Chanel Sweethearts Read online

  By the same author

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  Chanel Sweethearts

  ePub ISBN 9781742740300

  Kindle ISBN 9781742740317

  A Bantam book

  Published by Random House Australia Pty Ltd

  Level 3, 100 Pacific Highway, North Sydney NSW 2060

  www.randomhouse.com.au

  First published by Bantam in 2010

  Copyright © Lisa Blundell and Michelle Hamer 2010

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted by any person or entity, including internet search engines or retailers, in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying (except under the statutory exceptions provisions of the Australian Copyright Act 1968), recording, scanning or by any information storage and retrieval system without the prior written permission of Random House Australia.

  Addresses for companies within the Random House Group can be found at

  www.randomhouse.com.au/offices

  National Library of Australia

  Cataloguing-in-Publication Entry

  Kendall, Cate.

  Chanel sweethearts

  ISBN 978 1 86325 694 0 (pbk).

  A823.4

  Cover illustration and design by www.saso.com.au

  For Jacque Ford, 5 June 1963 – 20 October 2009, Andy’s Paper Nautilus. LB

  To Mum and Dad. Thank-you. For everything. MH

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Acknowledgements

  More from Random House

  Prologue

  It was the smell that really knocked her sideways. She was expecting the heat, the smoke and the noise, but not the sickening stench of burning oil and blistering paint mixed with sizzling eucalyptus from nearby trees.

  Jess stood numb as the miasma of smoke and the acrid smell wove thick, black plumes around her. It was surreal, it couldn’t be happening. It couldn’t end like this; all her dreams and hopes burnt to nothing.

  She pressed the sting of tears from her eyelids. She put her head up and stared at the purple – red flames leaping into a night sky that was bruised with black smoke.

  ‘Stand back, love,’ one of the CFA volunteers shouted. ‘She’s coming down.’

  The wrenching squeal of corrugated iron announced the roof’s collapse.

  The crowd gasped and hurriedly shuffled to the other side of the road. Des and Merle from the supermarket up the road stood distraught in each other’s arms. Fat tears on Merle’s cheeks glowed orange against the blaze.

  The cafe’s frontage was the last to go. In her mind Jess saw the ghosts of that afternoon’s customers dancing in the haze. Rainbow and Songbird had been there; and Steve the milk-bar guy, laughing and chatting together. Here they all were again, just a few hours later, but now everything had changed.

  There was a loud pop as the fryer exploded, sending the stink of burnt chip fat into the night air.

  ‘Where’s Nick?’ someone called from the crowd.

  Nick!

  Jessica turned wildly to the speaker, then back to the store, terror prickling her skin. Nick had been with her just two hours earlier. He’d left, saying he had work to do. Had he come here to fix that loose floorboard for her? She wasn’t sure whether she was going to faint or vomit. Bile rose in her throat.

  ‘Gas!’ someone shouted and soot-faced men spilled from the shop.

  ‘Please, there’s someone in there, there’s someone in the kitchen!’ Jess shrieked, her words distorted, breaking in anguish. She rushed towards the inferno, wild with fear. Not Nick; not him too, not after so many losses that year. Not her Nick.

  ‘Get out of there.’ A fireman grabbed Jessica and dragged her roughly across the road. ‘We checked out the whole place when we got here, there’s no one in there.’ He held her arms to her side to stop her battering his chest with her fists.

  ‘Are you sure? Are you absolutely definite?’ she screamed at him.

  ‘Yes we’re sure, now stay over here,’ the firefighter shouted.

  Rainbow ran over to her in the lurid orange light. ‘We saw Nick pass our place about an hour ago,’ she said, and Jess felt her legs collapse beneath her with relief.

  Rainbow and Songbird sat with her in the gutter, holding her, as the chaos continued around them. A series of deafening booms split the air as gas bottles exploded one after the other.

  Jess watched it all from the safety of her friends’ arms. Tears spilled down Rainbow’s face, running under her chin and off the end of her nose, but she ignored them and continued to whisper, ‘It’s okay, it’s okay, it will all be okay’ in Jess’s ear as she rocked gently beside her. Songbird said nothing, but her arm was firm and strong behind Jess’s back.

  Jess suddenly felt strangely detached from the scene, as if she were watching it all unfold from above. As the store’s weatherboard facade finally gave in, ending its eighty-four-year history, she felt nothing. She was empty. She watched, mesmerised, as the ‘GEN’ in General Store blackened first, then the scorched letters fell one by one to the verandah below. The fire was almost like an interactive artwork, she thought; so beautiful in its destructive for
ce.

  Then there was nothing but charred timbers and the insatiable flames.

  It was all over.

  2

  The next morning Jessica stepped over the rake lying across her back doormat. She banged her Blundstones against the step to scare out any uninvited guests and sat to pull the boots on.

  She gazed across her property’s broad expanse and beyond to the whitecaps darting across Westernport Bay. The waves roared and crashed, urged on by a strong southerly. This was the homestead’s best view.

  But although Jess saw it, it didn’t move her as it normally would. She sighed and looked at the crazy cottage gardens that flanked the gravel path. She should be concerned that a yellow broom seed had sown its wicked work and was infiltrating her wildflower bed, but really she couldn’t care less.

  Usually the chaos and colour of her native wildflowers made her smile, but not today. They hadn’t for some time. Maybe Nick could come and give her a hand, although his job description supposedly kept him in the paddocks, not in the domestic garden.

  She forced herself to her feet, restrained her wild curls with an elastic, and wandered down the wide garden steps. She saw with a start the daisy grubber that sat rusting in the same spot where she’d jammed it over a month ago. It wasn’t like her to neglect her beautiful garden for so long.

  But it was hard work to maintain the property now that she was on her own.

  It just seemed so much easier to cook, clean and garden when she knew that others would enjoy it too. She couldn’t seem to dredge up any joy these days. Everything was mere duty: the gardening, the General Store, her friends, even her art.

  All night she had mulled over Jimmy’s job offer and the whole idea was just giving her a headache now. What he’d said was true, she had wanted an artistic career – once. But she’d changed. Nothing excited her or moved her anymore; nothing gave her that swell in the guts that she used to get when she spied a piece of nature balanced well against its backdrop, or an old chair that needed just a splash of paint in a vintage shop, or the perfect colour of ochre in a pebble ... it was all gone. Graham had taken so much more than the boys when he’d left her.

  A movement in the corner of the yard caught her eye and she turned to see the empty swing, hanging from the boughs of the she-oak, swaying in the wind.

  She glared at it and turned away, redirecting her glare at the overgrown garden.

  The native flowers, oblivious to their owner’s despondency, gaily bobbed their heads in the brisk breeze from the south. The dietes lining the homestead’s baseboards were beginning to pop out their mini iris-like heads. The scarlet running postman wandered lazily across the path, while pink fairy orchids and blue periwinkles jostled happily together, ignoring the threat of the greedy agapanthus lurking behind.

  Jessica was proud of her drought-tolerant Australian garden, but even the most self-sufficient flora needed some TLC occasionally and, thanks to this rotten immobilising malaise, they had been neglected for too long.

  She looked down to the orchard. The bulbs around the fruit trees were on their last legs. She should pick the remaining few dozen blooms and take them to the General Store. There were enough for each of the tables. Maybe she could create a tall centerpiece for the entrance table from the cherry blossom branches. Or maybe not. It was too hard. It never used to be too hard. It used to be fun. There was lots in her life that used to be fun.

  What had she done wrong in the relationship? What could she have done better? Why didn’t Graham love her? Why did he have to take the boys away from her? Her heart resumed its familiar frenetic increase in pace and her breathing shortened. She shook her head and tried to snap out of it. It had been eight months. Why was she punishing herself with the same questions; the same interminable thought patterns, over and over; again and again? It didn’t help; it just made it worse. She breathed deeply, slowing down the panic.

  Shielding her eyes, she looked up at the sun. She had to get to her afternoon shift in about an hour. She had a tremendous manager at the General Store, Linda Dundas, so Jessica’s presence wasn’t crucial, and she didn’t have to be on time, but she liked spending time at the store, chatting with customers, maintaining the look of the place, and ensuring the gallery ran smoothly.

  She took a deep breath and attacked the garden beds; she pulled out weeds, evicted snails and wrestled with aggies using the physical toil as therapy to channel all her sadness and frustration.

  3

  The sweat dripped off Nick Johnson’s forehead and onto the parched earth. Catriona Bayard stood over him, hands on hips.

  ‘No, I think it’s a bit crooked. How about you twist it about thirty degrees?’

  Nick stood up slowly, easing the crick out of his back and stared at the lady of the manor. He was a patient bloke. He was tolerant and empathetic. But some of these tourists who came down to his township on the weekend were complete shockers.

  ‘I’ve ... umm ... already planted it,’ he explained. The mature crepe myrtle loomed above them.

  ‘Oh, I don’t mind if you have to dig it back up,’ Cat said with a flick of her hand. ‘But it must match the other one,’ she pointed to a second crepe myrtle on the other side of the driveway. ‘Let me know when you shift it – I’ll be down at the manège.’

  Nick glared at the generous jodhpur-clad bottom as it swayed off towards the dressage arena.

  Surely Cat wasn’t seriously expecting him to dig for another two hours just to twist the thing around? He stared at the crepe myrtle’s mate. It had long limbs reaching out eastwards while the new tree’s limbs reached northwards. Simple. Nick grabbed his shears and snipped the overgrown boughs off each tree and gave the foliage a clean-up until the two silent sentries were twins, impossible to tell apart.

  The bright late-morning sun filtered through the pencil-pines and dappled the mulch.

  Now he had time for more satisfying design pursuits. He worked his way down the exposed aggregate driveway towards the manor, where he tidied up the overgrown English-style garden. He pulled a few errant weeds from the rose garden and noted with pride that the savage pruning months earlier had resulted in a bounty of blooms.

  The daphne beneath the French windows was awash with buds and as he hacked it back from the path he grinned at the powerful fragrance that clouded the air. He cut some for Jess, hoping it would bring a smile to her face. She’d been so miserable since that bastard broke her bloody heart. God, what he wouldn’t give to smack that guy in the mouth sometime. The idea of it made Nick grin happily as he chose blooms for his friend.

  Once he’d amassed a sizable bunch he turned to survey the grounds. Nick was no trendy landscape designer, more a general hand, really, but he had long been popular with the holidaymakers who flooded into their rural properties over the warmer months. Apart from Cat Bayard’s occasional eccentricity, he enjoyed this job – and it was the only other regular gig he did now that he worked full-time at the Wainwrights’ Springforth Estate as Richard Wainwright’s farm manager. He’d taken the job on a few months ago, thrilled to be able to help Jessica manage her dad’s property. It gave him a chance to be there for her more and support her as much as he could as she dealt with the heartbreak of losing those boys. Nick smiled to himself again as he imagined their cheeky faces lit up with joy as they played hide-and-seek around the property with him and Jess.

  He’d been managing the farm unofficially for years anyway: as Jessica’s friend and advisor he’d been happy to help where he could. After all, they’d been friends since high school. They’d drifted apart for awhile in their twenties, which he knew was his fault, but things had been, well, difficult back then. Now they were as close as ever, and he loved it.

  ‘Oh, good, you did it,’ Cat said, waddling back an hour later draped in various pieces of riding tack. ‘See, it’s so much better facing the other direction, isn’t it?’

  ‘Absolutely, Cat, your suggestion was spot on,’ Nick said, managing to keep a straight face.

>   ‘Sorry I couldn’t be here to supervise, I had to see to Lady. She’s fussing with her new snaffle, the minx. Can you believe the farrier suggested an Uxeter Kimberwicke?’

  ‘Err, no, I, guess I can’t.’

  ‘Outrageous! Anyway, next time, Nick, I’d like to improve the ambience of the kitchen, so I’d like you to create a window in the rear hedge so we can enjoy a water view.’

  ‘Riiiight,’ Nick said. ‘I’ll see what I can do.’

  ‘And do you think we could grow some aubergines and courgettes in the vegie patch? Apparently they’re culinarily de rigueur. Not that I’d know,’ – she snorted a rather equine laugh – ‘I’m a hopeless cook! If it doesn’t come in a packet I wouldn’t have a clue! But in the country one really must do a kitchen garden à la Stephanie Alexander.’

  ‘Let me work on that for you,’ Nick said.

  ‘Brill, you’re a marvel,’ Cat brayed with pleasure, flashing her impressive teeth. ‘You mightn’t guess, but I don’t really have much of a green thumb, so you’re my absolute saviour.’

  ‘Really?’ Nick said, a smile playing at the corner of his mouth.

  ‘Yar, yar, absolutely. House plants take one look at me and run screaming to the compost heap in a suicide mission,’ she said and snorted happily.

  ‘Well, it’s a magnificent garden.’

  ‘As long as the horses are happy, that’s all that matters. Leave your invoice in the mud-room: I’ll have Freddy draw you a cheque. Which reminds me, must get those frozen Yorkshire puds in the oven,’ she said, and she tottered off to the stables.

  Nick threw his tools into the back of the truck. Cat was all right. They all were, really, these townies who used his hometown as a holiday village. Many of his local friends couldn’t stand the city folk. ‘Swanning in as if they owned the place,’ Mrs Carmody from the bookshop complained every weekend. It didn’t matter how many times Nick pointed out to Maude Carmody and her cronies that the city dwellers with their fancy holiday houses kept the village alive, they’d still grumble. ‘Real show ponies, the lot of ’em!’