Chapter Thirteen
I wake at six on Friday morning to a text: CJ and I are going to the cricket in Sydney—won’t be back till late. Your clothes are on the line. Collect them today, or I’ll get them to you tomorrow and we’ll talk. Up to you. C
Cameron’s property seems empty without him.
Paddocks, cattle, the national park in the distance.
The washing line is two lengths of nylon rope strung between a post of what I think will be a pergola (why else would it be there?) and a downpipe at the northwest corner of the house.
As I lay in bed late last night, I imagined our shirts and jeans hanging on a washing line together, but now that I’m here, I see even more.
Anna’s socks. CJ’s jacket. Tara’s pale pink cardigan with sleeves the length of my hand.
Anna was twenty-two when CJ was born. Cameron was only eighteen, but he stepped in and supported his sister. Even though she now has a partner and another child, he’s still like a father to CJ.
This is what families look like.
It’s too early to cry, but I sniff and blow my nose. ‘What am I supposed to do?’ I ask Keith Urban. ‘Cameron’s family is here, and he loves Summerfield as much as Summerfield loves him. He said he wants on. He also said he wants serious. But how could we have a future together?’
On my first day in Summerfield, Anna told me that Cameron was the first port of call when dealing with the primary school’s livestock, but if there was a veterinary concern, the school would call me out. The deputy principal phoned early this morning.
‘Caesar is lame,’ she said. ‘I’m told he needs antibiotics.’
The school is smaller than I remembered.
Because I’m larger than I was? Because I’m not shoving glasses onto my nose or into my bag when I should be wearing them because I fear they draw even more attention to my face?
As I walk along the shaded bitumen path between the school hall and a classroom block, memories filter through.
A group of chattering children, ten, eleven, twelve years old, run out of the hall and onto the path.
Heart rate spiking, I flatten myself against a wall.
With curious looks, the children walk around me but one boy, tall and with a gap between his teeth, turns back.
‘Are you lost, miss?’
‘Can you tell me where the sheep are kept?’ My voice squeaks. ‘I’m Amelie, the vet.’
‘We can show you.’ Another student, a girl wearing reindeer antlers, also doubles back.
‘Don’t you have to go to class?’
‘We’re getting ready for the Christmas concert.’ She calls out to another child. ‘Dean! Tell Miss Winters me and Charlie are taking the vet to the farm.’
Miss Winters. Surely not. ‘Has your teacher been at this school for long?’
The girl grins. ‘She’s been here forever.’
I thought Miss Winters had been at the school forever too.
I also thought she was old, but if she’s still here now, she might only have been in her fifties.
When she was my teacher in grade five, there was a delay in getting new lenses in my glasses and I had to go back to wearing an eye patch.
Ahoy there, Pirate Peterson! The pharmacist gave me a patch that was black and held on with hat elastic.
Even before I left the pharmacy, I’d hidden it in my school bag.
Did I wear it when I rode Atticus? Possibly.
I wore it in the classroom because Miss Winters insisted on it.
But she must have worked out I was self-conscious because she kept me back one lunchtime and presented me with adhesive skin-coloured patches that fitted directly onto the skin.
Even without trying them on, I knew they’d be impossible. I knew what they’d say. Cyclops.
‘No, thank you.’
‘Amelie …’ She spoke gently. ‘Would you like to spend lunchtime in the classroom until you have your new glasses?’
I could have hugged her. ‘Yes, please.’
‘Will you wear the black patch or these new ones?’
I put a hand over my eye. Then I took it away and closed my eye. ‘This works just the same.’
Charlie and the girl, Bronte, walk either side of me as they escort me to land at the rear of the school. The paddocks are small and the fencing is varied as if it’s been cobbled together in a parent working bee. An enclosed run keeps the chickens safe.
‘When I went to school here, this land was used to grow sunflowers.’
Bronte’s eyes widen. ‘I didn’t know a vet came out of this school!’
Charlie points. ‘Caesar is in the yard with Mr McLeod.’
I jerk to a stop and my heart thumps. Cameron, the sun on his hair lightening it to gold, is wearing the blue checked shirt he had on last time I saw him when we—
‘Mr McLeod!’ Bronte stands on the lower rung of the fence and waves. ‘How’s Caesar going?’
Cameron glances at the large merino sheep standing in the middle of the yard before doubling back for his hat and walking towards us. ‘Not great.’
‘We found the vet for you,’ Charlie says.
Bronte straightens her reindeer ears. ‘Her name’s Amelie and she went to this school.’
After the children, yelling goodbyes, have raced across the grass to the bitumen, I turn to Cameron. ‘Hey.’
I can’t see his expression because his hat is tipped low. ‘Thanks for coming.’
‘Did you get a call too? Why does the school need both of us?’
‘Because he’s a bastard to catch.’
I’m reasonably certain Cameron could wrestle Caesar into a corner and flip him onto his back, but whether in deference to me or to a pampered sheep hobbling on three legs, he holds back until, finally, with my murmured endearments and Cameron’s cursing at the stupidity of sheep, we herd him into a makeshift pen.
Sheep don’t squirt dung in the same way cattle do, but we’re both hot and dusty.
‘I’ll hold him down while you look at his hoof.’ Cameron wipes a hand across his face.
‘You don’t get paid for this, do you?’
Another curse. ‘Christmas charity.’
‘Maggie Bates isn’t a fan of that expression.’
He drops the scowl. ‘Thank you for helping her.’
‘Rocket’s leg is no longer painful. That’s a good sign.’
‘Was it hard to come back here to the school?’
‘Yes, but …’ I look over my shoulder to the outline of buildings. The hall and classrooms haven’t changed much in sixteen years, but there’s a covered play area now and a new block where the demountable library used to be. ‘Charlie and Bronte were helpful.’
‘They’re good kids.’
I run my hand over Caesar’s soft and springy wool. ‘When the mine was in operation, a lot of itinerant workers came to Summerfield. It must have been hard for their children to move around all the time. They looked for someone even less settled, less happy, than they were.’
‘That never made it right.’
‘The school was under resourced, the mine was struggling, my parents were weird. What the kids did was wrong, but coming back to Summerfield has helped me understand why it might have happened.’
‘They don’t deserve forgiveness.’
‘Kids—ten-, eleven-, and twelve-year-olds—aren’t inherently bad. There were ringleaders. The rest were followers.’ I open my fingers, thread them through the fleece. ‘Did you know Miss Winters is still here?’
‘Is she a problem for you?’
‘No.’
‘Am I?’
I could so easily love you. That’s how you’re a problem . ‘I’d better look at this sheep.’
As Cameron holds Caesar down, I clamp his front hoof between my knees, cleaning and disinfecting before carefully paring with a hoof knife.
‘He’s got an abscess on his heel.’
‘Can you get at it?’ Cameron asks.
‘I think so.’
We’ve been chasing a recalcitrant sheep, but when Cameron leans over to take a closer look and his shoulder presses against mine, my increased heart rate has nothing to do with heat and dust and exertion. Does he feel it too? If he does, he gives no indication.
‘Bingo.’ A dribble of pus slides down Caesar’s hoof and drips onto the ground.
When Caesar throws up his head and dislodges my hat, Cameron, as if it’s something he’s done a thousand times before, pushes back my fringe and plonks the hat back on my head.
I glance up. He searches my face.
I tear my gaze away.
After the abscess has drained and the pressure has been released from his foot, Caesar is barely limping. I give him antibiotics before releasing him into the paddock.
‘You could have done this on your own, couldn’t you?’
Cameron slaps dust from his jeans. ‘Maybe.’
‘Julia told me you did a year of medicine. Why did you leave?’
He’s frowning as he picks up his bag. ‘Come to the pub tomor-row night.’
‘What for?’
He huffs. ‘A country pub. Friday night. It happens.’
‘Who will be there?’
‘Me, Julia and Jimmy, maybe Anna if she can get out. You might know others.’ He takes off his hat and pushes back his hair in the same way, only thirty minutes ago, he pushed back mine.
He’s experienced in relationships. He knows who and what he is, where he wants to live and what he wants to do with his life. He’s clever and popular and confident.
‘Thanks, but I won’t make it.’
He walks past the toilet block and I bravely walk alongside him. Today, I remembered about the patch and the pirate jibes. I faced them and put them behind me. That’s enough for now.
When we reach the car park, he follows me to my ute and opens the door. ‘If you change your mind about—’
‘I won’t.’ When I grab the door to close it, our hands touch. Technically, I’m trapping his hand because mine is on top, but he’s taller and stronger and there’s no question that if he wanted to take his hand back, he could. The school bell rings. Clang clang clang . And then he walks away.