When the news of this find became public Jack would credit her with nurturing his love of art. The Garden of Eden, as he had been calling it, would be an outstanding piece in his collection. The respect he would garner would extend beyond the island’s so-called art circles, to the mainland, and internationally too.
As he kissed her goodbye in her front hallway, she clung to him.
“I wish you didn’t have to leave. How is the house and the farm?” she said. “I miss it more and more.”
“Come and stay,” he said. “Let me talk to Celia and see when will suit.”
Victoria gave a cold laugh and crossed her arms.
“Mother. You’re always welcome.”
“Over Celia’s dead body.” She stroked a pearly fingernail across her neck.
“Mum.”
“I am a great one for not mincing my words,” she said. “Never sweep outside your hut until you have swept inside.”
“That doesn’t even make sense,” he said.
But his mother’s words resounded in his head as he drove home. The road burrowed up into densely forested high country. He kept the window down and the wet air flushed his face. Over the years, he had accepted that no matter what Celia did, in his mother’s view, she was wrong. She was ruining the house if she replaced soft furnishings; she was neglecting the house if she did not.
Thoughts of his new painting helped him forget his mother’s judgments.
An open home would not suffice for a painting of this caliber. Instead, he would lend his collection to the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery in the capital. They could display it with a sign stating, “Collection on Loan from Jack Lily.” The premier, heads of business, art scholars, and other collectors would attend the opening night. Finding one of John Glover’s lost paintings was a once-in-a-lifetime occurrence.
There was traffic on the main street of Vanishing Falls. Horses—not theirs—were crossing the road. As he waited Jack looked up at the hotel. At the turn of the nineteenth century it was built for a new tourist industry, as people traveled on improved roads to view the falls and hike in the forests. At the peak of the commercial hunting boom, the pub hosted adventurous and brutal men whose legacy was the extinction of the Tasmanian tiger. The old redbrick building was now clad with beer and meal deal advertisements. The garden out back was the only thing that never changed. As a boy, he had played there with local children, beneath the huge English magnolia tree. They had spent hour upon hour poking around in the creek, which had eels, trout, and the occasional platypus.
In the pub’s glowing window, he recognized the couple who owned the junkyard at Marsh End. They were having lunch. Her hair hung thickly down her wide back. Her husband had tied a red bandanna around his head for the special occasion of their midweek pub meal. It had not escaped Jack that they now ate lunch or dinner at the pub weekly. A few years ago, before he started visiting them, he only ever saw them buying fried chicken and chips at the takeaway shop.
* * *
Cliff
Gatenby’s Poultry Farm
He lay on his bed, trying to rest his eyes. The noise of Kim vacuuming was like razor wire thrusting in and out of his ears. He strode into the living area. Kim was bent over, vacuuming under his weight bench. She glanced up at him. He detested her then, with her beady, resentful eyes, like the broilers as they were loaded into crates for the slaughterhouse.
“Shut that thing off. Wait until I’m at work and you can do it all day.”
She turned it off.
“You look like shit,” she said.
“Look at yourself.”
“I’m worried about you.”
The trouble with Kim was that you couldn’t trust her. She lied all the time—she said things that she thought he wanted to hear, when what he really wanted to hear was the truth.
“I’m exhausted,” he said. “From working too hard.”
It was true. There were never holidays. No wonder he felt so prickly. His wife acted like he spent his days wandering around dreaming up schemes for free-range chickens and picking thistles out of the pasture when in fact he was up to his armpits in chicken shit, hosing out the sheds, wheelbarrowing broiler carcasses to the incinerator, and breathing in the dusty fibers of the feed until he coughed up chunks of muck whenever he lay down.
“I’m on your side, Cliff.”
She touched his arm.
“Come here,” he said.
She glanced toward the boys’ room.
“They’ll cope without you for ten minutes,” he said.
In the bedroom dirty thoughts peppered his mind. It started with him imagining he was having sex with someone else, and then that person started looking a lot like Celia. Afterward, he felt a pang of guilt, like he had cheated on his wife. The thing was, there was too much of Celia, those obscenely luxuriant breasts; long, tanned legs; and all that silky hair. You’d never know where to start.
What no one realized was that Celia Lily had a crush on him. It was surprising they didn’t know given the way she fawned over him. She didn’t care who saw. She knew no one would dare tell her what to do.
Saturday at the fair, she had pressed her breasts up against him as they greeted each other. It was no accident.
She was too flirtatious. Give him a decent, sensible woman like Kim any day.
While Kim was in the bathroom, he took two diazepam, got dressed, and stepped outside onto the porch. The dog shivered in its kennel. He strode across the muddy yard, the rain slapping his face.
* * *
Miss Gwen
The Smithtons’ house
Miss Gwen walked the Smithton twins home from school along the creek path. There was a lot of water moving rapidly in the creek and she urged Baxter to be careful lest he fall in. The little boy kept dashing from the track, his attention caught by a platypus slipping through the reeds into the water.
“Why can’t you just hold my hand like Emily does?” Miss Gwen said ineffectually.
“Miss Gwen . . . I think Mum needs your help,” Emily said. “She told me something was wrong last night when she kissed me good night.”
“I wonder if it was anything in particular?” Miss Gwen searched Emily’s face for information.
“Someone was mean to her.”
“Did she say who?”
“Nope.”
The conversation ended abruptly because the children noticed a large stray cat watching them from a thicket of hawthorn.
Miss Gwen pondered on it as she gave them their afternoon tea at Joelle’s kitchen table. Later, as she helped Baxter clean out the rabbit cage, Miss Gwen asked him if he had noticed anything bothering his mum.
“No.” He laughed. He had Joelle’s dimpled smile. “Mum doesn’t worry about anything except doing nice things for us.”
“Sweet boy.”
It was good that the children did not know any more details. In the past, there had been incidences when Joelle overshared her concerns with the twins. Miss Gwen and Brian had explained to Joelle that it was not fair to burden the children with adult worries. Joelle understood.
Nine years ago, Joelle had raced down Old Dairy Road to Miss Gwen’s house.
“I’ve got two exciting secrets to tell you,” she had said, her hands resting protectively on her stomach.
At the time, Miss Gwen had struggled to show genuine happiness about Joelle’s pregnancy. She was worried about how on earth this joyful, vulnerable woman would cope. At first the government provided formal support. It was a terrible solution. The professionals looked for problems. They talked about things that might happen in two years, five years, or maybe never. Eventually, Brian and Miss Gwen, and Joelle too, convinced the Department for Child Protection that the little family was doing fine. There was enough kindness in Vanishing Falls village to provide Joelle with the support she needed.