House for All Seasons Read online

  You’re right about that. Not even her own family history interested Sara. But a man who talked about family rather than golf couldn’t be bad. For that alone, Sara liked Elliott instantly, idiot or not. And he rode. Bonus.

  ‘What is it you do for a quid, if you don’t mind me asking?’

  ‘I’ll do just about anything, including my current gig—feeding and watering the little farmyard you got out back. I can do with the bucks, but if you’d rather I didn’t bother you …’

  ‘Oh, no, that’s fine.’ The notion of farmyard chores might excite Caitlin. They did nothing for Sara.

  ‘I’m Sara.’ She braved the last few steps down the hallway and extended her hand.

  ‘Can’t help admiring the bike you’re carting,’ he said, nodding at the tow-bar rack on the rear of Sara’s little car. ‘Nice one.’

  ‘I keep fit. I ride most days too, although I forgot how hot it can get here.’

  ‘Maybe we can take a ride together sometime.’

  She had to think quick, saying the first thing that came to her mind.

  A lie.

  ‘I’m, ah, planning on keeping busy.’

  The man grinned with a mouthful of straight, white teeth, made even brighter by his deep tan. Dark brown eyes were rimmed by lashes too long and too luscious to be a man’s. ‘You sound like a lady on a mission.’

  ‘I guess you could say that.’

  ‘Hmm, pretty and mysterious. You know, I have one myself—a mission, that is,’ he said, strapping the bike helmet in place.

  ‘That’s good.’ Sara didn’t ask what it was, mostly because she didn’t want him asking her the same.

  He pushed open the screen door to leave, the cleats on his bike shoes clickity-clacking as he stepped on the wooden boards of the veranda, and Sara wondered why she hadn’t heard his approach.

  ‘Maybe you can help me with my mission,’ he said.

  ‘I’m sorry, Elliott, but like I said—’

  ‘Yeah, yeah, you’re busy. No problem. But if you need anyone to help with mission strategies, I’m your man.’

  ‘I’ll keep that in mind.’ Sara hoped her smile was polite as she bent down to pick up the small carry bag he’d dropped inside the front door.

  ‘You know, I can also keep a secret.’

  Sara shot up straight, clasped her hand to the open neck of her shirt and demanded, ‘What makes you think I have a secret? I do not.’ Argh! Stop being so paranoid, woman. He can’t tell. No one can tell. ‘I do, however, have to get unpacked, so if you’ll excuse me.’

  ‘Well, anything I can do to help just let me know. All part of the service. I’m supposed to come round every few days to check on the animals. See you then.’

  She waited until Elliott mounted his bike and took off at a terrifying pace down the gravel drive and onto the punt.

  Idiot indeed!

  Down the hall, Sara found a door with a plaque. On it was her name, scribbled in a child’s writing under a picture of a colourful stick-figure family, five smiling children in front of a stick-figure house, its double chimneys sending a corkscrew of smoke into the sky. When the doorhandle didn’t move, she remembered the parcel that had arrived in the mail a few days earlier and the old-style barrel key made of brass that she’d tucked in the pocket of her jeans before setting out this morning.

  With a turn of the key, she eased the door open, the room winding her with its dazzling decor of hand-painted sunflower faces smiling up at a sky-blue ceiling. Happy Mr Do-Bees dotted the walls and black and white magpies were perched in trees. One kookaburra on the ground was grinning, a similarly smiling worm firmly clenched in its beak.

  ‘Oh my!’ Sara was suddenly half-laughing, half-crying.

  Sunflowers had been Willow’s favourite. She’d grown them from seed, cut out pictures, drawn them, all while Sara was secretly scribbling in her schoolbooks: Sara loves Will.

  4

  Sleep had washed over Sara so easily last night—her best sleep in two years and totally unexpected. No staying in bed this morning. The sunny room beckoned, as did the day outside the window.

  A shower and a bowl of muesli later, she looked around the rambling old house and knew the top o’ the mornin’ feeling would soon vanish if she stayed here alone reminiscing. The day was new, the sun delightfully warm where it streamed in through the kitchen window, and with Item 2 on THE LIST being Look after your body, a bike ride seemed the most logical thing.

  Lists, any kind of lists, were something Sara had grown up with—little to-do notes, the tiny squares of sticky paper that once littered her life, reminders of the tragic consequences should she miss one of her mother’s tablets or fail to lock her father’s door each night, especially towards the end. Some reminders she’d written herself, others would appear for her on the fridge, the kitchen table, in the bathroom—a plague of Post-it Notes that had left Sara today with a loathing for the colourful squares. For a girl barely in her teens, checklists had become a necessary part of life, and while they didn’t rule her so much these days, lists did seem to write themselves. When she wasn’t writing them, she had mental lists she couldn’t shake. No blaming innocuous little slips of paper for those. Her mental lists were all her doing. There was never a problem with her memory as such—in fact she remembered too much sometimes. Forgetting and forgiving were Sara’s biggest issues. Obsessive list-making ranked third.

  Only one list was really in play during her stay in Calingarry Crossing. Ten tiny promises she’d made—well, nine actually, as she was still working on #10—that together added up to a new, improved Sara, stronger and more mentally prepared to take on anything life wanted to heap on her—as long as it didn’t all come at once like before.

  If she was going to ride, it had to be early, before the heat of the day set in. She could pace herself, stop in town for a coffee and avoid the detour past the sale yards, knowing that if she continued along Sale Yard Road she’d end up outside the cemetery gates.

  Not today.

  Not yet.

  One step at a time.

  Today was about rediscovering the delights of cycling away from the city’s smog and crowded streets. Newly graded, by the feel of the road under bike wheels more suited to asphalt, the relatively flat route she’d chosen still had enough bends and obstacles to give her and the dust-filled bike gears a good workout. But her path was unhurried and steady and she fell into a rhythm with nature and the metronome click of the wheels.

  Slow down. No rush. Slow down. No rush.

  There was no rush, no urgency to get things done anymore—not as much as there had been, and not since her last check-up. How long would she stay that way? No one knew, and while events over the last couple of years had left her loathing the word deadline, she’d become inexplicably fixated with setting them. Perhaps the obsession satisfied the void left by her Post-it Note cure. In a way, Calingarry Crossing’s deadline—summer at the house—had been set for her, so while she was here Sara planned to reconcile her past with her present. Only then could she tackle her future.

  Sara rode towards the town her teenage self had once held responsible for everything bad about her life and couldn’t wait to leave. Although it was still early in the day, the sun bore into her back through the fine cotton of her favourite cycling shirt. Stones crunched under the bike’s wheels, alerting a murder of crows feasting on something long dead on the side of the road, the putrid smell so thick Sara could almost see the fetid fog as she rode past. It made her gag. It also made her smile.

  Oh yeah, you’re back in the country, all right!

  Back and needing to reconnect. Time to see Calingarry through grown-up eyes.

  Gypsy’s bequest was Sara’s chance to set things right, recover, bounce back, start again. Her first challenge would be getting accustomed to the heat. She braved it; good country air and sunshine had to be restorative, even while pedalling through the pain of the cramp now gripping her left calf muscle. Once on the sealed section of road on the outs
kirts of town, Sara let the shimmering heat haze in the distance drive her. The analogy of pushing through was the perfect fit with Item 6 on THE LIST: Never give up. Positive thinking might have been part of the cure, but for Sara her philosophy now was more a case of expect disappointment and the crap won’t hurt so much. These days, while not immune to disappointment, being prepared helped.

  No need to worry about disappointment this morning. The café was open and Will was at one of the outside tables, his eyes hidden behind sunglasses but his face very definitely following her ride-by. She waved without slowing, doing a lap of the main street. There weren’t too many people. The little corner store was putting out newspaper posters and the Stock and General was taking a delivery. She didn’t recognise any of the shopkeepers’ faces, although they did give her an odd look. No doubt the locals would think Sara quite mad in bike gear on a day like this. At least she hoped it was her lunacy and not her Lycra-clad backside. Soon enough they’d know that the crazy woman on the bike was poor Sara Fraser. She retraced her path along the street.

  ‘Hey, marathon woman. Thought I recognised it. Here, catch.’ Will tossed a plastic bottle to Sara as she walked into range.

  ‘Recognised what exactly?’ she managed to ask in between catching her breath and catching the cold bottle, which she immediately held against her cheeks.

  ‘Why, your stamina, of course! What else would I have meant?’ Will winked over his glasses and smiled. ‘Don’t you remember I nicknamed you the Duracell Bunny back in school? You were always in a hurry, a little pocket rocket, always with some place to go and a list of things to do. But right now, your face is as red as Bertha. Sit down before you fall down.’ He pointed to a chair in the shade. ‘Why on earth are you riding a bike in this heat?’

  Sara sank into the seat and fluffed her shirt to unglue it from her body and let air circulate. The Lycra shorts were tight enough; she didn’t need a clingy top too.

  ‘I like to ride. It’s good for the planet. Reduces my carbon footprint.’

  ‘Can’t argue with that.’ Will manoeuvred his chair into a position opposite Sara. ‘I might take a ride with you when it’s cooler. Maybe tonight. They say there’s a change on the way. Should take the temp down a notch or two. I’m all finished here by six. What do you say?’

  ‘You ride?’

  Good one. Sara groaned inwardly.

  ‘Hey, they don’t call me Wheels Travelli for nothing.’ Will tapped his chair. ‘Have wheels? Will Travelli? Get it? Guess it’s not so funny when you have to explain.’

  ‘Oh, I got it. I was just … I didn’t mean to … That was so rude. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Sara, stop.’ Will leaned forward, his face almost collecting one of the hands she waved about apologetically. He grabbed hold, restraining the flailing limb with one hand while he slid the sunglasses down the bridge of his nose with the other and peered up. ‘Relax, Sara, you’ll get used to all this metal after a while. You’ll forget about the chair—until I run over your toes.’ He didn’t smile, leaning in with a serious face. ‘There is, however, one protocol that I insist on around here.’

  ‘A protocol?’

  ‘Yes. Something you should know. Lean over. I’ll whisper.’ Will wiggled his finger, inviting her closer … closer … closer. ‘We don’t use that word around here. Strike it from your vocabulary, unless it’s something super big and super bad.’

  ‘What word?’

  ‘You know the one. No more sorries about any of this stuff, okay?’ A crooked grin returned and he slapped the arms of his wheelchair. ‘Things is how they is, Sara, so ignore the chair and focus on the good-looking bloke sitting in it.’ Will arched one eyebrow. ‘Remember, only super big and super bad things, a list of which can be found pinned in my kids’ bedrooms for reference. Now drink the water before you explode.’

  Despite his close proximity, Sara did relax—a little. Understanding the protocol helped. Despising the word herself helped, especially having suffered from a sorry overload as a youth, not to mention just last week at the hospital.

  Everyone was always so sorry.

  Sorry your husband left.

  Sorry your mum’s sick.

  Sorry your dad almost blew the house up because he could no longer be trusted with something as simple as a box of matches.

  If only she’d thought to ban the word years ago. She could have got a mug printed or a T-shirt designed. No, on second thoughts, buying T-shirts with slogans blazoned across her breast definitely was not on THE LIST.

  ‘Coffee this morning?’ Will asked.

  ‘That was the idea, but with all this country air and sunshine I’m thinking no to coffee. I’ll stick to water, thanks. Decreasing my caffeine intake won’t hurt.’

  Will snorted. ‘Bloody hell, I take mine by osmosis. Help yourself to a juice from the drink fridge if you like. I’ll be right back.’

  Sara had to smile, amused at football superstar, Will Travelli, using a word like osmosis. So his vocabulary had changed, but that was about all. Aside from the obvious, he was the same knock-about bloke she used to daydream about and drool over, albeit from a distance—a distance enforced by Will’s numerous female admirers, all long and lanky and all so not Sara.

  ‘Hello, Sara.’

  ‘Jenny!’ Sara recognised the statuesque figure by her table. Jenny Williams had been Calingarry Crossing’s equivalent to leader of the cheer squad, a perpetual groupie for every school sport—male sports, of course—and Will’s number one fan. With her father the head of Saddleton Farmers’ Guild, her crowning as Miss Showgirl two years running had surprised no one.

  ‘People call me Jennifer now,’ she informed Sara while busily wrapping a black apron low across her hips to show off a bejewelled belly button, tattoo and toned tummy.

  Now that’s uppity slutty.

  Sara had had one of those once—the toned tummy, not the stud or the tat. Although petite, months of inactivity had left her with a slight podge and slightly broad in the beam, possibly too broad for the Lycra bike shorts currently cutting into her thighs. But even that choice was strategic. At least while people were looking at her backside they weren’t focused on her bust line.

  ‘Will said you were back in town,’ Jennifer continued. ‘He mentioned it in passing last night after picking me up and giving me the most beautiful bunch of flowers, then taking me out to dinner at, of all places, La Mystique restaurant in Saddleton, where we drank champagne and he made a toast, to me, of course. It was my birthday, you know.’

  Was the woman still breathing? Sara began to wonder, having listened to the longest sentence in history. Maybe Jenny was cheerleader for the verbal Olympics these days. Despite the long-windedness of her monologue, the message could not have been any clearer if she’d tattooed it on that tummy next to the navel stud: Back off, Will’s mine.

  ‘Well in that case, happy birthday, Jennifer,’ Sara said, trying not to smile.

  She should put the woman out of her misery, tell Jennifer she was here to close doors, not bang her head against them by chasing after a twenty-year-old attraction that was never reciprocated in the first place. Sara had moved on from Will a long time ago. She was interested to know how he was doing despite her unforgivable lack of contact and concern, but after fulfilling her obligation with the house, Sara would go back to Sydney. Staying permanently in Calingarry Crossing had never been a consideration. Never again would the town tie Sara down. By summer’s end she would be ready to face the world as a new woman, get a job and get used to how life was for her now. Telling Jennifer she need not worry about any competition from her was the right thing to do, but the devil in Sara decided to let the woman make her own assumptions. Jennifer was probably quite skilled at it.

  ‘Morning, boss,’ Jennifer chirped as she sashayed past Will on his way back over to Sara.

  ‘I think my arrival may have upset Jenny … I mean, Jennifer.’

  ‘Not sure I follow.’ Will wrinkled his nose the way he always used to, excep
t for the time a Saddleton team bully broke it in a high tackle.

  ‘Jennifer? Your date last night? Wildly romantic dinner? La Mystique? Ringing any bells?’

  ‘Is that what she just told you?’ He chuckled in a sweet, sympathetic way. ‘Poor Jen. Her husband left her last year. Ran off with a backpacker working at the Saddleton pub. Yesterday was her first birthday alone and I thought a night out would be nice, cheer her up a bit. Besides, she’s a good worker and hangs around to help me close up. She never claims overtime.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sure she feels amply rewarded, though.’

  Sara was teasing, but the pangs of jealousy jabbed a little too hard. Why had there been no Will and no knight in shining armour to rescue Sara when her husband had run out, dumping her at the worst possible point in her life?

  Don’t go there.

  ‘So, speaking of dinner, Ms Sara Fraser, how about you have it with me tonight?’

  ‘Oh my, La Mystique two nights in one week?’

  ‘Ah, actually, I was thinking more Le Café, as in here. It’s wages night so I’m slaving over pays after I lock up, but I can have Dom knock us up a meal before he finishes. When I’m done with the wages I can just bung the plates of whatever in the microwave.’

  Bung whatever in the microwave!

  Sara laughed so hard, the lack of control over her normally tightly controlled emotions surprised her.

  ‘What’s so funny?’ Will asked, doing a lousy job of keeping a straight face.

  ‘You—and you know it.’ She buckled her helmet and unhooked her sunnies from the neck of her shirt, preparing to leave. ‘I guess it’s microwaved whatever around six. I’ll be here.’

  Pleased with the proficient mounting of her bike in front of an audience, Sara pushed off with a final wave, silently cursing Will behind her smile. He was making this way too easy. It wasn’t meant to be easy. If talking to him was so simple, what excuse did she have for being a wimp and not telling him how she’d felt twenty years ago? How different might both their lives be today if she’d been brave back then? Of course she knew the answer to that in Will’s case: a different path would not have had him in the car that night with Ebony. But there was no duping Sara’s destiny. That was a done deal, thanks to genetics.