Ursula called out, ‘Would it hold me? Reckon I’d bring the supports of the roof down if I got going in it!’ Some of the women struggled to stifle their giggles.
‘It takes up to one-twenty kilos,’ Tracey said.
‘That means I’d need a bloody small bloke,’ Ursula said.
‘You could grab one of those new jockeys from up the road to give it a go,’ Gabs suggested. ‘Come to think of it, if you weren’t in it, you could fit three jockeys in there. They’re only about forty kilos each, aren’t they?’
The women all laughed. Jockeys had been the focus of jokes lately since the sale of Rivermont. It was the district’s second largest farm after Rebecca’s Waters Meeting and a bit more sizeable than Janine’s husband’s Elvern Estate, and had in the past twelve months sold for three million. The new owners, who wanted to expand their racing operation from Scone, had dived in and proceeded to give the entire property and homestead a facelift and transformation that was beyond belief. Within months it had been cultivated into a premier racing training and breeding facility that would rival the Packers’ polo place.
It wasn’t the only change the locals were dealing with. The previous summer the road from Bendoorin had been sealed right up through the valley so that rich sightseers wanting an easy glimpse of the summertime snow country could now drive their BMWs and Mercedes Benzes through the valley comfortably. There were also mutterings that the mining companies were sniffing about for new leases.
In short, Bendoorin was experiencing a renaissance. So much so that Candice’s daughter Larissa had opened a coffee shop that served flat whites and chai lattes to the Rivermont staff, new tourist trade and mining men.
Transition and change were in the air and, even though there were employment benefits (and sexy visiting tradesmen for the women to ogle), most of the locals didn’t like it. Particularly Rebecca. Her quiet backwater farm of peace and solitude had now become a thoroughfare for ski-bunnies, bushwalkers and weekend tourists looking to escape the city during holiday periods, along with four-wheel drives packed with workwear-clad men carting geo-equipment and core sample drilling rigs. And the conversion of Rivermont to a place frequented by pukka big-money corporates and the best racehorses on the planet was just another pain in her arse.
Absolute tossers could now be found at Candy’s store, asking for organic sourdough bread and low-fat soy milk for their coffees. And there was often a rowdy queue at the counter when the playful Rivermont staff zoomed into town in their sign-painted work vehicles and bought up all the sausages and steak from the meat section for their pissy barbecues, leaving none for the locals.
‘Bugger the Rivermont jockeys and the snobby bastards there,’ Ursula said. ‘I’m sick of their bloody helicopter flying over and upsetting me pigs!’
‘Hear, hear,’ said Rebecca, raising her empty glass.
Just as the other women joined them in a toast, in walked a stunning woman, dressed in skinny jeans and knee-high leather boots. A classy blonde pony tail pulled back from her clear vibrant face meant it was difficult to tell her age. She could have been in her late twenties or early thirties. Or she could have been a well-preserved forty. Rebecca looked at her with a tinge of regret. It was how she wanted to look. How she suspected she had looked before life had got in her way.
‘Sorry I’m late,’ the woman said to Doreen, glancing around the room.
‘No problems, duck. We’ve only just started. Everyone, this here’s Yasmine Stanton. From Rivermont.’
The ladies eyed her more thoroughly.
‘Yazzie, for short,’ she said with a big perfect-toothed princess smile. ‘Everyone calls me Yazzie.’
‘Jazzie Yazzie,’ Bec heard Ursula mutter, knowing news of the presence of the leggy blonde in the area had already spread like wildfire among the Bendoorin men. ‘More like fucken Barbie.’
If the woman had heard Ursula’s comments, she didn’t react. She just beamed a smile and graciously accepted a shooter from Doreen, downing it and eagerly grabbing up a second.
An hour later Doreen had Tom Jones blaring from the stereo. Some of the women were gyrating on the specially bought red shag-pile rug. Gabs’s terriers, who had now been allowed into the house, were up for some fun too, trying in vain to hump the rug and the leg of anyone who would stand still for long enough. Amanda Arnott was attempting to slide down the half-metre banister on the small stairs that led to the bedrooms and bathroom, getting her bum-crack wedged on the turned wooden knob each and every time before pivoting onto the floor onto her back, snorting laughter. Candice was peeking through Speedo’s cage, trying to feed the disgruntled budgie her hand-made ‘cheese dicks’.
Bec, who sat at the smorgasbord of sex toys, tried again to focus on her order form and ignore the chaos about her. What on earth should I get? she wondered, flicking through the catalogue, muddled by the rum. She decided to switch to water for the rest of the evening. What would Charlie like? He never even talked to her much about sex these days. It was as if he had shut down from it. It shocked her to realise she no longer knew what her husband liked. As her pen hovered over the order form, she heard a voice beside her. ‘Hi, I’m Yazzie.’
Rebecca looked up. ‘Rebecca.’
‘From Waters Meeting?’
‘Yep, the one and the same.’
‘I had so hoped to meet you!’ Yazzie said brightly. ‘My father isn’t so good at getting out to meet the neighbours. He’s never here, and I fear we’ve made a terrible racket getting the place built.’
‘It has been a bit of a whirlwind,’ Bec said a little coldly, thinking back to the times when she and Charlie had been furious at the way the workmen drove huge trucks around the middle of the blind corners of the tight-turned mountain roads, and about the chopper unsettling the calving cows and lambing ewes as the rich Stanton man from the city built his Taj Mahal of racing in their once quiet valley.
But Yazzie seemed not to notice Rebecca’s coolness towards her, or, if she did, she was ignoring it. ‘What are you getting?’ she asked with the same pretty smile as before.
‘I really don’t know. Not sure if I need any of this stuff; plus what if my boys found my stash of sex toys?’
‘Just tell them they’re part of Mummy’s lightsaber collection,’ Yazzie said.
Bec laughed. ‘You’re right.’
‘Here, allow me,’ Yazzie said, taking the pen and the order form from her. ‘I’ll choose and I’ll pay. Think of it as an apology gift. I know what a balls-up my father creates in people’s lives. Trust me.’
‘No, really. No. That’s too much,’ Bec said, reaching for the form.
Yazzie pulled it away from her. ‘Please. I insist.’
Bec watched, amazed, as Yazzie sat down in the chair next to her. ‘You’re giving me sex toys? As an apology gift?’
‘Why not? And the policewoman’s uniform. You and I can go riding in them. That would be a hoot. I’m assuming you do ride, don’t you?’
Bec nodded. ‘When I can.’ But truthfully she couldn’t remember the last time she’d been on Ink Jet, her horse, who was so old now Bec felt guilty even
