2. Prologue

Prologue

Ribbonwood

There aren’t too many small towns that would band together and say a woman deserved to be widowed, but Ribbonwood was that town and Lara Bennett was that woman.

Lara had been too good for everyone else by the time she turned seventeen. Her long blonde locks swaying down her back, blue eyes shining, her body a grown woman’s since she’d hit Year Nine and you bet she knew what to do with it. No time for high school boys, she seduced Josh Rees right before everyone’s eyes and he was a man of twenty-eight and already engaged to marry Jessica Webb. What kind of a girl does that?

Addie Armstrong said her boyfriend had heard from his mates on the football team that Lara had boasted she could suck a man’s soul right through his dick and didn’t that just tell you everything you needed to know? Josh Rees - Ribbonwood’s golden boy though he might have been - never stood a chance in the face of those batted eyelashes. As for Jessica, she was so heartbroken she had barely turned around before she was married to Stephen Westerson and we all know how that turned out.

Lara gave Josh the runaround; quite the dance she led him on. You’ve never seen a man so hung up, it was like she’d cast a spell. Three years later she was married to him: twenty years old and a bride so fresh-faced and pretty it was unnatural. Still, it seemed a bit like telling a lie in everyone’s faces that she’d dressed for her wedding in white. That, whispered Dottie Parsons as Lara passed by her in the aisle, satin and lace snuggling up to her indecent curves, is no damn virgin.

Of course, it was no wonder Lara had turned out the way she had, with no mother to raise her and no one but her half-drunk father to keep an eye on her. Phil Bennett was gentle enough but quite hopeless, on that Ribbonwood was clear, and honestly, it was a good thing when you thought about it, that Lily had died before she saw the kind of girl her only daughter had become. Lily had always been the sweetest of angels; it was mystifying to see how far that particular apple had fallen from the tree.

But life moves on and for a while, Lara Rees née Bennett passed by under the radar. Josh’s little home down the paddock from his parents’ big house was not good enough for her of course, and some said it was her pestering that had him take out that oversized bank loan, the one that bought them a farm of their own. She worked him hard, day and night, always wanting the finer things in life. You’d see him down at the pub, exhausted, barely able to stand up straight, the poor man. Some men just aren’t built to farm macadamias, but did she care about that? Not one whit .

In all that time, what did she even do? No one ever saw her outside of glimpses here and there, pushing a shopping trolley over in Silverbloom or flirting with Nate Kerr at the mechanic shop to give her a free service. Oh, I’ll bet she got serviced alright, Albert Sanderson claimed down at the Ribbonwood pub, his white bushy eyebrows raised high over his beer glass.

They’d been married five years before she even deigned to pop out a child for Josh, and by then he was already thirty-six years old. The man had been dying to be a father his whole life, but just like always, she made him wait until it suited her. And then , oh lord, if you thought she’d had airs before . You’d think Matilda Rees was the first damn baby ever born on this planet. The way she snuggled and cuddled and coddled that little girl? Kylie Burgess told Crystal Berry that she wasn’t even sure if two-year-old Matilda could walk on her own, Lara held her so tight.

And as for Josh, he may as well have been last week’s leftovers, she discarded him so fast. There he was, down at the pub, night after night, lonely as all get out and no wife whatsoever to comfort him. She was all wrapped up in the baby; barely gave him any attention at all after she’d got her child from him. All he had was his mounting debt, his struggling business and his loneliness. When his car left the road one night, after an evening of drinking away his sorrows, and was found wrapped around a tree, his broken body flung free from the wreckage, all of Ribbonwood knew the facts: the whole thing was Lara Rees’ (née Bennett’s) fault .

If she had just started having her babies earlier and made him a proper family man when he was ready for it; if she’d just made him feel wanted instead of forcing him out into the cold; if she hadn’t insisted on that big bank loan that had him working day and night; if she hadn’t seduced him in her damn school uniform in the first place.

After that, of course, Lara lay low. Played the grieving widow, or perhaps, more likely, didn’t dare show her face around town. Because, after all, maybe she’d gotten what she’d wanted all along? The insurance payout was enough to buy her home and a little corner of the macadamia farm outright, while she sold the rest to pay off the bank loan. She was independent, set for life, and now she had Matilda. She’d always been a schemer, that woman, you could tell by the look of her, even way back when. Too good for high school boys? Oh, she’d always had a plan.

And then came the real icing on the cake. Lara Bennett - she changed her name back, can you believe the nerve of her? - the man had barely been gone for four years - up and bought the Ribbonwood General Store. Her daughter was at school, and now - now - she wanted to work. At least, that’s what she told Myra Jenkins when she popped her head in to see what the hell was going on, brown paper covering the front windows of the store and the doors temporarily closed to the public.

Ribbonwood’s population was only 907 people at last count (906 now, Lara Bennett? ) and that’s far too small a town to hide from your crimes. Who, precisely, did she think was going to buy from her ?

The Michaels were the previous owners of the general store - Michael Webster and Michael Patterson, that is - boyfriend and boyfriend if you can believe that, but nice enough fellas and people shopped at the store because it’s important to support locals. The Woolworths over at Silverbloom was a hell of a lot cheaper however, and just a thirty-minute drive, so Lara was dreaming if she thought she could keep that business afloat.

But to everyone’s shock, when the brown paper came down off the windows, Lara had rebranded. Sure, you could still buy your tea bags and a loaf of bread, but there was a clear tilt towards the tourist market: free-range organic eggs at double the price - as if everyone’s chickens around here weren’t damn organic - overcharged jams with exotic ingredients, locally grown coffee beans and artisanal cheeses you’d have to re-mortgage your home to afford. All the weekend tourists up from Brisbane, staying in yurts, going glamping, or holidaying in Airbnb’s on Myra’s or Crystal’s or Albert’s or Jessica’s property all flooded through the doors.

Typical Lara Bennett, still too good for the locals. I’m not saying she deserved to be widowed, whispered Amber O’Brien to Kimberley Evans, but doesn’t she look like she secretly enjoys it?