North Star (2 page)

‘I guess I'll find out tomorrow. I'm going to see Henry's solicitors and get the keys to the place then.'

‘Well, if you need any help, just let me know.'

‘Thanks, I'll do that. Hopefully I won't need you in a professional capacity again,' said Kate, then immediately regretted it. Was it just her, or had that come out sounding . . . suggestive? ‘I mean, you know . . . as a police officer . . . not that I'd need you in any other sort of capacity.' Kate bit her tongue.

To his credit, John gave a low chuckle before he turned back to his vehicle. Then, with a final wave, he drove away, leaving Kate staring after him, furious with herself now as well as Georgia.

It was a tense evening, but thankfully it didn't last too long. Liam was dead to the world shortly after he'd eaten his dinner, and even Georgia was asleep by eight-thirty.

After ensuring the door was locked, and placing enough obstacles in the way to make a silent breakout during the night near impossible, Kate closed her eyes, bone weary.

As she drifted off to sleep she wondered how many surprises lay in store for her in the weeks to come.

At nine o'clock the next morning Kate parked the car outside the small offices of Mannerly and Sprite. She was surprised that the ‘Sprite' hadn't been removed after all this time. It had been the talk of Widgerry for months when Mr Sprite had run off with Mr Mannerly's wife and most of the firm's funds.

After sitting the kids down in the waiting room, Kate approached the reception desk and waited for the bottle-blonde receptionist, who was busy typing from a dictaphone, to acknowledge her.

Kate watched in amazement as the woman's lethal red talons flew across her computer keys in a blur. Her hair also defied logic, sitting piled high on her head in a beehive style that had been out of fashion for at least forty years.

‘Excuse me—' Kate said finally.

The receptionist's eyes flickered towards her, though her fingers continued to type furiously on the keyboard.

‘I have an appointment to see Mr Mannerly at nine o'clock.'

‘Take a seat.'

So much for country hospitality, Kate thought as she sat down beside Georgia, who was flicking through a very old
Women's Weekly
with a decided lack of enthusiasm. ‘Jesus, this is prehistoric,' she muttered, pointing to a picture of Brad Pitt still happily wedded to Jennifer Aniston.

A few minutes later a loud buzz sounded at the reception desk and the receptionist informed Kate that Mr Mannerly would see her now.

The offices of Mannerly and Sprite had last been decorated in the late 1970s and Mr Mannerly himself seemed to be still wearing a suit from the same era. Sliding a curious glance towards the desk calendar, Kate was relieved to see it showed the correct year. She eased herself into the burnt orange visitor's chair in front of Mr Mannerly's desk.

‘Mrs Thurston,' the solicitor greeted her politely. He reminded her of Mr Cunningham from
Happy Days
, with his big round face and puppy-dog eyes.

‘Actually, Mr Mannerly, it's Ms—I'm divorced.'

‘Oh yes, so you are. My apologies. My condolences, too, for your grandfather's passing.'

‘Thank you, but in all honesty I didn't know him that well. He and my mother were estranged for a long time.'

‘Yes . . . of course . . . an unfortunate turn of events,' the solicitor mumbled uncomfortably.

Moving on to the matter at hand, he leant forward and began to read out her grandfather's will. What followed was a mind-numbing array of ‘forthwiths' and ‘herebys' that took a solid thirty minutes to listen to and only confirmed what the solicitor had already told Kate in plain English on the phone—namely that she was now the sole owner of a substantial property consisting of a house, machinery and various sheds and other buildings.

‘I just need your signature on a few documents and then you can have the keys to your property,' said the solicitor.

‘Mr Mannerly, do you know what happened to the men my grandfather had working for him?'

‘I'm afraid Mr Campbell let all the workers go quite some time ago. It's my understanding that there hasn't been anyone out there for a great many years.'

‘Then how on earth did he manage the place all this time?'

‘I believe your grandfather hadn't run any livestock on the place for well over ten years. He was an old man, Ms Thurston. I'm sure you can appreciate it would have been difficult for him to continue running the place alone at his age . . . and with his, um . . . condition.' The solicitor squirmed uncomfortably in his seat.

‘His condition?' Kate arched an eyebrow. ‘Do you mean the fact that he was an alcoholic? I didn't realise alcoholism was considered a condition nowadays.' Kate didn't mean to sound so harsh, but being a violent drunkard could hardly be put in the same category as diabetes or heart disease.

‘Y-yes, well . . . um,' stammered the solicitor, shuffling through the papers on his desk. After a moment he seemed to collect himself and pointed out the places she had to sign.

‘Have you considered what you might want to do with the property?' he asked. ‘I do know that it's a much sought-after piece of land around these parts.'

‘Well, for now my children and I will be living there,' Kate said, scrawling her name across the crisp white paper.

‘As I informed you on the phone, Ms Thurston, your grandfather was somewhat of a recluse in his later years. I'm told that the property is in quite a state of disrepair.'

‘I'm not suffering any illusions about the condition of the house, Mr Mannerly. However, I am in need of a place to live. I have no plans to return to the city until North Star has been fixed up, and who knows how long that will take.'

‘As you wish.' He gave a small shrug. ‘I'll go and collect the keys and your copies of everything we've gone through here today.'

After he'd disappeared, Kate leant back in her seat and closed her eyes as she concentrated on releasing the knot in her shoulders that had become a constant over the last few months.

The truth was she hadn't wanted to take time out to deal with the tension and stress. To slow down would have allowed the reality of her situation to sink in, and that would have been just too depressing to contemplate.

It had been hard enough trying to stay positive for the kids, pretending that losing their pretty little house in the quiet cul-de-sac and giving up their affluent middle-class lifestyle was a character-building adventure. No wonder they both looked at her as if she was crazy half the time.

They'd barely got used to their parents' divorce when they were being moved from the safe, happy place they'd spent their childhood to a dingy two-bedroom flat in a suburb where the roar of traffic replaced the sound of kids playing outside in their backyards.

Kate had had to take on two jobs and pull Georgia and Liam from their private schools. Even then she had only barely been managing to make ends meet.

North Star had seemed the answer to all sorts of problems, although she had no idea what she was going to do with the place. She had enough money in her account to keep the three of them fed and clothed for a few months at least—surely a solution would present itself by then.

Kate straightened in her chair as Mr Mannerly came back into the room with a large envelope which he said contained the keys to the property, documents and copies of the paperwork she'd signed. Kate thanked him and shook his hand.

Liam jumped up and hugged her when she appeared, and even Georgia seemed relieved to see her—not a reaction she'd been used to of late.

Outside by the car, Kate took a deep breath and smiled. ‘Ready to go see our new house?'

‘Oh yay,' Georgia muttered as she scrolled through her ever-present iPod.

‘I am, Mum,' Liam said, and Kate felt her heart swell with love for her gentle youngest child.

As they headed out of town, Kate found she drove from instinct. It had been sixteen years since she'd last been here but places like Widgerry took a long time to change.

Fields of irrigated crops, so green they were almost iridescent, stretched out on either side of the road. Large irrigation sprinklers made their steady progress back and forth, dotting the patchwork landscape with rainbow sprays of water. It was such a stark contrast to the crowded concrete city they'd come from. So different, yet so achingly familiar.

Half an hour out of town, Kate slowed when an overgrown driveway came into view. Twin jacarandas stood as silent sentinels either side of the cattle grid. A lump formed in Kate's throat. This had been the only real home she'd ever known as a child and the memories, good and bad, were still powerful enough to produce an unexpected sob.

‘Is this the place, Mum?'

Liam's voice dragged her back to the present and she forced a bright smile. ‘It sure is.'

The sign swung below the letterbox, which was a rusty tin drum with a hole cut into it. It had been there for as long as Kate could recall and most likely a long time before that.

‘
North Star
,' Liam read out carefully.

North Star. The fixed axis that guides the lost. Never had the property's name seemed so apt.

The driveway had eroded in parts and it took quite a lot of careful navigation to negotiate the small car down it. Her trusty little Holden Apollo wasn't going to cut it out here, Kate thought, wincing as they bottomed out over a particularly rough spot.

As Kate rounded the base of the familiar incline, the land opened up before her and she caught her first glimpse of the homestead.

She wound down her window and took a deep breath, instantly transported back to another place and time. The smell of sun-warmed skin and the sound of happy laughter as she ran through the paddocks chasing Jenny. Two carefree children without a thought for anything except the moment.

‘Wow,' Liam breathed in awe. ‘Mum, do we own a mansion?'

‘It's not a mansion, sweetie. It's just a really big house.'

The house
was
large. With seven bedrooms, it was a sprawling homestead with wide verandahs on all sides. It was raised on stumps, with five wide steps sweeping up to form the entrance. Age and neglect had caused the paint to fade and peel and the gardens her grandmother had tended so lovingly were overgrown and wild.

The gorgeous purple-blue wisteria that had once framed the verandah now covered the entire front of the house and had begun creeping up over the gutters and rusty roof. The front gate, which Kate remembered as being white and cheery, was grey and hanging off its hinges.

Kate pulled the car to a stop outside the gate. Climbing out, the three of them took in the house with varying degrees of despair.

‘You dragged us all the way out here for
this
?' Georgia whined.

‘Your great-grandfather wasn't able to get outside much towards the end,' Kate said dully, surveying the devastation before her.

‘Ya think?' said Georgia.

Kate picked her way through the overgrown grass and struggled with the listing gate for a few minutes until finally wedging it open far enough to squeeze through. Waving to the kids to follow, she forged ahead through the undergrowth that now covered the pathway and what was once lawn. The solicitor's warning had not prepared her for the extent of the neglect. She'd expected the place would need some work, but this was overwhelming.

There'd been a time when the garden had been meticulously and lovingly cared for, but now it just looked . . . old. Old and tired. It had been her gran's pride and joy; flowers seemed to spring from the ground in abundance, splashing a rainbow of colour through the yard. Kate pictured her gran kneeling on an old pillow, humming a wartime tune as she pulled weeds from between her precious plants. Grace Campbell had been Kate's guardian angel, and her death was still a raw ache.

‘Mum!'

Kate blinked and turned back to the kids, who stood watching her strangely.

Taking a deep breath to fortify herself, she put her hand on the railing and eyed the staircase warily. The steps creaked a little, but they seemed solid enough. Digging the key chain from her pocket while she opened the antique screen door, Kate took a few minutes to find the correct key for the front door. She'd never known it to have been locked; in fact, she couldn't remember seeing anyone use a key anywhere on the place when she lived here.

The door squeaked in protest, then reluctantly swung open. ‘I'm sure it's not going to be as bad inside,' she started brightly. How badly could one old man living alone mess up a house anyway?

Very, very badly, as it turned out.

Kate looked about, speechless. Papers were stacked in huge piles in every conceivable space. Empty bottles were strewn about the place, and dust caught in the sunbeams that invaded the dark house for the first time in what must have been years.

‘You cannot be serious, Mother. We are
not
living in this dump,' Georgia said flatly.

‘Do you think there might be cockroaches in here, Mum?' Liam asked nervously.