Sophie reached over the tailgate of the float and smacked Buck on the rump.
‘Cut it out. You don’t know what frustration is.’
Sophie did, and it went by the name of Aaron.
Buck twisted his head around to look at her, as if to say ‘Up yours’, and then carried on stamping and kicking his annoyance. Sophie wished she hadn’t bothered wrapping his legs in protective floating boots. He might stop kicking if it actually hurt. She gave him another whack before stepping down.
In the faint hope that a change of scenery might freshen him up, she’d taken him out to the pony club grounds that afternoon for a run around the cross-country course. The moment she unloaded and tied him to the float, she knew it was a mistake. His expression turned mulish, his ears turned back and his tail flicked back and forth in annoyance, but in desperation she’d persevered. She saddled him, fixed boots to stamping legs, mounted, and worked him quietly on the flat, trying to use the discipline of dressage to coax out his bad temper before attempting to jump. For thirty minutes he behaved, but as soon as she faced him at a jump, he threw a tantrum. Sophie ended up flat on her back with Buck careering around the grounds bucking and squealing like a bronco.
She’d cried the whole time it took to catch him, but knew her tears weren’t just for the horse. Frustration with Aaron, anger at Tess and irritation with herself all played their part. A fortnight ago, she’d celebrated her greatest victory. She’d felt strong and ready to take on anyone. Now, she just felt bruised, inside and out.
Back at Vanaheim, she peered into the old drench drum that posed as the roadside mail drop. The only delivery was a newsletter from the South East Showjumping Club, advertising its coming winter showjumping series, which would conclude with a heavily sponsored three-day carnival in August. A glut of magazines had arrived the previous week but they lay on the kitchen bench still in their plastic wrappers. Usually they were dog-eared and tatty within a week, but Sophie was too distracted to concentrate on articles about equine nutrition or the latest clover varieties.
Chuck looked up from his grazing and whickered. He’d only been retired for two weeks and already his coat was thickening and his belly expanding. She still brought him in from the front paddock every night to the warmth of his stable, but when the spring arrived, she’d turn him out permanently.
Ignoring Buck’s increasingly hysteric kicking, Sophie climbed through the rails and wandered through the long grass toward her best friend.
‘Hey, superstar,’ she said, kissing Chuck on the nose. ‘Are you enjoying your retirement?’
Chuck bunted his head against Sophie’s arm and let her rest her cheek against his for a while. She played with his ears and tickled his chin, thinking how much she missed having him in work. He was a horse, but like the dogs, he seemed to know her moods better than herself and was always willing to offer comfort.
She ran her hands under his rugs, checking to see if he was warm, and then circled him, keeping a look-out for any cuts or bumps. She leaned against his shoulder, stroking his neck, half watching the float as it rocked under Buck’s assault. He needed to learn some manners, but Sophie wasn’t the one to teach him. The decision had been made that afternoon. He was going. She’d given up.
‘Listen to that silly bugger,’ she said to Chuck. ‘Anyone would think he’s the centre of the universe. If only he was like you, hey?’ She sighed and kissed Chuck’s cheek. ‘Mum would have known what to do, wouldn’t she, boy?’
Sophie hadn’t thought much about her mother lately. Her mind had been too full of Aaron and, to a lesser extent, Tess, but for once, she didn’t feel guilty. Fiona Dixon had chosen to leave this world. She’d chosen herself over a daughter who needed her, and left confusion, anger and heartache in her wake.
It wasn’t just Sophie’s life affected, it was Tess’s too, and, she supposed, her father’s. He hadn’t always been so distant. He’d once loved her, or at least acted as though he had, but her mother’s death had damaged their relationship beyond repair. It wasn’t so bad at the start. He’d tried, in his clumsy way, to be there when she was young and overflowing with hurt and confusion. But the older she grew the less she saw of him, and when he did visit, he struggled to even look at her. Not until she was older did she ask herself the question of who he saw when he looked at her face. She’d resigned herself to never knowing the answer.
“I’ll take you for a walk later,’ she promised Chuck, then let him get back to grazing. Buck slammed his hoofs into the rubber-lined tailgate of the float. Sophie shook her head in defeat. The horse had to go. She wasn’t strong enough for him. What control she’d once had over the animal was now gone. He’d lost all respect for her.
An unfamiliar silver four-wheel drive sat in Vanaheim’s yard. Sophie’s jaw clenched at the sight. The last thing she needed was a visitor. At that moment, all she really wanted was to wallow in a black fug as she composed an ad for Horse Deals.
‘Damn,’ she muttered when she saw the rental-car company sticker and realised who it could be. Immediately, her thoughts darted to Tess. It wouldn’t do her cause any good if her father found out what sort of state Tess was in, but perhaps it also wouldn’t hurt for him to see what he’d condemned Tess to.
She pulled the Range Rover to a halt and opened the door. Sammy and Del sat side by side looking up at her. They started to whine.
‘I know, I know,’ she told them. From the float, as though sensing her nerves, Buck began yet another hoof-beat tattoo.
By the time she’d completed her chores, her father still hadn’t appeared and her stomach had almost turned itself inside out with worry. He had to be with Tess. Either that, or he was deliberately unsettling her with his continuing absence.
A blast of hot air hit her in the face when she pushed open the door of the cottage. The rarely used central heating had been cranked up to maximum. She’d always thought it a waste of energy and made do with the gas log fire, but her father preferred the temperature tropical, as though the tropics was where he really wanted to be. She pulled off her boots and glanced down the hall. Sitting at the breakfast bar, with a laptop in front of him and a mobile phone pressed to his ear, was her father.
Irritation had her clenching her fists. How dare he waltz in unannounced after weeks of no contact, as if this was a hotel instead of her home?
‘Send me the details and I’ll look at it and then talk it over with Gerry,’ he said to whoever was on the phone. Despite herself, Sophie smiled. Ever since she could remember, she’d loved her father’s deep, mellifluous voice.
She padded into the kitchen, trying to keep her nerves at bay, knowing that the ensuing conversation would be difficult. She had to stand up to him. She was twenty-two years old, not fifteen, and she was strong now. She couldn’t let him make her feel pathetic again. She wouldn’t let him make her beg for his approval.
‘Yes. Email is best. CC it to Gerry as well. That will save time.’ He hung up and glanced at her before looking back down at his mobile and dialling another number. ‘Sophie, I won’t be a minute.’ He smiled. ‘Politics.’
Sophie blinked and then let out a breath. She leaned against the sink, watching him. Ian Dixon was a tall, craggily handsome man with dark hair turning an attractive salt and pepper and eyes the same grey as her own. Despite the years he’d spent in Canberra, his farmer’s body remained trim and fit, free of the flabby paunches of his contemporaries. His looks and good health appealed to his rural electorate, though that would have little bearing on the outcome of an election. The district was blue-ribbon conservative. Ian Dixon’s seat was as safe as they came, but Sophie knew there were some in the branch who would do almost anything to usurp his position and destroy his dream of a cabinet position. A good reason, in her father’s mind, to keep any family skeletons firmly in the closet. Politics was, after all, a filthy game.
‘Nathan says he’ll email the report through to you. If you can look at it and then let me know your opinion —’ Ian paused, and then went on. ‘I am aware of that, but this is a major export industry I don’t want to be the one to have to tell the PM that we lost a 220-million-dollar contract because of bureaucratic chest beating … Exactly. Read it and let me know.’ He snapped the phone shut and smiled at Sophie.
‘Hi, Dad.’
He surprised her by walking over to kiss her lightly on the cheek.
‘You smell like horse, as usual.’
‘I’ve been riding,’ she said lamely, watching him as he returned to his seat. ‘Have you seen Tess?’
He nodded. ‘She’s in bed with the flu.’
‘Mmm. She hasnt been well. Do you want a cup of tea?’
‘Thank you. I could do with one.’
She switched the kettle on, grabbed two mugs from the cupboard and dangled a teabag in each. Her father had turned to his laptop and was reading something on the screen, something that obviously mattered more than his daughter.
‘Tess tells me you won the Lake Ackerman event,’ he said without looking at her. ‘You should have told me.’
‘I did.’
He eyed her. ‘I don’t think so.’
‘I left a message on your machine.’
An odd look flitted across his face. ‘I should have realised,’ he muttered, then looked directly at her. ‘I’m sorry. It must have been accidentally deleted.’
Prevarication and lies. How typical of him. And today of all days, when she felt angry and fragile, and when heaping blame for all that was wrong was hard to resist.
‘Why do you lie to me all the time, Dad? I don’t deserve it.’
‘I don’t lie to you.’
She smiled sadly. ‘You do. You’ve been doing it for years. Starting with Mum.’
He sighed, and pressed a finger against his right eyebrow, closing his eyes as though suffering a severe headache. ‘I apologise for not telling you the truth about your mother’s death. It was wrong of me. I should have explained what happened.’
She leaned across the bench. ‘But what did happen, Dad? Mum just didn’t kill herself for no reason. Something must have happened to push her to do it.’
‘She was very depressed.’
‘I’m aware of that, but you’re forgetting that I’ve been there. I know what it’s like. Something must have happened. She loved me. I know she did, and I know she would never have left me alone like that without reason.’ She grabbed his forearm and squeezed it. ‘Tell me. Tell me why someone as beautiful as Mum took her life. Please.’
He snatched his arm out of her grip. ‘Your mother was not a saint, Sophie!’ He looked away, as though disgusted by his outburst before turning back to her and softening his voice. ‘She was a very difficult woman.’
‘Why didn’t you get a divorce, then?’
His mouth compressed into a grim line. ‘Because she wouldn’t let me. She wanted you to grow up in a normal family, but we were never a normal family.’ His eyes sharpened. ‘Or have you forgotten that? Think, Sophie. Think back to what it was like.’
Sophie dug into her memory, probing it for signs that what her father said was true. Her parents had argued. She knew that. Slamming doors, the harsh whispers of a couple trying to hide their altercation from their child, her mother’s puffy eyes and blotched skin. She remembered those things but they were hazy, faded, like gauze curtains that had seen too much sun. As soon as she touched them, they broke into a thousand threads and were gone.
She frowned. ‘I remember arguments. Is that why she did it? Because you’d had a fight?’
He looked tired, his face collapsing as her words touched him. ‘She threatened to kill herself all the time, Sophie. I couldn’t stay and I couldn’t leave. She had me trapped.’
Her question remained unanswered, but then she hadn’t expected an honest response. Evading the truth was a Dixon speciality.
‘Did you love her?’ She watched her father’s face closely. ‘The truth, Dad.’
‘If it’s truth you want so badly, then I’ll give it to you. Yes, I loved your mother, but she wore me down. In the end, I hated her. It’s not something I’m proud of, but that’s what happened.’
The implication of his words hit her like a blow. In his eyes she was no different to her mother. Unstable, depressed, needy and attention-seeking.
‘Is that what I did to you? Wore you down until you learned to hate me?’
He stared at her as though she were mad. ‘For God’s sake, Sophie. I don’t hate you.’
‘But you don’t like me.’
He shook his head, his eyes closing momentarily as if he couldn’t believe what he was hearing. ‘That’s just not true.’
Anger gave her breath. ‘Oh, come off it, Dad. You resent me. You have since Mum died. You might have tried to be a father at the start but that didn’t last long. First chance you had you escaped to Canberra to tend your all-important career. I was left to grieve on my own and I didn’t know how. No wonder I was screwed up. As for now, I may as well not exist. I had the biggest win of my career and you didn’t even ring to congratulate me.’
‘I told you, I didn’t receive your message.’
‘Don’t lie to me! I’m sick of it. I’m not one of your cronies, I’m your daughter!’
Her father’s palms slapped down on the granite bench. ‘And I’m a father who loves you!’ He sat back, and Sophie could see the effort he was taking to calm himself, to put the politician’s mask back where it belonged. ‘I’m worried about you. So is Tess.’
She gave a derisive sniff. ‘The only thing you care about is your career.’
‘That’s not true. I do care a great deal about my career, but believe it or not, I also care a great deal about you.’
Sophie closed her eyes as tiredness overwhelmed her. She was so sick of this. A tear slipped from her eye. She wiped it away with her hand. ‘Then why don’t you ever show it?’
His mobile rang. He looked at the screen and then back to her. ‘I must take this.’
She looked at the ceiling, her eyes watering and her throat aching. After a pause, he picked up the phone and began speaking quietly to the caller.
For something to do, she switched on the kettle again and stared at the teabags still hanging dryly in the mugs.
Your mother was not a saint.
Of course she wasn‘t, but she was very sweet and very loving. Everyone knew that. Even Aaron had said so. Aaron. They hadn’t even started on him and Sophie was positive Aaron was the very reason her father was sitting in her kitchen.
The kettle boiled. She poured the water and waited.
Her father ended the call, closed the lid of his laptop and started shoving it into its bag.
‘You made it quite clear how you felt about me when you were fifteen,’ he said. ‘Your suicide note said it all. I have only complied with your wishes and kept out of your way, but I’m very sorry that you haven’t recognised the actions of a loving father.’ He zipped the laptop bag closed and began walking to the door. ‘l’ll leave you in peace.’
‘Don’t you want to talk to me about Aaron? After all, it’s what you’re here for.’
He stopped, caught her gaze for a moment and shook his head. ‘No. I can see now that whatever I say won’t make any difference. You’ll have to learn from your own mistakes.’
‘He’s a good man.’
‘No, Sophie, he’s not. He’ll hurt you, and you’re going to let him. And to my shame, there’s not a damn thing I can do to prevent it.’
Sophie worked her way through the marble and granite graves dominating the upper tiers of the old section of Harrington cemetery, where only descendants of the pioneering families still owned plots. She didn’t need to count the headstones or orient herself with a crumbling angel or towering monument. She’d trodden this path hundreds of times, although this was her first visit in weeks.
For Harrington’s dead, the town’s forefathers had, with unrealised irony, selected a resting place with a panorama the interred would never appreciate. The cemetery lay to the south of the town on the slope of a north-facing hill and sported magnificent views over the township and landscape beyond. In the late afternoon sun, the vista glowed, but Sophie didn’t notice. She was on a mission.
Toward the end of a long row of neglected graves, next to her paternal grandparents’ ostentatious black and gold double plot, she stopped, crossed her arms, and studied her mother’s memorial. Though in better condition than those around it, the normally polished white marble appeared dirty, dull and unloved. Pine needles and small cones from the trees lining the cemetery perimeter littered the surface, and dust and sap had sunk into the headstone’s deeply carved gold letters, blunting their lustre. On an adjacent slab, someone had left a posy of white paper daisies and Sophie realised that, for the first time she could remember, she hadn’t brought flowers from Vanaheim’s garden. The realisation roused no guilt. Her mother didn’t deserve them.
She scraped away the needles and sat on the slab, letting its cold hardness seep into her bones. She needed it to cool her anger. Fiona Dixon had deserted her and now, when Sophie desperately needed her guidance, she hated her for it.
Her mouth thin, she swivelled away from her mother’s name and focused on the view. To the north, past the town, sprawled a patchwork quilt of paddocks. Dark pine forests broke the vibrant greens and browns of pasture, and several new plantations of bluegums added a hazy grey to the landscape. As her gaze swept to the east, Sophie picked out Vanaheim, easily discernable by the majestic plane trees lining the front boundary.
She couldn’t remember the funeral – grief or horror had somehow razed it from memory – but the day afterward remained clear in Sophie’s mind. In the last act of kindness she could recall from him, Ian Dixon had taken his distraught daughter’s hand, walked her out into Vanaheim’s highest paddock and pointed to the south. ‘See, Sophie? She might be gone but she’ll always look over you.’
The idea had given her comfort but now she wasn’t so sure. Her father knew how unhappy his wife was at Vanaheim, so why bury her where she could see it?
Sophie shook her head. What did it matter? Her mother was dead. She couldn’t see anything. Not Vanaheim, not her daughter.
She lowered her eyes to the cemetery, gazing at the weeping stone angels, crosses and towering obelisks. This was a peaceful place, yet Sophie felt restless. No matter how she tried to shed them her father’s words clung.
Your mother was not a saint.
No, but in Sophie’s mind she was kind and gentle, not difficult, and certainly not the sort of person you could end up hating. She tried to remember the parental fights she knew were locked in her memory but couldn’t – not the details, only fragments. Her mother turning away to hide her tears, the bitter words she sometimes uttered about her husband, the look on her face when Vanaheim’s enchanted tunnel of love ended and she pulled into the yard. Sophie remembered these things, but they seemed incongruous to the woman she knew and loved.
And it wasn’t just her mother she didn’t understand. Today she’d learned her father wasn’t the man she thought either. She’d written terrible things in her suicide note. How much she hated him, how she wished he’d died instead of her mother. Afterwards, when her pain seemed incurable and he distanced himself even further, she’d deemed him cold and unloving, and herself as unlovable. Yet all he’d done was follow her wishes.
Even Tess, who she’d thought had no aim but to make Sophie’s life difficult, was driven by a need so desperate she was willing to suffer for years in a place she hated.
Then there was Aaron, a man she thought she knew. A man she thought might love her, who’d once said her name like it was precious, but who held a secret he believed was so terrible that its revelation would result in her hating him.
She spread her fingers across the cold stone slab, tired and overwhelmed with doubt. ‘Have I judged everybody wrong?’
But Fiona Dixon’s grave remained mute. Though she strained, Sophie heard only the breeze through the pines. Nothing called, no icy fingers caressed her skin, no presence whispered from the beyond. The dead, as always, refused to speak.
Her mission had failed. She’d just have to muddle through on her own.