Outback Sunset (36 page)

Nova tapped the side of her nose and grinned at Diane. ‘Naturally. My lips are sealed.’
What a coup, Nova
, her little voice chortled. Hilary and Stuart had had an affair. Which meant … Oh, bugger! Toni and Nicki were wending their way back through the tables. She stood and patted Diane’s shoulder. ‘It was lovely to see you, Diane. Enjoy your spending spree.’

As she walked back to her table and Glen, Nova didn’t find it hard to read between the lines of Diane’s confession. Stuart’s wife may not have spelt it out in so many words but there had been a definite level of animosity directed at Hilary and Stuart, which made only one conclusion possible. Diane hated Hilary because of the affair with Stuart, in spite of the fact that he’d had the grace to marry her
and legitimise their first child.
But, lovey, the fascinating thing is, this isn’t all
said the voice in her head.
Unless you’ve read the information incorrectly it’s possible, more than possible, that Bren Selby isn’t Matthew’s son
. Nova knew that Kim, Diane’s eldest daughter, and Bren were only five months apart in age. Stuart could be Bren’s father. Wow! What a discovery.

When she put the pieces together it made sense. Stuart, who had four daughters, was openly fond of Bren but he didn’t give a tinker’s damn about Curtis and Lauren. And Hilary, by making Bren her favourite over her other children, could be compensating for her guilt for being unfaithful. Shit, what a bombshell. Her gaze narrowed as she sat opposite Glen. She smiled at him as if nothing momentous had just taken place. But … if Diane’s admission was true and could be proven so, Curtis was the rightful heir to Amaroo. Of course. That’s what Diane’s comment, ‘Curtis being badly done by’ meant.
The man
you
love has been cheated out of his inheritance
, came the voice again.

Hmmm! Was there a way she could use this information to help Curtis and to give him what she knew he wanted — and what was his birthright — Amaroo? A cunningness, which had developed as she’d matured, told her that she would have to be careful how she used this information because it had the potential to blow Amaroo and the person she cared for — Curtis — apart. With an enormous effort she masked the excitement Diane’s
faux pas
had brought her way, and extended her smile at Glen.

‘Sorry I took so long,’ the publicist apologised. ‘I bumped into a couple of friends in the foyer. We haven’t seen each other for years.’

‘That’s okay. I caught up with someone I know too.’ She looked at the menu. ‘Let’s order. I’m starving.’

‘Glad to hear it. I’ve noticed that usually you eat like a rabbit.’

‘Not tonight. I’ve something to celebrate and I intend to order the most expensive dish on the menu.’ She saw his quizzical glance and gave him her most winning smile, ‘To commemorate the winding-up of a successful promotional tour.’

Glen raised his glass of beer in a salute. ‘I’ll drink to that.’

Kerri and
North of the Nullarbor’s
producer, Heather Clarry arrived at Amaroo after the wet when the weather, being summer all over Australia, was stupefyingly hot. The days were dry again and the nights pleasantly warm. This was Kerri’s first visit to the outback and Vanessa, flying the women in from Kununurra in the chopper, intended that her friend should go away with a memorable impression of life in the Kimberley.

Heather, based in Melbourne, was a forty-five-year-old redhead with freckles, originally from Glasgow, who planned to stay at Amaroo for a week. She and Vanessa took to each other straight away and while Kerri slept off the residual jet lag from her international flight, they went over the proposed scenes and location possibilities.

‘If July and August are the best months,
weatherwise, that’s when we’ll shoot the local scenes,’ Heather said, after checking the stockmen’s quarters. ‘From the point of logistics, because of the remoteness, we’ll truck or fly in most of the equipment and the crew, probably for about five weeks. Having adequate accommodation here is a bonus too. Then there’ll be approximately two weeks in Fremantle using outdoor streetscapes to depict the family’s arrival from England. Other scenes, such as sailing from England will be filmed on board
The Bounty
in Sydney Harbour and the interior scenes are pencilled in to be shot at Movie World’s lot on the Gold Coast.’

‘At a stretch we should fit most of your crew in the stockmen’s quarters, do some doubling up in the stone cottage and there will be rooms in the homestead for Martin Pirelli and the camera crew,’ Vanessa told Heather. And with Bren dead keen on his home-stay accommodation plan, it would be an effective dry run to see if the station could cope with the extra numbers. They’d also have to bring in assistant cooks so Fran wouldn’t be run off her feet.

‘We’ll truck in vans for make-up and wardrobe.’ Heather stopped to study the front of Curtis’s cottage, on their way back to the homestead. ‘Would it be okay to see inside?’ she asked, pointing to the cottage. ‘With proper lighting we might be able to shoot a few interiors there and, because of its rustic appeal, an outdoor shot or two on the front verandah.’

‘Don’t forget Gumbledon Creek. Several scenes — the camping scene, the fight between Rupert and Thomas, cattle crossing the river etc — could be filmed along the creek. There’s a lot of dappled shade though so someone in the camera crew, or a
lighting technician, should check that the light’s adequate and for the best time of day to shoot,’ Vanessa suggested. Then she asked, ‘Getting around to the various spots I want to show you will be easier if you ride. Do you?’

Heather grimaced. ‘Not as well as I’d like to but, yes, I can, so long as the horse is a placid beastie,’ she said in her Scottish accent. She gazed towards the distant foothills and the line of gums that denoted the route of Gumbledon Creek. ‘I think we’ll get some wonderful scenes here to suit the script, Vanessa.’

‘You will. I’ve a list of places for us to check out over the next few days.’ Vanessa was proud of every inch of Amaroo but she intended to save the ride to Exeter Falls for the last day so Heather would leave with its memory solidly implanted in her head.

Heather glanced pointedly at Vanessa’s stomach. She was almost five months and beginning to show. ‘It’s okay for you to ride?’

‘Goodness, yes. I rode when I was pregnant with Kyle till I was seven and a half months.’ Remembering the difficulties of that, she chuckled. ‘One day I tried to mount Runaway, my horse and couldn’t, not even with help. I was a blimp. Couldn’t even drive a ute …’ she shook her head. ‘I’ve resigned myself to going through that again but at least this time I know what’s ahead for me.’

Over the following days Vanessa enjoyed showing Kerri and Heather many of the places she loved on Amaroo …

For the ride to Exeter Falls Fran packed them a picnic lunch, plastic cups and a bottle of white wine.

Heather was rapt in the scenery and clicked off an entire roll of 35-mm film before they reached the falls and the gleaming, inviting pool of water the falls dropped into.

‘Aren’t you glad I suggested you bring bathers?’ Vanessa reminded a perspiring Kerri as they dismounted and tethered the horses near a patch of yellow grass. She took the wine from her saddlebag and sank it up to its neck in water to keep it cool.

‘This place is magic,’ Heather enthused, her tone noticeably awed. ‘It will be perfect for the love scene between Emily and Rupert, the escaped convict.’

Vanessa beamed, ‘I thought so too.’

‘Speaking of escape, can we escape into the water? My body’s so hot I think I’m going to spontaneously combust,’ Kerri complained good-naturedly. Ripping her bathers out of her backpack, she was about to go into the bush to change, when Vanessa spoke.

‘Let me check the area for snakes. This is where one almost bit me not long after I’d come to Amaroo.’

Hearing that, Kerri and Heather gravitated towards a clump of rocks and stood on them, happy to wait for Vanessa to check the surrounding bushes.

‘All clear,’ Vanessa gave the go ahead, giving them a maddeningly cheeky grin at their apprehensive expressions. ‘Should have brought Sandy with us. He’s a great snake catcher.’ Then, the water being too inviting, she threw down her Akubra, stripped
off her clothes — having her bathers on underneath — and waded in. The water was cool against her heated skin as she breast-stroked to the centre, where it was deepest and coolest, to wait for Kerri and Heather.

‘Vanessa, it’s-it’s bloody cold,’ Heather said through chattering teeth.

‘’Cause your body’s hot. You’ll adjust in a little while,’ Vanessa advised with a laugh. ‘It’s more pleasant here than paddling in Gumbledon Creek, even though the creek’s flowing well after the wet. Sometimes,’ she added for their information, ‘if the wet’s particularly heavy, we can’t get in for a month or two, till the flow eases. I had Bren fly the area yesterday to check that it was okay to come up.’

‘What about crocodiles?’ Kerri asked tentatively. Her black eyes darted suspiciously around the shoreline.

‘It’s croc safe.’

Kerri sighed, her features relaxing. ‘Thank God for that.’ She rolled onto her back and began to float. ‘It is beautiful here, quite starkly beautiful,’ she said as she floated towards Vanessa. ‘After some time here it’s easy to see why you fell in love with the place. There’s a raw strength to the land, a sense of timelessness about it.’

During her visit, Kerri had been quietly observing everyone on Amaroo, and Bren got special attention. She still had reservations as to his worthiness and over the years, as far as she was concerned, he hadn’t done enough to make her opinion change. Bren Selby was, she referred back to when they’d been courting, the affable, hail-fellow-well-met type of man, but
whether Vanny was aware of it, in her opinion there wasn’t a great deal of substance to the man. It was, she believed, a tribute to Vanny’s highly developed sense of loyalty that the marriage had lasted as long as it had and, now, with a second baby on the way. She sighed, well … To her credit, Vanny never complained or said anything that reflected badly on Bren. But knowing her as she did, she sensed a tension between them, enough to guess that the marriage was going through a bad patch.

The three were ready for lunch after spending an hour in the cooling waters of Exeter Falls. Vanessa spread a lightweight rug, which had been strapped to the back of her saddle on the ground, and they sat cross-legged on it to devour every morsel of food, including the wine and a thermos of iced, but now lukewarm tea.

‘Not so primitive, after all, hey?’ Vanessa quizzed Kerri because, occasionally she had taken verbal pot shots at the remoteness of where she lived.

‘No. Mind you, it isn’t as civilised as a picnic in Hyde Park, with vendors hawking ices and soft drinks, but here is … quite acceptable.’

‘There’s another plus. No hordes of tourists trampling about the place either,’ Heather voiced her opinion.

‘Above the flood-water line there are several Aboriginal cave paintings. If you don’t mind a half-hour hike uphill,’ Vanessa suggested.

‘Oh, lovely! Just what I need to work off Fran’s lunch,’ Kerri said tongue-in-cheek.

‘We can go up in our bathers and boots, have a look, then come back for a quick dip before we head
home,’ Vanessa said. ‘First though I’ll sluice the utensils off in the water.’ Of necessity they travelled light but because Heather and Kerri were guests, Fran had packed plastic plates, cutlery and glasses.

Afternoon shadows disguised a cover of moss clinging to several rocks as Vanessa, barefoot, hopped from one rock to another to get to the water’s edge. She didn’t see the wet patch of green that had been dampened when they’d exited the water, until it was too late …

Her left foot slipped on the moist area, and unable to regain her balance, her legs went from under her. She landed squarely on her bottom, hard. Instantly the jarring travelled from her coccyx all the way up her spine. The air whooshed out of her lungs. She dropped everything and used her hands to stop from pitching forward onto more rocks, then into the water. As she righted herself a sharp, breath-catching pain stabbed low in her stomach. The baby. Oh,
noooo
…!

H
eather and Kerri rushed to Vanessa’s aid, helping her to her feet.

‘Are you all right?’

Vanessa shook her head. ‘I don’t know. I felt … something.’ Another pain grabbed low in her midriff, making her double over.

‘The baby,’ Heather whispered, looking at Kerri, who nodded back gravely.

‘Vanny, you shouldn’t move, or walk,’ Kerri said, taking control.

‘How will we get her back to Amaroo?’ Heather wanted to know.

Vanessa, who had collapsed on the ground again, the fingers of both hands spread protectively over her stomach, looked up, wide-eyed, at Kerri. ‘There’s a two-way radio in my backpack. Get it for me. Bren can fly the chopper in to where the gorge begins, but we’ll have to ride out and meet him there.’

‘I’m sure you shouldn’t move. You could lose the baby,’ Kerri interrupted, her dark eyes full of concern. She bit down on her lower lip as she was wont to do when anxious.

Vanessa shook her head. The pains were turning into something she recognised, mini contractions. They made her fear the worst. ‘It isn’t a matter of choice,’ she said. ‘The gorge is too narrow for the chopper to land in safely. I have to ride Runaway to a pick-up point. Get the radio and I’ll make the call.’

By the time they reached the rendezvous point, which took a good hour or more, Kerri, who’d stayed close to Vanessa as Heather rode ahead, towards the chopper, spotted the dark stain — blood — on the loose, cotton shorts Vanessa was wearing. She knew her dear friend was holding the pain and the hurt in, and the knowledge that she could be miscarrying.

Bren shouted over the whirr of the rotor blades as he lifted Vanessa, who was barely able to contain her emotions, into the chopper’s cabin. ‘I’ll take her to the hospital in Kununurra. They’re expecting us.’ Fran had given him towels and blankets to keep Vanessa warm. Settling her, he turned to Kerri and pointed to Amaroo’s foreman. ‘Reg will take you back to the homestead. I’ll phone as soon as there’s news.’