FOLLOW THE MORNING STAR

Di Morrissey is Australia’s most popular woman novelist. Her first book,
Heart of the Dreaming,
launched her bestselling career and paved the way for
The Last Rose of Summer, Follow the Morning Star, The Last Mile Home, Tears of the Moon, When the Singing Stops, The Songmaster
and her latest novel,
Scatter the Stars.

Well known as a TV presenter on the original ‘Good Morning Australia’, Di has always written – working as a journalist, advertising copywriter and screenwriter.

Di has two children and lives in Byron Bay, NSW, where she devotes herself to writing, in between travelling to research her novels.

Di Morrissey can be visited at her website:
http://www.dimorrissey.com

Also by Di Morrissey

Heart of the Dreaming
The Last Rose of Summer
Follow the Morning Star
The Last Mile Home
Tears of the Moon
When the Singing Stops
The Songmaster
Scatter the Stars
Blaze
The Bay
Kimberley Sun
Barra Creek
The Reef

First published 1993 in Pan by Pan Macmillan Publishers Australia
This edition published 1995 by Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Limited St Martins Tower, 31 Market Street, Sydney

Reprinted 1993, 1995 (twice), 1996 (twice), 1997, 1998, 1999 (twice), 2000, 2001, 2002 2003, 2004 (twice), 2005

Copyright © Di Morrissey 1993

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

National Library of Australia
cataloguing-in-publication data:

Morrissey, Di.
Follow the morning star.
ISBN 0 330 27403 1.
I. Title.
A823.3

Typeset in 11/13 pt Andover by Post Typesetters Printed in Australia by McPherson’s Printing Group

This novel is a work of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

These electronic editions published in 2007 by Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Ltd 1 Market Street, Sydney 2000

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

All rights reserved. This publication (or any part of it) may not be reproduced or transmitted, copied, stored, distributed or otherwise made available by any person or entity (including Google, Amazon or similar organisations), in any form (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical) or by any means (photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise) without prior written permission from the publisher.

Follow the Morning Star

Di Morrissey

For my mother
always with love

Acknowledgements

For my beautiful daughter Gabrielle as she sets out on her own journey in life, and for my darling son Nick, for his love, support and humour.

For Jim and Rosemary Revitt for your loving advice.

For Tom Knapp, a good friend and an honourable lawyer.

For Julia Stiles for your sensitive editing and patience

For all those friends who love the land and stopped to yarn, answer questions and share your feelings.

And, as always, for my guiding star who lights up my life.

The Morning Star paled slowly, the Cross hung low to the sea.

And down the shadowy reaches the tide came swirling free.

The lustrous purple blackness of the soft Australian night

Waned in the grey awakening that heralded the light
. . .

JAMES LISTER CUTHBERTSON

Chapter One

TR rolled over in bed and reached for Queenie. Discovering cool empty sheets, he opened his eyes. Dawn was breaking. With a jolt he remembered, Queenie was down in Sydney. Probably shopping her socks off, he thought, grinning as he swung out of bed. He fumbled about in their walk-in dressing room for the moleskin pants he’d dropped the night before and looked over to where Queenie’s clothes hung neatly. Impulsively he grabbed a handful of silk and cotton and buried his face in the softness, smelling the faint but familiar citrous tang of Queenie’s perfume.

As he dressed he thought how Queenie’s spirit and beauty hadn’t faded since the first time he’d met her at her twenty-first birthday party here at Tingulla. She had climbed out of her bedroom window onto the roof to pick jasmine blooms from the vine entwined in the old peppercorn tree. Her startled emerald eyes
staring down at him, a face like an angel framed in waves of golden-brown hair, was an image forever burned onto his memory.