Scandalous Secrets. Michelle Douglas

‘Mum, I’m happy here.’

      There was a moment’s pause. Maybe something in Penny’s voice had got through. ‘Really?’

      ‘I am,’ she told her. ‘And Samson’s turning into a sheepdog. You should see him.’

      ‘I thought you were working at a hotel.’

      ‘This is sheep country.’

      ‘So you’re meeting the locals?’

      ‘I...some of them. But Mum, I can’t come to the wedding. I’m so busy I’m even starting to forget what Felicity and Brett did to me.’ She took a deep breath and decided to say it like it was. ‘To be honest, I’m even starting to feel sorry for Felicity. And worried. You should tell Felicity there are a lot nicer men than Brett.’

      ‘You wanted to marry him.’

      ‘That was before I knew what a toerag he was. There are still some honourable men in the world.’

      She shouldn’t have said it. If there was one thing Louise was good at, it was sussing out gossip and, despite her distress, she could almost feel her mother’s antennae quiver. ‘“Honourable men”,’ she said slowly. There was a loaded pause and then, ‘Penny, have you met one?’

      Shut up, Penny, she told herself. Get off the phone fast.

      But she wouldn’t lie. Had she met an honourable man? Yes, she had, and the thought was a good one.

      ‘That’s for me to know and you to guess,’ she told her mother, forcing herself to sound breezy. ‘Goodnight, Mum.’

      ‘Penny, please come.’

      ‘I can’t.’

      But she lay in bed that night and thought of her mother’s tears. She thought of her mother, isolated at the wedding by her appalling husband and her even more appalling stepdaughter.

      How did you rid yourself of the ties of loving?

      She should ask Matt.

       CHAPTER EIGHT

      IN THE NEXT few days, while Matt coped with the tasks that had to be done before the wool was sent for sale, Penny attacked the house.

      If anyone had ever told her she’d find joy in a mop and bucket, she’d have told them they were crazy. But cleaning took her mind off her mother’s increasingly distressed phone calls, and this was a challenge worth tackling.

      Ever since she’d walked into the house she’d thought of it as something out of a Charles Dickens novel. ‘I feel like I might find Miss Havisham under one of these dust sheets,’ she told Matt as they sat on the veranda that night. ‘How long have they been here?’

      ‘Donald’s mother was a socialite,’ Matt told her. ‘She ran away when Donald was seven and his dad pretty much closed the house. When Donald sold me the house and contents I left it as it was. I use my bedroom, the den and the kitchen. I’ve no need for anything else.’

      ‘You’re two male versions of Miss Havisham,’ she told him. ‘Not that I mind. You can gloat over your wool clip while I clean. I’ll even enjoy it.’

      ‘I would be grateful,’ Matt admitted. ‘If Lily comes...’

      ‘Is that likely to happen?’

      ‘Maybe,’ he said slowly. ‘She’s not getting on with Darrilyn’s new partner. Darrilyn’s talking about sending her to school in Australia so it’s not impossible.’ But he sounded like a man who was scarcely allowing himself to hope.

      ‘Does she know anyone in Australia?’

      ‘No, and that’s why I’m telling Darrilyn she’d need to come here first. So she knows some sort of base.’

      ‘Poor kid,’ Penny said, and meant it. She knew all about being a teenage thorn in her socialite parents’ lives and the thought of the unknown Lily was part of her driving force.

      ‘The sofa in the main sitting room’s so hard it feels like sitting on bricks,’ she told him. ‘Why not replace it with something squishy? Now the flood’s receded you can get it delivered and, with the fire lit, that room would be lovely. It needs a big telly, though, and all the things that go with it. If Lily comes she won’t feel welcome if she has to sit on a horsehair brick. And her bedroom...I’d suggest buying a four-poster bed. Not pink, unless you see her as a pink girl.’

      ‘I don’t,’ he said faintly. ‘Penny, she probably won’t come.’

      ‘You know,’ she said diffidently, ‘if I was thirteen and there was conflict at home, my dad sending pictures of the bedroom he’d prepared for me might well make me feel a whole lot better about myself, whether I was allowed to come or not.’

      ‘Even if they’re never used?’

      ‘You can afford it,’ she told him bluntly. ‘And Lily sounds like she needs it.’

      ‘How do you know?’

      ‘I don’t. I’m guessing. You want to go with my guess or with yours?’

      He looked at her for a long moment and then raked his hair. ‘You probably do know more about thirteen-year-old girls than I do.’

      ‘Hey, I was one once,’ she said cheerfully. ‘If you agree, I’d suggest we go with a theme of antique white. The rooms are so old-fashioned, why don’t we...’

      ‘We?’

      ‘Me then,’ she said and grinned. ‘Why don’t I go for white on white? Broderie anglaise, heritage quilting, a deep rug on the floor, some old-fashioned sampler type pictures on the wall...’

      ‘How do you know what she’d like?’

      ‘I know what I’d like,’ she told him. ‘If my parents had done something like this for me...’

      And then her voice cracked. She heard it but there wasn’t a thing she could do about it.

      ‘Still hurting, huh?’ Matt said. They were sitting on the edge of the veranda and he reached out and touched her face. It was a fleeting gesture, but it said, in some deep way, that he understood the distress she still felt whenever she thought of her mother’s pleas. The knowledge was enough to make her toes curl.

      She concentrated fiercely on getting them uncurled.

      ‘I can forget about it here,’ she managed.

      ‘But you can’t stay here for ever?’

      ‘No. And Malley’s isn’t an option any more. But neither is staying away, I guess. My sister’s getting married on the seventeenth and Mum’s organising a family dinner on the twelfth. On Dad’s orders. To heal differences, he says, and he expects me to be there. He’ll blame Mum if I’m not.’

      ‘Surely you won’t go?’ He sounded appalled. That was how she felt but what choice did she have?

      ‘You see, I love Mum,’ she said simply.

      She loved, therefore she did what was expected.

      Matt was silent for a while. The night was closing in on them and somehow it felt...almost threatening? Why did this man make her feel so exposed?

      ‘I guess that’s why I don’t love,’ Matt said at last. ‘I won’t let myself need people and I won’t be needed.’

      ‘No?’ She gave a hollow laugh. ‘What about Lily?’

      ‘Lily’s different. She’s my kid.’

      ‘And this is my mum.’

      ‘And your mum should be protecting you, as I’d protect Lily. Penny, your mum’s an adult. She’s had a lifetime to form her own armour and maybe