Free-Falling Read Online Free PDF Page A

ought to get back to the farm as soon as possible. Once upon a time, the Heartfords’ farm had employed several staff who could have kept things running without a problem, but with the recent year’s damaging weather, which had brutally alternated between drought and floods, her parents had had to lay off one worker after another, until it was just them and a couple of the longer-serving staff they couldn’t bring themselves to let go. It was easy to convince Barbara that she should return home immediately after the wake. While Belinda knew that her mum would have stayed in a heartbeat had she been asked, she was also aware that Barbara would have been terrified at the prospect of doing so. Yet Belinda was still given a crushing hug by her mother before she climbed into the four-wheel drive with the rest of the family.
    â€˜Maybe I could stay,’ she’d started to say, one foot hovering back out of the car door.
    â€˜No, no, Mum, you need to help Dad. I’ll be okay; Stace says she’ll look after me.’
    Now, as Belinda looked at Stacey intently tapping away at the laptop, she wondered if she had spoken too soon. She ached to be alone, to wrap herself up in one of Andy’s old jumpers and just cry herself to sleep.
    â€˜Umm, what exactly are you doing, Stacey?’ she asked as she watched the screen fill up with a cascade of search results. She was astonished by how natural her voice could sound, even though she felt as if thousands of tiny, burning needles were puncturing every inch of her skin.
    â€˜I’m figuring out what’s wrong with you,’ Stacey responded matter-of-factly.
    â€˜What do you mean, what’s wrong with me? We’ve just been to Andy’s funeral – isn’t that enough?’
    â€˜Yes, but I’m talking about how you reacted the day after he died. Everything you did.’ Stacey stared back at her defiantly.
    Belinda twisted uncomfortably in her seat. She’d forgotten that when she’d got drunk last night she had called her friend. Whilst sobbing somewhat snottily into the phone, she’d given every last, gritty detail of that awful day.
    Stacey looked up from the computer long enough to reach a hand out and give Belinda an awkward pat on the arm – her apparent attempt at comforting the bereaved. The two of them were sitting on the huge wrap-around couch in Belinda’s living room. ‘Wrap-around’ had been Andy’s silly (but kind of cute) way of describing their modular lounge suite. It was one of those terms that nestles its way into your vocabulary, making you use it all the time until you thought it was the normal word for something: ‘Should we eat dinner on the wrap-around tonight?’ ‘Nah, we always eat in front of the TV. Let’s eat at the table and sit on the wrap-around later for dessert.’
    Thinking about it now made Belinda irritated with Andy: he had tricked her into using an incorrect word. When she and Stacey had arrived back at her place that evening, Belinda had had to make a conscious effort to suggest they sit on the ‘ couch ’. The feeling of irritation was followed almost immediately by a thud of guilt. She had just been at his funeral and here she was feeling annoyed at him over something so childish and silly. God, what was wrong with her? I’m sorry, Andy, I didn’t mean that, I didn’t mean it.
    Admittedly, the feeling of irritation with her dead fiancé could have had something to do with the said dead fiancé’s evil mother and her performance at the funeral. She let an image of Mrs McGavin creep into her mind, saw her standing up the frontof the church in her smart charcoal suit – the woman looked like she was dressed for some high-powered business lunch. There wasn’t a hair out of place and it appeared she’d just had the colour redone: fiery auburn, glinting in the sunlight that filtered in through the