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actors (even Hugh Jackman). Yet
she
ended up being blamed for it, as his producer, and her photo was splashed all over the papers and the internet. My poor Victoria. It’s been awful, especially because she’s now unemployed while the whole thing has somehow done wonders for his career. I’ll never understand how the media works. I just hope that any relationship is over now they’re not working together.
    I’d never tell her this, but I really wish she would come back to South Australia permanently, maybe even get a job back in her old radio station up here. She’s a country girl deep down. I’ve never thought big-city life was for her. I actually thought that of all the children, she would be the one who would take over from Nick. She was always out working on the station with him, asking him questions, learning about the stock, the equipment. She was his shadow, even talking about going to do an agriculture course at university after she’d finished her journalism degree. But when she and Fred Lawson broke up (the oldest son of one of our neighbours – they went out with each other for four years, until Fred went overseas), she seemed to lose heart and interest in running Errigal. Then Genevieve talked her into applying for the cadetship at the radio station in Port Pirie, and that was that. Before we knew it she was a radio producer on a big show in Sydney. And look where that’s left her now: unemployed and publicly humiliated, all alone there. I hate to think of her like that.
    There was no stopping Angela now.
    As for
Lindy:
My poor Lindy. She’s already back here on the station, after her latest attempt at independence in Melbourne landed her in a bit of a mess. A bit of a debt-ridden mess. A lot of a debt-ridden mess, if I’m being totally honest. I really hoped she’d found her career niche with her online crafts website. She’s tried so many jobs over the years since she finished her arts degree – nursing assistant, child care, landscape gardening, secretarial work. This crafts website seemed to combine two others from her CV – her brief foray into IT work and her summer job in a fabric store. It sounded like such a good idea too, making personalised cushions for people to mark special occasions. And of course Nick and I agreed to lend her the seed money. And perhaps it did make sense for her to put in a bulk order for her cushion material. But sixteen crates of it? From dubious suppliers in China? Delivered to her tiny flat in Melbourne? The first we knew about it was when she rang in floods of tears begging for help. Thank heavens Nick knew a local truck driver who was happy to pick up not just the crates but also Lindy and her belongings. She arrived a month ago and she’s been crying pretty much since. But I know there’s more to her problems than a loss of face, bad debt and an over-supply of cushion stuffing. I’m waiting for her to tell me she’s pregnant. Or a drug addict. Or a pregnant drug addict. All or any of which would be fine, it really would. We’d deal with it, somehow. But we can’t start fixing it if we don’t know what the problem is, can we? And in the meantime, she won’t leave the station, not even to go into Hawker or to visit any of our neighbours. She spends most days following me around, talking or crying. Talking and crying. Was she always so needy? Or such a drama queen?
    Angela stopped for a moment to catch her breath. A moment was all she needed.
    As for
Ig:
My darling Ignatius. I love my little Ig very much. Which is why I can say with certainty that he has turned into a very weird little boy. It’s not just his long hair. Or the stubbornness. Or the running away from boarding school in Adelaide, three times in the last term alone. He’s started talking to himself again. Not to ‘himself’, unfortunately. He’s back talking to Robbie, his imaginary friend. When it first happened a few years ago, I decided to ignore it, and sure enough, it stopped, but