LITMIR.BIZ

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at every turn. She had everything going for her and she blew it! What an idiot! The word had become an alternative to fool. Her mother had ended most sentences with one or the other.

      The handsome and popular Nat was the scion of media mogul Richard Saunders, a close friend and partner in various enterprises—probably dodgy—of her stepfather Carl Brandt. Of course she lost her budding career. A swift retribution that did nothing to raise her spirits. Over the past year she’d swum into the limelight as a popular character in the award winning TV police drama Shadows. Two weeks ago she had met with a very bloody end. A shoot-out. Officer down. It had blitzed the ratings and caused a storm of protests from her fans—she never knew she had so many—but she wasn’t going to be allowed to get away with shaming two outstandingly rich families.

      Her mother had given her hell, like it was her main aim in life to make Bronte’s existence intolerable.

      “How can any of us hold up our heads?” Miranda had exploded. “After all Carl has done for you, you ungrateful little fool!”

      What exactly had Carl done for her? He hadn’t adopted her. Her own father had left her enough money to cover her education through university, pay for her upkeep and her clothes. Her mother still beautiful and sexy at forty-five—never mind she had celebrated that birthday twice already—had not been her first husband’s beneficiary. Bronte had been that, her inheritance administered by her late father’s lawyer as executor of his will. Apparently Ross McAllister hadn’t trusted his wife to do that. Bronte found out years later her father had changed his will on the very day of his death. Her mother had got away with the family home, all the contents and her cache of jewellery, a veritable Aladdin’s Cave, otherwise she’d been cut out entirely. There was a story there, with in all probability grave implications, but nothing could bring her father back. She had loved him so much! She could still feel his hand patting the top of her head.

      Her remarried mother sided with her new husband on everything. Perhaps she had no alternative? Bronte understood it was easier on her mother that way. Carl Brandt was a big shouldered, imposing looking man with heavy lidded, obsidian eyes and a very loud voice. No one would ever have to ask her stepfather to repeat himself. Yet for reasons totally beyond Bronte, her stepfather was positively magnetic to women who liked a touch of the brute. On the proviso, of course, he was powerful and had lots of money. Even age didn’t seem to come into it. Such men retained their attractions at over ninety unlike women who some believed started the downhill slide once they hit thirty.

      Her mother had always been attracted to money and power. Never mind that Carl Brandt was a tyrant, with a tongue like a chain saw. Bronte’s own gentlemanly father had doted on her but he had been taken from her when she was only seven. Killed when his high powered sports car crashed into a tree. Her mother thereafter maintained Ross McAllister was a reckless driver with a thirst for speed. An opinion rejected by his many friends.

      Bronte’s life had changed dramatically after that. Her mother had acted deranged for a couple of days, a tragic figure on the verge of a breakdown. Bronte had been sent to live with her maternal grandparents, an arrangement that lasted only a few months. Her grandmother—not the kindest granny in the world—decided she couldn’t tolerate Bronte’s “tantrums” any longer. Children should be seen, but not heard whereas Bronte had been given to creating disturbances. That’s when Gilly McAllister had come to the rescue. Gilly had offered to look after her. Good old “crazy” Gilly. Thank goodness for her! Gilly who privately called Miranda “shallow and egotistical.” Bronte was meant to stay with her great-aunt until Miranda felt more able to cope after her tragic loss.

      Bronte stayed five years. She saw her mother rarely. As her husband’s property—Brandt owned people—Miranda had to be on hand at all times. Her grandmother she saw not at all. “I can’t believe our luck!” Gilly chortled. Neither of them were asked to Miranda’s and Brandt’s society wedding which took place an unseemly month or so after Ross McAllister’s tragic death. So much for the tragedy queen and the nervous breakdown that never was. Then again, perhaps it illustrated Miranda’s extraordinary resilience.

      A suspiciously short period of time later Bronte’s half brother Max—poor little victimised Max—made his much gossiped about entry into the world though Bronte and Gilly locked away in the deep Far North didn’t get to hear about that happy event until at least a year later when Gilly read about Max’s existence in the newspaper.

      On her twelfth birthday Bronte’s mother—no one saw it coming—made the decision to send Bronte to an exclusive boarding school back in Sydney. “We have to get you away from this primitive place!” Miranda had cried, accelerating away from the plantation so fast she sent up a dust storm. “You’re nothing but a savage. I was a fool to let Gilly look after you. She can’t even look after herself.” Miranda had appeared genuinely shocked at the run-down condition of the old plantation gone back to jungle and Bronte’s appearance which even Bronte had to admit in retrospect must have been a little on the wild side. With Gilly for a mentor Bronte had gotten used to wearing a sort of safari outfit—boy’s shirts and trousers with a thick belt and good stout boots. She’d have worn that outfit to school, where she shone academically, only the headmistress, Miss Prentice, wouldn’t have let her through the front gate.

      The day Bronte left, her darling Gilly had cried, her tall, vigorous body bent over and shaking like she had a tropical fever.

      Gilly who was as brave and fierce as the general in the family. General Alexander “Sandy” McAllister who’d risen to fame in India fighting for the British in the Afghan wars. “Sandy” was one of Gilly’s favourites from the family spirit world. After his long stint in India Sandy’s spirit had settled in well to the humid heat of the rain forest, unfazed by the cyclones that blew in from time to time.

      Feeling a little rested Bronte slung her bag back over her shoulder then picked up her expensive suitcase. It was one of her mother’s discards. Her mother enjoyed enormously being the wife of a very rich man. Rich men ran the world! Wealth defined the man! Brandt pampered her mother for a good reason. Miranda was always on show as his wife. Her beauty and elegance were legendary and she had a wonderful flair for dressing. Why else would Brandt have married her? It all reflected wonderfully well on his taste.

      Otherwise he was far from being a generous man. He had never been generous to Bronte. She would have been walking around in rags, uneducated, if not for the inheritance her own darling father had left her. Her mother didn’t believe in spoiling her either. Worse Brandt was downright mean to his own son. Poor Max who hadn’t inherited any of his father’s abominable skills and bully boy nature. The endless criticisms, the cutting sarcasm, the scorn the two of them had endured. It had been tough to leave fifteen-year-old Max behind, but at least Max had respite at boarding school. He’d even dug in his heels to stay at school through vacations. Something that had affronted their mother who laboured under the monstrous delusion she was a good mother.

      My sad, dysfunctional family! Bronte thought. There was a crisis every day of the week. She was always amazed she could look so much like her mother yet be nothing like her in her nature and behaviour. It was Gilly who had taught her values, shown her love and understanding. Gilly was the woman of substance not her own mother whom she continued to love even as she despaired of ever having her love returned. Beautiful Miranda who at the drop of a hat—for instance a broken engagement—could turn into a shrieking virago. If Brandt was famous for his lung power, he could on occasion be equalled by her mother.

      Bronte staggered on bravely, remembering how Gilly had always called her “plucky.” As a child it had made her laugh. Plucky. For some reason—the obvious clucky—she associated it with Gilly’s chooks. Despite Bronte’s multiple discomforts she was drinking in her surroundings. She loved this place. It was the Garden of Eden complete with the snakes. The countryside was glorious. The coastal corridor north of Capricorn was as lush and bountiful as the Interior across the Great Divide was arid. She adored the rampant blossoming of the tropics. The brilliantly plumaged birds. The colour!

      Bougainvillea ran like wildfire on either side of the private track. You could hardly call it a road. It was near impassable in heavy rains. The magnificent parasite covered fences, climbed trees, old water tanks. Orange.

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