‘I think that’s part of the problem. There were – are – people in town who thought that I should have come back here when my parents split up to help Dad with the farm. And that I definitely should have come back after he died and left a lot of people missing a lot of money.’
‘And after Scotty asked you to marry him,’ Gus said matter-of-factly.
Claire’s jaw dropped. ‘You know about that?’ Except for Vanessa, she hadn’t told a soul about Scotty’s mad idea that getting married at twenty and twenty-one respectively would somehow fix everything.
‘Everyone knows about that,’ her cousin replied. ‘This is Bindallarah.’ The look she gave Claire told her Gus couldn’t believe she was so clueless.
Claire groaned. ‘Well, that’s just marvellous,’ she muttered. Just one more reason for the community to believe she was totally heartless.
Gus was unfazed by Claire’s angst. ‘So was Uncle Jim a crook or something?’ she pressed.
Claire paused mid-lament, perplexed. Big Jim Thorne’s many misdeeds were common knowledge in Bindallarah. Hell, he’d ripped people off all over the district. How was it possible that Gus didn’t know all the sordid details of his transgressions?
‘Gus, has your mum never talked to you about what happened?’ Claire asked.
She shrugged. ‘I was only ten when he died. All I know is that he was killed in a car accident. I suppose Mum thought I was too young for the full story,’ she said.
Claire’s heart gave a painful throb as she pictured Gus as a tiny and bewildered ten-year-old, frightened by the magnitude of her mother’s grief over the loss of her brother, confused by the drama surrounding his death – and with absolutely nobody to talk to about it.
I should have been here, she thought. She was ten years older than Gus; she could have been a surrogate big sister to her. Another entry for her shame ledger.
‘You went to boarding school when I was five,’ Gus continued. ‘I’ve heard people say stuff about you in town over the years, but nothing really bad. I think they felt sorry for you more than anything. Mum’s always telling people how great you are. Scotty too.’
Claire’s breath caught in her throat. ‘Scotty? Really?’ She tried to keep her tone neutral. ‘You mean like in the last few months?’
‘No, always. Ever since he moved back to Bindy after university.’
She didn’t know what to make of that. The end of her relationship with Scotty had been crushing for both of them. It had never occurred to Claire that Scotty would have anything kind to say about her afterwards – especially not to people who would have been one hundred per cent on his side if he despised her.
‘So will you tell me?’ Gus asked. ‘What really happened with Uncle Jim?’
Claire took a deep breath. Gus deserved to know the truth – if only to better understand why Vanessa had kept it from her for so long – but raking over the coals of her father’s miserable last years was agony.
‘Of course,’ she began. ‘You probably don’t remember my mother, Emily, very well. She left my dad when I was sixteen, a few months after I went away to school, but they’d been very unhappy for a long time.’
‘They split up after you went to boarding school? I thought their divorce was why you had to go away,’ Gus said.
‘Their marriage problems were part of it, but it was also about Scotty.’
Her cousin’s eyes widened. ‘They had a problem with Scotty? But everyone loves Scotty!’
Claire couldn’t help but laugh. Scotty certainly was Mr Popularity in Bindallarah.
‘They didn’t have a problem with him. They had a problem with us being together. They thought we were too serious about each other, my mum especially.’ She smiled sadly. ‘Mum wasn’t ever that keen on rural life. I think she worried I’d marry Scotty and stay here in Bindy forever. She wanted more for me.’
‘What’s wrong with Bindy?’ Gus said with all the indignation of a teenager who had never lived anywhere else.
‘Absolutely nothing,’ Claire replied, and she realised she meant it. ‘I didn’t want to go. I begged them to let me stay. Leaving here was heartbreaking.’
‘And then Aunty Emily left anyway.’
Claire nodded. ‘She did. She moved to Perth, remarried. I’ve got three stepbrothers, you know?’
Gus wrinkled her nose. ‘Poor you.’
‘After Mum left, Dad really struggled to cope. He’d always liked a drink, but he really started hitting the bottle. The farm went downhill. He wasn’t taking proper care of the cattle. The milking equipment was old and needed replacing, but the processing companies were paying less and less for raw milk and Dad just couldn’t afford to upgrade. So . . .’
This was the part that always tore her up inside. The part where she’d tried to help, but didn’t try hard enough.
‘I offered to quit school and come home. Actually, I insisted. I told the principal I was leaving and everything,’ Claire said. ‘But Dad wouldn’t let me. He told me it wasn’t my job to solve his problems and that my education was more important. So I stayed.’
Claire lapsed into silence as she recalled the day she’d been summoned to Sister Hilaria’s office to take a call from her father. The smug look on the nun’s face as she watched Claire reduced to tears by Jim’s rage at the other end of the telephone line. It’s not your decision to make, Claire, he’d shouted.
‘Then what?’ Gus prompted softly.
‘It’s hard to say for sure, because Dad became quite secretive,’ she said. ‘He’d figured out that someone in town was telling me he was doing it tough. I think he suspected your mum, but it was —’
‘Scotty,’ Gus supplied.
Claire smiled. ‘You guessed it. We were always in touch, though I didn’t see him again for three years after I was sent to school in Sydney. He’d always planned to
