Chapter Ten
By nine o’clock the next morning, the manager had been dismissed, and the police had been informed of the missing cattle. Jemima and Lucy were left in charge of the kitchen while Gran set off on horseback to the back paddocks with Liam and Seb cantering beside her. Together they would see how much stock was left.
“Look at her, Luce. She’s better on horseback than the guys are.” Jemima wrapped the scones in the tea towel and placed them in the box. “Are you still scared of horses?”
“Not scared so much, but I hate being up high on them and not having any control of where they go.” She gave a rueful grin. “But I guess I’m going to have to get over that.”
“You know”—Jemima leaned back on the kitchen bench and crossed her arms—“I’m really looking forward to coming back here. I’ve even been thinking I might move back for good.”
“But what about your career?” Surprise filled Lucy as she looked at her cousin’s manicured fingernails and perfectly styled hair.
Jemima shrugged. “I’ve done well enough already to set me up for life. You know, I’ve felt more settled since I’ve been back here in the last two days than I have for years. I’m over international airports, living out of hotel rooms, and parading clothes for the rich and famous.”
“Half your luck. You’re younger than me and my career has only just started to take off. This current campaign will set me on the path to success…hopefully.” Lucy paused as she filled the last thermos with boiling water. “But you’re right, I think we all needed to come back to sort out what we all want to do. The longer we stayed away the harder it became to come home. I guess losing our mums added to that.”
“What about you, Lucy? Could you ever come back here to live?”
As Lucy shook her head emphatically, an image of Garth Mackenzie’s face filled her thoughts. “No. You know me. The flies, the dust, the prickles.” She waved a hand towards the paddocks they could see through the window. “Not what I want at all.”
“What about our heritage, the family, and”—Jemima bumped her shoulder—“the gorgeous Garth?”
Heat rose into Lucy’s face and she walked away and opened the fridge.
“Garth?” She stalled for time as a little skitter ran down her spine. What is wrong with me? “We’re just friends. And he’s going to do a photo shoot for me for my campaign. Oh damn, in all the talking I forgot to tee it up with Sebastian. Remind me when they come back in for lunch.”
“We’ll see,” Jemima said with a grin. “You didn’t see the way your ‘just friend’ looked at you yesterday.” She put her finger to her chin. “And I seem to remember hearing about an encounter or two by the dam—”
“That was when we were kids!”
“Kids? You were eighteen, and as I remember it, you were in lurve.”
Lucy elbowed Jemmy and grinned as she put the butter in the esky. She was saved from further teasing when the screen door opened.
Tommy Robinson pushed open the door and fell back against it in a dramatic pose with his hand on his chest. “Be still my beating heart. Now there’s two of them!”
“Come in, Tommy,” Lucy said. “This is my cousin, Jemima.”
She smiled. It was Jemima’s turn to blush as Tommy took her hand and bowed before kissing her fingers.
“Love coming over to the kitchen these days,” he said with a cheeky grin.
“I thought the harvesting was almost over,” Lucy said with a frown. Not that she minded. If she was in the kitchen, she didn’t have to work outside.
“Another three days will see us out.” Tommy picked up the boxes, and with a final appreciative grin shot Jemima’s way, he headed back to his ute.
Jemima glanced at Lucy as he drove away. “I can stay that long and then I’ll head back to Sydney and organize my life. I feel so bad that we live so close and didn’t see each other. What happened to us all, Luce?” Jemima looked out at the paddocks with a sigh.
“Tragedy that not many families go through on that scale, I guess. We knew if we got together we’d have to remember it.”
“You know what? I’m going to saddle up and follow them down the back. Want to come for a ride?” Jemima pulled her loose hair back into a ponytail.
Lucy shook her head. “No thanks! I’ll tidy up here and do some more work on my proposal. Can you tell Seb I’ve lined him up for this afternoon, in case I’m not here when they come in?”
“Will do.”
Lucy stood and watched as Jemima headed for the horse paddock, her back straight and her walk graceful. Lucy felt like a misfit when they talked about cattle, and feed, and weights, but never more so than now as she watched Jemima stride confidently to the horses.
Lucy spent the afternoon on her laptop, trying to Skype with the office. The connection kept dropping out, and in the end she called Caleb on the landline and he gave her verbal approval to start the campaign she proposed.
“Flick me an email with the outline and send me some of the photos you get this afternoon, and I’ll have a look. But Lucy, the concept sounds great. Go for it!”
At four thirty, she looked anxiously at the clock; there was no sign of Gran and her three cousins. Luckily, the food for pick-up had been prepared and all she had to do was pack it and wait for Tommy to collect it when he brought the lunch baskets back in. She smiled as he looked around for Jemima.
“Sorry, Tommy. Only me this time.”
Lucy took a quick shower and deliberated over what she would wear before pulling herself up with a good talking-to. In the city, she’d wear cargos and a T-shirt, so that would do here. The lipstick she put on was purely to stop her lips getting burned by the late-afternoon sun.
It was.
She grabbed a bottle of water and her hat, and then scribbled a note for Seb, reminding him to come down to the dam and bring his camera as soon as he could. The cattle crush was quiet and empty when she walked past, but a sudden memory of her mum sitting on the top rail as the cattle ran through the gate made her catch her breath. Lucy took out the memory and let it roll around in her thoughts. Back in those days, she had loved to help when Mum and Dad came out from town when the cattle work was full-on.
Move ’em, move ’em along, Paul. The beasts were noisy, and it had been hot and dusty work. Mum used to perch up on the rail, her blue-checked flannel shirt flapping in the cool winter wind as Dad would push the cattle along in the crush. It had been Lucy’s job to raise the gate and let them out one by one after Mum lifted the drench gun and moved to the next beast. In primary school, she’d felt important, and by the time she’d got to high school, she was allowed to write down the numbers as Pop weighed the cattle so the animals got the right dose of Cydectin. God, she even remembered the name of the drench for parasites. What else was buried in her brain?
She shook her head and stared at the cattle crush. The only noise today was the chain rattling on the gate as the hot westerly blew in. If she was honest, it was only after Mum had died that she associated Prickle Creek Farm with all the bad memories. Before then, the dust and the flies, the heat and the prickles, had just been a part of life.
Her thoughts were pensive as she walked to the back dam.