by Cathryn Hein
‘What about Phantom?’ Kate asked, concern in her tone. ‘Are they painful for him?’
‘No. Maybe a bit annoying but they don’t hurt. Eventually his immune system will kick in and they’ll just drop off. A few months and Morton’ll be back to his normal handsome self.’ Reaching between the horse’s ears, she ruffled his black forelock. ‘Won’t you, Warty-Morty?’
Lyndall glanced from Callie to her mum and back again. ‘Morty?’
‘Sorry. I renamed him.’
As Callie spoke, Morton pushed past her to hang over the gate. He lifted his nose a few times, as if in greeting, then pawed the dirt before standing still and blinking at Lyndall. Stepping alongside, Kate reached out and caressed his jowl. Lyndall stayed where she was, eyes still huge. Callie’s heart went out to her.
‘He’s such a lovely horse,’ said Kate. ‘Always on the hunt for pats. When Lyndall was at school I used to take my morning tea out and we’d chat.’
Callie smiled. ‘You miss him?’
‘I think I just miss having someone to talk to during the day. We had to put my old lab, Buffy, down a few years ago and the place feels empty without her.’ Kate turned to her daughter. ‘Do you want to come and say hello?’
Lyndall clenched her hands to her sternum, her fear palpable. She took a step forward, thin chest moving rapidly as she breathed in short harsh breaths. Though she now stood under a metre away from the gate it may as well have been a chasm. Desperate longing glistened in her eyes. Swallowing hard, her fingers trembling, Lyndall hesitantly reached out for her beloved horse. Morton stretched forward to meet her only for Lyndall to snatch her hand away with a frightened cry. She skittered backward, her hands once more shoved hard against her ribs.
‘Oh, sweetie,’ said her mother, leaving the gate to wrap an arm around her shoulders. ‘It’ll be okay.’
‘It won’t!’
‘Shh. It will.’
Callie felt as though someone had wrung her heart in their hands. She turned away and gazed at the lightly swaying forest canopy, wishing she knew how to make things better for Lyndall.
Bored with no one paying him attention, Morton wandered off to graze. With the horse at a safe distance, Lyndall broke from her mother’s embrace to approach the gate and lean her chin on the backs of her hands.
Callie slipped through the fence and locked gazes with Kate, hoping she’d interpret her expression correctly. ‘I’ll fetch us all a cold drink.’
‘I’ll come with you.’ Kate caressed her daughter’s back. ‘Will you be all right for a minute?’
Tight-mouthed, Lyndall nodded, her eyes locked on the animal she so desperately wanted to touch.
‘I hate seeing her like this,’ said Kate when they were out of earshot. ‘It breaks my heart.’
‘She loves him.’
‘Desperately.’ Kate spread her hands. ‘But what else could we do? Lyndall wouldn’t go near him and he was costing us a small fortune in feed and vet bills. We tried to help but nothing worked. The fall had just left her too traumatised. Finally Xav – that’s my husband – made the decision he had to go.’ Kate pressed her lips together. ‘She cried for days.’
Of that, Callie had no doubt. Given the way Lyndall had acted on seeing her horse she probably still cried over his loss. What worried Callie now was where that grief was going, what emotions it was morphing into.
In the shade of Nanna’s liquidambar, she halted and turned to Kate. ‘Look, I know this is none of my business, but please don’t let what happened to me happen to Lyndall.’
The other woman regarded her with a worried expression. ‘What do you mean?’
Callie hauled in a breath. Time to be open for once. This wasn’t about her. It was about a heartbroken and lost young girl, whose fate closely mirrored her own. ‘I had a horse, a sweet grey galloway called Phantom.’
‘Phantom?’
‘Yes.’
Kate gave her a close look but to Callie’s relief didn’t comment further. She didn’t want to explain her grandmother’s game. Getting through her own story was trial enough.
‘I loved that horse more than anything.’ She touched the frayed rope end of the broken tyre swing, taking a moment to choose her words. ‘We lived in Melbourne. Mum’s a city girl but Dad was born and raised here, at Glenmore. So every school holidays and on weekends, when we weren’t doing anything else, he used to bring us to visit Nanna and Poppy and let us loose on the farm. He wanted us to have some of what he had growing up, and I guess he missed it too.
‘When I was eight, my grandparents finally got sick of my endless horse nagging and bought me Phantom. I couldn’t come here enough after he arrived. I was so mad for that horse it was if nothing else existed in the world. He was like a best friend.’ Callie shook her head. ‘Actually that’s a lie. He was my best friend.’ She stopped talking as a choke formed in her throat.
‘What happened to him?’
‘He was sold, for similar reasons to Lyndall’s Phantom. Things changed at home, which led to us not visiting as often. I tried to come but . . .’ She shrugged as though it didn’t matter any more. ‘I was young. Then my sister Hope died.’ Callie let go of the rope and crossed her arms over herself as the familiar ache began to rise.
Kate’s expression softened with sadness and sympathy. ‘I’m so sorry.’
‘Thanks. It was a long time ago.’
‘I’m sure that doesn’t make it any less devastating.’
‘No. No, it doesn’t.’ Callie threw a look at Lyndall, still with her chin on her hands, watching Morton as he grazed, just as Callie used to do with Phan. She turned back to Kate, willing her to understand, to see how important this was.
‘After Hope’s death, Mum and Dad set up a charity to remember her by. They worked really hard at it. I suppose it helped them cope, knowing they were doing something for her, but it also meant I never got to see Phan. Eventually my grandparents asked what they should do with him and Mum thought it best if he was sold. I wanted to object but with everything else it didn’t seem right.’ She blew out a breath. ‘Things were really hard at home. I was trying to help, make sure my sister was remembered properly . . .’
She shook her head. ‘I’m so ashamed I didn’t fight harder for him. It still hurts. He was my best friend. I think maybe if I’d had him things mightn’t have been so painful. I mightn’t have run away like I did.’ Callie gave a sad half-smile and spread her fingers. ‘Who knows. But I do know what Lyndall’s going through and you have to believe me when I tell you that she’s hurting, really badly.’
Kate glanced at Callie’s tattoo before turning away. For a long while she remained silent, her eyes riveted on her daughter, blazing with the sort of fierce lioness-like protectiveness and determination that only mothers possess.
Finally, she turned back to Callie. ‘Lyndall’s more precious to me than anything. More precious than my husband. More precious than my own life. And I will do anything, anything, to keep her safe and happy.’ Her expression sank into helplessness. ‘But I don’t know how to deal with this.’
‘Neither do I.’ Callie smiled and touched Kate’s arm in a sign of grateful solidarity. ‘But that doesn’t mean we can’t try.’
Eight
Not bothering to open his eyes, Matt reached out and patted the bedside table as the raw opening guitar riff of AC/DC’s ‘Thunderstruck’ broke him out of sleep. After a few seconds’ scrabbling his hand finally closed around the vibrating shell of his iPhone. He brought it close to his face and half-opened one eye, unsurprised to find the cool, green-eyed gaze of his mother’s professional profile staring back at him.
Awake now, Matt unglued his other eyelid and checked the time. Two twenty in the morning – mid-afternoon London time, although knowing Phoebe Hawkins, she could be anywhere in the world. His mother’s private banking career meant his life had been punctuated with phone calls from all over the world, although for the last several years mainly China. Usually at inhospitable hours.
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He slid his finger across the screen to unlock it and answer. ‘Hey, Mum.’
‘Did I get the time wrong again?’ Phoebe said with her strange, Australian-mixed-with-the-rest-of-the-world-accent, a quirk developed from living abroad since her early twenties. Fluent Mandarin – and asset management expertise – had made her career, but she also spoke basic French and German.
He ground his palm into his left eye, rubbing the last of his sleepiness away. ‘You always get the time wrong.’
‘Sorry. You’d think I’d know by now.’
Matt thought so too. He doubted very much she ever stuffed up the time difference with her clients, but Matt was ‘the mistake’ and therefore rated low down on his mother’s importance scale. He didn’t hold it against her. Phoebe Hawkins simply had different priorities to other people.
‘So where are you?’
‘Home.’ Which for Phoebe meant her barren, hyper-modern apartment in Islington. ‘Although not for long. I’m leaving for Beijing tomorrow. Have you spoken with your father?’
Trust Phoebe to come straight to the point. He flattened his hand over his forehead and smoothed his palm back over his hair, well aware of what was coming and wishing he could just roll over and go back to sleep. ‘Not yet.’
‘You are going to though, aren’t you? He owes you.’
‘He doesn’t owe me anything, Mum.’
Phoebe remained silent, her annoyance betrayed by the carrying sharp tap of a pen or pencil or fingernail against a desk. ‘Then let me help.’
‘I’m fine. Honestly. I’ve told you before I don’t need anything from Kieran or from you.’ Except perhaps a little bit of love, maybe a bit of pride in the son these two career-obsessed people accidentally created. Something other than this sense of being a cost on their lifetime balance sheets. But it seemed his parents could only ever relate to him in terms of money.
His father was the worst. The last time Matt caught up with Kieran Lynch-Moore was in Singapore’s Changi Airport shortly before his second tour, when his scars were still raw and it had seemed so important to connect. His father was flying back to Luxemburg after a series of meetings in Asia and, determined to talk to the man he called Dad, but had never really known, Matt had flown in from Sydney. They were meant to spend the evening together at the Four Seasons Hotel. Instead they’d met in a crowded airport lounge, with his distracted father itching to catch his early flight out. The meeting lasted forty minutes, most of which was spent with Kieran on the phone, and ended with a pat on the shoulder and a promise to ‘settle some funds on him’. Matt hadn’t bothered to explain that he wasn’t there for a handout. It wouldn’t have registered anyway, but Matt had walked away vowing that if he ever had the chance to be a father then he’d be a far different man from Kieran Lynch-Moore.
‘So how’s work?’ Matt asked, changing the subject.
‘Challenging, in the climate.’
‘You should slow down a bit. Maybe take a holiday.’
‘I wish I could, but you know what this business is like. And stop prevaricating. I know you have this strange idea about not taking money from Kieran but you’re forgetting that he never contributed a cent to your upbringing.’
‘I’m not a bill that needs to be paid, you know.’
Phoebe must have caught the irritation in his voice for she softened her own tone. ‘No. Of course you’re not. But I’m concerned about your future. You can’t stay at Uncle Wal’s forever and I doubt you have much savings wise. The army doesn’t pay that well.’
‘Ahh, now that depends which army you’re in.’
His quip earned him a laugh. ‘Isn’t that the truth.’
Matt smiled into the phone. Growing up, laughter was a sound he’d rarely heard from his mother. Even now, he still savoured it. ‘You don’t need to worry about me. I’m all right. I’ll work something out.’
Plus she was wrong about Kieran. Matt had taken money from his father: at eighteen, when he received a letter advising that a trust fund set up in his name had vested. It wasn’t a huge amount and despite adding to it over the years, it still wasn’t enough to buy him the farm he wanted, but it was a start.
‘That’s the issue, Matthew. You shouldn’t need to. One word to Kieran and you could have the wherewithal to buy that farm you covet so much.’
‘And where would be the fun in that? Come on, Mum, you of all people should understand that you have to work hard for what you want. I’m no different. And I don’t know enough about managing a farm to take one on yet. I need this time at Wal’s to learn.’
She sighed. They’d been through this before, after his stay with his old nanny, Antonella, when he’d realised what mattered most – family, contentment, love. Phoebe hadn’t understood then either. It simply wasn’t in her.
‘I’m trying to help.’
‘I know and I appreciate it, but I’ll manage all right on my own.’
After all, it was what he’d been doing most of his life anyway.
When she rang off he dumped the phone back on the side table and tried to fall back to sleep, but the conversation had triggered something in his mind. Despite what he told Phoebe, Matt’s lack of experience hadn’t prevented him looking at farms in the district. To his dismay, he’d found most were out of his reach. Those properties he could afford he doubted were big enough to make a living, and a smaller farm would mean he’d need to find other work. While he wasn’t too proud to take on even the most menial of jobs, that scenario wasn’t part of his dream. As fairy tale as it sounded, he wanted a life on the land with his family always close, where he could be a proper husband and father. A man made rich with happiness.
As he finally drifted back to sleep, he imagined Hope and wondered what his life would be like if they hadn’t broken up. If he’d come to Dargate after school instead of joining the army. Would they be married, have kids? Cheeky little girls like Flora and Maddy. Perhaps a boy, too and a smiling blue-eyed wife, who made him feel special and wanted and protective.
His dream drifted, reshaping the face in his mind, until it settled once more. Only this time the smile he imagined wasn’t Hope’s.
It was her sister’s.
*
Familiarity and time were slowly attuning Matt to Amberton’s ebb and flow. Not to Wal’s standard – the old bugger knew the place so intimately it was as though he could sense a flyblown sheep and the paddock it was in while sitting at the breakfast table – but each day Matt improved. It was the quiet that did it, the absolute peace of the place. A perfect balm for his soul after all the violence he’d witnessed.
He cocked his head and listened. The sound of a car decelerating on Thiedeke Road drifted over the farm. He waited, the hay he carried itching against his arms. Topanga cast him hopeful looks, his bottom lip quivering as he hung over the round yard fence, healthy chestnut coat a shimmer of gold in the sunshine. The car changed gear, the gravel crunch fading as the tyres swung onto a smoother surface.
‘Sounds like we’ve a visitor,’ he said to the colt.
With his free hand he unlatched the gate and carried the sheaves of hay to the old steel washtub that served as Topanga’s feed trough. The horse followed behind, anxious for his feed and, Matt suspected, some attention. Since Wal’s accident, he’d made sure the colt was well looked after, but Topanga was used to the old man’s kind mutterings and fond mane scratches and rubs, whereas Matt struggled to justify the time. With so much else to do on the farm he couldn’t help but view playtime as slacking off, plus he lacked his uncle’s expertise. Wal’s ministrations had a purpose – to condition the horse to human contact and develop trust – and Matt worried his ignorance could undo all his uncle’s good work.
Ears still tuned to the car, he took a moment to stroke Topanga’s silken neck as the colt snatched at the hay. The engine shut down, the quiet that followed broken by the dull whump of a car door closing.
‘What do you reckon, Pang? Jehovah’s Witnesses? Mormons?’ But he’d heard
only one door close and religious callers usually arrived in pairs. He sighed. It’d be just his luck to find an insurance agent banging on Amberton’s front door, or someone selling vacuum cleaners or pay television.
Giving Topanga a last mane scratch, Matt left the yard and took the worn path back toward the house. As he dodged around the trees shading Dolly’s run, his step faltered.
‘Look at you little cuties,’ cooed a familiar female voice.
Supercallie.
A grin broke across his face. He took another step, careful to stay hidden in the shadows but angled closer so he could observe her without her knowing. She was crouched by Dolly’s run, face animated with delight, as a mass of squirming, squeaking, soft puppies crowded against the fingers she’d poked through the mesh barrier keeping them safe and out of mischief.
A sudden memory struck him, one he’d long forgotten, of Hope meeting Wal’s previous dog, Cooper, for the first time. Despite the threat of a cuff under the ear, he’d snuck the pup away from Amberton and met Hope in the firebreak behind the forest that separated Glenmore from Amberton. Her expression when she’d held the excited, licking puppy had made any risk worthwhile, flip-flopping his lovesick teenaged heart in a way that was almost painful. For days afterwards, he’d tried to figure out how he could buy her a pup of her own, but like so many of his ideas for them back then, he never managed to make it come true.
‘You can have one if you like,’ he said, moving out of the shadows and walking toward Callie. ‘Wal’s giving them away to good homes.’
She didn’t start, making him wonder if she knew he’d been watching. Giving an ecstatic cock-eared puppy a last tickle, she rose and faced him, smiling.
‘I doubt I’d make a good home.’
‘You sure? They’re pretty cute.’
‘Ahh, but cuteness isn’t everything.’
He rubbed at his jaw, glad that he hadn’t bothered to shave; the bristles helped make his scar less confronting. ‘Probably just as well, otherwise I’d be stuffed.’
