They had slipped into conversation so easily it was obvious Heather was starved of female company and ready for a chat, if not a good gossip. What struck Olivia as out of the ordinary was that Heather appeared to have taken to her on sight, when she knew scores of people who called her standoffish and a lot worse behind her back. It would have shocked them to know how shy she really was when the layers of cool polished veneer were stripped off. The trouble was, as the years went by she got better and better at playing cool. But it was all a facade. All the people who loved her knew that.
So apparently did Heather. And Bessie, her Good Samaritan. She hoped to see Bessie again.
Heather spoke gently. “You’ll be a good mother when the time comes. I take it you’re not married?” She had taken note of Olivia’s elegant ringless hands.
Olivia sighed. “It would be fantastic to meet the right man.”
“But you must have heaps of admirers.” Heather wasn’t trying to flatter. She thought her visitor very beautiful and refined. Also, her upper-class English voice fell entrancingly on the ear. Heather was impressed.
“Bella is the one with the admirers.” Olivia’s smile held pride and affection. “She’s very quirky. Funny as well as being stunningly beautiful. I missed out on the quirkiness. I tend to keep a much lower profile. Bella is very much at ease with herself. I’m a bit on the bland side, I’m afraid.”
“Nothing wrong with that,” said Heather, thinking her visitor anything but bland. Obviously the sister had a strong sense of her own beauty, whereas Olivia, for some unfathomable reason, did not. “Anyway, outback life instead of big-city life is guaranteed to bring anyone out of their shell. I know you’re going to love Kalla Koori. It’s one of the outback’s great showplaces.”
Of course it was, as befitting outback royalty.
“I’m looking forward to staying there.”
Heather leaned forward confidentially. “Just between you, me and the gatepost, which incidentally is a good few miles away, I should tell you Marigole still likes to pop in from time to time. Unannounced. As you don’t know her and you’ll be staying on the station, I feel a little word of warning mightn’t go astray. Marigole is very territorial, divorced or not. We’re all convinced she wants him back.”
“Really?” It wasn’t the discreet thing to do but Olivia decided to follow up Heather’s lead. Listening carefully, one always learned something interesting, or potentially useful. Just think of the journalist who had spilt the beans on her family. “How did they come to split up in the first place?” She knew her questioning Heather wasn’t the done thing but she really wanted to know. McAlpine wasn’t about to tell her a thing.
Heather leaned in. “Marigole put it about she was totally fed up with the lifestyle, the fact Clint was never there for her when goodness knows he has a huge job on his hands, but it was the other way around, I be thinking. You know they have a daughter?”
Olivia nodded and waited for Heather to continue.
“Georgina. Used to be a little honey but the divorce upset her terribly plus puberty hit her hard, as they say. Marigole pretty well abandoned her when this new guy came along. Lucas something, a merchant banker. Last year Clint’s aunt Buffy acted as his hostess and did a marvellous job of it but sadly her health has declined of recent times. It was a terrible grief and shock to her—to us all—when Mr McAlpine was killed. Lady Venetia—that’s Buffy—lost her brother and Clint lost his father.”
Olivia of the tender heart bowed her head. She had learned from her own father that Kyle McAlpine had been killed in a freak accident on a mining site. Clint McAlpine’s mother lived in Melbourne; one sister, Alison, had married a wealthy American business man and lived in New York. The other sister, Catriona, was a lawyer in London. Something to do with international law. She thought she had that right.
“Remember that character Joan Collins used to play on Dynasty?” Heather asked.
“I know of Joan Collins, of course. A beautiful ageless woman, but the series was before my time.”
“You should catch the reruns,” Heather advised. “Joan played a marvellous bitch, Alexis, the divorced wife, but I have to tell you, Marigole could give her lessons.”
Confidences were abruptly cut short.
“Hell, it’s Clint!” Heather turned in her chair so her eye was on the front door. “Not a word of this to him, love.”
“Goodness, no!” Olivia was aghast. “Mum’s the word.”
“It’s really not like me to gossip, especially not about the boss, but I spotted you for an innocent right off.” Heather hastily demolished what was left of her raisin cake. “In my experience—and I used to be a nurse for the Flying Doctors Service—a timely warning never goes astray.” She spoke as though her confidences were strategic manoeuvres Olivia should have at the ready. “As soon as Marigole hears you’re on Kalla Koori, she’ll descend like a bat out of hell.”
Olivia, blessed and sometimes cursed with a highly visual imagination, half covered her face. She had visions of a Caribbean fruit bat sinking its teeth into her like a ripe mango.
CHAPTER THREE
FROM the air she looked down on a great many deep pools of water that glittered an unearthly blue-green. Crocodile lagoons, she wondered with a shudder. Prehistoric monsters existing in such beauty. In the distance to either side were more pools of emerald green and a long winding river that cut through fiery low ridges and endless giant fingers of sand dunes.
A jagged cliff with sheer rock walls that glowed a range of dry ochres—pinks, reds, yellows, creams and blacks, with deep purple slashed into the narrow ravines—served as the most dramatic backdrop possible for Kalla Koori’s massive homestead. She had been expecting colonial architecture and the quintessential verandas. This was something completely different. More in keeping with a desert environment with a touch of Morocco. The house from the air had an endless expanse of roof line with a central two-maybe three-storey tower. It stood in the very centre of what looked like a fortified desert village.
Here at last was the McAlpine stronghold.
Presumably in times of torrential cyclones McAlpine could offer shelter to the entire population of Darwin beneath the homestead roof, Olivia thought, her breath taken by the spectacle beneath her. The base of the stand-alone cliff appeared to be in permanent shadow. It was marked by a border of lush green where water must gather and never entirely dry out. All else was a million square miles of uninhabited desert—a beautiful, savage place unlike anything she had ever seen. She could well imagine the most superbly engineered four-wheel drives sinking into the bottomless red shifting sands, never to be seen again. There was a great deal to be feared about this environment.
But goodness! One could well find passion and romance here.
Astounded by her flight of fancy, she endeavoured to get a grip even though her pulses were jumping wildly. It had to be one of her increasingly mad moments, or alternatively it could be taken as an indicator she had at long last become aware life was shooting by like a falling star. That’s what came of having to play the archetypal earth mother to her siblings. She was starting to imagine herself as a woman standing at the edge of a cliff like the one that towered beneath them. Either she could totter for ever as she had done all her life or take a spectacular dive. Truth be told, she was sick to death of being sensible. Bella was never sensible. Indeed a lot of her escapades had been hare-brained, but at least Bella had fun.
McAlpine landed the helicopter to the right of a giant hangar at least a mile away from the home compound. The interior looked as though it could well hold a fleet of Airbuses. The station insignia—Kalla Koori—was emblazoned in chrome yellow and cobalt blue on the roof. The Australian flag that stood on a tall pole nearby only moments before hanging limp suddenly whipped to attention,