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Later, after I'd had to sit with a blanket over my shoulders and Lana kept shoving a hip flask in my face, my only consolation was that the whole thing hadn't been filmed and shown on national television as it might have been if Gary Hadley were still here.
I wondered, if I had reacted in a different way, perhaps the mass hysteria that followed wouldn't have happened? And the cows wouldn't have also freaked and started bolting in different directions.
It was the quick thinking of Dennis – who, I realised too late I had never had a word to about the importance of pants on Mother's Day – that saved things in the end. Turns out he was very nimble when unencumbered by pants and was a dab hand at herding cows, but it had leant a further hysteria to the day.
I'd been horrified that a lot of Reg's teapots and teacups had been smashed in the cow carnage. It was a miracle no-one had been hurt.
"Oh, love, they're only things," Connie had said, when I'd showed her the box of smashed pieces, too scared to give them back to Reg. "What you've done here is something much more precious. You've created memories."
"Who will want to remember this?" I'd croaked, looking around at what seemed an insurmountable task to fix.
She cackled hard. "Everyone! This one will go down in the history books. The first and worst Cameron Valley Bake Off event."
That sentiment seemed to run through with everyone. It was like here, in Cameron Valley, the more it stuffed up, the more merriment was found.
Something that would be talked about for ever and a day.
Imperfect memories.
I supposed people didn't say, 'Do you remember when we had that perfect day, when everything went swimmingly?' No. They liked the out of the ordinary. The memorable. I had watched Larry slapping the bar in the hotel afterwards, his face red as he tried to recount Lana running from the cows with bottles of alcohol slung under her arm and then Dan chimed in with his own version of Mick diving for cover behind the hay bales before realising, too late, he'd dived into the men's toilets.
I hadn't had a moment alone with Josh to discretely check again, what time did he think he got in the other night? And I wasn't sure what I wanted to know. Plus, if he started asking questions back, how would I respond? 'Actually, I don't know what time I got home, or how I got home, because I was so intoxicated. But don't worry, it was Gary Hadley who got me to the door.'
I shuddered. No. I'd wait until the excitement of the day settled down and roll everything around in my head later and then decide whether to tackle it head on or perhaps leave it alone, best swept under the carpet.
Besides, Josh didn't seem like someone who was looking to be elsewhere as he put his arm around me, and we sat on the couch at home with Tim and Alice and several bottles of champagne to watch Cameron Valley's television debut. Even Dianna seemed in good form when she arrived unannounced with her own bottle of champagne and a cheese platter. After a couple of gins at the pub, Dianna was slightly softer around the edges and as it was Mother's Day, I chose to ignore her usual barbs.
"Right! It's starting!" Tim called, corralling everyone into the lounge room. "We don't want to miss our big bloody debut!" He clapped his hands and cheersed Josh with his beer.
We all quietened down when a shot of the main street of Cameron Valley came on with Gary Hadley walking up it in quiet contemplation. He stopped in front of the camera and looked back down the street as if looking for answers.
"When we imagine a small country town, we imagine the simple things in life." The camera panned out to the main street again and I squealed as I saw Josh crossing the street. He raised his eyebrows at me and put his arm around me, squeezing me tight.
"Hope you didn't leave me on the cutting room floor, Molly," Tim joked.
"I'm hoping she did!" Alice quipped, hitting him with a cushion.
"Shh, all of you." Dianna leant forward in her chair, smiling.
"But for those of you thinking a tree-change might be the way for you, think again," Gary intoned dramatically at the camera.
"Yeah, think again!" Alice yelled heartily at the tele. "We don't want a heap of city slickers. Except you of course, Molly."
"What looks to be a quaint rural town getting on with seasonal task of providing food for the country, these people, the backbone of our nation..." We all laughed and squealed again as we saw Mrs Grundy walk out the front of the butcher shop and then scurry back in.
"...is actually a seething cesspool of grudges, cliques and a loathing of newcomers."
"Eh?" I sat up as the scene shifted to me walking, sad and lonely, down the main street, looking mournfully in to shop windows as if everyone had shut me out.
"It's a place where the shops are never open, slow living is taken to the extreme and due to outsiders being unwelcome, inbreeding."
My voice came over the footage. "It's not like living in the city. It's slower than dialup internet. And you need a family tree because you never know who's related to who."
The camera panned to Larry and Scarby sitting out the front of the hotel looking for all the world like a pair of simpletons from the 1800s.
"A woman moved here with her policeman partner, desperate to make a change, but it seems even the law enforcement is not really up to the job."
The camera cut to a shot of Josh asleep in the police car he had parked to close off the road for the filming to be done. Again, my voice cut across the television. "Apart from someone doing fifty-five in the fifty zone, there's not a lot happening in Cameron Valley. The last thing he wants to do is go and arrest someone."
I turned to Josh, who was sitting as stiff as a board next to me. He looked at me and then shook his head as if he didn't have the words to tell his feelings. This was exactly what he had warned me about.
"If this is the law enforcement in a country town, what of the other services? Are our country children even getting an education?"
All joviality had fallen from the room as my voice came over clear as a bell while the camera panned across the school. My voice betrayed me again. "There's the local school, which is very small. There's also a boarding school close by. If you want more of what a city school can offer, you can send them there. It's very progressive.”
"Alice, that's not what I..." But her face was white and set hard. She put her hand up to silence me so she could hear the rest in all its glory.
"With only a Mother's Day event to look forward to all year, all of the hard work done by this plucky young woman, she has only been met with backlash from the community time and again."
"It's very bloody difficult. It's like I've landed on another planet sometimes. A planet with a different language."
I wanted it to stop, wanted to lean over and turn the TV off, but I knew it wouldn't end there. I hoped something good might come of it, perhaps he would change story angle and say, 'However, look, it's all worked out okay in the end.'
But the footage rolled on, now a shot of me, in a billowing floral skirt marching around the creek doing final measurements for the day. I cringed as my voice filled the room again.
"There's not really a lot of jobs in a small town unless you want to be a teacher, a farmer or a shop person. The kids don’t get jobs and then well, they turn to crime."
Soft music began playing in the background with Gary's voice over the top: "Malnutrition, disease and a lack of education are real problems facing our rural communities." The footage of Alice and Laura out the front of the pub with a close up of Laura's snotty nose made them seem like homeless people living in the car.
"And with all of these breakdowns in a community, it bleeds into a breakdown of the home."
The shot cut back to me looking mournful in the street again.
"My mother-in-law thinks because I'm from the city that I'm going to run off and have an affair. Just because her husband did."
I closed my eyes, wishing I could crawl into a hole as I heard Dianna mutter sharply under her breath, "Right."
Gary then walked towards the camera and looked earnestly down its lens. "With a lack of education, buildings in wrack and ruin due to a lack of care, and community life a thing of the past, I don't know, I think I'd be re-thinking my tree change. But that's just me, one man's view. Gary Hadley's view."
"I was on the tele!" Laura piped up from the floor, not noticing the tension in the room.
"I want to be on the tele!" Jimmy moaned and started to cry.
"Trust me, darling, you don't want to be on the tele," Alice said through gritted teeth. "C'mon, we're going."
"Alice please, I..."
"Don't, Molly. Just don't." She managed to grab her two children and with a nod to Tim, they were out the door in a flash.
Dianna got up from her chair, but tipped forward, the champagne and gins catching up with her. Josh grabbed her just in time. "I knew it!" she cried, pointing her finger in the air. "I knew" – she pointed her raised finger at me – "that you would not last."
"C'mon Mum, I'll drive you home." Josh put his arm around her and bundled her out to the car.
"But I'm fine!" I heard her protest on her way out.
"I know, I know. Just want to see you home safe."
Their voices faded off down the path. I heard the car doors opening and shutting and then the car drive off, all while I stood motionless in the middle of the room, an array of empty glasses and chip bowls around me.