The Patterson Girls

by Rachael Johns

  Waving goodbye to a few more people as they went, the Patterson clan climbed into the old van.

  ‘Well, that was a riot,’ Madeleine noted when the door was safely shut behind them.

  Nobody replied and Lucinda only hoped that tomorrow, when it was just her sisters, Dad and Aunt Mags, they’d finally find a little Christmas spirit.

  Chapter Six

  Dressed in her orchestra black, Abigail held her violin against her shoulder, balancing her chin on the rest as she looked past the conductor and out into the audience of cultured people wearing their evening best. She still got a buzz before every performance, an all-over thrill that shimmered through her body. Rehearsing with her colleagues or even practising by herself made her happy but there was something magical about playing for an appreciative crowd. Thrillseekers or extreme sportsmen might disagree but as far as Abigail was concerned, this was as good as any bungee jump, and better than leaping out of a plane. Better than wine, better than sex, even better than chocolate. For as long as she could remember—since the moment she’d picked up her first violin—she’d known the orchestra was her calling. Playing music was like breathing.

  If she couldn’t play, she would die.

  She grinned as the lights in concert hall dimmed slightly and Walter, their ancient conductor, lifted his baton demanding the attention of his musicians. Abigail gladly gave him hers, her excitement swelling to epic proportions as she waited for her signal. This would never get old.

  And then it came. As natural as walking and breathing, her fingers slid across the strings as her other hand glided her bow across them in time with her fellow string musicians. She heard the deep sounds of the woodwind family coming to life behind her—her favourite, the bassoons—and the steadying beat of the percussion at the back. Whatever else was happening in the world didn’t matter as she lost herself in the music.

  It all went well for the first few concertos, Abigail silently congratulating herself for her outstanding effort, but then something awful happened.

  Her mind went blank.

  Her fingers froze on the strings.

  The notes on the stand in front of her blurred and her hand holding the bow clenched so tightly that her fingernails dug into her skin.

  Oh shit. Oh fuck. She glanced from side to side, hoping none of her fellow musicians had seen her falter, hoping their music was strong enough to cover her. But then the kettledrums grew louder, so loud she felt as if they were playing inside her head. She just wanted them to stop. She wanted to remember her music. She wanted to scream.

  Why is this happening to me?

  ‘Get your lazy ass out of bed,’ came Madeleine’s muffled shout, slightly tinged with a not-quite-American accent. ‘We’re supposed to be in this together.’

  Abigail frowned. In what together? Her eyes blinked open and she sat up so fast her head spun. She slammed her hand against her chest, hoping to calm the erratic beating of her heart.

  ‘It’s just another dream,’ she whispered, taking a deep breath. When would she stop reliving that god-awful day?

  The door burst open. Madeleine, wearing a scowl, bright pink rubber gloves and jiggling the master key ring on her index finger crossed to the curtains and yanked them back, letting in the harsh morning sunlight. ‘Merry Christmas, sleepyhead,’ she sang faux-chirpily. ‘It’s time to get up and clean the rooms. I’ve already done one.’

  Abigail groaned and flopped back against the pillow. She didn’t know what was more of a nightmare—the dream she’d been rudely awoken from or her real life. So much for this trip being a holiday. So much for presents first thing on Christmas Day.

  ‘My head hurts,’ she whined.

  ‘Hardly surprising considering how much you drank last night,’ Madeleine said, not showing one ounce of sympathy. Abigail didn’t think this was fair coming from the woman who seemed to have had a glass of wine in her hand constantly since they arrived, but she was too shook up to mention this. She’d hoped being intoxicated would stop the nightmares, but apparently not.

  ‘Just let me have a shower and I’ll be with you,’ she promised.

  ‘Fine. I’ll see you in a moment.’ Madeleine turned in her sneakers and marched back out of the room. If Abigail wasn’t feeling so shite, she’d have found great amusement in the sight of Madeleine wearing cleaning gloves. She couldn’t recall ever seeing her oldest sister anywhere near a cleaning product. Without a doubt, Madeleine paid someone to do her dirty work.

  Despite wanting to crawl back under her covers and tug a pillow over her head, Abigail forced herself to get up. A grumpy Madeleine was one thing but if she didn’t pull her weight she could add an irate Lucinda to her list of woes and that wasn’t a happy prospect. She hurried her shower and then dressed in shorts and a t-shirt, ready to work. For the first time in her life she wished she could cook, because surely making breakfast would be better than scrubbing motel rooms. After tying her hair back into a high ponytail and pulling on her sandshoes, she went outside to find Madeleine.

  ‘Stop laughing, you jerk. It’s not funny.’ Madeleine—with a rare smile on her face—was leaning against the cleaning trolley a few rooms along the verandah, talking into her mobile phone. ‘How would you like to spend your Christmas changing sheets that smell of other people’s sex lives? I just had to pick up a used condom.’

  Abigail grimaced at the thought. Was there any way she could get out of this?

  ‘Honestly,’ Madeleine continued, ‘you wouldn’t believe what pigs people are when they don’t have to clean up after themselves. Give me a nice hygienic maternity ward over this any day. I have a newfound respect for cleaners.’

  Abigail approached the trolley and gestured that she was going to start on the next room. Madeleine barely acknowledged her, laughing at something whoever was on the other end of the line said. Abigail stripped the bed—thankfully she didn’t find any nasty surprises—and then bundled the sheets up, tossing them in a pile by the door, ready to take to the laundry. Screwing up her nose, she returned to the trolley, pulled out a pair of plastic gloves—orange ones—took a deep breath and picked up a cloth and some spray. As she scrubbed the vanity of toothpaste and soggy hair, Abigail wondered if this was what her life would be like from now on. She would need to get some sort of job when she returned to London. Her meagre savings wouldn’t last more than a couple of weeks but she wasn’t trained to do anything except play music. Racking her mind for anything besides cleaning toilets for a crust, she worked quickly to clean the bathroom. She surveyed her handiwork and then went outside to get rid of the used linen and fetch the vacuum.

  Madeleine was still on the telephone. Now who wasn’t pulling their weight? Sighing her loud annoyance, Abigail marched past her sister on the way to the laundry and when she returned Madeleine was finally finishing up her phone call. Abigail paused, no longer feeling any guilt about eavesdropping.

  ‘Merry Christmas, Hugo,’ Madeleine was saying, like it was the funniest thing in the world, and then she disconnected.

  ‘Hugo?’ Abigail raised her eyebrows. ‘Significant other I should know about, dear sister?’

  Madeleine scoffed. ‘My only significant other is my iPhone. Hugo is a colleague and a friend. He rang to wish me a good Christmas. I think he must have had a few drinks.’

  ‘He sounds like my type of guy,’ Abigail said, peeling her lurid orange gloves off and retrieving a blue pair. Those orange ones stank of something she didn’t want to think about.

  ‘He’s engaged,’ Madeleine informed her with a smug smile. ‘Not that you should care, since you are apparently coupled-off.’

  ‘I didn’t say I wanted to marry the guy. I was just making conversation. Must be a good friend if he rings you all the way over here.’

  ‘He is.’ Madeleine smiled in the manner of a dreamy schoolgirl. Abigail bit her tongue on asking if the guy’s fiancée liked him making over-the-ocean phone calls to another woman.

  ‘Anyway.’ Madeleine snapped out of her t
rance-like state and picked a clipboard up off the trolley. ‘We’ve got three more rooms to go,’ she said, glancing down at the chart that listed rooms that were currently occupied and needed a freshen up and those that were being vacated today and needed the full overhaul.

  ‘How about I take one room, you take another and we’ll share the third?’ Abigail suggested.

  ‘Sounds good to me.’ Madeleine shoved her mobile phone into the back pocket of her shorts, turned on her heels and headed towards room 19. In turn Abigail grabbed the cleaning equipment she required and took room 11.

  The two sisters worked hard for another hour, scrubbing toilets, emptying bins, putting sheets in the massive commercial washing machine and making beds until all the rooms were ready for their guests.

  ‘I’m utterly exhausted,’ Abigail moaned when they were finished, feeling as if she could fall atop her bed and sleep for a month.

  ‘Me too.’ Madeleine nodded and then glanced at her phone. ‘But it’s almost time to collect Aunt Mags. Do you want to come with me?’

  Abigail smiled at the thought of flamboyant Aunt Mags, who held court in a retirement village when she wasn’t flitting to some far corner of the earth. ‘Hmm, let’s see, a toss up between a trip to Port Augusta to pick up Mags or being bossed around by Lucinda to help make Christmas lunch?’ She grinned. ‘Give me five minutes to get changed.’

  Madeleine adored Aunt Mags—all the sisters did—and so she’d been more than happy to volunteer to collect her. And, like Abigail, she reckoned being well out the way of Lucinda’s Christmas lunch preparations was a smart idea.

  At almost ten years older than Dad, Aunt Mags was still very independent and capable, but her eyesight had deteriorated dramatically in the last few years. Last year after she’d had her driver’s licence taken away, she’d surprised everyone by announcing that she was moving out of her tiny cottage and into an ‘entertainment centre’ (her words—she didn’t like the word ‘retirement’) that had recently opened in Port Augusta. Meadow Brook itself was too small for such a development, so many of Aunt Mags’s friends had chosen to make the move as well. Apparently it was quite a social hub—with events on almost every day of the week to keep the old folks amused. Indoor bowls, scrapbooking, card games, Bogan Bingo, you name it!

  ‘You should put your name down,’ Aunt Mags had told Mum and Dad when she’d first announced her decision.

  ‘Over my dead body,’ had been Dad’s response, with a few more colourful words interspersed in between. Or so Mum had told Madeleine later on Skype. But apparently Mags was having the time of her life. She sent regular emails about her adventures and it sounded like she had many fans in the retirement village, including a few gentleman friends. Madeleine couldn’t blame them; there was just something about Mags that uplifted all those around her.

  It was a blessing for all of them that she’d chosen to spend Christmas at the motel instead of heading out to the farm to see her nephews. Hopefully with Aunt Mags knocking back the gin and tonics at the kitchen table, conversation would flow more easily than it had the last few days. If anyone could make Dad smile, it was his much-loved, eccentric older sister.

  ‘I can’t wait to see her,’ Abigail said as they climbed the steps of the retirement village’s reception. Neither of them had been here before so they needed directions to Mags’s villa.

  ‘Me too.’ Madeleine pushed open the door and held it while Abigail stepped into the foyer.

  ‘Wow, not bad.’ Abigail’s words echoed Madeleine’s thoughts as they glanced around what seemed more like the reception of a five-star hotel than, let’s face it, the entrance to what was essentially a dressed-up nursing home.

  ‘Hello? Can I help you?’ A terribly thin, tiny woman behind the desk stood up and peered at them over the top of her steel-rimmed spectacles. She didn’t look pleased to be working on Christmas Day.

  ‘We’re here to pick up Margaret Patterson,’ Madeleine told her.

  The woman’s face lit up at the mention of Aunt Mags. ‘She’s in villa 2B. Just outside this door—’ She pointed to her right ‘—and across the courtyard, then turn left and you’ll see it.’

  They thanked the woman and then followed her directions, walking through what felt like a tropical oasis. If Madeleine didn’t know better, she’d have thought she was in Bali. If all retirement villages were like this, she wouldn’t mind getting old.

  ‘It’s quiet, isn’t it?’ Abigail noted as they approached the first row of little houses.

  ‘I guess most people are off visiting their families.’

  Before Abigail could reply they heard a loud, ‘You-hoo, over here!’

  They both laughed as they caught sight of Mags standing outside 2B waving her arms like someone needing to be rescued from the sea. She was dressed as Mrs Claus and wore a ridiculous smile.

  ‘Oh, Aunt Mags.’ Abigail launched into a jog, closing the distance between herself and their aunt. She threw herself into the older woman’s arms and rested her head on her gigantic bosom. ‘It’s so good to see you.’

  ‘Dear, dear child, enough of the theatrics,’ Aunt Mags scolded, patting Abigail on the back. ‘You’ll embarrass me in front of my friends.’

  ‘What friends?’ Madeleine asked, looking around and seeing no one.

  Mags gave her a look. ‘Enough of your cheek, young lady, I have plenty of friends, but their families were less tardy about collecting them. I almost got heat stroke waiting for you two.’

  Madeleine thought the costume might have something to do with that, but she knew better than to suggest such a thing to her crazy aunt. ‘Let’s get going now then,’ she said instead.

  Aunt Mags beamed and offered them each an arm. ‘Grab my bag will you, Madeleine.’

  She did as she was told and as they walked to the van they listened to Mags chat about a Christmas Eve party one of her neighbours had thrown last night. Apparently one of the residents had gotten so drunk on sherry that she’d sworn it was snowing.

  ‘Esme went outside, lay down on the grass and tried to make snow angels and nobody could get her back up. In the end we had to call the nurses. But enough about me,’ Mags barked as she clicked her seatbelt into place and settled her hands on the dashboard like she needed to hold on for dear life. ‘What’s new with you two?’

  ‘Nothing much,’ Abigail said from the back seat where she was checking her phone—no doubt on Facebook.

  ‘I suppose you don’t have much time for a life outside the orchestra.’ Mags sounded only slightly sympathetic.

  ‘She’s got time for a boyfriend.’ Madeleine laughed. ‘She went all the way to London to find a man who comes from Adelaide.’

  ‘No! Really?’ Mags peered her head around into the backseat. ‘You must tell me all about him.’

  Happy to be the centre of attention, Abigail prattled on for the next little while about her boyfriend. Madeleine thought he sounded too good to be true.

  ‘What about you, Madeleine?’ Mags said, when Abigail seemed to run out of puff. ‘Anyone warming your sheets these days?’

  ‘My electric blanket. Better than any man. I can switch it on or off whenever I please.’

  Mags snorted.

  The truth was, the only man Madeleine could imagine putting up with on an ongoing basis was Hugo, and he was all set to marry someone else. She pushed that thought aside and decided it was time to enact the ambush she’d been planning since yesterday afternoon. Although she thought the whole curse thing a big joke, her dad’s reaction had sparked her curiosity and she thought if she could drag the truth out of anyone it’d be Mags—she’d always liked spinning a good yarn.

  ‘Aunt Mags, yesterday we started clearing through some of Mum’s things to help Dad get the motel ready to put on the market.’

  ‘Aw,’ Mags sighed, ‘what a horrid task.’

  ‘Yes. But you’ll never guess what we found.’

  ‘Ooh, yes,’ shrieked Abigail from the back seat. ‘Tell her.’

 
‘Sex toys?’ Mags suggested, her tone wicked.

  Madeleine blushed and Abigail giggled.

  ‘Please, Aunt Mags. No.’

  ‘We found a wedding card with something about a Patterson curse,’ Abigail blurted.

  Madeleine looked sideways just in time to see a weird expression cross Mags’s face. She couldn’t quite work it out. ‘Know anything about that?’

  ‘About what?’ Mags asked, pretending to be a doddery old woman, which she most definitely was not.

  ‘About the curse. Surely you’ve heard something about it before?’

  Mags shook her head. ‘Can’t say it rings any bells. Have you asked your father?’

  ‘Yes,’ Abigail said. ‘He said he promised Mum he’d never tell us.’

  ‘That is odd. Did you say your father is selling the motel?’

  Madeleine’s fingers tightened around the steering wheel at Mags’s less than subtle attempt to change the subject. Did she really know nothing about the curse? Or was she hiding something?

  ‘Yes, but forget about that a moment,’ snapped Abigail from the back seat. ‘What do you know about this curse?’

  Mags sighed deeply. ‘I promised your mother I wouldn’t say anything either. She swore us all to secrecy.’

  Madeleine didn’t like her aunt’s uncharacteristically serious tone. ‘Okay, now you’re scaring me,’ she said. And the truth was, nothing much scared Madeleine. ‘If there is such thing as a Patterson curse, don’t we—as Pattersons—deserve to know about it?’

  ‘Probably; and after all, these things only have power if you let them.’

  ‘What things?’

  ‘Tell us, Aunty Mags,’ Abigail pleaded.

  ‘To be honest, I always thought Annette was a little precious about keeping it a secret. Especially since she swore black and blue she didn’t believe a word of it.’