‘Particularlyfor your family. I dare you to let your grandmother hear your handbag line.’
‘Who do you think modelled how to assert my independence? You know that Nonna totally dominates Nonno. And you. And Uncle Dan, too.’
Her father stood, helping Sam clear the table. ‘It might look like Nonna makes the rules, but Nonno will put his foot down when he believes it necessary.’
She smirked. ‘Then perhaps I’ve learned something from each of them.’
‘Wait, circle back,’ Hamish said, doing well to get a word in. ‘A handbag?’
Jemma tossed her hair back over one shoulder, narrowing her gaze. ‘Kain looked pretty on my arm when I had to attend work functions. And, come to think of it, he was ever so useful at holding things,’ she added with a grin.
‘And yet he is no more?’ Hamish did a fair job of sounding perplexed, although his eyes crinkled at the corners. ‘Can’t imagine why.’
‘A girl likes to change her outfits … and accessories.’
‘You think that’s gender limited?’
She looked at Hamish with renewed interest. He might be a player, but he also knew how to play the game.Hergame, now that she’d discovered this new entertainment.
‘You two want to get a room?’ Sam said.
‘Maybe don’t encourage them,’ Dad said dourly.
‘Anyway,’ Sam continued, ‘we still need to come up with a way to get Tara and Jemma in the same orbit.’
‘How about you give me your number, Jem, and I’ll text you when I come up with something?’ Hamish said.
Jemma didn’t meet her father’s eyes as she took Hamish’s phone and entered her number. Only the favoured few were ever allowed to shorten her name.
With Evie’s pikelets pushed to one side, Jemma, Dad and Sam sat with Evie and Paul in their farmhouse, staring with differing degrees of dismay at the paperwork scattered across the kitchen table. Courtesy of some outdated kits unearthed at the local post office, Paul and Evie had had a go at drawing up their own wills—a move guaranteed to strike fear into the heart of any lawyer.
‘These are just not going to be valid,’ Jemma repeated. Usually she avoided estate law—it was work for the lawyer equivalent of accountants—but Evie’s and Paul’s wills were more interesting, as they were seeking to exclude their daughter from the inheritance.
‘You understand them, though?’ Paul demanded, tapping the paperwork with a gnarled finger. ‘We want to leave the property equally to Sam and Jack, and that’s it.’
‘I understand, but I also believe that your daughter is in a strong position to contest the wills. So let me draw up thepaperwork and I’ll make sure they’re watertight. As watertight as possible. Although, this isn’t my field,’ she added honestly. ‘But I can find you someone who specialises in estate law. Just …’ She tapped the papers, the spots of coffee and crumpled corners attesting to how much they’d been pored over. ‘Don’t use these.’
‘We don’t want to see anyone else,’ Paul declared. ‘It’s none of their business. This is for family only.’
Across the table, Sam stared down at her clenched hands, her chest heaving irregularly. Jemma wished there was a way she could ease and expedite what would always be an unpleasant process. No one enjoyed discussing what their last input into the world would be.
‘We don’t need someone from the city poking around, telling us what to do with what we own,’ Paul continued. ‘This farm has always been for the kids and that’s exactly where it will go.’
‘Jemma would find you the right person to handle it, Paul,’ Dad said. ‘Someone she knows well, trusts. It’ll be almost like family.’
‘There’s nothinglikefamily,’ Paul asserted.
‘Except some of our friends,’ Evie said. ‘You didn’t think you’d like Monica coming in to clean every week, but look at us all now, thick as thieves.’
‘Well, I admit that was a threesome I wasn’t expecting,’ Paul said, then chuckled as Jemma’s shocked gaze went to him. ‘But I don’t suppose that’s what you’re offering, Pandora?’
Evie snorted. ‘Like you’d remember what to do with her.’
Jemma had just been thinking that Paul and Evie reminded her of her own grandparents, but maybe not so much.
‘Sorry,’ Sam mouthed, shaking her head resignedly.
‘Jemma would only recommend someone she has confidence in,’ Dad said. ‘Actually, maybe there’ll be someone at the function on Saturday, Jemma? You can introduce me, then they won’t be strangers by the time Paul and Evie meet them.’
