacqueline, wearing a floaty floral dress and nude-coloured high heels, steps out. I close the gate and walk across the garden. I force a smile as I hold out my hand.
‘Jacqueline.’
‘I’m sorry to turn up unannounced like this.’
‘How are Atticus and Alex?’
‘I didn’t dare tell them I was coming.’ She smiles uncertainly. ‘They often ask about you. The broomsticks remind them.’
‘I imagine that annoys Robert.’
Her bubble of laughter is genuine. But then she sobers. ‘I was afraid you’d send me packing.’
‘You’d better come in. It’s hot out here.’
We’re almost at the door when she doubles back to the car. She leans into the passenger side and picks up a buff-coloured folder.
My flower supplies are neatly stacked in the living room. There’s a narrow path between the boxes from the front door to the bathroom and bedroom, with a right-angle turn to the kitchen. Stacking the boxes on top of each other would give me more room, but I wouldn’t be able to find anything.
‘Sorry about the mess,’ I say, as I clear strips of blue crepe from the kitchen bench.
‘They’re beautiful colours, Sapphire.’ Her brow creases. ‘I should have said they’re beautiful colours, Sapphie. What are you making?’
‘A native flower—the blue fairy.’
We talk about the weather as the kettle comes to the boil. I put a selection of teas on the bench. ‘Which one would you like?’
‘Earl Grey, please.’
I make a pot of ginger and lemon tea as well. Jacqueline perches on a stool, the skirt of her dress draped elegantly over her knees.
‘Those boxes,’ she says, ‘were they previously kept at the farmhouse?’
Ray Bainsbridge recommended ginger for nausea. I fill a cup from the pot and blow crystal clear steam from the top.
‘Your car is a rental from Dubbo. I guess you flew in this morning?’
‘Yes.’
‘You’ve had a long day. Ma Hargreaves never lets anyone leave Horseshoe without a cup of tea.’ I sit opposite her. ‘That’s why I invited you in.’
‘You haven’t spoken to Matts Laaksonen, have you?’
‘What about?’
‘He said he wouldn’t tell you. He wanted it to come from Robert.’ She glances at the folder. ‘There’s paperwork to be finalised, naturally, but Robert will sell you the farmhouse.’
I wrap my hands around my mug. ‘I won’t do what he wants.’
‘There are no strings attached.’ She opens the folder. ‘As I understand it, you sign the transfer and give it to your solicitor to register at the lands office. In the meantime, you pay the money into Robert’s bank account.’ Tapping the folder, she pushes it across the bench. ‘It’s all here.’
‘He must want something.’
‘Not from you.’ She sips her tea again. ‘Matts refused to give details, but assured Robert your Argentinian contact had given him the entire story. Robert and your mother did nothing wrong.’
I blow small even breaths on my tea. One. Two. Three. ‘My contact. How did Matts find out who he was?’
‘Leevi Laaksonen knew nothing about the controversy involving Robert but, as I understand it, he gave Matts a lead about something else.’
‘I see.’
‘Matts wants to keep whatever happened secret, as does your contact. He won’t give Robert the statement he wanted. This means Robert will be forced to wait until the Argentinian inquiry, and possibly the trial, are over. He’s likely to lose preselection. He won’t be able to contest his seat.’
‘So why did he agree to sell?’
She raises her brows. ‘He’s a political animal—one door closes and another one opens. When Robert refused to return the farmhouse to you as Matts had demanded, Matts’s father stepped in.’
My breath catches. ‘Mr Laaksonen got involved?’
‘Very much so,’ Jacqueline says. ‘Robert had always envisaged a career beyond parliament, preferably one in diplomacy.’ She uncrosses her legs before crossing them again. ‘Leevi is a career statesman, with innumerable contacts in the international community.’
‘Did he force Robert to do this?’
She takes a tissue from her bag and pats her lipstick. ‘Now that Robert has had an opportunity to reflect, I believe he would say that Leevi, acknowledging his former friend’s desire for an international posting in the future, persuaded him that it would be in his best interests to return the farmhouse to its rightful owner.’
I can’t see the farmhouse out of the window, but I can see the hill in the distance. My heart thumps in a confusion of hope and uncertainty.
‘Why did you come here, Jacqueline? You could have emailed.’
She lifts the teapot, swirls the tea around and pours a little more into her cup. ‘I wasn’t aware of what Robert had done. Why didn’t you tell me about the option when we met in Canberra?’
My tea is much cooler now. I sip it slowly. ‘Robert supports you and the boys, doesn’t he? And you know what kind of man he is. You’ll put your sons’ interests first. You won’t let him trample all over you.’
‘I will continue to be a good wife to him.’ She nods thoughtfully. ‘On my terms.’
‘That’s what I thought. My relationship with my father is different from yours. I didn’t want to make things difficult for you.’
When our eyes meet again, she smiles. It’s a small smile, but a genuine one. ‘I rather like the idea of an overseas posting.’
‘Atticus will enjoy it too.’
‘Why Atticus in particular?’
‘He’ll get to see a lot of different flags.’
She smiles again. ‘I wish only good things for you, Sapphie. I hope—’ She runs a perfectly manicured fingernail around the handle of her cup. ‘I hope you’ll find peace at the farmhouse.’
It’s almost midnight here, so it’ll be late afternoon in Europe. Tumbleweed is fast asleep at the end of the couch when I send a text.
Can I call?
I still have my phone in my hand when it rings. My heart skips a beat. ‘Matts.’
‘Sapphie.’
‘Where are you? Are you all right?’
‘Geneva. Yes.’
I stand up and sit down again. ‘Jacqueline came to see me.’
‘Not Robert?’
‘No … She said you’d spoken to Gabriel. I … What did he say? How much—’
‘The affair,’ he says quietly. ‘The pregnancy.’
If he were here, I could hold him. ‘I’m so
rry.’
‘Garcia, the deposit box, this whole fucking mess. Why didn’t you tell me?’
I hold the phone even closer to my ear. ‘I care about you, Matts. I didn’t want to hurt you.’
‘You were protecting me?’
‘Like you’ve always protected me. Even after we argued, you helped me get the farmhouse back. Jacqueline told me everything.’
‘I don’t want what we had when we were children.’
I curl my legs on the couch. ‘You said I couldn’t lose you. What did you mean by that?’
‘I think you already know.’
‘When do you come back?’
‘That’s up to you.’
When I close my eyes, I see the shades in his.
Charcoal, flint, graphite, dove.
Shadow.
CHAPTER
45
After last week’s rain, water dances over the rocks in the creek. Prima skitters when an echidna burrows into the softened earth at the base of a sandstone boulder. Further upstream, the creek leads to the river, which flows to the wetlands. The kangaroos and birds. The reeds, red gums and coolabah trees. The frogs and fish. Weeks ago, Jacqueline said she hoped I’d find peace at the farmhouse.
‘I should be happy.’
When Prima’s ears twitch, I lean forward and run my fingers through her mane. She trots as we climb the incline to the paddock, but slows to a walk as we reach level ground and the farmhouse comes into view.
Morning sun bounces off the corrugated roof. The rain has washed the dust away; the leaves of the lemon and orange trees sparkle in the light. There’s more water in the dams than there was. Soon enough, the grasses will shoot and the stock will have feed in the paddocks. Jet and Finn will be home for Christmas and we’ll spend the day with the Hargreaves.
I miss him.
New water tanks sit proudly near the vegetable patch. The sinks are plumbed and soon there’ll be an inside toilet and shower. First thing on Monday morning, the electrician will finish the basic rewiring. I glance at the roof. The rooster still lies on his back. Short term, I need to have the roof patched and the gutters and floorboards repaired. There are gaps beneath the skirting boards and the windows don’t seal. Long term …
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