Chapter Six
I’m climbing down the ladder after making the bed when my phone rings. The cabin is small and there’s very little storage, so I’ve allocated places for essentials. My keys are on the windowsill. My phone and charger are on the bench next to the kettle.
‘Amelie Peterson.’
‘I found your card in the general store. Is it okay to call so early?’
I adjust the straps of my pyjama top. ‘Vets are always up early.’
‘I’m Milly Rogers. Me and my partner Benedict have a hobby farm at 111 Kitchener Road.’ This must be the Milly that Anna told me about. Her voice is tearful. ‘Can you come and see our cow, Belle?’
‘I have a booking at ten, but I could come at eight. What’s the problem?’ When I open the blind above the sink, the snowflakes on the Christmas ball sparkle in the light.
‘A calf.’ Her voice breaks. ‘You’ll see when you get here.’
I check my supplies and whistle Keith Urban into the ute straight after breakfast. Milly is the fifth client I’ve picked up through Jimmy’s efforts and I’m grateful for—
Cameron’s ute, parked across the driveway, is blocking my exit.
In the past week, I’ve seen him only once, when he was pulling out of the driveway and onto the road.
He was turning right. I was turning left.
It’s not like it would have been dangerous for our eyes to have met or for us to have acknowledged each other.
The lift of a finger from a wheel. A flash of lights.
No, and no. We were so intent on keeping hard left and hard right we could have ended up in the ditches either side of the driveway.
Today it’ll be impossible to avoid him. ‘Stay,’ I tell Keith Urban as I jump to the ground. ‘I won’t be long.’
Cicadas buzz a chorus as I skirt around the sprawling branches of the blue-green spruce to his ute.
The doors are shut but the windows are down, and the tray is open.
‘Cameron!’ When the roll was taken at school, when he won awards in assembly, when he was made school captain, teachers used his full name.
Is that why I still do it? Even though everyone else around here seems to call him Cam. ‘Cameron!’
‘Up here!’
I spin around, then peer through the foliage of the spruce. Cameron, ten metres up and leaning back, has his feet against the trunk of the tree.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Hanging lights.’
When I make out the harness strapped around his legs and waist, my heart rate should steady but doesn’t.
‘I’ll come down.’
‘I can move your ute. Where is the key?’
He secures a large canvas bag between two branches.
‘In my pocket.’ Like he’s abseiling down a wall, Cameron releases the rope in increments as, a bounce to every step, he works his way through the branches and jumps down the trunk to the ground.
When he releases the strap around his waist, the harness puddles at his feet and he steps out.
Blue jeans, a faded blue shirt, three-day growth on a handsome face.
‘Didn’t think you’d be out so early,’ he says.
‘I have more work than I expected thanks to Jimmy.’
‘Word of mouth is good.’
My eyes go to his mouth, his go to mine. We both look away. ‘I told Milly Rogers I’d be there by eight.’
‘Milly is great. Benedict too.’
‘I haven’t met them yet.’
‘Have you met anyone else?’
‘Terrence Lee called me out. So did Summer Vallance and a couple of others.’
‘Anyone but clients?’ His eyes are particularly green. ‘A lot happens in sixteen years. There are other good people.’
‘Maybe.’
‘I don’t lie, Amelie.’ His lips firm. ‘I never did.’
He doesn’t have to say ‘roundabout’ for me to know what he’s referring to.
I search for safer ground. ‘When you said that Keith Urban and I could move into the cabin, we were planning to stay for a week, so I didn’t pay in advance.
As it now appears we’ll be here until the end of January, we’d better settle on terms. I’ll also need your bank account details. ’
‘Julia thought you could live in the terrace, and you can’t. She owed you an alternative.’
‘You didn’t.’
‘Whatever my reasons, I agreed you could have the cabin.’
‘At the practice, I would have been liable for water, electricity and other costs.’
He frowns. ‘I don’t want rent.’
‘I insist.’
‘Pay me in kind.’ He speaks gruffly. ‘I have over two hundred cows and almost that many calves.’
‘I pay rent in the form of veterinary services?’
He shrugs. ‘Why not?’
It’s good of him to let me live in the cabin. He’s given me no reason not to be civil. When he asked after my parents and I asked why he’d done that, he said, ‘That’s what people do.’ Polite conversation. If nothing else, I owe him that.
‘How many acres of land do you have?’
‘Six hundred in total. Four hundred are set up for grazing and I’m rehabilitating another two hundred.’
‘Were the two hundred previously owned by the mine?’
‘The land was abandoned when the mine went bust. I bought it from the liquidator.’
‘What kind of rehabilitation work does it need?’
‘It was used for mine-related activities—vehicle and material storage, drainage, safety zones. I’m cleaning it up, improving the soils, revegetating.’
‘I didn’t expect you to be a farmer.’
A lift of his lip. ‘Me neither.’
I’ve been courteous and neighbourly, now it’s time to walk away. But I want to ask more questions, I want to know—
‘Did Jimmy fill you in on the building work?’ Cameron crosses his arms, uncrosses them, puts his hands in his front pockets. He has spruce needles in his hair. He smells of spruce.
‘I’ll need to confirm with Julia that I can access the surgery from next week.’
‘Have you seen her?’
‘She’s invited me to morning tea tomorrow.’
When Jimmy said Julia hadn’t called about the builders because she’d been poorly again, I got the impression he thought I’d know more about her health than I do. Is Cameron the person to ask about that? I’m not sure he is.
‘I’ll move the ute.’
After he reverses up the bank on the far side of the driveway, he jumps from his ute and faces me across the bonnet of mine. Keith Urban sticks his head out of the window and Cameron, mumbling words I can’t make out, scratches under his chin. I search for words of my own.
‘Is it safe to climb the tree like that?’
Cameron blinks as if he’s never considered the danger. ‘Anna’s kids liked the lights last year.’
‘I met Tara. And CJ. He told me he plays cricket.’
‘I used to go to all of his matches, but now …’ He blows out a breath. ‘Teenagers get self-conscious. They need their own space.’
The cicadas continue to chirrup. The scent of the bush is sharp yet sweet. A breeze blows through the eucalypts. For the second time this morning, Cameron’s gaze slips to my mouth and mine slips to his. Neither of us is smiling. A few seconds pass. One, two, three.
‘How are you celebrating this year?’ he asks quietly.
I open my door and stand on the running board. ‘Celebrating what?’
‘Christmas.’
Christmas is environmentally unsound. A commercial indulgence. Wasteful and profligate, excessive and reckless. These were the hymns of my childhood. I’m hot. Then cold. I feel sick.
‘Amelie?’ He walks around the bonnet so all that’s between us is the open door. ‘I didn’t mean—’
‘Thanks for moving the ute.’ They’re only words, but he takes a step back like he’s been pushed.
‘No problem.’ After a long hard look that I refuse to acknowledge, he walks away.