CHAPTER SIX

A month into the new labour arrangement, peace of sorts reigned in Templeton Hall. Henry had met two of their demands: new costumes and a changed roster. He’d tracked down a company that specialised in period costume for TV companies and bought up a job lot of extras’ costumes from a recent historical mini-series. He’d also tweaked the roster, giving them an extra day off per month. That was the good news, he told them. The bad news was there’d be no pay increase. Despite all the attention Gracie’s accident had brought them, their visitor numbers were down again, for the second quarter in a row. Money was too tight at the moment for increased wages, he was sorry to say.

Back at school after another weekend spent marching groups of tourists around the Hall, Charlotte wasn’t happy. She needed that pay rise. She wanted to travel, as far as possible and as soon as possible. The second she finished her schooling, hopefully. She’d decided against university. The truth was her results weren’t good enough, anyway. But if she wanted to see the world, she’d need money soon, from somewhere.

She discussed the problem at length with her room-mate at school. Celia was in a slightly better position than Charlotte, as the only child of elderly parents, an American father and Australian mother, though they were even more strict than Henry and Eleanor. They gave her only a small monthly allowance, and had also told her that were they to die soon, the bulk of their estate would be held in a trust until she was thirty.

‘Thirty,’ Celia said, disgusted. ‘I could be dead by then myself. What makes me most sick about it is the hypocrisy. My mother only married my father because he was rich. They barely speak to each other.’

‘At least you’ve got the promise of money. And you’re an only child. Whatever we get has to be divided between the four of us.’

‘But the Hall’s worth a fortune, surely? It looks so amazing in the photographs.’

Charlotte did her best to ignore the wistful tone in Celia’s voice. She hadn’t invited her room-mate to visit Templeton Hall yet, despite repeated hints from Celia that she would like nothing more than a weekend there. Charlotte had so far produced all manner of excuses and lies: Spencer’s recurring measles outbreaks; plumbing problems; water contamination scares … It was humiliating enough for complete strangers to see her in that costume, let alone schoolfriends. She also didn’t want any of her friends to witness Hope having one of her drunken ‘turns’. They’d been happening too often lately.

She sighed. ‘Without sounding too ghoulish, Dad’s in such good health it could be years before we get our hands on it. Even then, all four of us would have to agree to sell, and I can’t see that happening. My little sister especially, she’s obsessed with the place.’

‘Could you ask for some of your inheritance in advance, then?’ Celia suggested, her voice muffled by the hot towel she was pressing into her face. Monday night was always beautify-yourself night in the girls’ dormitories. ‘And didn’t you tell me your father’s an expert in antiques as well? There’s great money in that, isn’t there?’

‘Any money Dad gets goes straight back into the property. It costs a fortune to run.’ It was only Celia she’d admit that to. All the other girls at their school seemed to have access to endlessly refilling bank accounts. What she wouldn’t tell Celia, however, was just how much the Hall cost. Charlotte had happened to be in her father’s office on a recent weekend and stumbled across a folder of outstanding bills, not just for the day-to-day running costs but dating back to the renovations as well. Shocked at the amounts, she’d then got another fright when Spencer crawled out from under the desk. She told him off for hiding, he told her off for snooping, and then their father came in and told them both off for being in his office.

Charlotte sighed again. ‘Maybe we’ll just have to forget our feminist principles and marry for money,’ she said, pointing her newly painted toenails towards the ceiling. Not that a husband would solve her immediate problems. She wasn’t even eighteen yet. Marriage could be years off.

‘No need to rush into it,’ Celia said. ‘What comes before a rich husband?’

‘A facelift?’ Charlotte said, now peering at herself in the hand mirror as she prepared to pluck her thick dark eyebrows into something resembling current notions of feminine beauty. ‘A crash course in womanly wiles and alluring sexual antics?’

‘A rich boyfriend, stupid,’ Celia said.

Charlotte put the mirror away, moved down to the floor and started the fifty sit-ups she tried to do each night. She gave up after ten. She’d never be thin. What was the point wasting all this energy? ‘Oh, of course, stupid. I’ll just pop down to the rich boyfriend shop next time I’m in town. Will I get one for you too?’

‘You’re already in the rich boyfriend shop, stupid. This school. Just because the two of us are poverty-stricken at the moment doesn’t mean everyone else is. You know Margaret, two rooms down? Her father’s on the list of Australia’s ten richest people. She’s got three brothers. And Paula, you know, with the red hair? Her father owns his own oil exploration company. Two older brothers. Samantha with the glasses? Huge mansion in South Yarra, a holiday home in the Whitsunday Islands and three older brothers.’

Charlotte was standing up now. ‘How do you know all this?’

‘Because I listen and ask questions, not spend my time trying to annoy the teachers like you do.’

‘I don’t try and annoy my teachers. I do annoy my teachers. All right, so we know who’s got rich brothers. But how do we get to meet them?’

‘You really have no idea, do you? Where were you brought up, the slums?’

‘You know where I was brought up. In far too many English cities and then a strange colonial theme park in the back of beyond. Seriously, how do we meet these men?’

‘It’s simple,’ Celia said.

Two weeks later, Charlotte stood in front of the dormitory’s communal phone. For the first time ever, she was going to call Templeton Hall and tell a lie. A real lie. But it was an important one. Celia had gone to so much trouble in the past week, networking enthusiastically on Charlotte’s behalf, beaming as proudly as a new mother when Paula-the-daughter-of-the-oil-baron invited Celia and Charlotte for a weekend with her family at their Mornington Peninsula holiday house.

‘But we don’t even know what her brothers are like,’ Charlotte said at first. ‘They might be hideous.’

‘It doesn’t matter. If we don’t like her first brother, we turn our radiant attention to her second brother. Or her father, if it comes to it. I’m joking, Charlotte. Her father’s in his sixties.’

‘My father is ten years older than my mother. Maybe sugar daddies will run in my family.’

‘Start with the brothers, all right?’

Charlotte listened to the dial tone, trying to ignore her thumping heart. Her mother answered. Damn. It would be easier to lie to her father. He was usually more distracted.

There was an exchange of news, and then Charlotte set forth. ‘Mum, I’m really sorry to do this, you know I wouldn’t if I could avoid it, but I’m not going to be able to come home this weekend. I know it’s my turn to be head guide. I’m hoping Gracie won’t mind stepping in. It’s just my room-mate, Celia, she’s having some serious personal problems. I’d rather not go into it on the phone but she’s got incredibly behind with her work. And we’ve got exams coming up, and she’s asked, actually she begged me to stay and help her cram. Of course I’d rather be home, but she’s been so good to me since I got here —’

Standing beside her, Celia made a mock gagging gesture.

‘Thanks, Mum. Will you tell Gracie or will I? Thanks for that, too, and tell Gracie I owe her.’ Charlotte laughed. ‘I’m sure she will. Bye, Mum. Love to everyone.’

She hung up and spun around, smiling widely. ‘Rich boyfriends, here we come.’

In her room two floors away from Charlotte’s, Audrey was learning her lines. That was all she’d done in every moment of spare time for the past few weeks. Her drama teacher, Mr Reynolds, had told her in what she considered a very sarcastic way that she should think about re-entering the human race at some stage, but she had just laughed politely (not wanting to upset him) and returned to her room for some more study. She wasn’t just reading the script. She was also poring over every book of stagecraft, acting tips, make-up tricks and theatrical biography she’d been able to find in the school library.

Mr Reynolds had expressed some concern that she was abandoning her other subjects. She was, but she wasn’t going to admit it to him. Instead, she’d argued passionately that this was her one big chance, that if it didn’t work for her, if the reviews were bad (‘I’m not terribly sure we get reviewed, Audrey. It’s a school production, not the West End’), if she didn’t get the audience reaction she longed for (‘We tend to be quite happy if they all stay awake’), she would realise a life on the stage wasn’t for her.

‘I just need to put all my energies into it, give it everything I have,’ she said passionately.

‘Oh, yeah?’ the drama teacher said. He was inclined to drawl when he was talking to his students, trying to sound cool, his students guessed. They thought he just sounded stupid. ‘You have to give it more than you have, Audrey. You have to give it everything that you don’t even know you have.’

She wasn’t completely sure what he was talking about, but nodded and tried to look thoughtful at the same time.

She still hadn’t told her parents about the role and had somehow managed to convince Charlotte to keep it a secret too. She’d decided it was best if her mother and father didn’t know she was spending so much time on her drama studies. They’d only nag her about her other subjects, she knew that. All she’d told them was that the school was holding a special presentation on the third Tuesday of October and she really wanted them to be there. All of them, Gracie and Spencer too. Yes, even Hope.

‘Are you getting an award, Audrey?’ Gracie wanted to know when they spoke on the phone one night.

‘I hope so,’ Audrey said, thinking of the Best Actress award the drama teacher could present if he felt one of the students merited it. ‘I won’t know for sure until the night.’

The rehearsals were going well, Audrey thought. At least she hoped they were. It was hard to tell. She was the only one who knew all her lines off by heart, the only one who had read all the theory on the play, and especially the only one who had borrowed videos of other stage productions and a television production from a decade or so earlier. ‘You’ll confuse yourself,’ her drama teacher warned her. ‘You have to reach into your own soul to find your performance, not become a simple echo of all that has gone before you.’

The problem was that Audrey really didn’t know what her own performance should be, no matter how hard she tried to picture it. Oh, some parts of the opening night she could clearly imagine. The hour before she went on stage, for example, sitting in the dressing room, staring at herself in the mirror, her pale face surrounded by the lights, as she slowly, expertly applied the make-up that would transfer her from Audrey Templeton, student, into Ophelia, the tragic heroine. She could picture herself standing on the side of the stage – stage left, she reminded herself to call it – waiting for her cue. She could picture herself walking out onto the stage, her timing impeccable, her bearing regal, her stage presence electric. She could even visualise the moment after the play ended, the hall exploding into a billowing cloud of applause, the clapping coming at her in waves, herself graciously accepting an enormous bouquet of orchids (it was sometimes roses, but she preferred orchids) from the director, and then another from an anonymous admirer, hopefully the school’s PE teacher, on whom she was harbouring a bit of a crush.

The only thing she wasn’t able to imagine was her actual performance. She knew that technically she couldn’t be better prepared. She knew her lines. She’d studied the stage directions. In truth, she’d also learnt everyone else’s lines and stage directions. If the cast was struck down by the flu, there was a fair chance she could pull off the entire production as a one-woman show. But could she actually act? Did she have what the role truly required? In every interview she’d read, famous actors and actresses spoke constantly about their insecurity, their self-doubt. She definitely had those negative qualities, but did she have the actual acting skills as well?

‘You have the enthusiasm – I’m sure any talent will follow,’ Mr Reynolds said unhelpfully, when she found the courage to ask him.

‘Isn’t it better to be talented first, and follow that with enthusiasm?’ she dared to suggest.

‘All I ask, Audrey, is that you learn your lines, turn up at every rehearsal and don’t put on any weight between now and opening night or our wardrobe lady will kill you and then kill me.’

She’d taken all of his advice to heart and begun assiduously watching her weight too. It was easy enough to do at boarding school. All the girls in her class and dormitory seemed to be obsessed with their figures. Audrey was naturally thin, and hadn’t thought of dieting before, but perhaps her teacher was right. She started keeping a food diary as well.

In her room now, she tried to ignore the rumbling of her stomach, sighed, turned the script pages back to the beginning and started, once again, to read through her lines.

At Templeton Hall, Eleanor, Gracie and Spencer had come to an excellent arrangement with their schoolwork. In addition to their nightly homework and outdoor science and physical education projects, Eleanor insisted on four dedicated study hours per day. It was up to them if they spread it out through the day, or did it in one block in the morning, giving them the rest of the day off. Spencer had suggested doing one twenty-hour day and taking the rest of the week off, but to his disappointment, Eleanor didn’t agree.

As usual, they were working in the morning room, sitting around the large round table that stood beside the bay window. Their lessons that day had been delayed slightly, after their mother was called away by their father to deal with what he called an ‘incident’ with Hope.

‘Poor Hope,’ Gracie said, as she busied herself sharpening her pencils so they were all exactly the same length. ‘She must have got upset about something again.’

‘She’s not upset. She’s just drunk.’

‘Spencer! Don’t talk about her like that. You know what Mum says.’

‘But it’s the truth. She is drunk again.’

‘How do you know?’

‘I just do, all right?’

They were both silenced by the sound of their mother returning.

Spencer was soon occupied with his maths exercises, while Gracie was thinking of possible topics for her history project.

‘I can do a biography of anyone?’ she asked her mother.

‘Anyone you like.’

‘Do it on me,’ Spencer said, not looking up from his sums. ‘I’m really interesting.’

Gracie ignored him. ‘Does the person have to be dead?’ she asked her mother.

‘No. It has to be someone you’d like to know more about. Someone who’s played an active role in the history of Australia.’

‘Can I do it on Dad?’ Gracie asked.

‘He’s not as interesting as me,’ Spencer said.

‘Please, Mum? On Dad and his ancestors and Templeton Hall and the stories about Captain Cook?’

‘What stories about Captain Cook?’ Spencer put down his pencil. ‘Dad didn’t know him, did he?’

‘No, Spencer, they missed meeting each other by about two hundred years. Which Captain Cook stories, Gracie?’

‘I heard Dad telling a tour group that one of his ancestors was from the same town in England as Captain Cook and they even learnt to sail together.’

‘Really? Gracie, wait here, would you? I’ll be right back. Do your nine times table please, Spencer. And no, you haven’t. I can see from here.’

Gracie swung her legs under the table as she waited for her mother to return. Spencer started swinging his too, much more enthusiastically than Gracie, kicking the underside of the table each time. Gracie knew that if she asked Spencer to stop, he would only do it twice as hard.

He stopped suddenly and turned to Gracie. ‘Captain Cook first saw Australia in 1770. His ship was called the Endeavour. There was a botanist with him called Joseph Banks. That’s who the banksia flower is named after.’

‘I know,’ Gracie said, chewing her pencil.

‘I know about Neil Armstrong too. First man on the moon.’

‘So do I. I’m older than you, remember.’

Spencer started kicking again. ‘Do you know about John F. Kennedy?’

‘Yes.’

‘Phar Lap?’

‘The racehorse? Yes.’

‘Ned Kelly?’

‘The bushranger. Yes.’

‘Who don’t you know about that I do, then?’

‘I don’t know. If I said their name, it would mean I know about them.’

‘But there must be things I know about that you don’t.’

‘Not much.’

Spencer threw his pencil at Gracie just as Eleanor returned. She nimbly caught it. ‘That’s fine, Gracie. I’d like six hundred words on one of your father’s ancestors by the end of today.’

‘That’s not fair,’ Spencer said. ‘Can I do my essay on you, Mum?’

‘No, Spencer. I’m too boring.’

‘Can I do it about myself, then?’

‘When we’re studying Great Criminal Minds of the twentieth century, yes.’

Gracie spent some time drawing up a list of questions before knocking on her father’s study door.

‘Gracie! What a surprise.’

‘No, it’s not. Mum told you I was coming. I have some questions for you.’ She glanced down at her notebook. ‘Name?’

‘Henry Charles Templeton.’

‘Age?’

‘A youthful-looking forty-nine.’

She was very businesslike now. ‘Please tell me something about your childhood.’

‘I grew up under the blazing African sun, rising each day to the sounds of the wildebeest … Oh, Gracie,’ he said, laughing at her cross expression, ‘you really don’t want me to have any fun, do you?’

‘It’s not me. It’s Mum. She’s very hard to please. I had to write my essay on the Tudors three times before she passed it. Can you please tell me all about your ancestors?’

‘Gracie, I’d be honoured. Pen ready?’ At her nod, he began. ‘As I think you know from your many tours here, my great-great-grandfather on my mother’s side was born and raised in Yorkshire, at a property twenty or so miles from the coastal village of Whitby —’

‘Is that where he met Captain Cook?’

‘I certainly believe so, Gracie. So it must have been destiny that a descendant of his decided to come to Australia too. Your great-great-great-uncle Leonard, during the goldrush that began in 1851. Is he the one you want for your essay?’

Gracie nodded, opening her notebook to a new page.

Henry began reciting the facts, in a singsong voice at first, until Gracie gave him another stern look. ‘Leonard first came to Australia in 1855, Gracie, while employed by the Smithson & Son Trading Company. His drive and ambition placed him in an ideal position on the goldfields, as he imported all the goods a working miner, and more importantly, an officer and his family, might require. Fabrics, equipment, foodstuffs. Before many years passed, he was one of the richest businessmen in Victoria.’

Henry stood up and leaned against his desk. ‘Leonard had all a young man could possibly desire. Untold wealth, a thriving business, standing in the community … All but love. Underneath all the trappings, Gracie, he was a lonely man, because back home he had left behind his sweetheart, Julia Smithson, the nineteen-year-old daughter of his employer. He was determined to bring her home to Australia with him and he set off to London with that express purpose in mind. Their reunion was romantic. He proposed to her, within an hour of arriving. To his great joy, she accepted. For twenty-four hours he was the happiest man in London.’

Gracie sighed with enjoyment.

‘He returned to Julia’s house the next day to formally ask for her hand in marriage. When Mr Smithson not only agreed, but also expressed his admiration for his future son-in-law’s business acumen, Leonard went in search of his beloved with the happy news. They would marry swiftly, he told her. She could return to Australia with him, as his bride.

‘And there the fairytale began to fall apart. “Australia?” Julia said. “Oh, no.” She’d heard only stories of horror and wildness and dirt and depravity from the colonies. “If you truly loved me,” Julia said, “then you would want to make me happy and live here with me in England.” But his life was in Australia, he told her. His business. His future. Back and forth they went, without agreement. It was with great sadness that his departure date came. He could put it off no longer. He assured Julia of his love, as she assured him of hers, and they farewelled passionately on the docks of Southampton.

‘As the ship sailed, Leonard had plenty of thinking time. Julia had told him all she loved about England. Her family house, most of all. He made his decision before the ship was halfway across the seas. He would build his Julia her own piece of England in Australia. The perfect replica of her family house, gardens and all.’

Gracie was now sitting completely still, barely breathing.

‘Once he arrived back in Victoria, he took to work in a fever. His business continued to thrive, while he hired the finest architects, builders and gardeners in the colony. Less than a year later, his beautiful new two-storey mansion was completed. It was time to go back to England to fetch his fiancée, plan a lavish wedding and begin their married life together in the home he had built especially for her.’ He paused. ‘And then tragedy struck.’

‘She died,’ Gracie said in a whisper.

‘No, Gracie.’

‘She got scurvy.’ Gracie had recently done a project on scurvy and eaten barely anything but oranges for a fortnight afterwards.

‘Not scurvy, either. Sadly, Gracie, young Miss Julia Smithson broke the news to my poor great-great-uncle that while he was busy in Australia building her dream house and increasing his wealth tenfold so she could have all the fine dresses and jewellery and gloves that her little beating heart would desire, she had been busy too.’ Another pause. ‘Falling in love with someone else.’

Gracie stared, wide-eyed. ‘Did he kill her?’

‘I’m sure he wanted to. But no, he fought against his baser instincts like the fine gentleman he was. He demanded to meet his rival. He was a doctor, from a very well-known family in London. He was as wealthy as Leonard was. And perhaps more importantly to Julia, he had absolutely no desire, intention or wish to up sticks and go sailing across the world to a hot, untamed wild land like Australia.’

‘Didn’t he show her photos of the house? Try and change her mind that way?’

‘There weren’t photos back in those days, Gracie. Nothing like we have today, anyway. We’ll discuss the technological advancements of the late nineteenth century another day. Try as he might, Leonard couldn’t persuade Julia to change her mind.’

‘Poor Leonard.’

‘Poor Leonard, indeed. But then his luck changed.’

‘The doctor died?’

‘You’re keen to kill people today, Gracie. No, he met someone else in Julia’s house.’

‘Her sister?’

‘No, he met the governess. A young woman called Louisa, who had been taken on to teach Julia’s much younger brother. You see, homeschooling has a rich and honourable tradition. And can you guess what happened next?’

Gracie shook her head.

‘Gracie! Where is your sense of romance and drama? Leonard was so cross with Julia, that he decided to invite Louisa to dinner, knowing it would cause a scandal. And it did.’

‘Was she ugly?’

‘No, she was quite beautiful, in fact. But she was from a different class than him.’

‘Like a local here?’

Henry’s lips twitched. ‘Not exactly. In any case, Leonard soon decided those old rules didn’t matter to him any more. He also realised Louisa had far more spark, intelligence and natural beauty than Julia had ever possessed. Six weeks later, Louisa sailed back to Melbourne with him, as his wife, and they took up residence in this beautiful building we now call home.’

‘She didn’t mind it was based on Julia’s house?’

‘Not at all. She’d always loved Julia’s house. It had been her home for many years too, remember. And so Leonard and Louisa lived here, happily ever after, for many years.’

From the doorway came the sound of a slow handclap. ‘What a beautiful story, Henry.’

Henry turned and gave his wife a small bow. ‘I aim to please, darling.’

‘I can’t wait for you to tell Gracie how you and I met,’ Eleanor said.

Gracie looked up eagerly. ‘Can you tell me now, Dad?’

‘When you turn twelve.’

‘That’s not for months.’

‘It will be even better for the waiting. So, any questions, Gracie? Did you get all of that?’

Gracie glanced down at her page. It was blank. Eleanor walked away, shaking her head, as Henry pulled up a chair and started to tell the story again.

Later that night, Eleanor knocked gently on the door of Henry’s study. He was sitting at his desk, a glass of whisky beside him, a pile of magazines to his side, a folder of accounts in front of him.

He glanced up and smiled. ‘Look, darling, I’m working. Doing the accounts. Being responsible.’

‘So you are. Can I interrupt you?’

‘I wish you’d interrupted me an hour ago. I’m bored rigid. Drink?’

She shook her head. ‘Henry, you have to stop telling Gracie those stories. She believes every word of them, you know.’

‘Of course she doesn’t. How could she?’

‘Gracie is eleven years old. A well-educated but also gullible, earnest eleven-year-old. She desperately wants to believe that every story she hears about Templeton Hall is true.’

‘Perhaps I shouldn’t have gone quite so far with Leonard’s story?’

‘No, perhaps not.’

‘I didn’t seriously think she’d believe it. I mean, a merchant flitting back and forth between England and Australia like that? On those ships?’

‘It’s your fault. You made it sound so authentic and romantic. She’s up in her room right now writing the best essay of her life.’

‘Then make sure you give her an A, won’t you?’

‘For fiction or essay writing?’

‘Well, now, that moral call is up to you.’ He took a sip of his whisky. ‘The other children don’t believe every story they’ve heard me tell, do they?’

‘No, of course not. Yes, perhaps. I don’t know. You can be very persuasive. And the basic facts of them are true, at least, aren’t they? All that family research you did before we arrived here?’ She laughed briefly. ‘Now, that would be funny, if you’ve pulled the wool over all our eyes, mine included.’

‘Eleanor! How devious do you think I am?’

‘I don’t think I’ll answer that.’ Eleanor sunk gratefully into the plush antique chair opposite his desk, closing her eyes for a moment. ‘The sooner today is over, the better.’

‘How is she now?’

‘Locked in her room still, thank God.’

‘Have you managed to talk to her yet?’

She shook her head. ‘I’ve been trying all day. This morning she was too drunk, when she sobered up she was too angry, and last time I tried she was too tearful. I’ll try again tomorrow. It can’t go on like this, Henry. It’s impacting on Gracie and Spencer’s schoolwork again, all of us tiptoeing around her. I have to try to get her to see —’

‘You have tried. You’ve been nothing but a good sister to her.’

‘I’ve been nothing but a foolish sister. I’ve put up with it for too long, yet again.’ She sighed as she stood up. ‘Are you coming up to bed?’

‘Not yet. I’ll finish the accounts first. Make a start on next year’s business plan too. Look at our visitor numbers. They’re down again, unfortunately. Nothing I can’t fix, I’m sure.’

She came across and kissed the top of his head. ‘You’re a saint, Henry Templeton.’

‘And you, my love, are an angel.’

He didn’t go back to his accounts after she left. He sat staring out the window instead.

The next afternoon, Gracie was in her bedroom. She’d just finished her essay and if she did say so herself, it was fantastic. Her mother had asked for six hundred words. Gracie had found it hard to stop at two thousand. She would have kept going only she’d reached the last page of her copybook. So she’d written To be continued in her neatest handwriting. It was amazing to think that all the stories her father had told her about his ancestors were her stories too. And she hadn’t even started on her mother’s side of the family tree yet. Her mother had said there was plenty of time for that. ‘One branch at a time, Gracie,’ she’d said. ‘And there’s the small matter of your other subjects too.’

Gracie had just started on her geography homework when there was a knock at the door.

It was Spencer. ‘Quick, Gracie. Come with me. I need to show you something.’

‘What is it? What’s wrong?’

‘I’ll show you when we get there. Come on, quick.’

Fifteen minutes later Gracie was standing beside the dam several paddocks away from Templeton Hall. She wasn’t happy about it. ‘That was a mean trick, Spencer. I don’t want to go fishing for yabbies. Do it yourself. I’ve got homework to do.’

‘It’s easy. Look. You just tie a bit of meat to the end of the string and wait.’

‘It’s disgusting. The meat and the yabbies. What’s the point of catching them, anyway? They sound horrible. You may as well eat cockroaches.’

‘There’s no meat on cockroaches. Come on, Gracie. It’s fun.’

‘It’s not. I’m going home. Why don’t you ask Hope to come and play with you?’

‘She’s still locked in her room, that’s why.’ He threw a rock into the water, deliberately splashing her. ‘Why did I have to be the only boy in this family?’

‘Because two of you would have been even worse. Why don’t you get that boy Tom to come over again? He was nice.’

‘He’s banned. We’re a bad influence on him, apparently.’

‘We’re not!’ Gracie said, indignant. ‘His mother was just upset that he went missing.’ Gracie had heard the fuss with the policeman. ‘She didn’t even meet us.’

‘She didn’t need to. She rang after she got Tom back. Dad told me. She wasn’t happy.’

‘So get Dad to go and talk to her again. Go with him. Try and pretend you’re normal for a few minutes.’

Spencer pulled a face. ‘Adults don’t usually like me.’

‘She might be the exception.’ Gracie stood up. ‘I’m going, Spencer. This is boring.’

Spencer didn’t try to stop her that time. Yabby catching wasn’t boring. It was sisters who were boring. As he sat impatiently watching for a tug on the line, throwing pebbles across the dam, he thought back to what Gracie had said. He sighed. Maybe it was worth a try. It couldn’t be any worse than sitting around on his own like this for days on end.