Time Will Tell (20 page)

‘And yourself. It'll all work out, somehow, sometime.'

‘As in: “It won't happen overnight but it will happen”?' Emily said, raising her eyebrows at her friend.

‘Something like that. So, how was it having Jake stay without Elizabeth?' Barbara asked, abruptly changing the subject, as she topped up their drinks.

‘Good. He really is such nice, easy company.'

‘Any idea when he's coming back?'

‘No, I think he's pretty busy.'

‘You sound disappointed.'

‘I am a little, to be honest. I don't know why,' she said with a dismissive wave of her hand. She gazed back over at the steel structure. ‘It was nice to talk to someone who lives an interesting, different sort of life,' she said wistfully. ‘Someone who doesn't just see me as John Stratten's ex.'

‘So what did you talk about?'

‘The house mainly – he's got some great ideas. If only I had the money. Jake reckons it would make a perfect B&B.'

‘I agree – and you'd be a great host.'

Emily turned quickly to look at her friend. ‘Do you mean that, Barb? Seriously?'

‘Of course. You're warm and friendly and welcoming. You love to cook and you're good at it – you could run jam-making classes to entertain visitors.'

Emily chuckled. ‘That's what Jake said.'

‘It'd be a good drawcard. I can just picture it; city people coming for weekend cooking getaways. Sort of like the Thai cooking schools that have become so popular. Yours could be The Authentic Country Cooking School,' Barbara said, now with her hands stretched out high above her as if holding up a banner.

‘Yes, well, I don't know why I'm getting all worked up about it, it's not like I've got the money to do anything.'

‘You've got the diamonds.'

‘I wish I hadn't found them. I can't do anything with them.'

‘Why not? You were clearly meant to find them when you did. And the timing was pretty spooky – right when the offer of the house appeared. You can't just dismiss them.'

‘If, as you say, I was meant to put them up for collateral or something, wouldn't this
universe
you're always going on about have me feeling better about it all?'

‘Fortune favours the brave, Emily.'

‘It's not brave, it's disloyal.'

‘Emily, I'm sure your gran would admire your sentimentality, but I think she'd prefer you to be happy – certainly not freaking out about money all the time.'

‘I just can't, all right? Please don't let's fight over this, Barbara.'

‘Okay. Fair enough.' Barbara backed off.

‘God, I wish I had your optimism.'

‘Just takes practice – and a few things going right. Don't forget I was raised by a mother who taught me I could be anything I wanted to be.'

‘Hmm, lucky you.'

‘Though, really, what difference did it make? Here I am, just a farmer's housewife,' Barbara said with a shrug. ‘A pretty happy one, granted, but a housewife nonetheless. Not much ambition here, I'm afraid, but I'm fine with that. And so is my mother, for the record,' she added with a wry smile.

‘You're lucky. Why do you think people have kids if they don't want them to be happy?'

‘Perhaps to shine a light away from their own inadequacies, to compensate for some kind of loneliness inside them, or maybe to try and rewrite their own lives to be better.' Barbara shrugged. ‘Any number of reasons.'

‘Do you and David want kids?'

‘We've actually been trying since we got married. I guess it will happen when and if it's meant to,' Barbara said with another shrug. Emily thought she saw her friend's features cloud slightly and wondered if she wasn't as nonchalant as a moment ago. But she couldn't be sure she hadn't imagined it.

‘I think you'd be a great mother.'

‘Thanks. You would too, you know.'

Emily didn't know what to say. Instead she changed the subject. ‘Gosh. I'm full; I've been stuffing my face with your gorgeous sandwiches and not even thinking how many I've had.'

She lay back on the blanket and stared up at the cobalt-blue sky and the fluffy clouds skipping across it. She hoped that one day she'd be as happy and content as Barbara seemed to be.

‘I keep dreaming about Jake,' Emily said suddenly, breaking a lengthy silence.

‘Erotic dreams?'

Emily detected Barbara's broad grin distorting the question, and reached out and playfully slapped her arm.

‘No, but we're together, at some sort of function. I've had the same dream – well, variations of it – three times now.'

‘It must be going to come true then,' Barbara said with a laugh. ‘What's it about?'

‘I'm not really sure. I can't tell where we are, but we're all dressed up. Pretty vague, I know. But every time we've been in the same outfits. I'm wearing a smoky blue-grey wraparound shirt and black pants and he's in a dark grey pinstripe suit with a tie that matches my top. And does he look gorgeous in a suit…' Her voice trailed off as she thought about how he'd looked in her dream and how he'd felt kissing her cheek and hair the other morning when he'd left.

‘Someone sounds a bit smitten.'

‘Hmm. It's bound to end in tears. He's probably got a string of women hanging off him in Melbourne – my cousin Elizabeth for one. Beautiful, sophisticated city women…'

‘He's not with Elizabeth,' Barbara said. ‘Actually, he's not with anyone,' she added quietly.

‘Really?' Emily said, propping herself up on her elbow. ‘How do you know?'

‘He told David the other day when they were off taking photos in the scrub.'

‘And…?'

‘Sorry, that's it. David said he tried to quiz him, but he clammed up.'

‘Hiding something?'

‘No, David thinks he's just a private sort of person.'

‘Yeah, he is quite quiet about most things except architecture and photography. I love how he's so passionate, but without being arrogant. I just wish he didn't live so far away – I could see us being really good friends.'

‘You'd be more than friends.'

‘Maybe, probably, in time.'

Mere days ago, Emily would have added that right now another relationship was the last thing she needed, but she was no longer feeling that so strongly. It was as though her grief over the separation had begun to ease with John's death. She was still cautious about getting involved again, but something had changed. It felt almost like she'd been vindicated for her decision to leave her marriage.

‘If it's meant to be, it'll be.' They both said the words at exactly the same time and then chuckled at their synchronicity. Emily smiled at hearing one of Gran's well-used quotes come out of Barbara's mouth.

‘Come on, let's get back to it. The sooner we start, the sooner we finish.'

Chapter Twenty-two

The last room to be cleaned was John's office. Emily hadn't gone in there earlier because she assumed the window was still nailed shut as it had apparently been since before John had moved in. Now she stood in the doorway, shaking her head at the scene before her.

There were piles of paper on every available flat surface – the spare double bed, desk, swivel chair, and the two grey filing cabinets.

Loose pages were scattered like crazy paving across the multi-brown swirling pattern of the 1950s carpet.

‘Bloody hell.' Barbara said, appearing beside Emily in the doorway and peering over her shoulder.

‘I've been standing here for five minutes trying to figure out where to start.'

‘So if all the papers are out here, what's in the filing cabinets? Surely he can't have had enough paperwork to fill them as well.'

‘They're probably almost empty. I set up a filing system with labels and everything when I first moved in, but I wasn't allowed to actually file anything. John never let me touch his papers – he said they were private.'

‘What a mess. How the hell did he do his tax returns and GST Business Activity Statements?'

‘Bundled everything up, stuck it in a box, and sent it off to the accountant's poor office drudge to deal with.'

‘Would have cost him a fortune.'

‘Probably.'

‘Now there must be some sort of system here in all this chaos,' Barbara said, stepping around Emily and into the room. ‘Let's start with the desk. A lot of it seems to be in piles, which suggests at least some form of collation.'

‘Hmm.'

‘Ah, this looks like bills to be paid,' Barbara said, picking up a pile and flicking through it.

‘Do I bundle them up for Thora and Gerald to pay? Oh shit, I can't do that; they think we were still together. I suppose that means they're my responsibility. Jesus.' She put out her hand to Barbara, who handed them over with a grimace.

‘Maybe you can wait until after you've told them. When things have calmed down a bit.'

Sure. Hi Thora, forgot to tell you that John and I had separated before he died. And by the way, he left a few bills for you to pay.

‘Bloody hell!' Emily said when she saw the figure on the first invoice. She sat down on the bed on top of another pile of papers and went through every page.

‘There's tens of thousands' worth here. And some of them are on final notice,' she said. ‘How could he have let things get this bad?' Again the question of whether John's death had been an accident flickered in her mind. ‘I'll just have to pay them, I suppose – and quickly by the looks of it.' Emily frowned.
How am I going to pay them when I'm not a signatory to his accounts? Hmm, tricky.

She remembered how humiliated she'd been the day she'd gone into the bank to change her address details on her personal accounts. The teller had informed her – in front of half a dozen waiting customers – that John had cut off her access to their joint accounts. She'd wanted the ground to open up and swallow her, and had been too ashamed to set foot in the place since.

But it looked like she probably would at least have to go in and discuss all this with someone in there. And she wondered how sympathetic Nathan Lucas would be.
Oh God, can it get any worse?

Emily checked her watch and was surprised to find it was already a quarter to three. They had to get to the post office by five. She looked back to the task before her and felt overwhelmed.

‘Perhaps I should go through all this paperwork on my own – it might take days,' Emily said.

‘I'm not leaving you to do it on your own. We either start now, or come back tomorrow. Personally I'd rather knock it over now, but it's entirely up to you,' Barbara said.

‘Thanks Barb, I really appreciate your help, but I just can't see where to start and my brain feels completely fried. To be honest, I'd forgotten there was even an office to go through. If I'd known it was going to be this bad I never would have agreed to do it.'

‘Well, let's at least have a quick look and get an idea of how much there really is to do. If he's kept absolutely everything, it might be a matter of just chucking most of it out,' Barbara said. She sat down at the desk and pulled some blank paper from the stash in the ink jet printer. Next she began rifling through the desk drawers.

Emily looked around at the work ahead of them.
I guess I'll have to get everything together for his final tax return as well.

‘I reckon stack the papers, keeping them in their bundles, so we have some space to work with. I'll do some labels to make sorting easier. Doesn't he have any bloody marker pens?!' With a loud bang, Barbara shut the first of the three drawers at the side of the old pedestal desk and opened the next one down.

‘He did have, because I bought them – they probably ended up in the shed.' Emily sat down on the bed and began gathering the various piles and laying them on top of each other in a criss-cross pattern.

‘That's better,' she said when she'd finished and the bed was tidy except for one thick stack of papers. It was amazing how much more doable things could seem by just starting with one simple task. ‘Did you find a marker?'

She waited a few moments.

‘Barb?'

‘Huh?'

‘The marker pen; for writing the labels – did you find one?'

‘No, but I found this,' Barbara said. She swivelled the office chair around to face Emily. She held out a stapled, crisp unfolded wad of paper and a business envelope.

Emily accepted the items with a frown.

‘It was already open,' Barbara added.

‘What is it?'

‘You'll see.' Barbara swivelled back to face the desk and continued going through the drawer.

Emily stared at the typing on the envelope: LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT OF JOHN EDWARD STRATTEN.

She remembered the day they'd visited the Strattens' family solicitors in Adelaide on the way back from their honeymoon on Great Keppel Island. They had made the wills deliberately simple. Neither document listed any items, just a general statement that everything was to be left to the other person. But that was over three and a half years ago. So much had changed since then.

When she had walked away from her marriage, changing her will had been the last thing on Emily's mind. Of course it had to happen sooner or later, but there were many more pressing things to deal with: like finding somewhere to live.

Was this
really
John's last will and testament? And why was it out of its envelope?

When they had arrived home, John had put both wills in the desk drawer, sealed. She had promptly forgotten all about them.

Again the circumstances of his death niggled at Emily. Could it have been suicide? She tried to force the question aside. There was no point wondering, because it could never be proven. As Barbara had said, if the police – or attending CFS or SES or anyone else – suspected anything, something would have been said and the whole town would be talking about it.
So stop it, Emily, you're just being melodramatic!