The kids were undressed to their knickers now. ‘The quickest way to warm is to shower and we’ll do it in relays,’ Pippa was saying. She motioned to a door at the end of the veranda. ‘That’s the bathroom. The kids can shower first. Then me. I’m sorry, Mr de Gautier, but in this instance it needs to be visitors last. Stay here until I call. We’ll be as quick as we can.’
‘What about Dolores?’
‘She can go through to the kitchen if she wants,’ Pippa said, holding the door open for the dog. ‘Though if you really want I guess she could shower with you.’ She smiled again, a lovely, laughing smile that made these bleak surroundings seem suddenly brighter. ‘Bathing Dolores usually takes a small army, but thanks for offering. Good luck.’
He didn’t shower with the dog. Dolores disappeared as soon as the kids did, leaving Max to wait alone on the veranda. Maybe Dolores had a warm kennel somewhere, Max thought enviously as the wind blasted its way through his wet clothes. Wasn’t Australia supposed to be warm?
Luckily the kids and Pippa were faster than he expected. Pippa reappeared within five minutes, dressed in a pink bathrobe with her hair tied up in a tattered green towel. She tossed him a towel that wasn’t quite as frayed as the one he’d used for Dolores.
‘I assume you have dry clothes in your bag,’ she said and he nodded.
‘Lucky you,’ she said. ‘Everything here is wet. It’s been raining for days. Shower’s through there. Enjoy.’
Everything here was wet? Didn’t she have a dryer? He thought about that while standing under the vast rose shower hanging over the claw-foot bath in the ancient bathroom. Everything he’d seen so far spoke of poverty. Surely Marc-and the girls?-were well provided for?
Alice, Gianetta’s mother, had cut off all ties to her family back in Europe. ‘She married well,’ he’d been told. ‘Into the Australian squattocracy.’ But then, that had been his father speaking, and his father treated the truth with disdain.
Up until now Max hadn’t been interested to find the truth for himself, but if these children’s maternal grandmother had married into money there was nothing to show for it now.
There were questions everywhere. He showered long enough to warm up; he dried; he foraged in his holdall and dressed in chinos and an oversized sweater that he’d almost not packed because Australia was supposed to be warm. Then he set out to find them.
The bathroom led to what looked like a utility room. A door on the far side of the utility room led somewhere else, and he could hear children’s voices close by. He pushed it with caution and found himself in the farmhouse kitchen. Here they were, the children in dressing gowns and slippers and Pippa in jeans and another windcheater. The cuffs of her windcheater looked damp, he thought. What had she said? Everything was wet? Where the hell was a dryer? Or a fire of some sort?
The kitchen was freezing.
Pippa and the kids were seated at the table, with steaming mugs before them. Dolores was under the table, lying on a towel.
‘Get yourself warm on the inside as well as the outside before we send you off as hunter gatherer,’ Pippa said, and she smiled. It was a great smile, he thought, astonishing himself with the intensity of his reaction. In her ancient windcheater and jeans she looked barely older than the kids. The oversized windcheater made her look flat-chested and insignificant. But still it was a killer of a smile. Something inside him reacted when she smiled.
That was a crazy thing to think right now. He needed to figure things out. Too many kids for a start. And this place…Despite the shower and his thick sweater he felt himself starting to shiver. The temperature was as low as outside. Which was pretty low.
‘Hot chocolate?’ Pippa offered. She was using a small electric cooker top. Beside the cooker top was a much larger stove. AnAga.
They had an Aga and didn’t have it lit?
‘We don’t have wood,’ she said, seeing what he was looking at and guessing what he was thinking.
‘I know. Marc mentioned it earlier. Why not?’
‘Pippa hurt her back,’ Marc volunteered. ‘So she can’t chop wood. There’s a dead tree in the far paddock and Pippa cuts it up when we run out but she can’t cut any more until her back gets better.’
‘What happened to your back?’
‘She fell off the roof,’ Marc said, sounding severe for his eight years. ‘Trying to nail roofing iron back on. I told her she’d fall off and she did.’
‘I didn’t have much choice,’ Pippa said with a trace of defiance. She was talking to Marc as she’d talk to an adult. ‘If I hadn’t we’d be in water up to our necks right now.’
‘It was scary,’ Sophie-was Sophie the red ribbons?-informed Max. ‘It was really, really windy. Marc was yelling at her to come down.’
‘And then some roof came off and she fell,’ Claire added, relishing an exciting story. ‘Sophie screamed but I didn’t and Pippa grabbed the edge of the roof and hung on. And she cut her hand and it bled and we had to put a bandage onto it.’
‘I told her not to do it,’ Marc muttered darkly.
What was going on here? Guardian and kids, or four kids?
‘I won’t do it again,’ Pippa told Marc, reaching out to ruffle his dark hair. ‘It’s fixed.’ He looked over to Max. ‘How are you related to the kids?’
‘I believe Marc’s grandmother, Alice, was my aunt.’
‘I remember GrandmaAlice.’ Marc nodded. ‘She died just before Mama and Daddy were killed and we were really sad. She said we had royal cousins, but she said they were a bad lot.’ He thought about it and drank some of his chocolate. ‘I don’t know what a bad lot is.’
‘I hope I’m not a bad lot.’
‘But you’re royal. Like a king or something.’
‘I’m on the same side of the family as you.’
‘Not on the bad lot side?’
‘No.’
The girls-and Pippa-were listening to this interchange with various levels of interest. Now Sophie felt the need to interrupt.
‘I’m really very hungry,’ she said soulfully-martyr about to die a stoic death-and Pippa handed Max his hot chocolate, glanced at Claire who’d gone quiet and made a decision.
‘Um…can the family-tree thing wait? If you really are family…Actually we are in a bit of trouble,’ she confessed. ‘We don’t have anything to eat.’
‘Nothing?’
‘Toast. But no butter. And no jam.’
‘You believe in putting off shopping to the last minute.’
‘We tried to put it off ’ til the rain stopped. But it didn’t.’
‘I see.’ Though he didn’t see.
‘Could you really go into town and pick up a few supplies?’
‘Of course. You could come with me if you like.’
‘All of us?’ Pippa asked.
He did a quick head count. Maybe…
‘Including Dolores.’
He looked down at Dolores-a great brown dog, gently steaming and wafting wet dog smell through the kitchen.
‘Maybe I’m fine by myself,’ Max said.
She chuckled, a nice chuckle that might have had the capacity to warm the kitchen if it wasn’t so appallingly cold. Then she eyed him appraisingly. ‘You’ll get wet again, walking back to your car. That’s not exactly wet-weather gear.’
‘Lend him Daddy’s milking gear,’ Marc piped up. ‘He’s bigger than Daddy but he might fit.’
‘He can wear Daddy’s gumboots,’ Sophie offered.
‘Gumboots?’
‘That’s Australian for wellingtons,’ Pippa said.
‘He needs an umbrella,’ Claire added. Like all of them she’d been staring at Max with caution, but she’d obviously reached a decision. ‘He can use my doggy umbrella.’ She fetched it from near the back door, opened it and twirled it for inspection. Pale pink, it had a picture of an appealing puppy on every panel. ‘You’ll look after it,’ she said, as one conferring a huge level of trust.