Murfey's Law by Bec Johnson Page A

was an unexploded bomb, she didn't want to be anywhere near it, or the boys for that matter. ‘He's already bequeathed me a noose around my neck. You can do what you were supposed to do in the first place, deal with it.’
    Feeling steadier on her feet now, Lori picked up her bag and took off out of the living room, round the deck and scooped up her sandals as she ran past them and down the steps. The clicking of Bob's claws soon caught up with her as she made her way down the driveway and out onto the road. One of the neighbours, wheeling their bins out through the shadows onto the verge at the front of their house watched intently as Lori, shoes and bag in one hand and hair whipping around behind her, ran past, Bob in tow.
    The pair didn’t drop pace, the entire way home.
     
    ‘Lorikeet darling? You need to wake up and eat something. Doctors' orders,’ Jenny appealed from the side of the bed, sometime the next day.
    ‘Go away!’
    ‘I will do no such thing. Everyone’s worried about you.’
    ‘Why would they be worried?’ Lori sat up and looked blearily at the alarm clock beside the bed just as it ticked over to three in the afternoon. ‘What’s it to them if I want to sleep in all day long?’
    ‘Well, Ok, worried may not have been the best choice of words I admit. It’s just that gossip has it you were witnessed running half naked from the Turners’ house in the middle of the night last night.’
    ‘That,’ Lori scoffed, ‘is a gross overstatement of what actually occurred.’
    Kicking her legs free from the grip of the tangled bed clothes she swung herself around to sit beside Jenny and placed her feet flat on the floor. Ugh. Somewhere deep inside her head, someone was hammering.
    ‘I know that’s not what happened silly, I called the boys first thing this morning, as soon as I heard the rumours. I’m just not so sure the rest of Murfey’s Beach has worked it out. Goodness only knows what the Twitchers Club have declared you’ve been up to by now.’
    ‘Well I don’t give a damn,’ Lori huffed. ‘They can think we’re having a dirty threesome for all I care.’
    The look on Jenny’s face told her that that was exactly what the residents were already thinking.
    ‘Argh!’ Lori threw herself back onto the mattress and pulled the clump of blankets over her head, groaning. Half a step forward and three steps back. She’d made absolutely zero inroads into charming the village, and most importantly the investors, thus giving her no chance whatsoever of persuading any of them that she could be trusted to sell the shop to the right kind of investor. If, in fact, the right kind even existed.
    It seemed Jenny had read her mind. ‘Listen, let's go make ourselves a cup of tea and a bite to eat, and we’ll put our heads together to discuss some tactics. Right?’
    From under the pile of linen Lori nodded. ‘Mmright.’
     
    A short while later, showered and groomed, Lori sat in the grass at the bottom of the garden. The afternoon sun warmed her skin, and with tea and toast in hand, she read and re-read Jenny’s Statutory Declaration.
    ‘So, you’re sure this is identical to the other six?’ Lori brushed the crumbs from the skirt of her pastel blue sun dress.
    ‘It is, yes,’ Jenny affirmed.
    There wasn’t really much to it. The basic facts were covered; the amount invested and the assurance gained in return. All investors had to, upon being repaid by the owner, give up their stake. They were free to sell on their shares in whole, but only to long-term residents of the village, and by that it stipulated twenty years minimum. And finally, it stated that should the owner wish to sell the property, thirty days notice was required before a meeting could be held where any prospective purchaser needed to be approved by a minimum majority of four votes to three.
    ‘So, today being the eighth of December, I could call a meeting for the seventh of January and spend the next thirty days working my arse