‘Sounds like a good plan,’ Paige said, thinking maybe she could do the same. ‘What did you find?’
‘Well . . .’ She picked up another sharp implement and began to pick away at the underside of the hoof. ‘By then I was preggers and poor and needing a job. Lucky for me there was an animal sanctuary outside Brisbane. They seemed happy to take in strays like me, as well as furry, four-legged ones. The counsellor got me the gig and part of my job was taking groups of school kids through to teach them about caring for animals. That place made me realise how much I missed horses. When some of the kids started making up rhymes about my pregnant belly—think pelicans,’ she added for clarity, not that the clue helped Paige—‘I figured it was time to quit. I came home—hand me that tin and the paint brush, thanks—landed on Banjo’s doorstep, and it was like I’d never left. Except I had a little bundle of responsibility called Liam.’
She lowered the hoof, brushed her palms together, then relieved Paige of the paint tin. ‘Banjo was a good dad to me. He was good to Aiden when he needed help, too. Speak of the devil.’ Sharni nodded towards the house. When Paige turned, Aiden was closing in, the sternness in his face softening as he neared the horses. ‘Don’t reckon I’ve ever seen so much of you, cuz,’ Sharni quipped. ‘You getting addicted to my personality, too?’
‘What are you on about?’ he ruffled Sharni’s fringe and she swiped his hand away.
Paige struggled to keep the smile from her face, made even more difficult when Sharni’s phone rang out a message tone that sounded like galloping horses. Struggling to see the message display in the sun, Sharni shielded the phone with her hand, at the same time swearing under her breath.
‘What is it? What’s up?’ Aiden asked.
Without uttering a word, she turned the phone’s screen towards him. He squinted, his expression turning to stone.
‘Tomorrow? Right!’ he said before turning on his heels and heading back towards the house.
Paige had to ask. ‘Bad news, I take it?’
‘You know that small landlord issue? It’s all happening. Just as well we got you moved.’
‘What part of your landlord coming back is upsetting Aiden so much?’
‘Poor Aiden. First love and all. Boyhood crush, big time.’
‘Your landlord and Aiden really were an item? You intimated that at the pub, but I was hoping . . . I mean . . .’
‘Yeah, I know, as if—right? Banjo says they were oil and water back then, and you know what happens when cold water hits hot oil.’
‘Twenty years is a long time. Rory might have changed. He might be different.’
‘Ha!’ Sharni whooped, wrapping the sets of reins around a railing before unlatching the gate to the round yard. ‘Hopefully not that much. He is a she,’ she called back.
‘He who is a she?’
‘My landlord, Rory.’
‘Rory is a girl?’
‘Yeah, of course, what did you think?’ she called back from the veranda where she picked up a freshly washed saddle blanket. ‘I think it’s short for Aurora, or something like that. Don’t tell me you thought Aiden was—’
‘You said landlord so I assumed male,’ Paige said in her defence. ‘But in actual fact she’s a landlady?’
Sharni’s face told Paige she didn’t appreciate the English lesson. ‘Yeah, sorry, I guess that would be the proper word, only from what I hear she wasn’t much of a lady. That’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it.’ The horses were growing restless, the anticipation of a ride giving rise to some jostling. ‘The town, Aiden included, called her Trouble, and for good reason according to Banjo. She inherited this place when her dad died, only she hasn’t lived here for years. I know about her from town talk when I was growing up. As I recall, she was a tough nut to crack and a bit of a cold fish. So when she hits town and runs into one hot-headed past flame, stand back.’
‘So Aiden’s not . . .’
‘Not what?’
‘He’s not gay.’
Sharni, and the two reined horses she led from the yard, a muzzle behind each shoulder, snorted in unison. ‘Shit, no!’
‘What you said the other day . . . If it smells like a woman, Aiden’s not interested.’
‘Oh that? Ha! No, no, poor Aido is off women after being two-timed. I should say he was off women, until you came along.’ She laughed again and for a moment Paige feared Sharni might repeat their conversation. ‘Aiden? Gay? No way! What a freakin’ waste that would be.’
Paige was a lot less embarrassed than she ought to be, and a lot more relieved, barely containing the silent victorious hiss.
I knew it!
What she’d felt by the river the other day, and later that night as she and Aiden sat talking in the dark, had brought her close to asking him outright. But Alice had brought Paige up to accept people’s choices without question and not judge or label them.
‘So, this Aurora—Rory—and Aiden were boyfriend and girlfriend?’
‘I was only a baby when she left town, but small town gossip is a sticky thing. Over time the glue that keeps the story hanging around starts to weaken, shifting from fact to fiction, morphing into whatever people want to hear. People start believing and judging people on that. You know what I mean?’
I do, Paige admitted to herself, nodding.
‘All I know is, like Aiden, the girl had a tough time growing up. But then how much was fact and how much was fiction . . . ? Who knows.’ She let her shoulders lift and drop. ‘The cottage is ready. Just gotta wait and see what her plans are so I know how long I can call this place home. Come on, let’s get you ready to ride.’
25
Alice
Their voices had floated up from the horse paddocks below Alice’s bedroom window yesterday, Sharni’s utterances and her laugh unmistakable, Paige’s voice softer, less of a match for the morning’s stiff summer breeze. Some words had remained elusive, like verbal dust motes—floating all around, yet impossible to catch. As though she were listening on a phone with bad reception, only the odd snippet of conversation reached Alice’s ears. But there had been one word; hearing it had made Alice’s knees buckle, the frisson of emotions playing tug-o-war with her heart and mind.
Aurora.
That was yesterday. Twenty-four hours later, what Alice Foster was feeling, concealed in her room on the top floor of the main house, could not be explained. She peered out from behind the curtains at the orange Valiant Charger with the black pinstripes running from the grill to the over-sized rear spoiler now rumbling up the driveway. Sooty smoke spewing from the exhaust was quickly lost amid a dusty whorl trailing behind. Where the driveway forked—right to the cottage, left to the main house—the engine idled, grumbling impatiently, waiting for the driver to decide. The indecision was momentary, before a wheel-spin towards the cottage scattered gravel and cloaked the vehicle in another cloud of dust.
The car slowed, stopped, the door flung open.
Arthritis pained Alice’s fingers as they clenched the lace curtains. Like a child sneaking a peek at something forbidden, desperate to stay undetected, her body held tight, her breath caught in her chest, her heart pounding so hard the boom, boom seemed to reverberate through the room.
‘Oh, Nancy, I know it is her. Finally, it’s her,’ Alice whispered. ‘Are you there, Nancy? Are you watching with me? This is why I stayed.’ She didn’t notice the tight grip on the curtains, nor the one on her heart as she waited for the baby she’d wondered about all these years to alight from the vehicle.
‘Do you remember, Nancy, how you’d wanted to forget? But I knew you better than you knew yourself. You were so desperate to know how Aurora was maturing that you grew to despise shopping plazas and playgrounds. You were always on the lookout, always wondering, always examining faces, looking for similarities.’
How familiar she’d be all these years later, especially with Nancy having described the twin girls as complete opposites, Alice was about to find out.
Ebony Paige ha
d been a dark-haired cherub.
Aurora Dawn fragile, her complexion fair, her hair . . .
Pink?
A fuchsia-streaked blonde bob, a beacon amid the muted, earthy tones of the surrounding landscape, was the first thing to emerge from inside the car and, as if sensing Alice’s scrutiny, the girl spun around sharply and glanced up.
Alice gasped—possibly her first full breath since seeing the car—quickly letting the curtain fall back into place, a sense of the forbidden churning her insides.
‘Oh, Nancy, my love, how do you expect me to keep the secret now?’
Alice touched the tips of her fingers to her lips. She was smiling. There was also the faintest flutter of excitement in her chest, where she’d expected dread.
Was this unthinkable situation a sign?
Was the universe telling Alice something?
Was Nancy?
‘Do you see what I see?’ Alice whispered. ‘I dare only watch from my window, even though I am so desperate to meet her, to touch her, to know she’s real after all these years.’ Alice bit her lip. ‘Oh, Nancy, yes! There is a charm about the forbidden that makes it unspeakably desirable.’
In refusing to acknowledge her former life, Nancy had blotted out Aurora’s existence. But Alice never forgot, never imagining she’d come face to face with the past. Now she was supposed to ignore the opportunity to know Aurora, to run downstairs and across the field, to fold the girl into her arms and tell her everything, the secret finally out.’
As logic kicked in Alice imagined her smile slowly fading. Paige might not be strong enough for the truth at this point in her life; nor might Alice be strong enough to deal with the fallout. There would be devastating consequences for having kept such a secret. Would Paige not see Alice as deceitful and wonder what else might have been kept from her? Trust was, and always would be, everything to Paige. Watching the impact of Robert’s deception only reinforced that for Alice.
If only Alice or Nancy had considered the ramifications of their pact that morning, when they bundled the bones of that family skeleton into the closet and locked it tight.
‘What she doesn’t know can’t hurt,’ Nancy had told Alice while watching a young Paige flip-flopping across the lounge room carpet in her mother’s cork platform shoes and a tie-dyed peasant top hanging loose to her ankles. The brim of a big straw hat flopped over her face, sagging under the weight of a fake, oversized sunflower. Paige giggled, tipped her chin towards the ceiling to peep out from underneath and invited her mothers to sit while she pretended to pour three teas for her tea party, complete with real scones.
‘Everyone knows you eat scones with tea,’ Paige had announced earlier that morning while diligently sifting flour into a bowl.
‘Then, my sweet Paige, scones we shall have,’ Alice had replied, trying unsuccessfully to keep the flour in the bowl rather than on the child.
She sounded so much like Nancy, who had once enjoyed her own food rituals; or should that be fads? When she was well enough, Nancy had been the cook in the family, experimenting with healthy homemade meals and treats, instilling the joy of food in her daughter.
‘Only buy foods with listed ingredients,’ she’d told young Paige repeatedly. ‘One day there will be more stringent labelling laws and better food label standards to protect people,’ she used to say. ‘One day we’ll find out some so-called harmless food additive or colouring has been responsible for cancer all along. You mark my words.’
When Nancy got sicker, and the food she’d once loved held no interest, Alice became chief cook. Although never as good as Nancy—never in a million years could she replicate her decadent pastries—Alice’s scones could show those CWA scone aficionados a thing or two. Nancy would say the magic ingredient was Alice’s teasing touch. Then they’d laugh.
With more flour on the bench and the girl’s apron than in the bowl, Paige was busy demonstrating the same soft touch, her little fingers working the butter knobs into the proper consistency.
‘I love you, Aunty Alice,’ she said, taking care to line up the scone rounds like soldiers on the baking paper. ‘Almost as much as I love Mummy. But lots, lots more than I love scones. So that’s good, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, my love, that’s very good indeed. In fact, that’s the way it should be. Perfect,’ Alice had said as Paige positioned another perfect scone on the baking tray.
‘Perfect would be having a sister,’ the girl continued, oblivious to Alice stilling her heart with a hand. ‘I could pick one.’
‘We don’t choose family, my love. Family just are.’
‘Mummy picked you.’
Alice smiled. ‘And I got you. What a bonus. Life works a little differently with sisters.’
What she doesn’t know can’t hurt . . . Alice thought, as she observed from her vantage point on the second floor of the farm house that very same family skeleton now strolling to the back of the orange Valiant where she bent over the boot.
Aurora straightened up and plonked a large-brimmed hat on her head to cover the pink hair, although not the dangly earrings, the two shiny silver hoops no challenge for Alice’s failing eyesight. She dared draw the curtains back to take another quick peek and only then noticed her palpitations had stopped—her breaths even, steady, the tug-of-war no longer playing out, her mind made up.
‘No.’ She shook a defiant head. ‘What she doesn’t know can’t hurt, and there’s too much to lose. You get to keep your secret, Nancy, and I . . .’ Alice sighed as she let go of the thin veil of lace, the curtain closed, the show over. ‘I get to keep my family.’
26
Aiden
‘Giv’us a hoy when the part arrives and I’ll come get it myself.’ Aiden waved to the local mechanic behind the cash register before exiting the shop. He used the same free hand to fight his way through the multi-coloured plastic streamers meant to let the customers in and keep the flies out.
As if!
He muttered and slammed smack-bang into another customer in the doorway. They collided hard enough to bounce off each other like two silly Sumo wrestlers.
‘Bugger! Sorry, mate, I—Oh!’ Aiden pictured his tongue recoiling in his mouth; a tightly sprung roller blind let go too quickly. His head jerked back, connecting hard with the door’s architrave.
‘Well, I’ve had nicer greetings, I suppose,’ she said calmly. Too calm perhaps, too controlled, too measured, while Aiden battled with the coloured bunting, sticky with a decade of dust and grease and God only knows what.
The woman’s sarcasm was instantly recognisable. Her appearance was not. Had he passed this woman on the street anywhere but Coolabah Tree Gully he wouldn’t have known her under the outlandish mop of pink hair and fake lashes long enough to tangle with the heavy fringe.
What the hell . . . ?
As if she’d heard his thought, plump lips painted fire engine red curved into a cheeky grin. ‘You look surprised,’ she said. ‘Gil or Sharni didn’t tell you I was coming back?’
As Aiden stepped into the store and away from the door to let another customer squeeze past, his feet hooked the stand that displayed corn cobs, freshly bagged, tripping him.
Corny was him all right. He was the gawky young guy who’d followed this girl around, all eager and hopeful like a puppy, until the day she dumped him and disappeared. Here she was, changed after some twenty years while he was still being a moron.
‘I heard something. Gil told Sharni who told Banjo who—’ He’d found his voice, but clearly his brain remained in catch-up mode.
Her smile widened. ‘Ha! Sounds about right for this town. Not much has changed. Everyone’s still talking about everyone else’s business.’
‘Not at all.’ Something snapped inside Aiden, his uneasiness replaced with a sense of loyalty for the town that had done nothing wrong by him, or by Aurora. Accuse Aiden of anything, but not disloyalty. He stood up for his mates. Loyalty and honesty were everything; even more so after Rene. How ironic that he then lied. ‘That’s
not how it is around town at all. Things have changed. The place is . . . It’s different. It’s good. I’ve been back for a while and I’m loving it.’
Her smirk said she probably knew it was a lie. ‘Yeah, right, well, I thought I saw Rebel down in the back paddock.’
‘Yeah, that’s him. I think he’s in love with Sharni.’
‘Well, next time you’re visiting, call in on me.’ She shrugged. ‘We can catch up. I opted to stay in the cottage. Didn’t want to turf out a good tenant. Although I hear she’s sub-letting rooms to a family from the city. Makes no difference to me.’ Her hand cut a couldn’t-care-less arc through the air. ‘The cottage is good enough. I’ve slept a lot rougher. Right now, though, I’d best pay for the petrol this bugger consumes.’ She nodded to the bright orange Valiant Charger. ‘It really would be good to catch up, Aiden,’ she said, sounding genuine. ‘Don’t expect me to bake a cake or anything, but I can prob’ly manage a sandwich. See?’ She grabbed the nearest loaf of white bread from the stand inside the door and wiggled it in front of her face. ‘Check ya later.’
No cake, and clearly no tea and sympathy either, he’d wanted to say as Rory buzzed over to the cashier’s counter.
Aiden’s head was spinning. He squeezed both eyes shut, took a deep breath and let go again once he was outside the shop.
Season of Shadow and Light Page 30
