CHAPTER
35
A day later, Kirsty woke to the sound of ixoras being snipped outside her motel room window. What time was it? Had she overslept? Had she—
Nope. It was freaking six am. Besides, she wasn’t working at the farm anymore, was she? Her life in Clarence had one focus only: finishDoreen Anne’s restoration, rescue it from the clutches of a gambler with a big-ass debt and deliver it safely into the hands of Young John and his team at the Wacol Military Museum.
Which was good. A clear goal, and enough to do to keep the fact that she hadn’t called the psychologist her boss kept texting her about out of her mind.
And the fact your mother played a role in your father’s death and never told you.
Whatever. She pulled Ken’s whiter-than-white bed sheet over her head, so she was in a safe little cocoon of high thread-count cotton. Terri was—
Well. Terri was Terri, wasn’t she? And that wasn’t a conversation to have over the phone, so she wasn’t being a total coward putting it off, was she?
Besides … Carol had instructed her to come up with story details compelling and romantic and heroic enough to capture the public heart and keep the Wirraway out of the bank’s clutches.
So long as she kept the focus on it being Bill’s story … not hers, or Terri’s, then everything would be righty-tighty.
Okay then. Yawning, she said goodbye to her cocoon, then rose from the bed, pulling the chenille bedspread around her shoulders against the cool of the dawn.
She shuffled over to the patio doors and flung them open. ‘Early start on the pruning, Ken.’
‘Ooops … I was hoping not to wake you, pet,’ he said. He had snipped off a plant stem that held a halo of tiny flowers, and he leaned over the patio railing to slip it into a pottery jug that … Wait. Had that jug been on her patio table yesterday when he’d shown her to her room?
‘Are they …?’
‘For you, yes. Couldn’t help but notice you seemed a little low when you roared into my visitor carpark yesterday.’
Low was one way to put it. Devastated, embarrassed, foolish, lonely … crap. ‘That’s pretty sweet of you, Ken. Shouldn’t you be saving some of those for Mrs Kwong?’
Ken dropped her a wink. ‘Already done, pet. The missus has gone off to her pilates, then she has a piano recital at the oldies home to officiate at. Oh … and here’s an envelope arrived for you. Special visitor dropped it into my office last night.’
‘Um …’ What she really needed was a couple more hours of oblivion with her head buried into a feather pillow, but Ken clearlyhad other ideas, because he’d sat himself down at the wrought-iron patio table. She eyed the envelope suspiciously. Terri texted her daily with some random woollen object snap, so it wouldn’t be from her, and she knew Joe’s writing from his chores list—he certainly never decorated the whiteboard with red texta chickens. ‘Was this special visitor about four foot tall?’
‘That’d be the one.’
Yore invited to Amy’s 9th birthday party! Whacko!!! See you under the party tree at Bangadoon, next Sunday at 2 o’clock. Presents are kompulsery. RPVS to my mum Daisy.Under Amy’s forceful scribble was a pencilled line of cursive:I heard you left the farm but please come anyway, Daisy xxx
Crap.
‘Trouble?’ said Ken.
‘Yes. An invitation to Amy Miles’s birthday party at Bangadoon.’
He winced. ‘Awkward. I’m all yours if you need a cup of tea and a chat.’
‘How do you know it’ll be awkward?’
‘Plenty of tea bags in the caddy, love,’ he said meaningfully.
‘You’re an operator, Ken; you know that, don’t you?’
He might have been grinning but it was hard to tell under all the grizzled whiskers. His eyes were certainly smiling at her. She sighed. She was up now, wasn’t she?
‘One sugar, right?’ she said.
‘Yep. And you can leave the dipper in, love.’