Scandalous Secrets. Michelle Douglas

Eventually I might set up a catering company in Adelaide or in Brisbane, but for now I need time to get my head together. I need to be as far from Sydney as possible.’

      ‘Which is why you headed into the outback in that car?’

      Now she grinned. ‘Isn’t it fun? Dad probably wants it back, though. He gave it to me when Brett and I got engaged. With a huge pink ribbon on it. I was momentarily the golden girl.’

      ‘Shall we take it back to the creek and launch it? Let it float ceremoniously a few hundred miles to the ocean?’

      She stared. ‘Pardon?’

      ‘We could take pictures of it floating out of sight and send them to your father. Very symbolic.’

      She choked. ‘Dad’d have a stroke. To say he’s careful is an understatement.’

      ‘But not careful of his daughter,’ Matt said, his voice softening.

      ‘Don’t.’

      ‘Don’t what?’

      ‘Get sympathetic. I’m fine as long as no one minds.’

      ‘So no one minds?’

      ‘No,’ she said fiercely. ‘No one at all. That last awful dinner, when Brett and Felicity walked in hand in hand, Mr and Mrs Smug...I was too gobsmacked to yell and Mum didn’t have the strength to stand up for me. But I guess that was my line in the sand. I can’t help Mum and I won’t keep trying to please my father. And in a way it’s liberating. I’ve walked away. I’m free.’

      Then she paused. The night stilled and he thought of what he should say next.

      But she got there before him.

      ‘So what about you?’ she asked.

      He’d finished his beer. He was tired beyond belief. He should pick up his dishes and head via the kitchen to bed.

      ‘What do you mean, what about me?’

      ‘Who minds?’ she asked. ‘That’s what you asked me. Who cares, Matt Fraser? You live here by yourself. No girlfriend? Boyfriend? Whatever?’

      ‘I have a...’ he said slowly, and then he paused. He didn’t want to talk about Lily.

      But this woman had just opened herself to him. She might say she was free, she was over being hurt, but he knew vulnerable when he saw it.

      She’d trusted him with her story. How mean would it be not to give the same to her?

      He tried again. ‘I have a daughter,’ he told her. ‘Lily’s thirteen years old and lives in the States with my ex-wife.’

      She’d been gazing out over the farmland but now she swivelled to stare at him. He hadn’t turned the porch lights on, but the moonlight and the light filtering from inside the windows was enough for her to see.

      Not that he wanted her to see. He wanted his face to be impassive.

      Which was pretty much how he wanted to be when he thought of Lily.

      ‘Thirteen! You must have been a baby when she was born,’ she stammered and he thought: Yep, that just about summed it up.

      ‘I was twenty-four.’

      ‘Wow.’ She was still staring. ‘So your wife took Lily back to the States. Isn’t that hard to do? I mean...did you consent?’

      ‘Darrilyn met an investment banker, coming to investigate...a project I was working on. He was rich, he lived in New York, she was fascinated and he offered her a more exciting life than the one she had with me. She was also four months pregnant. When you leave Australia with your child, the child needs the permission of both parents. When you’re pregnant no one asks.’

      ‘Oh, Matt...’

      ‘It’s okay,’ he said, even though it wasn’t. ‘I have the resources to see her a couple of times a year.’

      ‘Does she look like you?’

      And, for some reason, that shook him.

      The guys on the farm knew he had a daughter—that was the reason he took off twice a year—but that was as far as it went. When had he ever talked about his daughter? Never.

      ‘I guess she does,’ he said slowly. ‘She has my black hair. My brown eyes. There’s no denying parentage, if that’s what you mean.’

      ‘I guess. I didn’t mean anything,’ she whispered. ‘I’m just thinking how hard it would be to leave her there.’ She gave herself a shake, a small physical act that said she was moving on from something that was clearly none of her business. But it seemed she did have more questions, just not about Lily.

      ‘So you,’ she said. ‘I’ve told you all about my appalling family. Your mum and dad?’

      ‘Just mum.’ Why was he telling her this? He should excuse himself and go to bed. But he couldn’t. She was like a puppy, he thought, impossible to kick.

      Or was there more? The need to talk? He never talked but he did now.

      ‘This farm,’ she was saying. ‘I assumed you’d inherited it.’

      ‘Sort of.’

      ‘So rich mum, hey?’

      ‘The opposite.’ He hated talking about it but he forced himself to go on. ‘Mum had me when she was eighteen and she had no support. I was a latchkey kid from early on, but we coped.’ He didn’t say how they’d coped. What use describing a childhood where he’d been needed to cope with his mother’s emotional messes?

      ‘Give me a hug, sweetheart. Sorry, I can’t stop crying. Can you go out and buy pies for tea? Can you go down to the welfare and say Mummy’s not well, we need money for food? But say I’ve just got the flu... I don’t want them sticking their noses in here...’

      He shook himself, shoving back memories that needed to be buried. Penny was waiting for him to go on.

      ‘When I was twelve Mum took a housekeeping job about five hundred miles inland from Perth,’ he told her. ‘Sam Harriday was an eighty-year-old bachelor. He’d worked his parents’ farm on his own for years and was finally admitting he needed help. So off we went, to somewhere Mum hoped we’d be safe.’

      ‘Safe?’

      ‘Sorry.’ He caught himself, but now he’d said it he had to explain. A bit. ‘There were parts of Mum’s life that weren’t safe.’

      She was silent at that, and he thought she’d probe. He didn’t want her to but he’d asked for it. But when she spoke again she’d moved on. Maybe she’d sensed his need for barriers. ‘Good for your mum,’ she told him. ‘But so far inland... You were twelve? How did you go to school?’

      ‘School of the Air.’ He shrugged and smiled at the memory of his not very scholastic self. ‘Not that I studied much. I took one look at the farm and loved it. And Sam...’ He hesitated. ‘Well, Sam was a mate. He could see how hungry I was to learn and he taught me.’

      ‘But—’ she frowned, obviously trying to figure the whole story ‘—this isn’t his farm?’

      ‘It’s not,’ he told her. ‘Cutting a long story short, when I was fifteen Mum fell for a biker who got lost and asked for a bed. She followed him to the city but Sam offered to let me stay. So I did. I kept up with School of the Air until I was seventeen but by then I was helping him with everything. And I loved it. I loved him. He died when I was twenty-two and he left me everything.’ He shrugged. ‘An inheritance seems great until you realize what comes with it. The death of someone you love.’

      ‘I’m sorry...’

      ‘It’s a while back now and it was his time,’ he said, but he paused, allowing a moment for the memories of the old man he’d loved. Allowing himself to remember again the pain that happened