Five years later
Remy Roberts paused to tip back her hat and take a long drink from the plastic bottle in her pack. When she’d had her fill, she let the liquid waterfall over her chin and throat to soak into her shirt. It was warm, but it was wet and it took some of the scorch out of the sun.
Tucking the water bottle in the pack at her hip, she paused for a moment to check where she was in the vine row before she started the steepest part of the climb for the eighth time in the last hour.
She liked the exercise. Liked the peace and quiet of walking amongst the vines.
She even liked the heat. Western Australia had its fair share of sun, but nothing prepared a girl for the eyeball-searing, scorching dry of a South Australian summer. Especially now the drought had stretched into its third year.
Reaching into the vine canopy, Remy twisted a berry from the ripening bunch of sauvignon blanc. It stuck to the stem and she had to tug hard before she put the fruit on her tongue. The flavours were there, flitting in and out of the sourness like wind through the vine leaves.
She didn’t expect sweetness. Harvest was six weeks away. Middle to late February, the local growers reckoned.
There was a thrashing in the vines out to her right and the sound of it made Remy smile. Seconds later her dog burst into the middle of the row in a mini-tornado of dust and dry grass. Breeze stopped at Remy’s feet, mouth open wide, pink tongue hanging.
She scratched the concrete block of her dog’s head. Breeze’s tail batted up a new cloud of dust. ‘Come on, then.’
She finished the last hundred metres to the top of the hill with Breeze at her heels, feeling the stretch in her calves as well as in her lungs.
Once there, she paused again, one hand on the roughened top of the trellis end-post. Breeze slumped in the shade of the vines at her feet and the sound of the dog’s puffing drowned everything else.
Remy never tired of this view. First time she’d walked up on the hill five years ago, with the red-faced and wheezy real estate agent, and gazed across the valley, she’d known she had to buy the patch of land locals called Old Menzel’s Farm.
Below, the vineyard sloped to the valley where the creek cut through. That creek had been running the first few years, but it was dry now, parched and cracked. The dam that fed from it was little more than a puddle for ducks. Ivy Lodge, Remy’s cottage, stood there too. Iron roof shining in the sun.
According to her neighbour Zac Williams, whose family knew everything and everyone in this part of the Hills, Old Menzel’s kids hadn’t wanted to follow their father into grapegrowing. They’d chosen different paths. As Mr Menzel got older, Zac said he’d let the farm go.
Remy could remember the exact tone of Zac’s voice. It was Christmas morning, the first one after she bought the farm. Seventeen-year-old Zac had been helping her dig a hole.
Breeze—a puppy then—had dodged a bullet that day. She’d chased the Williams’ sheep. Remy had paid Zac’s dad for a ewe that couldn’t be saved, helped Zac bury it, and promised Bryce and Sheila Williams it would never happen again. If it did, Remy said, she’d put Breeze down herself.
Old Menzel let the place go, Zac had said, as they’d leaned on their spades looking over the valley, in much the same way Remy leaned on the trellis post now.
She was damn glad the old owner had let it go. It was the only way she’d been able to afford it.
Remy slapped her palm on her thigh and Breeze leapt up. The bitch was four now and in her prime: a tan and white ball of mischief with a chest like a front-rower and thighs to match.
‘Come on lazy,’ Remy said to the panting dog. ‘This isn’t getting our work done.’
***
An hour or so later in the cottage, Remy had made her second cup of tea for the day and was about to take it out into the shade of the big trees near the old stable, when Breeze growled in the yard. At the front of the house, Remy heard tyres crunching gravel.
She put her cup on the sink and crossed to the fridge, pulling out a bag of tomatoes, two zucchinis and a handful of basil with the ends tied into a bundle of damp cottonwool. Seconds later she heard the metallic clank of the lock at the side gate and paws scrabbling.
She pushed out the patio doors.
Zac Williams’ leg came through the gate first, blocking Breeze who’d been trying to get her head past his knee. Zac had a carton of eggs in one hand and Remy’s mail in the other.
Breeze growled at him. A low staffy growl that was like a vintage car engine cranking on a cold day, tail wagging hard enough to wiggle her entire body.
‘One of these days I’ll come in here and she’ll take me bloody arm orf,’ Zac grumbled.
‘Nah. She likes you,’ Remy said. ‘People she gets along with fine. It’s just anything on four legs, or if it has wings.’
‘No wonder you don’t keep chickens.’ Zac shut the gate. In the next breath he shoved his sunglasses to the top of his mop of brown hair and held out the eggs and envelopes.
He was pushing twenty-three now, and no longer lanky. Like his dad, Zac had shoulders honed on years of tossing full-grown sheep like they were woolly pillows.
‘Great, you’ve brought me bills.’ Remy swapped the eggs and mail for her homegrown vegetables.
‘Great, you’re giving me tomatoes. Mum must be down to her last six dozen.’
‘Well, if she would take any money for the eggs, I wouldn’t have to give you fruit and …’ It wasn’t the first time they’d had this argument. It wouldn’t be the last. Remy didn’t want people’s charity. Never had.
Zac’s gaze travelled to her feet, where the big toe of her right foot emerged from her sock like a fat pink worm. ‘Air conditioning?’
‘Yep. Natural ventilation.’ Who had money for inconsequential things like socks?
He laughed, dragging his gaze north, up her bare legs to worn denim shorts, before jumping quickly to her face. ‘So,’ he began, clearing his throat. ‘Have you heard the news?’
‘I never go anywhere to hear any news, you know that. What’s up? You knocked up someone’s daughter and you’re leaving town?’
‘You know you’re the only girl for me, Rem.’
He almost carried it off too, Remy thought, but the bob in his Adam’s apple gave him away. Zac had had an almighty crush on her for years. Starting, probably, the day they’d dug that hole for the dead sheep. Not wanting to embarrass him she said again, with a smile: ‘Go on then, tell me. What news?’
‘Max Montgomery sold Montgomery Wines. Walk-in, walk-out. Some West Australian company brought it. Lasley or Laxley. Somethin’ like that.’
And winter’s ghost stole summer from the sun. The egg carton slipped. The mail slid from Remy’s hand, fanning across her outdoor table until the envelopes rustled into the stone wall.
‘Lasrey.’
‘Ah!’ Zac slapped the verandah post. ‘Lasrey, that’s it. Dad said you’d know ’em. They’re big in the West, ’parently, and growin’. Not many wineries doing that right now so we knew they were a player.’
‘They’re a player,’ Remy confirmed, then clicked her fingers to call Breeze so she could cover the shake in her fingers by stroking her dog’s head.
Why was Seth Lasrey buying a winery here in the Adelaide Hills? Why did it have to be Max Montgomery’s damn winery? He’d bought most of Margaret River and the Swan Valley in the last few years. Hell and Tommy. Wasn’t that enough?
Zac chattered on. ‘Dad reckons Max got over three million for it. The property, the restaurant, cellar door, the brand and the wines. Sue Mont is already in Sydney. It’d be a helluva shoppin’ trip, Mum says, only Dad reckons the bank’s probably gonna get most of the cash.’
‘Banks usually do,’ Remy said. She ducked her head, bending low over Breeze so the messy swirl of hair that escaped her plait fell over her shoulder and covered her eyes.
Zac had three older sisters and a knack for knowing when a girl was about to cry and Remy—trying desperately to keep her shit together and contain the scream that wanted to escape her throat—could sense him watching. Scratching at the paving with the toe of his boot, he said, ‘Remy?’
‘Yep?’
‘You look like you might faint on me or somethin’. Not that I mind,’ he added hastily. ‘Like, I’ll catch you. I promise.’
‘I’m not going to faint.’
‘You always said the Monts were like fairy godparents. Is that what you’re worried about? That the new owner won’t take your fruit? You’ve got a contract with Montgomery, haven’t you?’
‘Not in writing.’ Remy shook her head. ‘Max did everything on a handshake.’
Zac kicked the pavers again. ‘Maybe that’s why he had to sell.’
Remy knew what he meant. The locals said Max Montgomery was too soft. He’d kept paying top prices to his grapegrowers when other winemakers were slashing rates. These last few years of drought had coincided with a worldwide glut of wine. So many wine companies had gone to the wall and when the wineries started pinching pennies, first to get squeezed were the growers who sold them fruit.
In all that, Lasrey Estate had got bigger and bigger.
Pity Seth had earned a reputation in the industry for being ruthless in the process, but then … you only had to look at his mother.
‘You’ll be right, Rem,’ Zac said, when he couldn’t handle her silence anymore. ‘You’ve got the best sauvignon blanc vineyard in the Adelaide Hills. Everyone around here says so. Max Montgomery has all those gold medals to prove it. These new guys will want it and if they don’t, they’re dickheads.’ He shook the bag of tomatoes as he said it, like that made it final.
‘I wish I had your faith.’
‘Well, if all else fails, you could always pull out that vineyard and run sheep,’ Zac winked. ‘Long as you can keep that dog from eating ’em.’
Breeze yawned, rolling out her long pink tongue. It was almost like she poked it out at him.
Zac pulled his sunglasses over his eyes. ‘I gotta go, Rem. Me and Dad are going across to Murray Bridge this arvo to look at a new ram. Catch you later. Thanks for the tommies.’
She might have said ‘no worries’ before Zac opened the gate. She might have said ‘seeya’ or ‘tell your folks I said hi’, or any of those myriad meaningless things neighbours said to neighbours all the time. She hoped she did. She didn’t want to be rude.
Truth was: Zac was there one minute and pretty much gone the next and when she thought about it later she couldn’t remember saying a word of goodbye, because right after that her head filled with visions of Ailsa Lasrey’s finger sliding that cheque across the boardroom table, and the day that changed her life forever.
‘What the hell is this?’ she’d said to Ailsa.
‘It’s an incentive,’ the older woman said.
Remy recounted the zeros. ‘It’s for $100 000, Mrs Lasrey. That’s not an incentive. That’s half a house.’
Ailsa shrugged. ‘You quit and it saves me a lot of paperwork. If there’s one thing I don’t like, it’s hassle.’
If there was one thing being Wayne Hanley’s daughter had taught Remy, it was there was no such thing as a free lunch. Whoever picked up the tab, you owed them something. There were always strings.
‘What’s the catch?’
‘I want you to stay away from my boys. Like right away. Like out of the state away.’
Remy glanced at the neat swirls of Ailsa’s handwriting. She had loopy, elegant handwriting. Little tails at the tip of the zeros. All those zeros. More zeros than she had ever expected to see written on a thin black line alongside her name. It wasn’t a business cheque. It was from Ailsa’s personal account. Perhaps it was easier to hide that way.
She’d be Ailsa’s dirty little secret.
Remy sucked in a breath and wished the boardroom would stop swaying.
It was a brand new life for herself and her mother, $100 000. She could pay off Mulvraney and start again in a place where no one knew them. Lexie wouldn’t be that drunk’s wife. She wouldn’t be that drunk’s daughter. Nor would she be the girl left heartbroken when Seth married Helene Bouchard.
Still Remy hesitated. She waited so long, Ailsa sighed and leaned across the table and said, ‘Do I have to take my money back?’
‘There is someone in WA who I can’t walk away from without paying.’
Ailsa fixed her with a hard stare, waited, as if measuring her up. Then she reached out and yanked the cheque from Remy’s grasp. The thought of watching it be torn in shreds proved to Remy how much she wanted the money.
The older woman reached beneath the table, to her handbag Remy presumed, and emerged with her chequebook. Flipping to a new page, she started writing.
‘Will 10 000 cover it?’
‘No,’ Remy said, feeling like the whole thing was a dream. A nightmare …
‘Fifteen?’
Remy shook her head. Mulvraney’s debt was eighteen grand.
‘I’ll give you $20 000 now.’ Ailsa wrote the new cheque. Then she flipped to a new page and wrote another. Pointing at it, she said to Remy, ‘This is the balance, but it’s forward dated for two weeks. This $80 000, you call me before that date so I know you’re gone. Otherwise I call my bank and cancel it. And you never contact my sons. Ever. You got that?’
Remy did. ‘I’ll pay it back, Mrs Lasrey.’
Ailsa actually laughed. ‘If it helps you to think that way, dear. You do that. I won’t hold you to it.’
‘Will you make sure they … Seth and Blake … know it was an accident? You’ll explain to them … I’d never try to poison their vines on purpose?’
‘Of course.’
‘Okay,’ Remy said, and she held out her hand for the cheques.