The Farmer’s Wife. Rachael Treasure

positive, appreciative thoughts, your whole world will open up to new ways for you. Money, health, relationships. It teaches you that you create your own reality, good and bad, through your thoughts,’ Evie said.

      ‘That’s nice. OK, well, thank you,’ Rebecca said, trying to usher the boys out the door.

      ‘Enjoy your journey — and remember, always follow your bliss!’ Evie called after them.

      ‘She was nice,’ said Archie as Bec strapped him into his booster seat.

      ‘Kookie more like,’ she said.

      ‘No, she wasn’t, Mum,’ Ben retorted. ‘You should think more good thoughts, like the lady said.’

      As she shut the car door, Rebecca stood in the sweltering heat. Her son had a point. When she was younger, she had believed she could achieve anything, but the more life had moved on, the more and more she had been steered by others and life no longer lit a fire in her belly. How could she rekindle it? She looked down at the book and CD she had just bought. They said books landed in your lap for a reason, didn’t they? This one looked way out of her comfort zone. She flipped open to a page that told her that it might take some time to adjust to the notion that she was creating her life through her thoughts, not her actions.

      ‘Huh?’ she said out loud before reefing open her door and throwing the book on the front passenger seat with a huff. The CD slid from the back sleeve of the book and dropped to the floor.

      ‘Bugger it,’ Bec said and started the engine.

      By the time they’d passed the Cranky Chicks sign, both boys were asleep. The shopping will be almost roasted, she thought. She should’ve left the groceries until last and she shouldn’t have spent thirty bucks on a book and audio she never wanted in the first place.

      ‘Get over yourself, Rebecca,’ she muttered crossly to herself. ‘Think good thoughts. Not bad ones.’

      Maybe she could pass the CD and book onto her city sister-in-law, Trudy, so it wasn’t wasted. She glanced at it, taking in the swirling cover art of outer space. There was no way known that Trudy would like it. Maybe her mother, Frankie, would be interested. With all her veterinary science knowledge, she might find something in the pages. Didn’t all this New Age spiritual stuff have physics and other science at its heart? She was again distracted by her phone.

      There were already two missed calls and two voice mail messages to retrieve and now a video call was coming in from Charlie.

      Video call? she wondered, frowning. He’d never made one of those to her. She rolled her eyes again. He was probably trying out things on the new phone that he’d so proudly scored in the tractor deal. Being married to Charlie felt like she was mothering three boys, not two, most days!

      She pulled over onto a roadside verge, the Cranky Chicks sign still in sight in her side mirrors. Her index finger pressed the answer button. ‘Hello,’ she said.

      There was a rustling noise and Charlie’s breath, then the blurred and darkened image of what looked like the inside of his jeans pocket.

      ‘Hello? Charlie!’ she yelled at the phone. ‘I think you’ve accidentally called me. Charlie! Char … lie! Charlie?’ Behind her in the back seat, her boys stirred, but did not wake. She smiled at them. Shearing-shed babies, she thought. They would sleep through a hurricane. She looked back at the phone and called Charlie’s name again.

      It sounded like he was walking up a hill, his breath coming fast. He must be out ploughing again, she thought irritably, and he’d be out checking the sods of earth, where she knew billions of soil micro-organisms would have been butchered.

      She pressed the end button, not wanting to waste money. Not wanting to think of the Waters Meeting soil she knew they were buggering with bad farming practice. He’d been going off lately about the high phone bills. Never mind that he spent bucketloads on fertiliser that she hated and fuel to run the machinery that he brutalised the landscape with. She sighed, glad the no-till cropping and holistic grazing night was tonight and she could get a good dose of Andrew and his positivity. She so badly wanted Charlie to click with Andrew, so that things on Waters Meeting could begin to change.

      She was about to pull the vehicle onto the road when a video call came in from Charlie again.

      ‘Hello!’ she said, this time crossly.

      In the palm of her hand, the iPhone screen lit up, revealing a glimpse of dry grass and again what was the edge of Charlie’s jeans pocket. She could now not only hear Charlie’s breath, but also his voice.

      ‘Oh yeah,’ he half whispered. ‘Oh yeah, baby.’

      A faint smile arrived on Rebecca’s face. After their early morning attempt at love-making and his peace offering in the sheep yards, was he sending her a naughty message? Her heart skipped a beat. She glanced back at the boys to make sure they were asleep. In an instant, she felt elation. The possibility of a rekindled relationship flooded her with hope. A marriage at last back on track. This iPhone could be fun for them …

      Then Charlie’s phone must have taken a tumble onto the ground and all she could see on the tiny three-inch screen was the tanned dimpled thigh of a woman and what looked like a part of Charlie’s backside pumping up and down. Then she heard the woman moan and Bec felt sick. Shock punched pain throughout her body. Winded.

      She dragged her eyes from the screen, tears blurring her vision. With the horror of the moment crawling into her mind and body, she turned to take in the sight of her beautiful sleeping boys in the back seat. Their faces unguarded. The perfection and innocence of their youth giving them the aura of angels. All the while she heard the moans of the woman. She looked back at the screen to witness the thrusting of flesh, raw and ugly in the sunlight. Her husband’s breath coming fast, the way she’d heard it in her ear in the early hours that morning, before he had withered so quickly with lack of desire. She ended the call and sat for a time, gulping in air, holding the phone in the palm of her hand. Then slowly she steeled herself as she dialled the message bank. The first recording cut out almost instantly, but the second revealed the rustle of clothing and the same moaning of the woman and heavy breathing of her husband. Rebecca shut her eyes and felt her entire life as she believed it to be dissolve. With shaking hands, she pressed the end button.

       Nine

      Rebecca stood at the Rivermont front door and rang the brass bell. She barely registered the presence of a blonde Cardigan Corgi and the elegant auburn German Short-haired Pointer sniffing at her weary, just-woken boys, who were standing beside her. She clutched the bag containing the baby-doll nightie, wondering what on earth had possessed her to turn into the Rivermont driveway.

      The Stantons were strangers. Having only met Yazzie the previous night, why wasn’t she seeking out Gabs as a friend to share her despair? Wouldn’t she be better to crumble at Gabs’s doorstep with the news of what she had just seen? And heard? Her husband’s sex-breath, matched with that of another woman. Something deep within her, a shame, a sense of failure, wanted to keep the grubby knowledge of her husband’s infidelity away from Gabs and out of the loop of gossip that permeated the district. Gabs seemed at this time too close to home, whereas Yazzie was virtually a stranger.

      Rebecca knew that shock had brought her here to this massive glossy white door, and maybe it was something else too? Maybe it was Yazzie herself. A hope that somewhere left inside her was a way of being, similar to Yazzie’s vibrancy and enthusiasm for life. The hope that the young jillaroo she once had been still remained. But that was stupid, Rebecca reasoned. Maybe she should just bottle up all her feelings and shove them deep down inside? Put up and shut up. Get on with it. Thousands of men had done this to thousands of women over the ages. And vice versa. Maybe she was overreacting? And everyone grew old and down and disappointed, didn’t they? She could sort this out herself, couldn’t she?

      She was about to turn away when the door was reefed open