Rachael tried very hard to ignore Christmas and New Year’s. In the lead-up, Beverley was particularly persistent in her attentions, promising to leave Rachael a full turkey dinner before going to visit her brother in Bathurst. On Christmas Day, Rachael eventually took the phone off the hook as Beverley’s Country Women’s Association friends called every ten minutes to see how she was. At least Bernie didn’t make a big deal of his concern, just stuffing extra bread rolls in her bag along with a wrapped copy of Elvis Presley’s Christmas Duets.
Rachael left the Christmas tree boxed in the attic, and with it the memories of good-natured arguing over whether lights or tinsel went on first, and putting the star on the top. The star was one Rachael had made in primary school, its points curling now and nearly all the glitter long ago shaken off into the carpet. Tess had one exactly the same. Rachael’s mother had loved the idea that they were somehow connected by that star no matter how far apart they were. So after Tess called on Christmas Day, uncharacteristically without any remonstrations, and wished Rachael a happy day and said the children were missing her, Rachael went and got the star out and put it on the windowsill so the gum tree on the rise could see it. Then she went back to work.
Sammy tried to encourage Rachael to go to the Parkes Race Meet on New Year’s Eve. Rachael refused, saying she was too busy, and promised she would go to the Elvis Festival in January instead.
It was an almost-truth. She had plenty to do on the farm, and was looking up information about journalism courses. She’d begun the latter task with enthusiasm but had encountered a problem: she could read about a course for only a minute before she found her fingers had opened a new browser window. A few seconds later, photos of Bonnie Quinn would be splashed across the screen.
Bonnie was tall and leggy, her skin smooth and fine, and she was stylish, whether in a pair of jeans by the beach or on a red carpet. Rachael kept coming back to note the details that made the elements of her outfits work together. Bonnie became burned onto her retinas.
In one particular photo she was wearing a very smart and very fitted white jacket that Rachael spent a long time ogling. It had three-quarter sleeves, rounded corners, a nipped waist, and covered buttons—classic fifties’ style. It was the sort of jacket that would be paired with a fitted skirt, but Bonnie wore it with three-quarter trousers with an upturned cuff and simple white pumps, crossing the eras. Her blond hair was twisted elegantly behind her head, with a subtle finger wave through the front that said she knew exactly what she was doing. Her only accessory was a burnished gold clutch in her left hand, the same color as the wheat fields in the summer sun.
In many of the photos Bonnie was standing in front of a wall of logos—at a premiere or a high-profile benefit; in others, her arm was linked with an older man who had a sizable paunch but still managed to look powerful and expensive in his tailored suits. This, Rachael discerned, was her father, Walter Quinn, billionaire businessman.
Rachael told herself that all this Google stalking was simply because she was curious. She wanted to understand who this woman was. But as she looked and looked, she realized she was searching for a flaw in Bonnie, something she could point to and say, there, Matthew chose wrongly. But the consolation never came. Bonnie was always smiling directly into the camera, seeming serious and classy and intelligent. She was never bending one knee or putting a hand on her hip like a ditzy model, despite being photographed alongside Hugh Jackman and a bunch of other celebrities.
The crisis point finally came when, after nearly two weeks of this, Rachael stumbled across a rare picture of Bonnie with Matthew. The photo had been taken at some distance, and Bonnie was partially obscuring his face, but it was unmistakably Matthew. He was smiling. The knot that had formed in Rachael’s chest when the invitation had first arrived pulled tighter. Her heart thumped as if she’d run all the way from the swimming hole.
She dropped her searching habit after that, hoping the dull ache behind her breastbone would ease. It didn’t. It reminded her of the dead-arm craze in primary school when kids had punched each other in the shoulder until the limb went numb. The next day it came up in technicolor bruises that took ten days to fade. Her chest felt like that now, except her heart was the muscle being pummeled. She didn’t know how long it would take the bruises to fade, if ever.
And there was a deeper problem. Rachael couldn’t concentrate on this potential uni course, couldn’t concentrate on anything, while she kept thinking about Matthew. Running the farm with her mother had always given her a bone-tiring satisfaction, but that wasn’t enough now. She needed to know what was next. Needed to be able to plan for it.
She pushed out of her chair and through the back door, facing the fields and sky. It was as though the two parts of her life that she’d sacrificed ten years ago—her future career and being with Matthew—were inextricably linked. While one remained unresolved, so would the other.
She paced down the verandah until she stood over the milk can. Several small creatures scuttled away from her hand as she dug inside. She brought out the crumpled invitation and smoothed its pages on the bench. Maybe she had been thinking about this all wrong. Maybe this wedding was the solution.
* * *
The day of the Elvis Festival, as promised, Rachael fought her way into Parkes to meet Sammy and Marty. The footpaths were swimming with people of all ages in costume and Elvis-flavored sights. The scents of atomized frying oil and hair spray filled the air with carnival excitement.
Rachael had organized to meet Sammy outside the Parkes Country Motor Inn, which was in full view of the main stage across the road in the park. When she arrived, a tribute act was belting out “Viva Las Vegas,” but there was no Sammy. After waiting for fifteen minutes and failing to raise her on her phone, Rachael trekked across to the park and poked her head inside the Blue Suede Choux stall. Bernie, in full Vegas jumpsuit and sunglasses, as though he was due to perform any minute, was serving the tail end of a rush.
“Saw her over by the main stage,” he called when Rachael asked.
So Rachael headed that way, only to spot Beverley ahead in a Lisa Marie wig. With a frisson of guilt, she veered left and ran straight into Sammy, who was jogging through the crowd. She had on a pair of skinny jeans, ballet flats, and a tight Blue Hawaii shirt, and looked fresh and appealing except for her red eyes. Rachael instantly forgot Beverley.
“Yes, I know, I’m so sorry I’m late,” Sammy said, looking harried. “I was just running across to find you. You must have been waiting.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Just something silly. I couldn’t find Marty.”
Rachael looked around. “Where is he?”
“Not coming, as it turns out. I finally reached him on the phone, and he’s gone to see a mate in Orange. So it’s just us. Do you want to get some food?”
“Are you sure you’re all right?”
Sammy turned away, smoothing her hair. “Yeah, I’m good. I wish he’d told me, but he says this mate might have a job opening. Now, what’s this thing you didn’t want to talk about on the phone?”
Rachael took Sammy by the arm and drew her away from the noise of the stage, where the tribute act was demonstrating his best Elvis legs, much to the shrieking delight of the ladies in the front row. Across the park and behind a water fountain, she found a space with comparative quiet.
“Do you remember when we went camping what you said about me maybe going back to study?”
“Of course.”
“Well, I’ve been trying to research it for the last few weeks.”
“That’s great—”
“But every time I try, I find myself googling Bonnie Quinn.”
“Oh.”
“I can’t split them apart, Sam.”
Sammy frowned. “I didn’t think you were going to try.”
“Not Matthew and Bonnie,” Rachael said, impatient. “I mean, Matthew and whatever I do next. I don’t think I’ll be able to move on until he’s completely out of my system. I need to decouple him from my life, you know, like, like . . . a tractor and a drill.” She shrugged helplessly.
Sammy laughed at the metaphor, then said slowly, “That does make some sense. You were saying you wanted to go back in time to when you still had both those things. But how are you going to get over Matthew?”
Rachael pulled the crumpled invitation from her pocket. “I have to go to the wedding. If I see him get married, I’ll know that he’s gone and it’s over with. Then I can move on properly. What do you think?” She bit her lip. She had no other ideas. If Sammy thought it was a dud, she was lost.
But Sammy was nodding. “That might just work.”
Rachael grinned. “I’m so glad you agree. Because . . . I want you to come.”
“What?”
“My invitation is plus-one. We can see Paris together, and I might need you for moral support. I can’t think of anyone else I’d rather go with.”
Sammy’s lips parted just slightly to admit a gasp of air, a faint horror brushing her features. It came and went so swiftly that Rachael was unsure she’d even seen it, but she had the deep sense that Sammy was about to refuse.
“You don’t want to?” she asked. “Is this about Marty? Oh, sorry. Of course. You’d want him to come too.”
“It’s not that at all,” Sammy said. “I’d love to.”
“I didn’t think . . . I just asked you to go overseas without him.” Rachael shook her head. “And Paris at that. I—”
Sammy put a hand on her arm. “You’re my best friend, Rach. Of course I want to go. You just surprised me.”
Rachael searched Sammy’s face, but could find nothing of the hesitation she’d seen moments before. She smiled. For the first time since her mother’s death, she could almost see the glittering possibility of being free of Matthew, of being able to find her own future.
Sammy grinned back. “Of course, you know what we have to do now, don’t you?”
“What?”
“Research! I’ll raid the movie shelf at the motel. We have to watch Midnight in Paris, The Da Vinci Code, Moulin Rouge, and The Bourne Identity to start with. They’re all set in Paris.” She seemed completely recovered.
“There is one thing I have to warn you about, and it might make you reconsider,” Rachael said. “Bernie and Bev both got invitations too.”
Sammy’s eyebrows shot up. “I knew Bernie did, but Bev? Both of them on the same plane? Why do I somehow feel like we might make the news?”
They both laughed.
* * *
Rachael didn’t know if it was the festival atmosphere or the rockabilly skirts, but when she returned to the farm in the late afternoon, she pulled out the plastic storage tubs from the shelves above the sewing machine. She hadn’t wanted to touch them since her mother had passed away, but now she had purpose.
Rifling through, she found a bolt of salmon-pink Italian slub silk her mother had ordered on sale from Hong Kong years ago and never used. In another tub was a big piece of polka-dot silk chiffon, a remnant of a formal dress from 2008, and a gorgeous blue oriental print that demanded something truly special. Silk again. Rachael had inherited her mother’s love of silk—its lightness, its shimmering luster, the way it draped and sewed. There were other promising finds: a large piece of pale green jersey with an elegant print of blushing red roses. Scraps of lace and tubes of buttons and clasps.
She waited until last to pull the footstool from under the table. Amid the collections of vintage buttons and closures, patterns and couture books that Tess had rifled through was a packet of corset boning and a huge piece of silk lining, so thin and light it could have been woven from a spider’s web.
Rachael pulled a few patterns from the box and skimmed her finger over the line of their skirts. If she was going to face Matthew getting married in Paris, she needed to look the part, and a gorgeous project, or three, was just the way to do that. The anticipation of making beautiful things and moving on with her life stirred an almost-happiness in her heart. She turned to a blank page in her sketchbook and started with a sweeping line, matching a vintage pattern. She drew and adjusted and redrew as the hours flew away and the sun dragged the blinds down on the day.
Finally, as dusk gathered, Rachael stretched out her aching hand and put the drawings aside. Her plan still lacked one critical element, and she couldn’t avoid it any longer.
“I have a favor to ask,” she said when Tess answered the phone.
“Can it wait? I’ve just got the kids to the table.”
“I’ll be fast. I wanted to know if you’d be able to come down to the farm for a week in April? I’m thinking of going to a wedding.”
There was a pause, and then the sounds of clattering plates and children became muffled. Tess must have gone to another room.
“Whose wedding?”
Rachael paused. “Matthew’s. It’s . . . in Paris.”
She braced herself, but Tess surprised her by saying, “I heard about that.”
“How?”
“We get gossip up here too. The rumor mill runs all the way to Dubbo.”
Silence followed, until Rachael could no longer bear it. She imagined Tess’s face, all the things she might be thinking.
“If you can’t come it’s not a problem,” she said in a rush. “I can find someone else. And I don’t want to hear anything about it being a bad idea.”
“Keep your pants on. I’m just thinking,” Tess said sharply, “and looking at the calendar. I do have a few things to work around, you know.”
“Oh.”
“And who said anything about it being a bad idea? Who turns down an all-expenses-paid trip to Paris?”
Rachael said nothing. She could hear Tess muttering under her breath as she looked through the dates.
Finally, she said, “Should be able to come. But we’d better have a talk about your planting plan to make sure. I’ll call you Monday with Joel for a conference.”
“Thanks so much. I owe you,” Rachael said, but didn’t hang up.
Another awkward silence. She was simultaneously desperate for advice and wary of Tess’s opinions.
“Tess . . .”
“Mmm?”
“I’ve been trying to decide what to do now that Mum’s gone.”
“What do you mean, what to do?”
“With my life. At the end of school I was going to go to university. I was thinking of maybe doing that now.”
“And what, sell the farm after it was just left to you?” Tess demanded.
“No, I would never do that.”
Tess let out a huge breath. “Listen, Rachael, the grass always looks greener on the other side of the fence. If you want my advice, I’d say stick with what you know. Choose the farm. You can always do side hobbies, but farms are where real work happens. It’s a good life.”
Rachael tried to give this the consideration it deserved, but her heart felt absurdly deflated.
“All right, I’ll speak to you Monday,” she said.
“Rachael, wait.”
“Mmm?”
“This wedding must be pretty upmarket—you making some new clothes?”
“As a matter of fact, I’m looking at patterns right now,” Rachael said, remembering too late that Tess was openly jealous of the sewing skills Rachael had learned from their mother, which she had missed out on by going with their father.
“What else?” Tess asked.
Rachael’s mind went completely blank. “You mean like shoes?”
“No, I mean sort out your awful nails. What good’s a nice dress if you’ve got chewed stumps on your hands? And make sure you get a haircut too. Do you need me to find a salon?”
Rachael hastily assured her she could manage. But after the call, when she looked at the red ends of her fingers and ragged bitten nails, then peered at her lank ponytail in the hall mirror, she had to admit that maybe Tess was right. Maybe she did need to do something about her chewing habit. And her hair.
She had just over three months to prepare herself to end this silly preoccupation with Matthew. It sounded like more than enough time.
* * *
Two months flew by in a blur of early mornings and late nights. Rachael’s sewing station came alive, piles of materials steadily spreading away from the table to occupy the whole lounge. She stopped protesting against Beverley’s cleaning visits and didn’t even mind when she came in with bucket and damp gloves to admire what Rachael was doing and ask questions. Rachael was so busy keeping the farm together amid the sewing that she forgot to chew her nails, and for the first time she could remember there were little white crescents at the ends of her fingers.
Taking it as a sign, the next day she headed into Parkes. Sammy was doing a shift at the motel but the hair salon seemed unintimidating, and this way if the result was a disaster there would be no witnesses. She would never have admitted it to Tess, but the closest she’d come to a hairdresser in the last ten years was trimming the ends of her ponytail with an old pair of craft scissors. What was the point when she wore a hat all the time?
She tugged her cap down as she pushed inside, delighted to find the salon nearly deserted, even if the woman behind the desk had hair an alarming shade of blue and cut in an asymmetrical bob.
“Rachael West,” she said. “I booked for ten o’clock.”
“Rachael!”
Rachael spun and was mildly horrified to see Beverley coming through the salon door as if she’d been tailing her. There was no hope of hiding now.
Beverley tried very hard to be helpful. When Rachael had no idea what she wanted, she pulled out a magazine and began showing her pictures. When this didn’t help, Bev got her talking to Bronwyn about fifties’ fashion, causing Bronwyn to suggest a long bob with a fringe cut in.
“The length will be modern, but the fringe is pure Audrey Hepburn. Very chic, and perfect for your face shape,” she added, holding her hands above Rachael’s shoulders to illustrate. She tactfully made no comment about the elastic band in Rachael’s hair, which was so used it looked like a shriveled dead spider.
Rachael took a breath. Now or never. “Do it,” she said.
Beverley clapped her hands in anticipation.
An hour later, the final result was surprisingly sophisticated. Rachael stared at herself in the mirror. Her hair had never been so smooth and glossy, like a perfect sheet of warm brown armor.
Beverley squeezed her arm. “Your mother . . .” she began, then broke off, her voice a little choked. “You look so lovely.”
This moment of warmth somehow led to Rachael going shopping with Beverley and being furnished with a new powder foundation in the right skin tone, an eyeliner pen, and three lipsticks in deep red, bright fuchsia, and satin baby pink. Then it was into a nail salon, which Rachael left with the new ends of her nails coaxed into smooth half-moons. The whole time, Beverley kept up a chatter about the history of Paris and all the things she and Rachael must see and do. By the end, Rachael was thoroughly overdone and crowded. She wanted nothing more than to go home and dive into the finishing details of her projects.
She was just summoning the courage to reject Beverley’s offer of lunch when they passed the Little Black Dress boutique. Beverley glanced in the window and her mouth twisted into an odd shape.
“Rachael, I have a little problem, and I don’t have your mother to ask anymore.”
“What’s that?”
The lines between Bev’s brows were deep. “It might be better if I show you.”
That was how Rachael ended up not back at the farm, but in Beverley’s house, standing in front of her open wardrobe. The opera music had been turned off today. Despite the alarming amount of chintz in the room, the clothes Beverley pulled from dry-cleaning bags were surprisingly tasteful.
“These are quite lovely,” Rachael said, admiring a blue dress that was layer on layer of chiffon, and a ball gown in black with a fitted bodice.
“I often showed your mother the pictures before I bought them. Lovely on the hanger, but once I put them on . . .” Beverley shook her head. “I don’t seem able to buy anything that looks any good, except suits, and I can’t wear those to a cocktail party in Paris.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” Rachael said, thinking of Bonnie’s fifties’ white jacket and pants. “But let’s see.”
One by one, Beverley put on the dresses and Rachael could see what she meant. Something that looked wonderful on the hanger looked lumpy or shapeless on Beverley. Finally, Rachael asked if she had a tape measure.
“I think I see the problem,” she said, after taking measurements. “You’re short-waisted.”
“What’s that?”
“Your legs are long but your torso is short. It means that the waist is always too low for you in anything you buy off the shelf. All these clothes are made for a standard body shape. That’s why they look wrong—they just don’t fit right.”
“So everything is going to look horrible?” Beverley looked as though she might cry.
“Not at all.” Rachael was busy pulling out dresses, muttering to herself. “We can’t do anything about this chiffon one because it’s all single pieces, though I might be able to dart the underdress. The one with the bodice will be impossible with all the layers. But this and this . . .” She pulled out an attractive satin print dress and a two-piece evening suit made in brocade. “I can pull these apart and recut the pieces.”
“Do you have time to do that?”
No, thought Rachael, but she could see the look on Beverley’s face, the pride of this woman who wanted to keep her house and garden immaculate, and who had lost her best friend in Rachael’s mother. Beverley, who came and cleaned and tried to look after Rachael, however much Rachael sometimes wished she would stop. She felt all of this as a great debt, and she was also trying to ignore Presley, whom she’d glimpsed through the window earlier, probably stoking the fires of the feud with his activities.
“I can do it,” she said. “Just let me take some more measurements. I’ll do one first and we’ll see how it looks. And if you buy anything new, go for an empire cut.”
* * *
That afternoon, Rachael went down to the waterhole, where she floated on her back and mentally reshuffled her time for the next month. As long rays of apricot light turned the fields orange, she climbed out and headed home to change for Sammy’s movie night. She hadn’t brought a towel so she rode the trail bike wet under her clothes, her squelchy shoes slipping on the clutch. Still, she was fresh and energized in a way she hadn’t been in a long time.
She packed a piece of her current dress project to hand-sew while movie watching. When she caught sight of herself in the hall mirror on the way out, her sleek bob had dried into pleasing windswept layers around her face, and the new fringe framed clear eyes. She looked like someone who was ready to move on.
Sammy said as much when she opened the door to the shed. “You didn’t tell me you were getting a haircut. Let me see. Oooh, glamorous.”
“I wasn’t sure how it would turn out.”
“But you like it?”
“I do. It’s a bit hard to tie it back, but I’m managing.”
Rachael looked around as Sammy went to check on a pizza in the oven. She and Marty had been living in this converted shed behind Bernie’s house for the past five years, with the intention of saving money for a house. While the place was small and not strictly legal, Sammy staunchly defended the low rent as a necessary step in their journey to a better place and buying their own business. Boxes were piled in one corner, full of items there was no room to unpack. An exception had been made for Sammy’s extensive movie collection, which was stacked two-deep in a bookshelf. All that was normal. But among the magnets pinning various calendars and photos to the fridge, Rachael saw a brochure for marriage counseling services.
“How’s Marty?” she asked.
“Same old, still looking for work,” Sammy said as she shoved a garlic bread in the tiny oven. “He got back from Orange today. He’s trying out surrounding towns. Wow, I’ve just seen your nails.”
“Oh, right.”
Rachael tried to steer the conversation back, but Sammy wanted to know all about what had happened at the salon and when Rachael had stopped chewing her nails, so Rachael ended up relaying the day instead, including about Beverley and her clothes.
“I heard there’s a few other locals been invited, mostly friends of Matthew’s parents from Parkes,” Sammy said. “And Pete’s the best man.”
“That makes sense,” Rachael said. She hadn’t seen Peter in a while, not since she’d gone into AgriBest the week after the funeral to pay some overdue invoices.
Sammy was about to say something else when they both heard a car rumble into the drive. A second later, the shed door opened and Marty appeared, dirty blond hair crammed under a cap, half an inch of stubble on his chin. He was a big guy, not fat, but with the kind of heavy muscle you’d see on a wrestler. He seemed on a mission, as if he hadn’t expected Sammy to be home.
“Hey, babe,” she said, dimples showing with a too-bright smile. “Need something?”
“Hi, Marty,” Rachael added.
“Hi, Rach. How you doing? Just forgot my six.” Marty squeezed past Sammy, went straight to the fridge, and extracted a pack of beer. “Don’t wait up, Sam. See you later, Rach.”
He pulled the door closed. Sammy blew out a breath.
Rachael sat frozen. Marty hadn’t looked at Sammy, and the tension between them was high and sharp and obvious.
“Is he mad about you going to Paris?” she asked in a hushed tone.
“No, he’s totally fine with that.” Sammy poked around in the oven again. “Look, we’ve had some problems. Having some problems, I should say. But we’ll be fine. It’s just a bump in the road.”
“Are you going to counseling?” Rachael pointed to the flyer on the fridge.
Sammy’s expression wavered. “Not yet. But we will. He’ll get the hint if I leave that there.”
“Sam,” Rachael whispered. Things were clearly worse than Sammy had been letting on, and she felt awful for not having noticed.
“No, don’t do that tone,” Sammy said, scooting around the couch to load the movie. “It’s really not that bad. We have good days, and we’re working things out. You and I are going to Paris for a week. You’re going to get over Matthew and get on with studying, and I’m going to come back refreshed and then get back on track with this house and business thing. It’ll all be great, you’ll see.”
* * *
The day before they left, Rachael wrote one last to-do list—of things to pack—her stomach twisting with nerves. All those years ago, the breakup with Matthew had felt like being abandoned on the side of the highway, watching the taillights of the future disappearing over the horizon. Now, it was as if another ride was just around the bend and she had to be brave enough to stick out her thumb and take it. She was suddenly unsure if she could.
When she’d been with Matthew, everything had seemed possible. He was smart and good-looking and had encouraged her to dream big. He’d been her confidence. No wonder she couldn’t move on without getting him out of her system. She wanted to know she was doing the right thing.
Rachael let the door slam as she left the house and tore up the tramline to the majestic gum on the hill. A circle around the trunk was planted with river daisies and into the bark was carved: Marion West, 1959–2016. Joel had done the carving, each letter careful and clear.
Rachael had never guessed this was how events would turn out when her mother was newly diagnosed. It had been two days before the Higher School Certificate Exam, and they’d been sitting in a consulting office with white walls and blue carpet.
The doctor said, “It’s the rare type, unfortunately, but there’s reason to hope. There are new drug trials all the time, and you’re still functioning well.” On he’d gone, about all the services on offer, avenues for treatment.
Marion had finally stopped him. “All that in its own time. Now, be honest with me. Brutally honest.”
He’d sized her up for a few seconds, and Rachael had wondered if he knew that this wiry direct woman with her sun-kissed face could somehow see through everything.
“It’s going to be rough,” he said finally. “You’ll likely lose your balance, your mobility, and your continence. We don’t have any treatments that work yet. And while other people with this disease have remissions, you probably won’t. There’ll come a point where you’ll depend on someone else for most of your daily living.”
Marion had set her shoulders, tipped her chin up. “Right. Now that’s out of the way, let’s talk about the other things.”
Rachael sank down before the daisies and pressed her fingers to the cool earth. She needed her mother’s bravery. “So I’m going to Paris,” she said, offering up her uncertainties, looking for confirmation.
A breeze ruffled the gum. A few leaves drifted down, but no answers came. Rachael’s lip trembled. She was on her own now.
When night had settled over the farm and the first stars were pricking the heavens, Rachael’s case was packed. She was as ready as she could be. She stood in the doorway of her mother’s room. The wardrobe was a shadow, all Marion’s things still inside. She had always told Rachael that when things got too much, a way forward would show itself. Maybe this trip was that way forward, its hope winking like Venus in the sky: tiny and distant, but enough to guide her through the darkness.
* * *
Bernie insisted on driving Sammy to the airport in his truck with the bumper stickers that said KEEP CALM BECAUSE ELVIS IS STILL KING, I’VE BEEN TO GRACELAND, I AM AUSTRALIAN: WHAT’S YOUR SUPERPOWER? and VEHICLE FREQUENTLY SIDEWAYS plastered across the chipped and rusty tray. To complete the look, a longhorn sticker spanned the rear window and a CB radio aerial and spotlight rack adorned the roof. As if to make sure she wasn’t outdone, Beverley insisted on driving Rachael. Her Corolla smelled of potpourri. Thanks to her stately observance of the speed limit and Bernie’s obvious flouting of it, the two vehicles were never in sight of each other on the highway. By some quirk of Sydney traffic, however, they arrived at airport parking a minute apart.
Rachael wasn’t sure how the valet parking attendants—included with compliments of the bride—kept a straight face, especially when Bernie accepted the detailing service and asked them to go easy on the paintwork, then supervised the unloading of their bags as if he was worried about damage. Beverley watched it all with pursed lips.
“Going to do a spot of duty-free,” said Bernie once they’d made it through check-in and security. He rubbed his hands together as if all the vices the airport offered were about to meet their match.
“Good riddance,” muttered Beverley as she turned to Rachael and Sammy. “Well, girls, what are we going to do with ourselves?”
“Not sure,” Sammy said. “We might follow Bernie to the duty-free.”
Beverley sniffed. “Have fun, I suppose. I’m just going to camp at the coffee shop.”
“We’ll come and have one with you soon,” Rachael said, but she was buzzing with anticipation and couldn’t have sat still. The week had finally arrived; nothing was left to do. Planters were lined up to sow the wheat the week after she got back, assuming the weather held.
All the Parkes area invitees were spread around the flight. Rachael and Sammy were together, with a spare seat on the aisle. Bernie was farther back in the cabin, and Rachael caught snatches of his conversation with the crew, who spoke both English and French and ably pretended interest in Blue Suede Choux. Rachael admired the butter-smooth quality of their French. She had been practicing phrases from an online French course for two weeks but was having trouble holding even the basics in her head. Beverley was five rows in front on the aisle; Rachael could just see her curls peeking up above the seat back.
She was nervous she might spot Matthew, though it quickly became evident that he wasn’t there. Nor were his parents, or Peter.
“They’ve already gone,” Sammy said when Rachael mentioned it. “All the family are meeting up first, apparently.”
Able to relax now, Rachael relished even the mundane details of her first-ever overseas flight. She watched the safety briefing, then read through the card in the seat pocket three times.
“Nervous?” Sammy asked.
Rachael nodded. “But excited too. I don’t think I’ll sleep.”
“Here.” Sammy passed across a bunch of glossy magazines. “Read about the duchess losing her baby weight, or Justin Bieber’s latest tattoo. That’s bound to dull your thoughts. I’m going to see what’s on the movie channels.”
Rachael flipped through the magazines, pausing to admire dresses she particularly liked, thinking about how the fabric might have been cut, and then started on a crossword. This lasted her the first ninety minutes. After that, she watched movies, secretly enjoyed the meals in their little partitioned containers, and got up frequently to walk to the bathrooms. When she found herself thinking about Matthew, she chose a different show, or surfed the music selections for nonromantic songs, playing the whole Taylor Swift 1989 album twice.
Sammy seemed able to endure hours in her seat, though she was similarly unable to sleep. She gave Rachael a long explanation of why The Thing offered on the movie channel was inferior to John Carpenter’s original, after which Rachael demanded to know why she was watching horror movies. Sammy laughed and said they helped her relax.
Finally, the two of them started up a silly paper dot-joining game they’d last played in school, until the plane began its final descent. Rachael found she’d left her nerves behind somewhere over the Middle East. She leaned across Sammy, craning for a glimpse of the city through the clouds.
The wheels bounced twice, and then the copilot announced their arrival in both English and French. Rachael gripped her armrest. Out the window was a cloudy sky, the sun just bleeding through like a soft-boiled yolk. The plane taxied. The seat belt sign blinked off.
And then they were in Paris.