“How on earth…” Her exclamation faded as she recalled Dan’s cousin and the vision of Jacinta and Stewart leaving through the gate to the side yard which wound around to this point. She hadn’t heard their car. They must have come through the front gate and not shut it. Paula hadn’t been out the front door for days. Everyone else drove to the side gate and came to the back door.

Dan had a small mob of sheep in the outer house yard and by the look of her decimated daisy bushes they had helped themselves to her garden.

She checked around both sides of the house. One side was nothing but dried weeds and they’d obviously not been interested. There were no other sheep in the yard but there were a few things missing from her rose garden. Obviously the roses themselves were too prickly but the smaller shrubs had been well and truly chewed.

Another black mark for Jacinta, thought Paula as she went back to the front gate and pushed it shut. One of the first rules of living in the country; if you have to open a gate you always close it again. At least the lavender bushes either side of the gate looked okay. The sheep obviously didn’t like them.

She hadn’t given Jacinta much thought since she’d arrived home yesterday to find Bert finishing up with the plumbing. After he’d left she’d thrown herself into the housework and forgotten all about Rowena’s strange behaviour but there had to be some way to find out more.

The sound of a vehicle distracted her. It was slowly making its way closer. Her heart skipped. It was probably her family. She bounced back up the steps and closed the front door to shut out the view of her decimated garden. Her mother would help her decide what needed to be done about it later. Paula wanted to have one last quick look around the house before they arrived.

* * *

“Tom! What are you doing?” Dan couldn’t help the edge in his voice.

Tom stepped back quickly from his ute. “I…um…had a bit of trouble with…”

“You don’t need your ute. I asked you to take the truck out to the back paddock.” Dan had been trying to contact Tom for the last hour with no luck. Finally he’d driven home thinking something must have happened to the truck. Now here was Tom in the shed at Rowena’s with half the inside of the cab of his ute scattered all around him.

“I know.” Tom glanced back at the cab. “It’s just that my phone…”

Dan was tired and fed up. “That bloody phone of yours. It works well enough when you want to contact your girlfriend but not when I want you.”