The Patterson Girls (10 page)

‘Are you okay?' Charlie nudged her in the side and Lucinda realised the congregation had stood to sing what she hoped was the final hymn. The sooner church ended the better.

‘Fine.' She blinked and stood quickly, tossing Charlie a carefree smile.

Half her prayers were answered when the priest wished everyone a Merry Christmas before walking up the aisle, but her hopes of a speedy escape were dashed. They hadn't even managed to wake Abigail before they were ambushed by old ‘friends', come to commiserate with them over their first Christmas without their mother—as if they needed reminding—and also enquire about their lives.

‘Luci! So great to see you.' Kate McDonald, who'd been in the same year as her at school and was now married to Mitch's brother Macca, leaned over from the pew in front and gave her a massive hug.

‘You too,' Lucinda said, smiling tightly as Kate pulled back and then absentmindedly patted the golden curls of the little girl standing on the pew beside her.

‘I'm so sorry to hear about your mum. I was in Adelaide having number four when you came back for the funeral.' Kate gestured beside her to Macca, who was holding a sleeping baby. He smiled politely and then glanced at his watch.

‘Thanks,' Lucinda said. ‘And congratulations on your new addition. You have a lovely little family.' She hoped her voice didn't betray her shaky emotions. It's not that she wasn't happy for her old friend, but why couldn't she have that too?

‘Will we hear the pitter-patter of tiny feet for you and Joe soon?' Kate asked, her eyes twinkling.

There were so many things Lucinda wanted to say to that question, but unfortunately none of them were socially acceptable—especially in a church. She was so sick of people asking her when she and Joe were going to start a family. They
were
a family. She summoned a smile and shrugged, ‘We're in no rush; we're just enjoying each other's company at the moment.' Lies, all lies.

Kate frowned as if she couldn't get her head around this idea. ‘Oh … well, all right then. Don't leave it too long. You're not getting any younger.'

‘Honey, we really should go.' Macca, who looked asleep on his feet, touched her on the arm. ‘The kids need to go to bed.'

Yes, listen to your sensible man,
thought Lucinda, while still smiling through her teeth.

Kate ignored her husband. ‘We should catch up for coffee and cake at Rosie Jean's while you're in town.'

‘I'd like that,' Lucinda said, ‘but it's a crazy time of year and I'm trying to help Dad at the motel while I'm home, I'm not sure I'll have the time.' As if to accentuate her point, she linked her arm through her father's. He too had been accosted and was nodding at something one of the old dears from the church was saying. ‘We should get home too.'

‘Yes, good idea.' Dad smiled apologetically at the woman who appeared to be coming on to him. Single pensioners could be vultures! ‘Early start tomorrow.'

Finally Kate got the message, as did Dad's suitor, both of them heading off to pester someone else. Madeleine, Charlie and Mitch, who'd also been talking to old schoolfriends stooped to drag Abigail to her feet and the six of them started down the aisle towards the exit. More people stopped them on their way, asking after the girls. Two more old ‘friends' asked Lucinda about future babies and one even dared to ask Madeleine if she was going to find the time to breed.

‘Why?' she asked, peering down at the snotty nosed toddler attached to the woman.

‘Well.' The woman looked flummoxed. She adjusted the child on her hip and smiled as he wailed. ‘Kids are a delight, aren't they?'

‘I'm quite happy delivering them,' Madeleine said, before dragging Abigail after her to the door.

That's the problem with small towns,
Lucinda thought. They were populated with busybodies. But there were also good things. When Mum died, these people had rallied around Dad, helping him with the motel, cooking meals and offering their support. She shouldn't be too harsh on them.

Waving goodbye to a few more people as they went, the Patterson clan climbed into the old van.

‘Well, that was a riot,' Madeleine noted when the door was safely shut behind them.

Nobody replied and Lucinda only hoped that tomorrow, when it was just her sisters, Dad and Aunt Mags, they'd finally find a little Christmas spirit.

Chapter Six

Dressed in her orchestra black, Abigail held her violin against her shoulder, balancing her chin on the rest as she looked past the conductor and out into the audience of cultured people wearing their evening best. She still got a buzz before every performance, an all-over thrill that shimmered through her body. Rehearsing with her colleagues or even practising by herself made her happy but there was something magical about playing for an appreciative crowd. Thrillseekers or extreme sportsmen might disagree but as far as Abigail was concerned, this was as good as any bungee jump, and better than leaping out of a plane. Better than wine, better than sex, even better than chocolate. For as long as she could remember—since the moment she'd picked up her first violin—she'd known the orchestra was her calling. Playing music was like breathing.

If she couldn't play, she would die.

She grinned as the lights in concert hall dimmed slightly and Walter, their ancient conductor, lifted his baton demanding the attention of his musicians. Abigail gladly gave him hers, her excitement swelling to epic proportions as she waited for her signal. This would
never
get old.

And then it came. As natural as walking and breathing, her fingers slid across the strings as her other hand glided her bow across them in time with her fellow string musicians. She heard the deep sounds of the woodwind family coming to life behind her—her favourite, the bassoons—and the steadying beat of the percussion at the back. Whatever else was happening in the world didn't matter as she lost herself in the music.

It all went well for the first few concertos, Abigail silently congratulating herself for her outstanding effort, but then something awful happened.

Her mind went blank.

Her fingers froze on the strings.

The notes on the stand in front of her blurred and her hand holding the bow clenched so tightly that her fingernails dug into her skin.

Oh shit. Oh fuck
. She glanced from side to side, hoping none of her fellow musicians had seen her falter, hoping their music was strong enough to cover her. But then the kettledrums grew louder, so loud she felt as if they were playing inside her head. She just wanted them to stop. She wanted to remember her music. She wanted to scream.

Why is this happening to me?

‘Get your lazy ass out of bed,' came Madeleine's muffled shout, slightly tinged with a not-quite-American accent. ‘We're supposed to be in this together.'

Abigail frowned. In
what
together? Her eyes blinked open and she sat up so fast her head spun. She slammed her hand against her chest, hoping to calm the erratic beating of her heart.

‘It's just another dream,' she whispered, taking a deep breath. When would she stop reliving that god-awful day?

The door burst open. Madeleine, wearing a scowl, bright pink rubber gloves and jiggling the master key ring on her index finger crossed to the curtains and yanked them back, letting in the harsh morning sunlight. ‘Merry Christmas, sleepyhead,' she sang faux-chirpily. ‘It's time to get up and clean the rooms. I've already done one.'

Abigail groaned and flopped back against the pillow. She didn't know what was more of a nightmare—the dream she'd been rudely awoken from or her real life. So much for this trip being a holiday. So much for presents first thing on Christmas Day.

‘My head hurts,' she whined.

‘Hardly surprising considering how much you drank last night,' Madeleine said, not showing one ounce of sympathy. Abigail didn't think this was fair coming from the woman who seemed to have had a glass of wine in her hand constantly since they arrived, but she was too shook up to mention this. She'd hoped being intoxicated would stop the nightmares, but apparently not.

‘Just let me have a shower and I'll be with you,' she promised.

‘Fine. I'll see you in a moment.' Madeleine turned in her sneakers and marched back out of the room. If Abigail wasn't feeling so shite, she'd have found great amusement in the sight of Madeleine wearing cleaning gloves. She couldn't recall ever seeing her oldest sister anywhere
near
a cleaning product. Without a doubt, Madeleine paid someone to do her dirty work.

Despite wanting to crawl back under her covers and tug a pillow over her head, Abigail forced herself to get up. A grumpy Madeleine was one thing but if she didn't pull her weight she could add an irate Lucinda to her list of woes and that wasn't a happy prospect. She hurried her shower and then dressed in shorts and a t-shirt, ready to work. For the first time in her life she wished she could cook, because surely making breakfast would be better than scrubbing motel rooms. After tying her hair back into a high ponytail and pulling on her sandshoes, she went outside to find Madeleine.

‘Stop laughing, you jerk. It's not funny.' Madeleine—with a rare smile on her face—was leaning against the cleaning trolley a few rooms along the verandah, talking into her mobile phone. ‘How would you like to spend your Christmas changing sheets that smell of other people's sex lives? I just had to pick up a used condom.'

Abigail grimaced at the thought. Was there any way she could get out of this?

‘Honestly,' Madeleine continued, ‘you wouldn't believe what pigs people are when they don't have to clean up after themselves. Give me a nice hygienic maternity ward over this any day. I have a newfound respect for cleaners.'

Abigail approached the trolley and gestured that she was going to start on the next room. Madeleine barely acknowledged her, laughing at something whoever was on the other end of the line said. Abigail stripped the bed—thankfully she didn't find any nasty surprises—and then bundled the sheets up, tossing them in a pile by the door, ready to take to the laundry. Screwing up her nose, she returned to the trolley, pulled out a pair of plastic gloves—orange ones—took a deep breath and picked up a cloth and some spray. As she scrubbed the vanity of toothpaste and soggy hair, Abigail wondered if this was what her life would be like from now on. She would need to get some sort of job when she returned to London. Her meagre savings wouldn't last more than a couple of weeks but she wasn't trained to do anything except play music. Racking her mind for anything besides cleaning toilets for a crust, she worked quickly to clean the bathroom. She surveyed her handiwork and then went outside to get rid of the used linen and fetch the vacuum.

Madeleine was
still
on the telephone. Now who wasn't pulling their weight? Sighing her loud annoyance, Abigail marched past her sister on the way to the laundry and when she returned Madeleine was finally finishing up her phone call. Abigail paused, no longer feeling any guilt about eavesdropping.

‘Merry Christmas, Hugo,' Madeleine was saying, like it was the funniest thing in the world, and then she disconnected.

‘Hugo?' Abigail raised her eyebrows. ‘Significant other I should know about, dear sister?'

Madeleine scoffed. ‘My only significant other is my iPhone. Hugo is a colleague and a friend. He rang to wish me a good Christmas. I think he must have had a few drinks.'

‘He sounds like my type of guy,' Abigail said, peeling her lurid orange gloves off and retrieving a blue pair. Those orange ones stank of something she didn't want to think about.

‘He's engaged,' Madeleine informed her with a smug smile. ‘Not that you should care, since you are apparently coupled-off.'

‘I didn't say I wanted to marry the guy. I was just making conversation. Must be a
good
friend if he rings you all the way over here.'

‘He is.' Madeleine smiled in the manner of a dreamy schoolgirl. Abigail bit her tongue on asking if the guy's fiancée liked him making over-the-ocean phone calls to another woman.

‘Anyway.' Madeleine snapped out of her trance-like state and picked a clipboard up off the trolley. ‘We've got three more rooms to go,' she said, glancing down at the chart that listed rooms that were currently occupied and needed a freshen up and those that were being vacated today and needed the full overhaul.

‘How about I take one room, you take another and we'll share the third?' Abigail suggested.

‘Sounds good to me.' Madeleine shoved her mobile phone into the back pocket of her shorts, turned on her heels and headed towards room 19. In turn Abigail grabbed the cleaning equipment she required and took room 11.

The two sisters worked hard for another hour, scrubbing toilets, emptying bins, putting sheets in the massive commercial washing machine and making beds until all the rooms were ready for their guests.

‘I'm utterly exhausted,' Abigail moaned when they were finished, feeling as if she could fall atop her bed and sleep for a month.

‘Me too.' Madeleine nodded and then glanced at her phone. ‘But it's almost time to collect Aunt Mags. Do you want to come with me?'

Abigail smiled at the thought of flamboyant Aunt Mags, who held court in a retirement village when she wasn't flitting to some far corner of the earth. ‘Hmm, let's see, a toss up between a trip to Port Augusta to pick up Mags or being bossed around by Lucinda to help make Christmas lunch?' She grinned. ‘Give me five minutes to get changed.'

Madeleine adored Aunt Mags—all the sisters did—and so she'd been more than happy to volunteer to collect her. And, like Abigail, she reckoned being well out the way of Lucinda's Christmas lunch preparations was a smart idea.

At almost ten years older than Dad, Aunt Mags was still very independent and capable, but her eyesight had deteriorated dramatically in the last few years. Last year after she'd had her driver's licence taken away, she'd surprised everyone by announcing that she was moving out of her tiny cottage and into an ‘entertainment centre' (her words—she didn't like the word ‘retirement') that had recently opened in Port Augusta. Meadow Brook itself was too small for such a development, so many of Aunt Mags's friends had chosen to make the move as well. Apparently it was quite a social hub—with events on almost every day of the week to keep the old folks amused. Indoor bowls, scrapbooking, card games, Bogan Bingo, you name it!