You deserve to be ornamental if you feel like it.’
‘Is there anything in between?’ he asked, thinking it through. ‘Say, if I don’t want to be ornamental and I don’t want to paint houses.’
Her answer to that was immediate. ‘You could make me breakfast.’
‘You’ve decreed that I’m cook?’
‘I thought you decreed that yourself. I do a mean bowl of cornflakes and I’m willing to share.’ She glanced across at the yard to where only ten more cows patiently queued. ‘I’ll be back at the house in half an hour.’
‘For cornflakes?’
‘For cornflakes or whatever variation you care to dream up.’
He’d had enough of pink. He made pancakes in Peta’s house. He felt really, really strange.
While he cooked he watched Peta through the window. He saw her finish in the dairy, sluicing it down ready for evening milking. She took herself to the outside shower-a primitive arrangement that he’d already inspected and found wanting-and he watched as she emerged dressed the same way as she’d been in the dairy, only cleaner.
Peta’s house had a lean-to kitchen-not a patch on Hattie’s bright beauty, but it had the huge advantage of being homely. The kitchen was obviously the place where Peta and the boys spent most of their lives. There was an ancient fire-stove, a vast wooden table, rickety chairs, battered linoleum, and windows looking out over the farmland to the beach beyond. It was a great room.
It was better when Peta walked in. Somehow.
She stopped in the doorway and sniffed in delight, and her smile lit the room.
‘Pancakes. Coffee. There. I knew there was a reason I married you.’
‘I wish you wouldn’t keep referring to our marriage as if I’m some sort of acquired toy,’ he complained and she paused from kicking off her gumboots.
‘It’s the only way I can think of it,’ she told him. Her eyes turned suddenly serious. ‘Not that you’re a toy boy. I didn’t mean that. But that it’s a sort of game. I can’t believe we did it. That I wore that dress. That I made those vows.’
He watched her face, and he shared her confusion. She was right. This was a far cry from white, lacy and bridal in New York. But underneath she was just the same Peta. The reason he married her still held. She needed help and she deserved it. ‘It’s not a game,’ he told her.
‘But it’s not for real.’
‘For two weeks it has to be real.’
‘When I think about it superficially,’ she said slowly, walking into the kitchen in her socks and lifting the flipper for the pancakes, ‘then it’s fine. But then all of a sudden it hits me. Wham. A complete stranger married me so I can stay here. So Harry can live here if he wants. So we can have a permanent home. But… To marry a stranger… How on earth did it happen?’
‘Fantasy,’ he told her. ‘Everyone likes a fairy story. I’ve already flipped the pancakes. They’re ready to eat. Sit.’
So she moved to the table and sat. He couldn’t object to her reaction to the pancakes-she ate as if she was ravenous-but as the pile dwindled she pushed back her plate and the look of trouble settled on her face again.
‘I’m sorry I wouldn’t let you help in the dairy.’
‘It’s fine.’
‘It’s not. I owe you so much. I should let you do whatever you want.’
‘But not sleep on your end of the veranda?’
Now where had that come from? The moment he said it he regretted it. She flinched. And then she faced him. Head on.
‘Do you want to?’
Did he want to? Hell!
But as he gazed at her across the table, as he let the sensation of her flinch settle, he knew there was only one answer.
‘No, Peta,’ he told her. ‘I don’t want to. I’m not here to take advantage of you. It was a stupid thing to say and I’m sorry.’
‘You’d be within your rights.’
‘I don’t think you’ve met very nice men,’ he told her. ‘If that’s what you think of marriage. That it comes with automatic rights.’
She stared at him. The moment stretched on. And on.
Ridiculous.
‘Tell me what you’re intending to do now,’ he said at last, and if his voice didn’t come out as he’d intended he couldn’t help it.
‘You mean…marriage-wise?’
‘You already got married,’ he reminded her. ‘What’s next?’
‘You mean, in life?’
‘I was thinking more how you intended spending the morning,’ he told her. ‘Sort of between here and lunch. There’s not a lot of hatches, matches and dispatches we can fit in until then.’
‘Oh.’ She sounded flummoxed. ‘You mean…like shopping?’
‘Is shopping on the agenda?’
‘We’re living out of the freezer. It’d be good to get something fresh.’
‘I’m good with shopping.’
‘You want to come into town and push a supermarket trolley in Yooralaa?’ Her smile, irrepressible, came flooding back. ‘There’s no cans of caviar for miles.’
‘Peta?’
‘Yes?’
‘Cut it out.’
She peeped him a smile. ‘Okay. I’m sorry. But I’m sure you don’t want to come.’
‘I’m sure I do.’
‘You-’
‘Peta, I refuse to stay locked in Hattie’s house for two weeks while the world decrees our marriage is valid. I’m coming with you.’
‘But people will think…’
‘That we’re married? That’s what they’re supposed to think.’ He hesitated. ‘That is-there aren’t suitors waiting in the wings who’ll be put off if they see me at your side?’
‘Um…no.’
‘No suitors?’
‘I find suitors are an awful pest,’ she told him. ‘They mess up the house something awful and object to gumboots.’
‘Which is why you just cut straight to the chase and got married. Okay.’ He rose and smiled down at her. She looked great, he decided. He might even enjoy walking side by side through the supermarket with her holding his trolley.
‘Don’t get any funny ideas,’ she said and he blinked. Peta, the mind reader.
‘Look, separate ends of the veranda is a concept I can deal with,’ he told her. ‘But separate supermarket trolleys is maybe taking independence too far.’
‘You can never have too much independence. I thought that was your motto.’
He’d thought so, too. He stared after her as she disappeared to find some shoes respectable enough to wear to town and he thought, yeah, independence. What had happened to his ideal now?
It was a very satisfactory day-the sort of day Marcus had never had in his life.
First there was the trip to the supermarket. He’d expected that she might be embarrassed but instead she introduced him to all and sundry and he was conscious of suppressed laughter.
‘Hi, Mrs Michaels. This is my husband, Marcus.’
