Luke parked his vehicle and walked to the front door, knocking briefly. When he didn’t hear any sound coming from inside, he walked around the side of the house, leading to the old overseer’s cottage he knew Hayley used as her office. He saw her staring intently at her computer screen, so intently that she hadn’t noticed him. He moved to the open door and stuck his head around the corner. ‘Hi.’
Hayley screamed and he automatically held out his hands in a calming gesture. ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you,’ he said.
She lifted a hand in dismissal; the other was still clutched protectively against her chest.
‘Are you okay?’ he asked, giving the room a quick survey.
‘Yes. Sorry, just deep in thought. I wasn’t expecting someone to appear.’
‘I didn’t mean to interrupt. I was just passing by and…It was stupid of me, I should have known you’d be working.’ Idiot. Why would you think she’d want you to barge in on her uninvited? He’d been trying to decide whether he should stop or keep driving and had found himself wheeling his car into her driveway at the last minute. He’d had the urge to see her ever since her last visit to Lochmanning. Who was he kidding—he had the urge full stop when it came to Hayley Stevens. He hadn’t been able to stop thinking about her since he’d helped pull her stupid donkey out of his dam. It didn’t help that he’d been dreaming about her too. He frowned slightly as he recalled the night before. They weren’t dreams as such, more flashes of images.
The last time he’d been this consumed by a woman he’d been a teenager, completely infatuated by his maths teacher. Although in all fairness he hadn’t been the only one—half the male population of his high school had fantasised over Miss Appleby. She’d left under a cloud of controversy involving an affair with the headmaster, and sadly maths had never held the same appeal after that.
This was different, though. It wasn’t the hormone-driven obsession of a teenage boy, it was something very different. Hayley was important. That was the feeling he got when he dreamed about her. How could someone be important to you when you didn’t even know them very well?
‘No, that’s okay. I’ve just been reading some stuff…’ Her voice faded as she glanced briefly at the screen before coming back to him looking embarrassed. ‘I could use a distraction…I mean a break. I could use a break,’ she muttered, closing her laptop. ‘Would you like a coffee?’
‘That’d be great. If you’re sure I’m not interrupting your work?’
‘No, it’s fine,’ she said, leading the way back to the house and in through the back door to the kitchen.
The sound of high-pitched meowing made him stop and ask, ‘What’s that?’
Hayley smiled, beckoning him to follow, opening the laundry door quietly. Inside he found a tortoiseshell cat sprawled in a box with three kittens clambering over her. She turned her head to give them both a dismissive glance before returning her attention back to her offspring.
‘When did you get a cat?’
‘When the mice started moving inside.’
‘So you naturally got one with dependants?’
‘She didn’t have dependants when I got her…They just miraculously turned up a few weeks later.’
‘What are you going to do with them?’
‘I don’t know,’ she shrugged, stepping back out of the laundry to leave the cat in peace. ‘Probably keep them.’
‘Four cats?’ he said doubtfully.
‘What? They’re great at keeping the mice away.’
‘You hear stories about people being found months after they’ve died, their bodies eaten by their cats,’ he warned.
‘You think I’m some crazy cat lady?’
‘Well, not yet, but you seem to have the starter kit…’
‘Thanks a lot,’ she said dryly.
‘I’m just sayin’,’ he shrugged. ‘It starts with one, and before you know it the house is overrun with cats.’
‘I’m pretty sure I’ve reached the limit of my cat addiction,’ she assured him.
Luke chuckled and watched her take down cups and switch on her coffee machine. ‘How’s the writing going?’
She glanced at him. ‘Not great. I’ve kind of been sidetracked by another project.’
‘Oh yeah? What are you working on?’
‘I really wish I knew,’ she said, shaking her head as she measured coffee grounds. ‘Your gran got me started on it. It was something she mentioned when I was there the other day, a story about one of your ancestors and a convict.’
‘Edward?’ he said, surprised.
She looked up. ‘Yes. That’s him. She told me the story about how he died.’
‘Yeah, she likes telling that story,’ he said dryly. He’d grown up with the stories passed down about the Masons and their long history with the early settlement of the valley. While he was proud of his family’s legacy, he also realised that the history that was told publicly glossed over some pretty shameful parts. He’d researched his ancestor Wilfred Mason for a history assignment at school. It was the first time he’d bothered to expand his search outside of family stories, and the information had been unsettling.
Settlement of this area hadn’t come without sacrifice or bloodshed from both the settlers and the Aborigines. The local Aborigines often raided homesteads, angered when farmland was cleared and their traditional hunting areas were destroyed. Retaliation parties would be then sent out to deal with them, which only resulted in strike-back action from the Aborigines. The arrogance of the English during this time was abhorrent; they dismissed the indigenous people as nothing more than animals. The general consensus was to move them on and, if they refused to go peacefully, to eradicate them completely. Reports of massacres—government sanctioned as well as unsanctioned by landholders—were not spoken of and yet were widely known.
Luke was realistic enough to accept that this had all happened in a very different time in history. Even so, he was sickened by the actions of his ancestors. They’d knowingly taken part in the slaughter of men, women and children in order to acquire the land they’d built their family fortune on. Blood stained their hands and it was difficult to stomach the family’s pride in its history when he knew the cost of it.
‘Have you ever looked in to it?’
‘His murder?’
‘Yes.’
There was something about the way she held herself, almost as though she were trying to hide the fact she was keenly interested in his answer. ‘Not really. There’s not that much to go on. It was back in colonial days.’ He watched her suck her bottom lip in and chew it a little. ‘Why?’
‘No reason. I just found it interesting. I’ve been thinking about it a lot.’
‘Is this the project you’re working on?’
Her surprised look answered his question.
‘I can’t seem to stop thinking about it.’ She slid his cup across the bench and moved into the front room.
‘Gran’s the one to talk to.’
‘Yes, I might see if she’ll sit down with me one day.’
‘I don’t think you’ll have a problem getting her to talk. Good luck getting away.’
She gave him a small grin and instantly he had a strange sensation of déjà vu that left him momentarily breathless.
Hayley looked at him oddly. ‘Are you okay?’
‘Sorry?’ he asked, clearing his throat.
‘Are you okay?’ she repeated, peering at him.
‘Yeah. I just…No, I’m good.’
She didn’t seem overly convinced but at least she didn’t press him on whatever had just happened.
What had just happened? One minute he was sitting here drinking coffee and the next he was lying in a field of long wispy grass, looking down at Hayley wearing that same shy grin. Only it hadn’t been Hayley. She’d had different colouring. But it was her. Somehow. Oh yeah, he was making all kinds of sense.
‘Actually, I dropped by to ask you if you’d like to come over to the restaurant for dinner on Saturday night, you know, check out the brewery,’ he said, racing to cover his awkwardness.
‘Sure,’ she said. ‘I’d love to.’
‘Great,’ he said, drinking the remainder of his coffee and ignoring the fact it burned a little on the way down. ‘I have to get back to work, but I’ll see you Saturday. Did you want me to come and pick you up?’
‘I can drive over, I don’t want to put anyone out.’
‘No, it’s all good, I invited you, remember,’ he added. ‘Besides, if you plan on taste-testing the beer, you don’t want to be driving home afterwards.’
‘Okay then. Sure, that would be good.’
He headed back to his car with a spring in his step. He felt like a bit of an idiot for getting so excited by the prospect of spending Saturday evening with her, but he was glad he’d suggested dinner. It was a small stroke of brilliance, he congratulated himself as he headed back home.
Later that night, after putting up a measly fight to talk herself out of it, Hayley gave in to temptation and decided to further investigate the story of Jane Carney and Edward Mason. Yes, she could have taken Luke’s suggestion and asked his gran for more information, but last time they spoke about Edward and Jane, well, the whole situation had been unsettling. No, she wasn’t ready to revisit the topic with Pearl just yet.
Hayley opened her laptop and typed Jane Carney into the search bar. She dismissed the various Facebook links, but a few lines down a tag caught her eye: Women transported to Australia. Convict ships. She clicked on the link and it took her to a list of women’s names on a ship’s manifest, with their age, previous profession, crime and sentence recorded.
Jane Carney was listed as being Irish, seventeen years old at time of sentencing, and convicted of larceny. Hayley jotted down the name of the ship she came on and dates of birth so she could narrow down her search. When she typed in the new details there were several more links to local heritage and family history sites that gave a few more clues and enabled her to verify that this was likely the Jane Carney she was looking for. On a different web page, she found a Jane Carney listed as a maid, indentured to Gilbert Mears, and she knew she was on the right track.
Delving deeper into online archives she managed to find a newspaper transcript from 1816. Despite her desire to get answers, Hayley took time to appreciate the wonder of being able to read through such historical artefacts. Halfway down the page, she located the article relating to Jane:
A murder most foul has occurred in the Hawkesbury district on a remote farm in the Upper Macdonald River region. Convict Jane Carney brutally stabbed to death her master, Mr Gilbert Mears, fleeing the scene after being confronted by the cook, who came upon the young woman standing over the deceased bloodied body.
The despicable woman managed to evade a hunting party for two days before members of the local constabulary located the murderous fiend, sadly arriving too late to stop the second murder, that of Edward Mason, son of Wilfred Mason. Where it is believed that in a fit of rage and despair, Carney then took her own life before she could be taken into custody.
The article mostly fitted in with Pearl’s version of the story, but it didn’t fit in with the things she’d experienced. The events reported in the paper and passed down through local folklore were wrong. Admittedly she couldn’t prove that; she was fairly certain telling someone she’d had a vision about it wouldn’t exactly count as solid evidence and yet…how could she have known all this and with such detail? Even now if she closed her eyes she could smell the hot summer day in that paddock and the scent of soap and leather on Edward’s shirt. She could smell the damp coldness of the kitchen and feel the sticky warmth of blood on the handle of the knife and metallic scent of blood hanging heavy in the air.
Hayley closed her computer and put it aside as a cold clamminess broke out on her forehead. She concentrated on taking a deep breath. Maybe she had malaria or something, she thought hopefully. A disease would explain the queasiness and sweats. Maybe she could google exotic diseases and see if there was any mention of visions or hallucinations as symptoms. Then again, googling medical issues was never a good idea. Maybe she’d just have to accept the fact that she wasn’t ill, she was just losing the plot.