She blinked and sniffed and then blinked again.
‘Fine then. Um…you have put something on that burn?’ She was under no illusions that Charlotte would kill her if it got infected.
‘I have at that,’ he told her. ‘It’s cleaned and it’s nicely antiseptic. So we can both go to bed with a clear conscience. Goodnight, Erin.’
‘Goodnight, Matt. And…thank you.’
And then, because she looked so rumpled and lost and forlorn he couldn’t help himself. He leaned forward and let his lips brush her forehead.
‘It was all my pleasure,’ he said softly. ‘Now stop thinking about twins and burns and belongings and worries. Think only about yourself for a change. Sleep!’
And she did.
There was simply no choice.
CHAPTER THREE
‘WHERE are we?’
Erin planned to wake the minute they woke, but she must have been too exhausted for her normal House Mother instincts to work. She’d propped open both bathroom doors so the twins could see her as soon as they opened their eyes, and now they landed on her bed in a tangle of legs and arms and astonishment.
‘Did the house really burn down? Did we really ride in a police car?’
That was easy.
‘It did and you did and you’re now at Mr McKay’s farm,’ she said, hugging them to her and hauling them in to lie under the covers. She was wearing an oversized T-shirt, and in their oddly assorted pyjamas they looked just as disreputable as she did. They were like something out of a charity bazaar, she thought and grinned to herself and hugged harder. She didn’t mind. They were safe.
‘The policeman won’t arrest us?’ It was Henry, ever the anxious one.
‘Now why would he arrest you?’
‘Because we made a bomb.’
‘But you’ve promised faithfully never to make another one,’ she said.
‘Mmm.’
She fixed Henry with a look. ‘You did promise.’
‘Yeah.’ He gave her a feeble smile. ‘Okay. We did.’
‘Then I think we might persuade him not to arrest you—this time.’
Apparently this was satisfactory. They snuggled down beside her and then snuggled some more.
But then William asked what was apparently super important in both their minds.
‘Erin, where’s Tigger?’
Oh dear. Erin thought back to the last she’d seen of the house. There seemed not one snowball’s chance in a bushfire that anything could have been saved. There was nothing to do but tell them the truth.
‘Guys, I’m afraid Tigger was burned.’
That silenced them completely. They lay, taking in the enormity of it, and then Henry sniffed.
One sniff was all he allowed himself, but Erin’s heart wrenched. Tigger had been given to the boys by one of their first foster families—a sort of sop-to-conscience-at-taking-them-back-to-the-orphanage gift—and they’d been so young they’d mixed him up with leaving their mother and their bothers and sisters. Tigger had become their only constant, a toy never fought over, never discussed, but simply there.
Apart from each other he was all they had—and now they’d lost him.
Erin knew enough to acknowledge he was irreplaceable. She thought of the impossibility of saying they’d find another Tigger, and she simply didn’t know what else to say.
She was saved by a knock. There was a light rap on the door and it opened to reveal Matt. Unlike Erin and the boys, Matt was fully dressed in his farmer’s moleskins and khaki shirt. A sticking plaster lay across the burn on his forehead, but otherwise he looked completely unscathed. He was bronzed, strong, capable and ready for the day’s work.
‘Good morning,’ he said gravely enough, but his deep brown eyes twinkled at the sight of the three in the bed. ‘That’s a single bed and you guys look squashed. Didn’t you find the other two? Is something the matter?’
‘We just came into Erin’s bed now—to keep her company,’ William said with dignity, casting a doubtful look at his twin. Henry was looking dangerously close to tears, and the twins’ code of conduct decreed it didn’t do to show emotion in front of strange adults.
They’d learned early to keep themselves to themselves.
But after one knowing look at Henry, Matt mercifully changed the subject, seeming not to notice the one errant tear sliding down Henry’s cheek. He chose the one subject that might make them think of something other than loss.
‘I’ve made pancakes and I thought you might like them in bed. How about it?’
‘Pancakes?’ William said, resolutely putting aside the vision of a burning Tigger. ‘I…I guess…’
They were very upset about something, Matt realised, but he could only go on from here.
‘I’ll bring in a tray, shall I?’
‘Yes, please.’ Erin was so grateful she could have hugged him. How had he guessed that the last thing they needed was a formal breakfast? ‘That’d be lovely.’
‘Coming right up.’ He left them to it, and Erin never knew what an effort it had been for him not to sit down and hug the lot of them.
It had cost to get them breakfast.
Matt had come in from the paddocks to find his weekly housekeeper, Mrs Gregory, hard at work. He had a cow in calf in the home paddock and, after a sleepless night, he’d decided he’d be happier checking on her than staring at the ceiling. His cow now safely delivered, he’d come in to find Mrs Gregory already sniffing lugubriously over the marks on the carpet.
‘Charlotte rang me,’ she said before he could say a word. ‘I knew how it’d be, so I decided it was my Christian duty to get here early. Those dratted children. You saved them, didn’t you? Why you had to offer to take them in…’
‘I guess it was my Christian duty,’ he told her and she didn’t even smile.
‘Hmmph. Those twins. And that mother of theirs. Oh, you don’t need to tell me a thing about that woman. The whole of Bay Beach knew her before she disappeared with the last of her string of men. If ever there was a no-good, two-timing—’
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