He didn’t mind the sea; he remembered beachside holidays as a kid fondly. In fact, those weeks spent in Sorrento or Rosebud or Ocean Grove with his folks were the only times he saw his parents truly relax. For the rest of the year, Sylvie and Angus Atherton coexisted in polite indifference, staying married for the sake of appearances and little else. So he’d cherished those snatched weeks by the ocean when he’d sit next to his dad on a pier, rods in their hands, raspberry icy poles in the Esky. They never caught a fish, not once; it didn’t matter, because he liked hanging out with his father, the sun on their backs and the breeze on their faces. Not catching anything had an added bonus of getting fish and chips for dinner and he couldn’t taste salt and vinegar without remembering those days.
When his mum spied the paper packet in his hands as he trudged sand all over the floor, her eyes would light up in a way they never did at home in their small weatherboard in Chadstone. She liked a treat as much as he did and for an all-too-short hour he’d share a meal with his folks on the porch, the distant sound of the waves crashing on the back beach a pleasant distraction, and pretend like everything was okay.
But he wasn’t at a seaside jaunt now. For the last four weeks of summer, he had to atone for his sins in godforsaken Acacia Haven. That’s what it felt like, being sent to this tiny town three hours from Melbourne—and three hours from the best barista in bayside Brighton—like he was being punished.
Not that he’d given Gus and his brigade any indication how truly pissed off he’d been. He’d bide his time, give them their precious bloody report, and look forward to utilising his long service leave by taking the last term off. He had plans for those four months and no way in hell he’d let some bureaucrats derail him.
As he crested a small hill leading towards town, the ocean vista widened into a cerulean crescent, and for a moment he released his residual bitterness and took in the view. To his right, a sheltered bay with towering cliffs. To his left, a calm stretch of ocean with a rock poking out smack dab in the middle, like a giant nose. And in between, a main street lined with shops leading all the way to the beach at the bottom of the hill.
He slowed below the recommended speed limit and cruised up the street. Along with the requisite pub, supermarket, post office and bank that most small Victorian towns featured, this place had an abundance of eclectic shops and cafés with equally distinctive names: Vegan Vault, The Cool Candle, The Love Lotus, The Okra and The Knick Knack Shop. Rainbow-coloured banners fluttered in the brisk sea breeze, beckoning the few people strolling the street into the shops. Sandwich boards were propped along the footpath, advertising sesame cucumber salads, chilli cauliflower steaks, grilled shiitake and asparagus tacos and quinoa burgers.
Jy’s stomach rumbled, reminding him he’d grabbed a muesli bar with his takeaway coffee before he hit the road, but none of what he’d just seen sounded appetising. A chicken parma at the pub was more his scene but first, he had to swing past the school.
He was not looking forward to this. Gus had reassured Jy the Education Department hadn’t told the school the reason behind his arrival but it wouldn’t take Einstein to figure it out, especially when he was stuck here for four weeks. They’d know he was making a note of their every move with the sole intention to close them down.
There was no other option.
He’d read the reports Gus had emailed and they weren’t pretty. Acacia Haven College had eighty-nine students of various ages and grades, most of whom barely passed the national standard exams set every two years. As for their VCE results, the few kids who actually sat the exams failed more often than not. In comparison, kids in nearby Inverloch outranked them by sixty percent. Not good. As Gus had said, they had the lowest results in the state and nothing Jy did could change that.
This wasn’t a fact-finding mission for some bogus report Gus wanted. He’d been sent here to shut this school down.
And that made him the bad guy before he even set foot in the place.
The droning voice from his satellite navigation told him to turn left at the end of Main Street, drive another kilometre, then take a slight left and his destination would be dead ahead. He followed the instructions but when he pulled up outside what looked like a massive wooden shearing shed, he glanced at the screen again. It still displayed the bullseye, indicating his destination was dead ahead.
Thiswas a school?
Shaking his head, he parked under a towering eucalyptus and got out of the car. His back twinged from the long drive and he linked his hands, stretching overhead, before taking a step and stopping. Should he put his suit jacket on? As Gus had reminded him many times, he’d be a representative of the Education Department while in town and he had to act like it. The warning had pissed him off. What did the old guy think, that Jy would do a nudie run along the beach’s foreshore?
This was the first day of a new academic year in a small country town. Strutting into a school where he wouldn’t be welcome, wearing a suit and tie, probably wouldn’t endear him to the teachers, so he left his jacket in the car and undid an extra button on his shirt. He’d been tempted to wear jeans as a silent finger towards Gus, but he’d settled for a suit. He had to present a professional front because the last thing he needed were the local teachers snitching on him to the board.
Opening his big mouth had landed him in this predicament in the first place. He’d seen a lot of changes in curriculum during his time as a teacher but the latest proposed updates had sent him into a tailspin. He’d always been old school in his approach to learning but open to possibilities. Yet the current recommendations, to focus on pouring money into expanding humanities and cut funding so all schools wouldn’t have counsellors to deal with escalating mental health issues, ensured he couldn’t keep quiet. He’d approached the department with his concerns, twice. Being a respected principal at an elite private school meant he usually had clout.
Not this time.
CHAPTER
1
Six months later
Karly refused to acknowledge the fear that twisted her gut into knots and ruined her appetite. Bad enough her best friends Summer and Nevaeh knew something was up; she didn’t need to tell them about it. Besides, a time would come very soon when they’d know everything and her life would irrevocably change.
‘Not hungry?’ Summer nudged the fish and chip packet towards her. ‘You’ve hardly touched your flake and your potato cake is getting cold and soggy.’
‘I had a snack before I came,’ Karly said, the lie sliding easily from her lips. She’d been doing a lot of that lately: lying to her friends, to Pop, to herself. Pretending everything was okay when she knew nothing could be further from the truth. How could it be, with an impending call from the last man she wanted to hear from?
Nev tut-tutted. ‘Honey, we’ve been catching up for Friday night fish and chips on the beach since we were twelve, and you’ve never left a single chip let alone an entire potato cake untouched no matter how many snacks you had beforehand.’ Concern darkened her eyes. ‘We know something’s wrong and while we haven’t pushed, surely you know you can confide in us?’
‘It might help,’ Summer added with a shrug. ‘It’s not like you haven’t heard me whinge about my complicated life over the last year.’
Karly refrained from pointing out that Summer’s complications had resolved in the best way possible: she now had a hot live-in boyfriend who’d moved from Melbourne to Acacia Haven to be with her, she’d connected with her biological father, discovered she had a half-sister who was due to move to town any day, and was now teaching full-time.
‘It’s work. Nothing major,’ Karly said, knowing she’d have to give them something to avoid a haranguing.
‘This isn’t the first time you’ve said something’s going on with work,’ Nev said, a frown knitting her brow. ‘Something about a guy you met at that conference?’
The knot of nerves in Karly’s gut coalesced into a hard ball and she resisted the urge to press her hand against her stomach. She had the same reaction every time she thought about her run-in with Hudson Grenville at that conference and the far-reaching implications it could have. Guys like him took everything as a personal challenge, and if she hadn’t got onto his radar she wouldn’t be in this predicament now.