‘Mum…’
‘Anyway, we just wanted to say welcome,’ Dwayne’s mother said, getting back on track. ‘We’ve met your Olga and we think she’s lovely. Not that Shanni wasn’t lovely, but Olga’s much more suitable as a housekeeper. She’ll always get a discount at our supermarket, and you can’t say fairer than that.’
To say he was hornswoggled was an understatement. He gazed across the crowd to Shanni. She was dressed as he’d never seen her dressed before-in a gorgeous soft pastel dress with scooped neckline and flowing skirt that reached mid-calf. She looked happy, he thought.
Well, why wouldn’t she be happy? She had her money back. She had her life back. She’d go back to London…
Shanni was motioning to a middle-aged lady standing beside Ruby. Olga?
If it was indeed their housekeeper then Olga was different. She was stout and rosy-cheeked. She was dressed in jeans that were a wee bit too tight for her. She was wearing an oversized gingham shirt and boots that came straight out of the Wild West.
‘Hi,’ she said.
‘You’re Olga? You’re our new housekeeper?’
‘I might not be your housekeeper,’ she said, smiling nervously as everyone else in the room grinned at Pierce’s confusion. ‘It’s up to you. Ruby knows I’ve been at a loose end. I used to foster, but then I got done for shoplifting- chocolate, you know?-it was one of the kids’ birthdays and my ex-husband had just broken in and taken all the housekeeping money-and I got a conviction and now I’m not allowed to foster, but I’ll never shoplift again. I swear.’
There was a moment’s stunned silence from the assemblage. Dwayne’s mother drew in her breath on an audible gasp.
‘I know you won’t,’ Ruby said clearly into the silence. ‘That’s why I said you might be suitable for Pierce.’
‘Ruby’s the best judge of character I know,’ Shanni added.
For some reason all eyes turned back to Dwayne’s mother. She took a deep breath. Recovered.
‘That’s fine, then,’ she said gamely. ‘If Shanni vouches for you, then it’s fine by me. It’s still ten-percent discount, and if ever there’s a birthday and you’re broke then you come to me before you return to a life of crime.’
General laughter. General cheering.
Hey, he hadn’t even interviewed the lady yet, Pierce thought, yet the whole community had seemingly accepted her as a done deal.
‘Give it up, mate,’ Dwayne said softly, still holding the cake. ‘It’s the women that rule.’
They certainly did. His eyes went again to Shanni. She was watching him. She was laughing, but even so…Her eyes said that she knew what he was feeling.
She’d given him a replacement for her.
‘Cut the cake, cut the cake,’ people were saying.
‘Right.’
‘Speech,’ someone else said.
‘In your dreams.’
More laughter. The cake was set on the table. They cut it as a family, Pierce’s broad hand holding the knife, and Bryce, Donald, Wendy and Abby’s hands on top.
Someone brought Bessy forward to encourage her to put her hand down, too.
‘Da,’ Bessy said, and put her fist squarely into the middle of the cake. And then into her mouth.
The party had officially begun.
It wasn’t just a party. It was almost a fair, without the profit making. There were donkey rides, apple bobbing, face painting. There were egg-and-spoon and sack races, and toss-the-caber competitions. There was more food than anyone could possibly eat. Pierce moved through the rest of the day as if in a dream, watching the kids-his kids-being embraced by the locals. Being welcomed. Receiving apologies, and promises of largesse from so many people.
For a man who was used to walking alone-who’d spent a lifetime perfecting the art-it was almost overwhelming.
Two of his brothers-Blake and Nik-were here, clapping him on the shoulder, laughing at him, but looking at him with some small concern. His foster brothers had all been raised in the school of hard knocks themselves. Their isolation was an art they valued. Pierce seemed to be tossing it away, and it troubled them.
It troubled him. But…
But he didn’t know what.
The kids finally wilted. He took them up to bed and came down again to find clearing up had begun. There was still a party happening outside but inside a team was washing, scrubbing, wiping, gossiping-the farm was alive.
Ruby was in the middle of it, having a ball. She saw him come down the stairs. She laid down her dish cloth and came across to him, and before he knew what she was about she’d enveloped him in a huge hug. Her small, bosomy person held him close, and he felt about six again.
He’d never let himself get too close to Ruby, but she’d always hugged him regardless. Did she know how much those childhood hugs had meant to him?
‘Thank you,’ he said gruffly as she finally released him.
‘It’s Shanni you have to thank, not me.’
‘You found Olga.’
‘She’s a treasure. She’s as desperate for a family as you were.’
‘I’m not.’
‘Not any more,’ she beamed. ‘Oh, Pierce, this is absolute joy.’
‘I’m not-’
‘Of course you’re not,’ she said, deliberately cutting across a denial she maybe guessed he was about to make. ‘We’re cleaning up. You go and find Shanni.’
‘Did Shanni organize this?’
‘Shanni and Susie. The world’s bossiest women. Go find her.’
‘Where is she?’
‘She said she was going out to talk to a bull.’
‘Shanni said…?’
‘She said it was a nice bull.’
He rounded the veranda and stepped down into the garden. Over to the gate to the bull paddock…
She was sitting on the gate post.
Clyde was right beside her.
She wasn’t in the actual bull paddock. If Clyde turned nasty she could simply swing herself off the post. Even so, the sight of her beside the great bull made him feel ill.
‘Shanni.’
‘Hi,’ she said without turning round. It was like she was expecting him. ‘I’ve just been explaining to Clyde that I’ve forgiven him. It wasn’t his fault. Dwayne told me what happened. Local kids being stupid. Cruel. Listening to their parents’ accounts of wanting you gone and taking matters into their own hands.’ She sighed. ‘It can happen so fast. To turn you into the local pariah…’
‘They never did that.’
‘Oh, yes they did. You were lucky they didn’t run you out of town with the odd bit of tarring and feathering to go with it.’
‘But you changed all that.’
‘I just told them the truth. It wasn’t so hard. If you’d told them yourself…’
‘How could I tell them?’
‘Any number of ways,’ she snapped, sounding irritated. ‘Like for instance stopping to gossip to the ladies in the
