The Patterson Girls by Rachael Johns Page A

eavesdropping.
    â€˜Merry Christmas, Hugo,’ Madeleine was saying, like it was the funniest thing in the world, and then she disconnected.
    â€˜Hugo?’ Abigail raised her eyebrows. ‘Significant other I should know about, dear sister?’
    Madeleine scoffed. ‘My only significant other is my iPhone. Hugo is a colleague and a friend. He rang to wish me a good Christmas. I think he must have had a few drinks.’
    â€˜He sounds like my type of guy,’ Abigail said, peeling her lurid orange gloves off and retrieving a blue pair. Those orange ones stank of something she didn’t want to think about.
    â€˜He’s engaged,’ Madeleine informed her with a smug smile. ‘Not that you should care, since you are apparently coupled-off.’
    â€˜I didn’t say I wanted to marry the guy. I was just making conversation. Must be a good friend if he rings you all the way over here.’
    â€˜He is.’ Madeleine smiled in the manner of a dreamy schoolgirl. Abigail bit her tongue on asking if the guy’s fiancée liked him making over-the-ocean phone calls to another woman.
    â€˜Anyway.’ Madeleine snapped out of her trance-like state and picked a clipboard up off the trolley. ‘We’ve got three more rooms to go,’ she said, glancing down at the chart that listed rooms that were currently occupied and needed a freshen up and those that were being vacated today and needed the full overhaul.
    â€˜How about I take one room, you take another and we’ll share the third?’ Abigail suggested.
    â€˜Sounds good to me.’ Madeleine shoved her mobile phone into the back pocket of her shorts, turned on her heels and headed towards room 19. In turn Abigail grabbed the cleaning equipment she required and took room 11.
    The two sisters worked hard for another hour, scrubbing toilets, emptying bins, putting sheets in the massive commercial washing machine and making beds until all the rooms were ready for their guests.
    â€˜I’m utterly exhausted,’ Abigail moaned when they were finished, feeling as if she could fall atop her bed and sleep for a month.
    â€˜Me too.’ Madeleine nodded and then glanced at her phone. ‘But it’s almost time to collect Aunt Mags. Do you want to come with me?’
    Abigail smiled at the thought of flamboyant Aunt Mags, who held court in a retirement village when she wasn’t flitting to some far corner of the earth. ‘Hmm, let’s see, a toss up between a trip to Port Augusta to pick up Mags or being bossed around by Lucinda to help make Christmas lunch?’ She grinned. ‘Give me five minutes to get changed.’
    Madeleine adored Aunt Mags—all the sisters did—and so she’d been more than happy to volunteer to collect her. And, like Abigail, she reckoned being well out the way of Lucinda’s Christmas lunch preparations was a smart idea.
    At almost ten years older than Dad, Aunt Mags was still very independent and capable, but her eyesight had deteriorated dramatically in the last few years. Last year after she’d had her driver’s licence taken away, she’d surprised everyone by announcing that she was moving out of her tiny cottage and into an ‘entertainment centre’ (her words—she didn’t like the word ‘retirement’) that had recently opened in Port Augusta. Meadow Brook itself was too small for such a development, so many of Aunt Mags’s friends had chosen to make the move as well. Apparently it was quite a social hub—with events on almost every day of the week to keep the old folks amused. Indoor bowls, scrapbooking, card games, Bogan Bingo, you name it!
    â€˜You should put your name down,’ Aunt Mags had told Mum and Dad when she’d first announced her decision.
    â€˜Over my dead body,’ had been Dad’s response, with a few more colourful words interspersed in between. Or so Mum had told Madeleine later on