The Vet from Snowy River by Stella Quinn

CHAPTER

8

Dear Aunt Jill

It’s me again, Vera, your niece.

I have a little fun news that you might enjoy. You know how you’ve spent years trying to convince me that craft is fun, not just a chore involving knitting needles or hot glue guns, and I’ve never, ever, ever believed you?

Well, I’ve been persuaded (bulldozed, really) into allowing a local craft group to use part of the café as its temporary headquarters.

There’s a very bossy woman in town, Marigold Jones; have you met her? She tells me she visits Connolly House pretty often. She’s about six feet tall, wears outfits that are sort of half hippy, half Gold Coast muu-muu. She has a deep voice so beautiful it’s like she hypnotises you and you agree to anything she suggests. Just today at a wake we hosted here (she seems to have about forty jobs, and one of them is being a celebrant at weddings and funerals), she started off saying a few words, and before I knew what was what, she’d volunteered my café for her craft group and strong-armed the husband of the deceased to turn up for knitting lessons!

The wake was busy, and I took some orders for cakes (your hummingbird recipe is a big hit). Hopefully, the people who came enjoyed their morning tea enough to visit us again.

All that craft talk reminded me of your boxes, you know, the ones we pulled out of storage when we left Queanbeyan.

Vera put down her pen to roll her shoulders. The function had gone well—except for that last bit when Marigold Jones decided to offer up The Billy Button Café’s back room for her craft group. Was that what had made her feel guilty about not unpacking her aunt’s boxes? Jill had been such a keen crafter in her day … and Vera’s sporadic attempts at unpacking had uncovered a stash of half-finished projects.

She’d barely begun rifling through them when crazy, scrappy fabric things in watermelon red and blueberry blue and paprika orange had surfaced. Half-made skirts, table runners, a plump assortment of patches that was maybe a quilt.

Perhaps there’d be some items in those boxes she could use to add a flourish to the café’s interior? Some exotic material that would make gorgeous cushions on the new green velvet banquettes, or an art deco vase or bronze candelabra to perch on the mantlepiece above the fire.

Vera twisted in her chair and tried to imagine the café gussied up with some of her aunt’s collection. It would be like Jill had visited The Billy Button Café in person to wish it well.

‘I’m off, Vera. Kitchen’s clean, windows are locked, till money’s hidden in the microwave.’

She turned, waved a hand at Graeme as he pulled his jacket off the peg by the door. ‘It went well today, didn’t it?’

‘Super well. So well, in fact, maybe we think about a waitperson or two—casual hours—to keep the tables cleared and the food served hot at busy times.’

The calico bag of takings she was going to drop into the bank in the morning was by her hand. She touched it with a fingertip. Counting up the notes and merchant slips in there had made her start to believe, just a little, that her mad, mad plan to keep her aunt in care even if she wasn’t around to earn a living might actually work.

‘Vera?’

‘Oh, sorry Graeme, I started daydreaming about café profits and drifted off. What did you say?’

‘You want me to look into hiring some more staff?’

‘Oh, yes please.’

‘No prob. Just one thing: Wednesday night is date night for me, so I’m not going to be much use for craft group. I’m sorry. Alex’s schedule won’t be flexible until the fire station roster changes.’

‘You have date night? That is so sweet.’ Well, not to her, obviously—date nights had been poisoned forever by her ex-boyfriend, along with romance, candlelit dinners and handholding—but she could be glad for Graeme. Only … oh crap. That meant she’d be the one who’d have to chat nicely about craft with a dozen of Marigold’s cronies every week.

Graeme’s grin was a little sly. ‘You know Marigold will rope you in to making tassels, or decoupage, or painting wild horses on velvet.’

She chuckled. ‘You’re making my blood run cold. I’ll manage. Thanks for letting me know.’

‘Don’t stay here too late, will you, boss? I can wait, if you want me to walk you to your car.’

What a guy. ‘No, Graeme, you get along home. I’m just finishing this letter to my aunt while the meringues cool off, then I’ll be on my way.’

‘Your Aunt Jill who lives in the hospice down at Cooma?’

‘Yep.’

‘Why do you write to her when you go visit her twice a week?’

She sighed. ‘She doesn’t recognise me. When I visit, she thinks I’m my mother—her sister, Barb—who passed away a long time ago now. Jill’s geriatrician gave me some advice about communicating with her … aim for a peaceful environment, you know, so she isn’t distracted by noise and buzz, and use a method of communication that she enjoyed in the past. Music, cards, singing and so on. Jill always loved receiving letters, so I write these and we sit in the garden at Connolly House and I read them to her. I like to think somehow, somewhere in her thoughts, she knows what her niece Vera is up to.’

‘You’re a sweetheart, Vera, you know that?’

She swallowed. She was pretty sure if she was truly a sweetheart, she wouldn’t be facing a criminal prosecution. ‘See you tomorrow, Graeme. We can workshop how we’re going to run this weekly stitch-and-bitch event Marigold sucker-punched us into.’

‘You got it, boss.’

Silence settled in the spotless café when the door shut behind Graeme, and Vera leaned back in her chair.

Things really were going well. The Italian-style dinner menu she was experimenting with was receiving compliments, the coffee was exceptional thanks to Graeme’s skill at the espresso machine. The locals of Hanrahan were all coming for a look-see and buying a roasted-vegetable tart or a cake, and despite it being the shoulder season between snow skiing and bushwalking, holiday tourists were plentiful.

She turned back to her letter.

We (that’s me and my new manager, Graeme, who is a godsend. He’s a marvel with the customers and could run this place with his eyes closed) are going to try opening up a couple more evenings a week and test the market for more formal dinners. It’ll mean getting some help with food prep, as dinner menus aren’t my forte, as you know!

I’ll write again soon to let you know how it all goes, but it’s getting late, and work starts early in the kitchens here. The apartment I’m renting is just a few blocks away from the café, and the streets seem very safe here in town, but I don’t want to be heading home too late alone.

I’ll visit when I can,

Love, Vera xx

A bleep-bleep from her phone interrupted her as she was folding the letter into an envelope, and she fished it out of her apron pocket and checked the screen.

Sue Anton calling…

Crap. Sue never called with good news.

‘Hi, Sue.’

‘Vera. This is not my good news voice.’

‘I’ve given up expecting good news. What’s up?’

As much as she liked Sue, the woman charged like a flock of angry emus. She’d learned the hard way to keep every conversation with her lawyer as short and succinct as possible.

‘Just an update on your arraignment. The court wants to bring your attendance forward, so we need to make our decisions on your plea. I need to make you aware of your options.’

‘What options, exactly?’

‘The first option is you plead guilty to the charges and we ask for a section 10 dismissal, which means you are found guilty, but no conviction is recorded, so it won’t affect your ability to work or travel in the future.’

‘I plead guilty? Sue, I’ve had to sell my apartment to defend my innocence, and now you’re saying I just roll over and accept the charges?’

‘It’s an option. It might not be your worst option. You’re paying me legal fees to give you advice, Vera, so listen to it before you bite my head off, all right?’

Vera snorted. ‘As though anyone could. I suspect you’re made of titanium, Sue.’

‘You’d be right. A non-conviction order would see you having to comply with a good behaviour bond. And there’d be certain conditions attached, like steering clear of writing damning articles about the aged care sector in Australia for example … but it might be the quickest way to get this shitshow behind you. To move on.’

She drummed her fingers on the table. ‘So if we agree to this—what did you call it?—section 10 dismissal, that’s it? I’m guilty, but I’m done with all this?’

‘It’s not that easy.’

Of course it wasn’t.

‘The magistrate decides whether or not they’ll grant it based on the seriousness of the charge, and they’ll take into account your character and criminal history, your concern for the greater good, that sort of thing. We have a solid shot.’

‘But no guarantee.’

‘Of course not. Where would the legal profession be if this stuff was ever clear-cut?’

Broke and bitter, she expected. Like she was. ‘What if I don’t want to plead guilty?’

‘Then we proceed as planned: we enter a not guilty plea at the arraignment, the magistrate will set a trial date, and we’ll argue it out.’

Lawyers in suits, batting words back and forth in some musty old courtroom, and her future on the line. She’d known it was coming. She’d known it would be a burden. What she hadn’t factored in was how hard it would be to stay strong for her aunt, for her employees, for the sake of the café’s bottom line, when the world was conspiring to bring her to her knees.

‘Vera? You still there?’

‘Yes, sorry. I was just brooding for a second.’

‘You’re going to want to give me a decision on your plea in the next couple of days. We don’t want to mess the court around, and we want time to work on our arguments depending on which way you want to go.’

Time for her to worry. Spend her last cent on legal fees. Be so distracted she messed up her new business. She sighed. ‘Thanks, Sue. I’ll think it over and let you know.’

Sue made a long breathy noise through her phone receiver, and Vera could almost smell the gush of nicotine. ‘I thought you’d given up smoking?’

‘My lungs did too. But then my ex-husband rang and enraged me so much, it was a cigarette or an aggravated homicide charge. I figured a cigarette wouldn’t ruin my career.’

Vera laughed. ‘You’re a funny girl, Sue. Sorry I got a bit antsy before, I appreciate your hard work, really I do. Thank you.’

‘You won’t be thanking me when you see my latest bill. I just emailed it to you.’

‘Yikes. I better get the hell off this call,’ she said, only half joking.

She said goodbye and hit the end icon. Those meringues had better be ready. She might need to comfort-eat a dozen or so before she headed home. Tidying up the table she’d been using to sort through her paperwork, she stood up and made for the kitchen. Meringues, home, wine, bath. Maybe she’d have the wine in the bath.

The oven door felt cool when she rested her hand against it, so she chanced opening it and had a look inside. Ah. Dozens of baby meringues winked back at her, their creamy tips just blushed with brown colour. She smiled. No matter how crappy things got, there was always something to be glad about in the kitchen. She hauled out the trays and began lining them up on the stainless steel bench, then frowned as a noise caught her attention.

Crying? She listened, then heard faint scuffling—not in the café, but out in the back alley.

She drew back the bolts and opened the door, and there was the cat, perched on the step as though it had just knocked and was awaiting a butler to grant it entree into a grand home.

‘Can I help you?’

She really must be tired if she was speaking to stray cats. She went to shut the door, then hesitated. For all its attitude, the cat was thin. ‘Wait there,’ she said. ‘Not a paw is to come inside. This kitchen is run by the anxious owner of a safe food handling certificate, and cats are strictly forbidden.’

She rummaged through the cupboards until she found a saucer, then poured a liberal dollop of milk into it from a bottle in the fridge.

‘Here,’ she said, and sat the saucer down on the step. ‘But don’t think this is going to happen again. I’ve no time for relationships, not even with half-starved cats.’

The cat looked up at her with wide grey eyes.

‘Do you have a name?’

Its eyes blinked, and her thoughts drifted to the other name she’d heard that day—Josh, at the wake, who’d introduced himself again just before Marigold dropped her bombshell—as though she’d needed to be reminded who he was.

Her head knew she’d sworn off men for eternity, but her hormones were clearly still adjusting. Maybe she should have a cold saucer of milk herself.

The sniffling started up again, but the cat had hunkered down on the step, helping itself to a drink. If not the cat, what …

While all she could see were the skip bins that lined the dark recess of the alley—one for each of the storefronts that faced Paterson Street—since the sun had disappeared behind the mountain range to the west, the back alley was just a little creepy.

Another noise. Definitely crying.

‘Who’s there?’ she said, staying within the doorway so she could leap back inside the kitchen and bolt the door shut if she had to.

‘Nobody. Go away.’

Hmm. Young, female, stroppy. Sounded like a teenager having a crisis. She should leave her to it; god knows, she was no good at fixing a crisis. She’d learned that lesson.

Her eyes fell to the cat who was staring up at her from lopsided eyes. Well, do something, its expression seemed to say.

She rolled her eyes. Cats, crying teenagers, and craft groups for lonely widowers all in the one day. She was turning into a one-woman charity shop. ‘Would “nobody” like a meringue and some milk?’

There was a long pause. So long that Vera wondered if the crying girl had scampered away in the shadows, then a voice sounded from nearby.

‘You got a Coke?’

The girl stood just outside the pool of kitchen light spilling into the alley.

Vera’s vision of herself reclining in her bath with Mozart in her ears and a glass of deep velvety shiraz in her hand evaporated. ‘Sure, I’ve got Coke inside. Come and sit in the kitchen with me while I box up my batch of meringues.’

The girl stepped closer, and Vera tried not to raise her eyebrows at the outfit. The boots alone must have weighed as much as bricks, and her skinny legs didn’t look strong enough to lug them around. Plaid skirt the colour of a school bus, eyeliner stripes making her look like a sad fairy penguin … so this was the modern-day version of teen angst. How well she remembered her own.

‘Just step over the cat,’ she said. ‘It’s easier than trying to encourage him to scram.’

The girl dropped to her knees. ‘Your cat’s a she.’

‘Oh. He … I’m sorry, she isn’t mine.’

‘British shorthair. Expensive cat to be a stray.’

Vera followed the girl inside. ‘You know your cats.’

The girl stiffened as though Vera had just said something horribly offensive. She replayed her words in her head. What was so bad about suggesting someone knew something about cats?

‘There’s Coke in the big fridge. Bottom left, hiding behind the organic stuff. Help yourself,’ she said, and started rummaging in a drawer for storage boxes. ‘You any good with scissors?’

‘With scissors?’

‘Yep. I need to layer these meringues into these boxes, and if I don’t put a square of waxed paper between each layer, the tops get ruined.’ She handed over the roll of paper and a set of kitchen scissors. ‘Actually, might want to wash your hands first. That back lane isn’t the cleanest place in Hanrahan.’

She paused, hoping the prompt would push the girl into saying why she’d been lurking there. Nothing came, so she tried another tactic.

‘I’m Vera.’

‘Poppy,’ the girl said as she dried her hands on the handtowel.

‘Uh-huh. You live here?’

‘No freaking way.’

‘Oh! Are you lost? A runaway? A time traveller from another dimension?’ She watched the girl’s face as she plucked a waxed paper square from the pile stacking up on the bench. The girl was neat, fast, and totally adept at snipping. ‘Only, I’m just wondering why you were crying in the alley.’

Poppy’s fingers slipped on the roll of paper. ‘I wasn’t crying.’

Denial. Okay, that was a defence she recognised. ‘Good to know. Only, I’m new in town. If you’re having a full-on teenage crisis, I don’t know who to call. Your mum?’

‘She’s in Sydney.’

‘Dad?’

‘Like he’d care.’

Aha. She must have had a fight with her dad. ‘Sisters? Brothers? A cool unmarried auntie who drives a moped and wears men’s clothes?’

The girl’s voice was quieter than it had been before. ‘I’m new in town, too, sort of, but don’t worry because I am not staying. Six hours in Hanrahan has been six hours too long. And get this … everyone here seems to think they know more about me than I do myself. And they don’t! They haven’t even met me before! And I do have an auntie here who’s kinda cool, but she works with my dad.’

Vera sealed off a box then reached for the last few meringues on the baking tray. Okay, that was hopeful; the girl had family in Hanrahan. Maybe Poppy just needed to cool off some, then she’d be happy to go home. A little like her meringues. She picked one up, offered it to Poppy. ‘Want to try one?’

‘I guess. I’ve made a few meringues myself, you know, back in Sydney, where everything used to be great until Dad wrecked my life.’

Vera popped one in her own mouth as she studied the girl. She dodged the wrecked-life comment and focused on the other bit. ‘Oh, you bake too? No wonder you’re such an expert with food storage.’

Her guest gave a little snicker, which encouraged her to think Poppy was feeling a little less blue. ‘Anyone can cut paper.’

Vera smiled. ‘Maybe. You know, Poppy, as fun as this is, we can’t stay here all night. I bet your dad’s missing you and wondering where you are.’

Poppy sighed. ‘Can you keep a secret?’

She frowned. Sure she could, but she was out of her depth here in teenager land. What if the girl told her something that shouldn’t be kept secret?

‘I can, yes,’ she said. ‘Except if it’s a personal safety issue. Then, sorry, I’ll have to blab it to someone who can help.’

The girl frowned. ‘Ew. It’s nothing like that. Okay, the reason I was in that dumb lane was I got mad with some dumb kid called Braydon. Like that’s even a name.’

‘Why? What happened?’

‘I’m surprised you didn’t hear it from here.’

‘Hear what?’

‘The yelling. Dad’s business is just across the park. He was trying to be all friendly and cute and “you’ll love it here, Pops”, but really he just wanted me to do some dumb chores, but then this woman with big hair and her kid got all up in my face and it all went bad. Epically bad.’

‘And there was yelling? Your father shouted at you?’

‘What, at me? No way! Dad’s the best.’

Oh, this was so confusing. ‘I thought your dad had wrecked, um, your life and everything.’

‘Well sure, he has, but … whatever. It’s complicated.’

‘Poppy, maybe I’ve eaten too many meringues and my brain’s clogged up with sugar, but I still don’t understand.’

‘It all happened when I was looking at the guinea pig and the Braydon kid asked me if it was true what he’d read in the paper and what everyone was saying about my mum.’

‘In the newspaper?’ Vera tended to avoid the Snowy River Star, as well as the national papers. Part of her survival strategy was pretending her old life hadn’t existed, and journalism was part of that old life. ‘What’s everyone saying about your mum?’

‘Yeah. Good question. And I was just about to ask him that, but then my dad went apeshit crazy and told Braydon to watch his mouth, and then his mum went even crazier and told Dad it wasn’t her son’s fault if Dad chose to bring his mistakes back into town and he should have kept his trousers on back in high school even if his science teacher was a cougar and a hussy who should have gone to prison not Sydney, and then Dad went all green-looking and stiff and said in this cold voice my daughter’s not a mistake, and I was like, what the hell, does she mean me? I’m the mistake? And then Dad says Kelly Fox, I think you’d better take your son and your guinea pig and your vicious bitchy self the hell out of my office, and she started crying and then I started crying and I ran out of there and hid in the alley and wished I was dead. Or maybe in Sydney.’

‘I see.’ Well, that was a lie, because she didn’t see anything at all after that impassioned outburst. Mistakes? Trousers? Guinea pigs?

Poppy shrugged. ‘It doesn’t matter anyway. I’m just here because Dad made me come see for myself what this stupid town is like. I’m not staying, I don’t care how many puppies he bribes me with.’

‘That’s too bad. My café manager was just telling me we should hire some casual waitstaff to help us. You know, in school holidays especially.’

‘You mean, you’d hire me? Like, if I was up here in the holidays I could work in your café and bake epic meringues and stuff?’

Vera shrugged. Underneath all that mascara and angst, Poppy seemed a sweet kid. And washing dishes and clearing tables was bound to be more fun than crying in dirty access lanes. ‘Yep. Here in my café, although maybe the work would start off with kitchen duties and waitressing and we could work our way up to baking. It’s not every day I meet someone who can cut such a neat square of paper.’

The girl almost grinned. She looked shyly up at Vera, then took a big breath in, let a big breath out.

‘I’ve got to be back in Sydney for school at the end of next week, but I’ve got, like, weeks off at the end of fourth term. When can I start?’