Ten
Dear Diary, welcome to hell.
It was a full thirty-seven hours and twenty-nine minutes since Harper had arrived at this soulless desert of dust, living on nothing but sheer teeth-gritting determination to beat Dex’s bet. Only made worse by the prick reverting to his original twenty-dollar bet, that she wouldn’t last the week.
He might win that bet.
Harper sat heavily in a kitchen chair in the large empty kitchen, where she fed Mason breakfast in his highchair. It was the only furniture in a house she’d class as a hovel filled with boxes.
It had taken Harper all of yesterday to clean and sort out Mason’s room, next door to hers. Then she attacked the bathroom that should’ve been declared a toxic war zone. But Mason enjoyed playing in the enormous bathtub like it was a private swimming pool, while she got soaked to the bone with raw hands and broken nails from cleaning.
She was the nanny. Not a cleaner.
Even though she had no clue what she was doing as a nanny, at least she had wi-fi, which allowed her to play music and scour social media for tutorials and tips.
Today, she was exhausted. Who knew cleaning was more physical than taking five spin classes with her Swedish spin master, urging them to train for the ski season? She hated that man. Right now, she hated cleaning more.
But boredom drove her to contemplate cleaning the kitchen with its long wide benches that only held a coffeemaker, and lots of cupboard space because it was a kitchen with no food!
They had plenty of baby food, beer, and bourbon. But there was nothing resembling any form of vegetable. The empty pantry had a few tins of beans that had long since expired, and were likely toxic.
Food for these savages was slabs of barbecued meat, slapped between slices of bread, smothered in tomato sauce, then washed down with a deep guzzle of beer.
Let’s not forget the volume of coffee they drank, because she’d never seen one of the Riggs brothers drink water.
The coffee she approved of. She’d never been picky over her coffee, which she needed to keep her eyes open from lack of sleep. Especially when Mason and Ruby, the labrador, had moved into Harper’s room at two in the morning.
But she needed food. She couldn’t live off coffee, beef, and bread, and she was not about to steal the processed toddler food.
Mason pushed away his cereal bowl, upending it to land with a splat on the kitchen floor, where Ruby the labrador was eager to lick it clean.
She left the dog to it. She was over cleaning.
She was also over doing laundry.
Oh, how she missed her local laundry. The magical store where she dropped off her laundry in a white sack, to return a few days later to collect her suits and shirts all perfectly pressed.
Now she had to fight with an old washing machine that you had to hold on to during the spin cycle, or it’d walk off the verandah. And then it was drip drying.
D-d-d-drip. Drying.
On a metal wire that made up the clothesline already filled with assorted long-sleeved work shirts and jeans, starchy and faded from the harsh outback sun.
They were Cap’s, Dex’s or Ash’s clothes. She knew this because yesterday, she’d watched in horror, as they dumped their clothes in a pile beside the washing machine where they had undressed, on their way to the outdoor shower. Then they’d tugged a set of clean clothes off the clothesline, dressing as they snatched a cold beer on the way to the table that lived on the front porch, where they sat around and argued over whose turn it was to cook dinner.
They were animals.
But all this baby talk and one-sided conversation was mushing her brain.
What she’d give for a trip to town to see people and asphalt roads and buildings that weren’t covered in red dirt. She missed concrete, and the noise of traffic. She missed the smell of coffee shops and bakeries and the taste of buttery rich croissants in the morning on her way to work. Oh, and how she missed a man in a decently cut suit and tie.
She also missed her job, that didn’t involve conversations about cattle, toddler talk, toddler toilet reminders, toddler food, night nappies, fixing dams, musters or beer. A job that didn’t involve getting covered in toddler teething slobber and dog hair, stuck in yesterday’s clothes with her hair in desperate need of a good wash and a blow dry. If someone dared mention the term toddler tantrum she was going to curl up in the corner and give herself a time out.
How women did this job for free had to be a joke. They deserved a dozen medals, a massive pay rise, and two months’ annual leave just to catch up on some sleep!
But there was no way she was letting Dex win his bet.
‘Knock. Knock.’
‘Bree?’ Harper bounded to the back door, blinking at the other female. ‘Hi.’
‘Oh, you poor thing.’ Bree pointed at Harper as she stepped inside the kitchen.
‘What do you mean?’ Harper tried to tidy up her hair that she hadn’t even brushed, with her shirt covered in breakfast mush. Or was that last night’s dinner? ‘I’d offer you a chair, but they all live outside. And I’m not touching that table they congregate at.’
‘I wouldn’t either. I brought over some more frozen fruit pops for Mason’s teeth.’ Bree slid the bag of goodies into the empty freezer. ‘Haven’t those boys gone shopping yet?’
‘Not unless you like baby food. If I knew where Mason’s car seat was, I’d go to town myself.’ And never come back —which was possibly why they were hiding the toddler’s car seat.
Bree poked her head into the empty pantry. ‘Jeez, they’re like cavemen. I bet they’re hoping you’ll cook and clean for them, too.’
‘Well, they’ll be waiting a while if they expect me to cook.’
‘Why is that?’
‘I can’t cook. At least Mason’s food comes with instructions.’ Harper pointed to the empty packet on the kitchen sink, piled with dirty dishes. ‘Besides, it wasn’t part of the job description to cook and clean when I got talked into this.’
Bree giggled. ‘Well, they’re screwed, aren’t they? So are you.’
‘That’s just great.’ Harper collapsed heavily in her seat. She’d never felt so helpless.
At the sinks, Bree ran the tap and rinsed off a face washer then cleaned Mason’s sticky hands and face, then carried his breakfast bowl to the sink. ‘Well, come on then.’
‘Where are we going? Please tell me we’re going to a day spa, where we get waited on by a body-building Scottish man, in a kilt, who gives the best neck and shoulder massages.’
‘Ooh. Now that sounds like my kind of heaven. But we’ll be going a few hundred metres that way.’ She pointed out the screen door.
‘Why?’
‘It’s where I live, and where I can guarantee you won’t need a tetanus shot to eat the food.’ She picked up Mason from the highchair. ‘Come on, toddler, let’s get you toddling.’
‘Play, Arper?’
‘H-H Harper.’ She corrected him.
‘Play?’ He held out his little hand to Bree.
‘I’d like that very much.’ Bree gave such a sweet smile, with shiny eyes as she let the little boy grip her finger.
Harper had to admire Mason’s unbridled joy to find the adventures in his day.
‘You’ll need to tell Ash to put childproof locks on all the doors, because there is no fence out there to keep this little one contained.’ Bree held Mason’s tiny hand, his little shoes taking eager steps for the door, with Ruby’s pitter patter of paws following.
‘I don’t know what I’m doing.’ Harper couldn’t even find the energy to move from her chair.
‘Nobody does, blossom. We all pretend that we do, which is just part of being in the grown-up game. But you look like you’ve been attacked by thirteen spiders and a koala.’
Harper touched her hair, which felt like a webbed nest of sorts. It was a shocker, especially when she’d been brought up to always have her hair and make-up done. ‘I guess I do.’ It was easy to avoid mirrors in this place, because they had none.
‘How about you go and take a long shower and get into some clean clothes?’
‘Really?’ Because that sounded like heaven to Harper.
‘Take your time, and then come over to my place and we’ll have some lunch.’
Harper’s stomach growled at the prospect of real food. ‘I— Thank you.’
‘All good, blossom.’ That beautiful redhead gave a knowing smile and a nod. ‘Come along, Mason, let’s give the nanny a break while we go on an adventure.’ Bree opened the screen door and walked the toddler outside with the nanny dog Ruby following.
Harper leaned back in her seat and watched them. The opportunity to revel in the bliss of five minutes alone was heavenly. One week. She could last a week. Right?