Page 2 of The Missing Sister

I took the orange juice carton from the fridge and poured the last of it into a glass, then did my best to hack through a loaf of day-old bread. I toasted it to make it edible, then began to write a quick shopping list to stock up on fridge supplies. The nearest supermarket was in Arrowtown, and I’d need to make the trip soon. Even though Mum had left plenty of casseroles in the freezer, it didn’t feel right defrosting the big plastic tubs just for myself.

I shivered as I brought the list through to the sitting room and sat on the old sofa in front of the huge chimney breast, built out of the grey volcanic stone that abounded in the area. It had been the one thing that had convinced my parents thirty years ago that they should buy what was once a single-roomed hut in the middle of nowhere. It had no running water or facilities, and both Mum and Dad had liked to recall how that first summer, they and two-year-old Jack had used the stream that fell between the rocks behind the hut to bathe in, and a literal hole in the ground as a dunny. ‘It was the happiest summer of my life,’ Mum would say, ‘and in the winter it got even better because of the fire.’

Mum was obsessed with real fires, and as soon as the first frost appeared in the valley, Dad, Jack and I would be sent out to collect the wood from the store, well seasoned in the months since it had been chopped. We’d stack it in the alcoves on either side of the chimney breast, then Mum would lay the wood in the grate and the ritual of what the family called ‘the first light’ would take place as she struck a match. From that moment on, the fire would burn merrily every day of the winter months, until the bluebells and snowdrops (the bulbs for which she’d had posted from Europe) bloomed under the trees between September and November, our spring.

Maybe I should light one now, I thought, thinking of the warm, welcoming glow that had greeted me on freezing days throughout my childhood when I’d come in from school. If Dad had been the metaphoric heart of the winery, Mum and her fire had been that of the home.

I stopped myself, feeling I really was too young to start looking back to childhood memories for comfort. I just needed some company, that was all. The problem was, most of my uni friends were either away abroad, enjoying their last moments of freedom before they settled down and found themselves jobs, or were working already.

Even though we had a landline, the internet signal in the valley was sporadic. Sending emails was a nightmare, and Dad had often resorted to driving the half hour to Queens-town and using his friend the travel agent’s computer to send them. He’d always called our valley ‘Brigadoon’, after an old film about a village that only awakens for one day every hundred years, so that it would never be changed by the outside world. Well, maybe the valley was Brigadoon – it certainly remained more or less unchanged – but it was not the place for a budding singer-songwriter to make her mark. My dreams were full of Manhattan, London or Sydney, those towering buildings harbouring record producers who would take Fletch and me and make us stars...

The landline broke into my thoughts and I stood up to grab it before it rang off. ‘You’ve reached The Vinery,’ I parroted, as I had done since I was a child.

‘Hi, MK, it’s Fletch,’ he said, using the nickname that everyone except my mum called me.

‘Oh, hi there,’ I said, my heart rate speeding up. ‘Any news?’

‘Nothing, other than I thought I might take you up on your offer to stay at yours. I have a couple of days off from the café and I need to get out of the city, eh?’

And I need to beinit...

‘Hey, that’s great! Come whenever you want. I’m here.’

‘How about tomorrow? I’ll be driving down, so that will take me most of the morning, as long as Sissy makes it, o’course.’

Sissy was the van in which Fletch and I had driven to our gigs. It was twenty years old and rusting everywhere it could rust, belching out smoke from the dodgy exhaust pipe that Fletch had temporarily fixed with string. I only hoped Sissy could manage the three-hour journey from Dunedin where Fletch lived with his family.

‘So, I’ll see you round lunchtime?’ I said.

‘Yeah, I can’t wait. You know I love it down there. Perhaps we can spend a few hours on the piano, coming up with some new stuff?’

‘Perhaps,’ I answered, knowing I wasn’t in a particularly creative space just now. ‘Bye, Fletch, see you tomorrow.’

I finished the call and walked back to the sofa, feeling brighter now that Fletch was coming – he never failed to cheer me up with his sense of humour and positivity.

I heard a shout from outside and then a whistle, the sound Doug, our vineyard manager, used to alert us to the fact that he was on site. I stood up, went to the terrace and saw Doug and a group of burly Pacific Islanders walking through the bare vines.

‘Hiya!’ I shouted down.

‘Hi, MK! Just taking the gang to show them where to begin the pulling out,’ Doug replied.

‘Fine. Good. Hi, guys,’ I shouted down to his team and they waved up at me.

Their presence had broken the silence, and as the sun appeared from behind a cloud, the sight of other human beings, plus the thought that Fletch was coming tomorrow, lifted my spirits.

‘You look pale, Maia. Are you feeling all right?’ Ma said as she walked into the kitchen.

‘I’m okay, I just didn’t sleep very well last night thinking about Georg’s bombshell.’

‘Yes, it certainly was that. Coffee?’ Ma asked her.

‘Uh, no thanks. I’ll have some chamomile tea if there is any.’

‘There is, of course,’ interjected Claudia. Her grey hair was pulled back tightly into a customary bun, and her usually dour face had a smile for Maia as she placed a basket of her freshly made rolls and pastries on the kitchen table. ‘I take it before bed every night.’

‘You must be feeling unwell, Maia. I have never known you to reject coffee first thing in the morning,’ commented Ma as she collected her own.

‘Habits are there to break,’ Maia said wearily. ‘I’m jet-lagged too, remember?’