Matilda Next Door - Kelly Hunter Page 0,55

is growing beyond all expectations, and I’m sure you’d like your kitchen back one day, and I’m wondering about either asking around in town to see if anyone has a commercial kitchen they’d like to rent to me for a couple of hours each morning or, better still, setting up a commercial kitchen of my own. And before you ask where, I don’t know. Somewhere in town, maybe. Even a shed somewhere if it can be brought up to spec. It’s still just the bud of a thought.’

‘Not a bad thought.’

‘Helps that you’d get your kitchen back.’

Her mother’s smiley grey gaze met her own. ‘True. But I agree that if you continue to grow your business you need to look into such options. You could get an apprentice to help you on occasion. Because, darling, you can’t keep taking the amount of orders you’re taking. There are only so many hours in a day.’

‘Exactly. I wouldn’t be able to call them an apprentice, though. Not as if I’m a chef.’

‘Then call them a helper. There are plenty of very competent people around here who would jump at the chance of part-time kitchen work.’

Her mother had that right.

‘So … setting those nuggets aside for future investigation, it’s Melbourne tonight for me and I’ll be staying in the furnished apartment next to Joe’s. I could be back tomorrow afternoon, it might be the following one. I don’t know yet. Depends how Henry and Rowan are travelling. Thirty hours of airports and planes.’ Tilly shuddered in remembrance. ‘Ugh.’

‘The man’s a champion.’ Her mother said these words without sarcasm.

‘You’re mellowing towards him?’

‘No need to gloat,’ her mother said airily. ‘I said the same of you when you did the trip. I mean every word, and when Henry returns, I’ll make more of an effort to get to know him. You’re not the only one who’s been doing some forward thinking. I have it all planned out.’

Matilda beamed. ‘I love you. Everything I know about love, I learned from you.’

‘Darling, I love you too. But those buns in the oven are burning.’

*

Tilly spent the rest of the afternoon at Red Hill Station, picking beans while they were still young and tender, and harvesting zucchini before they grew to the size of a watermelon. She par-boiled the beans and then froze them, knowing Joe and Beth wouldn’t mind her using their kitchen to preserve their harvest. She pickled the zucchini, dastardly vegetable that tasted of nothing and took over the garden. A quick check of the house pumps, pipes and tanks showed no leaks and ample water. A squiz in the fuse box showed everything still in order. Grass needed mowing but she decided that wasn’t her problem. Bedsheets could do with washing, but she didn’t want to go presuming.

There was a stack of papers on the floor of the little farm office alcove that butted up adjacent to the kitchen. Spewed out by the printer, it looked like, and she stopped to pick them up on the way out the door.

She should have left them there, she thought minutes later. She should never have decided to put the pages in order.

Because the first page said ‘Confidential,’ but it was the last page she picked up, and by then she’d caught the gist of the report she held in her hand.

It was a paternity test.

And the results strongly suggested that Henry hadn’t fathered Rowan.

She’d always wondered, given the difference in their colouring. She’d always wanted to ask about Rowan’s mother’s heritage, beyond being Irish. But Henry had never said a word when it came to Rowan not being his and, once the initial shock of finding out he had a daughter had worn off, he’d taken to fatherhood with unerringly good instincts.

He’d stepped up, not back, when it came to taking responsibility for the motherless baby girl. Watch a man with a child and he’d show you his soul.

He was making plans, plans for them all.

But if he wasn’t the father, who was? And would they want Rowan too? And would that mean challenges and legal cases and courtrooms, and it might help if Henry was married, but who was to say the real father wasn’t?

And her mother was going to say that Henry had known all along that he might not be Rowan’s father, and that his case would be strengthened if he married, and soon.

For convenience, not for love, but it wasn’t true.

She couldn’t bear it to be true.

She put the papers on the