THREE
Three
Lottie unlocked the front door of the shop and began setting up for the day. She dragged out the larger items she displayed outside—this week, a nest of beautiful old suitcases that had just come in and a rocking chair she swore she was going to take home for herself if someone didn’t buy it soon. She did that a lot—her little cottage was almost bursting at the seams with the things she fell in love with at work. She really needed to work on that … or buy a bigger house.
‘Morning, sweet cheeks.’
Lottie glanced up as a familiar, rather flamboyant figure sashayed towards her, leaning in for a brief cheek kiss. Cherise, also known as Cher, was Lottie’s best friend and neighbouring shop owner. She operated the swanky cafe-tapas bar Madame Dubois, a little slice of Melbourne in downtown Banalla. They were also unofficial cousins, thanks to their very first conversation in which the two had discovered a shared connection to Jack McNally. Cher had proudly declared she was a descendant of Kate O’Ryan, the sister of Jack McNally, and that she had decided to do a pilgrimage of sorts and return to her family’s historical hometown. Once here, she’d fallen in love with the place and decided this was her destiny.
Cher changed her appearance like most people changed underwear. She had a closet full of wigs and outfits she’d collected during her years as an actor and singer and proudly donned them as part of the dining and show experience she provided in her bar. Today, she was a redhead wearing a red-and-white polka dot dress with a 1950s flared skirt and V-neck bodice that clung to her curvaceous, size twenty-eight body. Her make-up was an artform in itself. She looked stunning.
‘Girl, have you checked your messages?’ Cher demanded, her husky smoker’s voice rising in a perfect imitation of Memphis Tennessee sassiness.
‘Uh, no. I haven’t had time this morning.’
‘Well, I can see why. All that time it must have taken you to put on your make-up and pick an outfit,’ she said, crossing her arms and kinking an eyebrow sarcastically.
A low blow , Lottie thought, but not entirely unwarranted . Lottie rarely wasted time with make-up—what was the point? It wasn’t as though she were trying to impress anyone. She was working in a quiet antique shop, not some high-end department store, and there was nothing wrong with her comfy work uniform of jeans and a T-shirt.
‘I’ll have you know, I paid a lot of money for this shirt,’ she said with a haughty sniff. ‘It was full price—not even on sale.’
‘Hmm.’ Cher’s expression spoke volumes to how underwhelming that bit of trivia was. ‘If you’d just let me loose on a makeover, you’d be a new woman,’ she said with a tsk.
‘I’m happy with the old woman, thanks.’
‘Well, that’s what you’ll end up being—a lonely, old woman. You’re hiding yourself away like you’re too scared to actually live.’
This was not the first time they’d had this conversation.
‘Not everyone needs to be the centre of attention. I’m happy just the way I am.’
‘There is always room for improvement.’
Cher had left her glitzy life in Melbourne, where she’d been part-owner of a prominent nightclub and had performed on stage in various theatrical performances and cabarets, searching for a simpler life after the breakdown of her relationship with her business and life partner. It was a complete one-eighty, moving from the glamour of a major city to the quiet, slower-paced Banalla, but Cher had managed to carve out a place for herself, and it was hard to think of life here before she’d burst onto the scene with all the drama and extravagance of a Broadway production.
She shouldn’t have succeeded. The arrival of a six-foot-tall woman dressed in sequins and high-end fashion, custom-made for her curvaceous figure, who was unapologetically loud in every aspect—from the clothes she wore to the volume she talked—had many shaking their heads in disbelief. It hadn’t helped that the renovation of the old haberdashery store, which had been vacant for years, was all done behind blacked-out windows. The gossip mills had run hot as to what kind of business could be going in. However, Cher had such enigmatic charm that she could sweet-talk the driest of stoic farmers and flatter the primmest of women. She’d had them all eating out of her hand within weeks and quickly became part of the community.
‘Anyway,’ Lottie said, changing the subject pointedly, ‘what were you texting me about?’
‘To see if you got the memo about the emergency meeting tonight.’
‘What emergency meeting? Why?’ Lottie asked, screwing her face into a grimace. The last thing she felt like doing tonight was attending yet another drawn-out meeting with the Chamber of Commerce. She picked up her phone and scrolled through her emails. Sure enough, there it was: U RGENT CALL FOR AN EXTRAORDINARY MEETING was the subject heading in capitals. Daphney Hindmarsh had increasingly been the proverbial thorn in everyone’s side since planning for the town festival had begun.
‘No idea. Something about Daphney receiving a request from some author doing research for a book on Old Jackie boy,’ Cher said with an uninterested wave of her hand. ‘Apparently has something to do with the festival committee.’
‘Why couldn’t she just put it in the damn email?’
‘Because then she’d have no excuse to get up and talk,’ Cher said sarcastically. ‘You know how she loves everyone’s attention.’
Lottie bit back a grin at that. Cher was the pin-up girl for loving attention, which was probably why she and Daphney didn’t get along. Although, in all fairness, Daphney was a pain in the arse and really did seem to have a thing for needing to be in control of absolutely every single detail of anything she was involved in. And she made sure she was involved in everything .
‘Do you want to have dinner at the pub before the meeting? I, for one, will certainly be needing a few drinks before I can deal with the bullshit,’ Cher announced.
‘Sure, dinner sounds good,’ Lottie agreed. Any excuse not to cook was always a good idea.
‘Speaking of authors, how’s your book going?’
‘I’m not an author,’ she automatically said, shaking her head.
‘You will be,’ her friend said matter-of-factly.
Lottie smiled at the certainty Cher always seemed to have whenever they spoke about her pet project. She wished she had that kind of belief in herself. ‘I spoke to that cousin of Gran’s I’ve been trying to track down, about the box of photos and bits and pieces she used to have. She said she was going to see if she could find it. I’m going to visit her on the weekend so I can take a look through it.’
‘That sounds exciting.’
‘Maybe … I mean, I hope there’s at least something in there that I can use in the book, but I’m not getting too excited.’ She’d been gathering information about all the women in her family and trying to put together a picture of their lives, but finding anything evidence-based, rather than purely handed-down stories, was proving difficult. Unlike doing a normal family tree, putting together a maternal-line family tree, tracing female ancestors as they married into different families, was a little more complicated. And this meant that photos, and other memorabilia and keepsakes, were held by distant relatives in many different families. She desperately wanted to find at least a few images of the women from her line as far back as she possibly could, but photos had clearly not been something her ancestors had been fond of—or, in the earlier cases, maybe they hadn’t been able to afford them. Either way, there were very few images and it was frustrating, as she’d been hoping to have at least one of each.
The ring itself, which had originally been the focus of the book, had been photographed a few times with family members—namely her gran and her great-gran, both of whom had been wearing it in wedding photos, but before that, there was nothing. She was desperately hoping that one of the cousins of her great-grandparents may have something that had been passed down in old photo albums or scrapbooks.
‘Well, I better get back. I’ll see you tonight.’ Cher kissed her cheek and wiggled her long, red-nailed fingertips in farewell before disappearing out the door, leaving only a lingering scent of Versace perfume.
The Royal was the oldest of the three pubs still operating in town, and the most popular. The building was a grand old structure, with wide verandahs on the second floor that shaded the street below. It had recently been renovated and given a facelift with a new coat of paint, making it look brand-new again … in an 1860s kind of way.
Stepping through the large front doors always felt like stepping back in time, and Lottie never tired of the sensation. Black-and-white photos of the town lined the walls—a testament to the town’s origins—and the furniture, although new, was timber and understated, lending an original feel.
Lottie spotted the fanatical waving of her friend as she looked around the room. She waved back and headed to the bar to order a drink. Wineglass in hand, she weaved her way across to the table where Cher sat, nodding and greeting the locals she knew along the way.
‘I think everyone on the committee had the same idea of getting smashed before listening to Daphney,’ Cher murmured as Lottie took her seat.
‘Smashed might be a tad exaggerated,’ Lottie replied, eyeing the other tables casually, but noting that a few people had obviously been here early and were clearly not on their first round of drinks.
‘There she is! The most beautiful woman in the room,’ a voice slurred as Dougie Walters stopped beside their table, leaning heavily on the back of the chair across from Cher, ogling her voluptuous breasts, which were barely contained within the deep neckline of her dress.
‘Hello, Dougie. I haven’t seen you around for a few days,’ Cher said with her usual unruffled grace.
‘I’ve been in hospital. Bloody doctors pokin’ and proddin’ at me all day.’
‘I hope you’re better now,’ Cher said politely.
‘Still kickin’, aren’t I?’ he replied, giving a hoot of laughter before breaking into a fit of coughing. ‘Anyways, how about I buy you drink?’ he continued unperturbed.
Lottie tried not to squirm in her seat. The man always made her uncomfortable, even though it was Cher he seemed besotted with.
‘That’s kind of you, Dougie, but I’ve already got one and my friend and I are about to order dinner.’
‘Righto, love. I’ll leave you to it, then,’ he said, toasting her with his half-empty glass of beer. He pushed away from the chair and walked unsteadily back to the bar.
‘I don’t know how you’re so patient with him,’ Lottie said, watching him butt into a conversation with two men across the room.
‘He’s harmless. Just lonely, I think.’
Lottie wasn’t even sure where he lived, exactly, he didn’t seem to have any family around town and he was always at the pub. It seemed a sad kind of life.
‘Hurry up and order. I’m starving,’ Cher announced, before handing her the menu.
‘Okay, geez. Give me a minute,’ Lottie said, glancing down the list of choices but already knowing exactly what she was going to get. ‘I think I’ll have the—’
‘Chicken parmigiana,’ Cher cut in. ‘I figured,’ she said, holding up a table buzzer with a grin. ‘Which is why I already ordered. I was just showing you the menu so we could play the game of pretending you’d order something else.’
‘I like chicken parmigiana,’ Lottie said defensively.
‘I know,’ Cher said, with a roll of her eyes.
They settled back in their seats to wait for the table buzzer to go off. Lottie scanned the room and noticed a nearby group of four people she didn’t recognise. They were clearly out-of-towners visiting, since they were all unsubtly eyeing Cher with varying expressions of surprise and curiosity. In their defence, Cher was an unexpected force of nature to find in a small rural town.
Cher’s resilience around other people never ceased to amaze her. She never took offence when people stared, whether at her size or her attention-grabbing fashion. It didn’t seem to worry her. She used her brashness and theatrical personality to defuse any situation and the locals were all used to her now. Sometimes, Lottie suspected, Cher quite enjoyed the attention from newcomers now that she was pretty much accepted by the majority of the community. Where was the fun in that? ‘Not everyone is meant to be a moth, my darling,’ Cher had told her more than once when she’d tried to talk Lottie into a makeover in the past. ‘Some of us are destined to be bold, beautiful, butterflies that light up the room like a rainbow.’
When Cher had realised the town lacked a theatre group, she’d quickly set about rectifying the situation. It was quite the talk about town once the flyers went up, with locals doubting there’d be enough talent about to create such a thing, but, gradually, Cher managed to coax out a surprising number of closet theatre buffs, like Bob, the local plumber, who had surprisingly wonderful comic timing, and Nigel, the mechanic, whose wife had dragged him along to an audition where he’d floored everyone with his remarkable deep-voiced rendition of ‘Gaston’ from Beauty and the Beast . The group had grown in confidence and over the last few years, under Cher’s experienced guidance, had put on a number of productions that raised money for charities.
As something of an introvert, it wasn’t always easy having a best friend who was so flamboyant and outspoken, but Lottie was in constant awe of Cher, and wouldn’t have traded her for all the tea in China.