‘Kim?’
She looked up from her potting to find Mel standing there. ‘Hi.’ Kim wiped her dirty hands on her jeans. ‘It’s good to see you.’
The school holidays were drawing to an end. Daisy and her kids had gone home, casting Kim into a depression. She’d been thinking about Mel a lot, trying to pluck up the courage to go see her, given she’d had no luck on the phone. Hoping that, like Daisy, Mel might come around first.
‘Jake and Abbey are down at the school, helping Jean dig the veggie garden. But they’ll be back soon if you want to bring your kids around.’
Mel didn’t look her in the eye. She shuffled her feet, making lines in the damp earth. ‘I’m afraid this isn’t a social call.’
‘Oh?’ Kim put her trowel down. She’d never seen Mel look so serious.
‘Your dingoes have killed my sheep.’
Kim felt the ground shift beneath her. She reached back for the old trestle table to steady herself.
‘Two of my best ewes. I found them this morning. They’d been dead a couple of days. Milly and Panda. Pregnant with their first lambs.’
‘Pregnant? Oh no . . .’
Mel’s mask of control was slipping. ‘If only Sultan had been there.’
‘He wasn’t?’
‘No.’ Mel’s voice cracked. ‘He was running with the weaner lambs. Maybe it’s just as well. What hope would he have had against a pack?’
‘Can I . . . can I come and see?’
Mel nodded. ‘I want you to. Taj as well. I want to prove what a mistake you’ve made.’
Three crows flapped away as the jeep approached. It was an awful sight. The corpses lay not far from each other, hollow sockets staring skyward. The birds had picked out their eyes. Great holes gaped in their fleece where their flanks should have been, exposing blood-flecked bones.
Mel and Kim stayed by the car while Taj went for a closer look. He made a thorough examination: inspecting the bodies, taking photographs, studying the ground for many metres around. Kim had to look away when he rolled one sheep over, and a slimy, purplish mass of entrails spilled out. She should look – her dingoes had done this – but she couldn’t.
When Taj returned to the car, his face was grim. ‘I’ll email you those photos, Mel, and come back later to remove the carcasses.’
She gave him a thin smile of thanks.
‘And I’ll pay you compensation,’ said Kim. ‘For the sheep. For the unborn lambs. For emotional distress, whatever you want.’
Mel didn’t seem to be listening. ‘Panda was a real character,’ she said. ‘Hand-raised as a lamb, so very tame. And she loved Sultan. So did Milly. They saw dogs as friends.’ She blinked back tears. ‘They wouldn’t even have been scared of the dingoes, not to start with . . .’
Kim could feel her own tears coming. ‘Oh, Mel, you warned me and I didn’t listen. I’m so very sorry. We’ll do anything to make up for it, won’t we, Taj?’
Taj remained strangely stony-faced and silent.
‘There’s only one thing you can do for me.’ Mel wiped at her eyes. ‘Get rid of those dingoes.’
Taj sat in Kim’s kitchen with Dusty’s head pressed against his knee. She bustled about, making coffee, wiping down the bench, finding biscuits – anything to avoid opening the emotional floodgates.
‘Come and sit down,’ he said at last.
She collapsed in the chair opposite him. ‘You told me this wouldn’t happen, that the dingoes would leave the sheep alone. What are we going to do? Mel’s bound to tell people. What if she reports the attacks? What if —’
Taj held up his hand. ‘The dingoes didn’t do it.’
Kim grasped for understanding. ‘You mean it was domestic dogs?’
‘I mean it wasn’t dogs at all. Dogs and dingoes kill by biting throats, damaging the trachea and major blood vessels in the neck. Or they attack fleeing prey from the rear, causing hind leg wounds. Mel’s sheep had no such injuries.’
‘No, just bloody great holes in their bellies.’
Taj fixed her with those piercing eyes. ‘That’s not what killed them.’
‘You could have fooled me.’
‘Those sheep were already dead when the scavengers came.’
‘Already dead?’ Taj was making less and less sense. ‘How could you possibly know that?’
Taj gulped his coffee, swirling the dregs, inspecting his cup as if the answer might lie there. ‘I can’t be certain until I skin the carcasses. The size and location of wounds in the hides will tell the true story. But there were no prints around the kills other than foxes and eagles. I tell you, our dingoes aren’t to blame.’
Kim tried the theory on for size. ‘So how did the sheep die? If some illness is going around, we have to tell Mel.’
‘We will, once I examine the bodies. But, until then, please don’t share my suspicions with anyone.’
Kim gave him a wry smile. She had no intention of peddling his crazy notion around town.
Taj rose to leave. ‘There’s one more thing.’ The clock on the wall ticked loud in the silence. ‘I want to take Dusty home with me,’ he said. ‘Just for a while.’
Kim stiffened. ‘Whatever for?’
Taj didn’t answer, his expression guarded.
‘No,’ she said. ‘Absolutely not. Dusty’s part of the family. It would break Jake’s heart to spend even a night apart from him.’
‘Very well.’ His dark eyebrows slanted in a frown. ‘But don’t let him wander.’
Kim followed Taj out to his car. Dusty seemed agitated, trotting at his heels and leaping into the driver’s seat when he opened the door.
Kim called him down. ‘No, Dusty, you stay here with me.’
As they watched Taj rattle off down the drive, the pup raised his nose in a spine-tingling howl that seemed too big for his body. A howl full of infinite sadness.
Later that night, Kim sat on the couch, leaning against Ben, listening to the rain on the roof. He pumped the air as another English wicket fell. With her new-found interest in cricket, the Ashes test series had turned into compulsory late-night viewing, especially since Australia was trouncing the English team.
Kim reached for her beer. Beer and sport on television. Not football, true, but it still took her back. How many nights had she spent like this with Connor, watching AFL? And Daisy was wrong. She and Ben did have something in common. They both barracked for the Giants.
Ben settled back with a contented sigh. She liked the easy weight of his arm draped round her shoulder. She liked his male smell, his solid presence beside her. Being with Ben felt right: familiar, safe, a guaranteed cure for loneliness.
She’d told him about the dead sheep, so there would be no secrets to poison their fledgling relationship. But not about Taj’s theory that the dingoes were innocent. Of course, Ben said ‘I told you so’, but otherwise he’d been relaxed about it – surprisingly so, considering that he disapproved of the whole rewilding thing.
‘Those dingoes aren’t my problem,’ he’d said with a philosophical shrug. ‘But don’t expect everyone to feel that way. Some blokes will take it as a challenge to shoot the buggers.’
‘They’re protected up in Tarringtops,’ said Kim. ‘And there’s no hunting here or at Mel’s.’ She shot Ben a pointed look.
‘Okay, I won’t let people shoot at my place,’ he said. ‘But that doesn’t mean they won’t try. You said yourself people have been spotlighting here.’
Kim didn’t need reminding. Just the week before she’d seen lights, high in the hills behind the house, and heard the crack of rifle shots in the night.
‘Bloody ripper,’ yelled Ben, as another wicket fell.
Kim put a finger to his lips and he nipped at it playfully. ‘Shh, you’ll wake Abbey.’ She had only one ear on the television, listening for the pitter-patter of small feet in the hall. There they were. Kim ducked out from under Ben’s arm just as Abbey came into the lounge room, sleepy-eyed in puppy pyjamas, holding Percy by one ear.
‘Hello, sweetheart,’ said Ben. ‘What are you doing up?’
Abbey stared at him with a steady, unblinking gaze that seemed to look though and beyond him. Then she turned to her mother. ‘When’s he going home?’
Her daughter was getting as rude as Jake. ‘Don’t mind Abbey. She’s tired.’
Kim guided her back to her room, sat on the bed, and drew her daughter onto her lap.
Abbey yawned. ‘I can’t get to sleep when he’s here. Will you read me some more of The Silver Brumby?’
‘Okay. Hop into bed.’
Abbey’s rosebud mouth turned up in a smile, and she snuggled under the covers.
Kim took the book off the shelf, and lay down. ‘I wish you’d try a bit harder to like Ben,’ said Kim, stroking Abbey’s hair. ‘He’s been a good friend to us, and it would mean a lot to me.’
Abbey took the book from her mother, turned to the bookmarked page. ‘Read.’
‘Will you at least think about what I asked?’
‘Maybe.’
It was not a convincing response. Kim kissed her baffling daughter. In some ways she was as mysterious and exasperating as Taj. ‘Come on then.’ Kim tucked Percy in between them. ‘Let’s see what Thowra and his herd are up to.’
Two chapters later, and Abbey was finally asleep. Kim glanced at the bedside clock. Almost midnight. The hum of the television had stopped. Kim kissed her daughter goodnight, and bumped into Ben in the hallway.
‘I’d better go.’ He indicated Abbey’s room with a point of his chin. ‘She asleep?’
Kim nodded, linked her arm through Ben’s and walked with him to the back door. ‘I don’t know why she’s got such a set against you.’
‘Kids are funny things.’ Ben drew her in for a tender, searching kiss. For a moment she let herself be swept away, surrendering to a quick pulse of desire. But the image of Abbey’s sweet, disapproving face swam before her, and she pulled away.
Ben groaned and licked his lip, as if savouring what was left of the kiss. ‘I haven’t met a woman like you before.’ He ran his finger down her cheek. ‘A woman who plays such a slow game. We’ve had an understanding for a while now . . .’
‘It’s no game,’ she said. ‘I want this to go somewhere . . . for us, to go somewhere.’
‘You’re doing it again.’ He gently took hold of her hands and lifted them from the shadows. ‘Playing with your ring.’
‘Was I?’
The gold band on her finger glowed softly in the faint porch light. That old, unconscious habit of feeling for it was hard to break. Such a comfort to touch it, to twist its solid warmth between thumb and forefinger.
Ben leaned close, and whispered in her ear. ‘Take it off.’
Kim’s breath caught in her throat. How could she not wear Connor’s ring? She might as well live her life naked. On the other hand, if she wanted to move on . . . If she truly wanted to move on with Ben . . .
Her fingertips found the wedding band as they had done thousands of times before. Exploring, tracing its smooth strength, spinning its endless arc. An unbroken, eternal circle. The symbolism seemed suddenly hollow, and she tried to wrench the ring off.
‘Careful.’ Ben eased it over her knuckle, massaging the finger as he went. With one final twist it came free.
He dropped the band onto her outstretched palm, and she examined it with new eyes. How peculiar it looked from this angle. How strange. Smaller, humbler, not the same ring at all. Its promise of undying love nowhere in sight.
He closed her hand over the ring. ‘Now, let’s try it again.’ She closed her eyes. Ben’s kiss was more persuasive this time. His lips recaptured hers, feather-light, then harder. They left her mouth, to find the hollow of her throat. When they moved down to the soft swell of her breasts, she eased herself away.
Ben scrubbed a hand over his face. He wore a smile of part amusement, part frustration. ‘Jesus, Kim, you sure know how to get a man going. I’d better leave before I explode.’
Kim watched Ben go, his headlights slicing a path through the rainy darkness. The time was coming when she would not send him off into the night. When she would lead him instead to her bed. But not yet. Abbey’s disapproval weighed too heavily on her heart, and the wedding ring was too heavy in her hand.
Kim checked in on Abbey, Jake and Dusty, then went to her room, slipping the ring into a drawer. When she flicked out the light, the darkness was all-engulfing. She crawled into bed as the rain grew louder.
The storm strengthened. Howled like a monster through the black night, roared through the forest, rattled the windows. She normally loved the sound of rain on the roof, but tonight was different. This was a bombardment.
Kim buried her head in the pillow to block the deafening noise. Her fingers reached automatically for the ring. When they didn’t find it her heart lurched alarmingly. She got up and padded surely to the dresser, despite the inky blackness. Her hand dived into the drawer, connecting with the ring as if it was a magnet and she was iron. Kim slipped it on her finger and exhaled. Back under the covers, and the ferocious peak of the storm was passing. The wailing wind was replaced by the distant cry of dingoes. How things had changed. That eerie sound, once so disturbing, was now a promise that all was well. Reassured by the howling, and by the familiar feel of Connor’s ring on her finger, she drifted off to sleep.