Blackpeak Station Read Free

the wide main road slicked black with drizzle. Andrea, who had been silent throughout the two-hour drive, blew her nose and checked her watch and decided she had time for a word with the caterers first, so Nick pulled into the shops and found a park opposite the tearooms.
    ‘God,’ he said, as he and Charlotte waited for Andrea to come out of the hotel. ‘I know we’re in mourning and all, but I could murder a decent coffee.’ He looked over his shoulder at Charlotte and smiled wanly. ‘I guess I could settle for one from here, though. You?’
    Charlotte smiled back. It wasn’t a very good joke, but youhad to love Nick for trying. ‘Yeah, thanks.’
    Andrea still hadn’t returned when Nick came back with the coffees. The drizzle had pretty much stopped. Feeling the need for fresh air, Charlotte opened the Prado’s door and swivelled round in her seat, leaning out to survey the strip of parked cars and tourist buses outside the souvenir shops, her flimsy ballet flats resting on the door sill. Nick leaned beside her, sipping his flat white.
    With a low grumble, a silver Porsche nosed into the opposite park, its hood up against the rain. Charlotte watched the driver get out. He looked young, not much older than Nick, and she was surprised to see he was wearing a shirt and tie.
    ‘Armani,’ sighed Nick, as the man slipped his suit jacket on. ‘Nice.’
    The driver stretched his broad shoulders back, straightened his elegant mauve silk tie, and buttoned the jacket over his narrow hips. Charlotte didn’t know much about suits, but she had to agree that he wore it well.
    As if reading her thoughts, he looked up, straight across the road and into her face. Charlotte felt herself blush, but, for some reason, her eyes wouldn’t drop. The man had no such problem. He looked her over lazily, a half smile at the edge of his mouth, as if he already knew her well and there was nobody but them in the car park.
    ‘Armani-guy is totally checking you out,’ whispered Nick, amused. ‘You should invite him to Dad’s wake.’
    Charlotte, conscious suddenly of the shortness of her skirt, jammed her knees together. She had put on the only ‘dress’ she possessed, a simple black tunic, over a black polo neck, but her mother had flatly refused to allow the black denim leggings she usually wore underneath. ‘I won’t have you in jeans, Charlotte,’ Andrea had sniffed. ‘Not today.’So now there was nothing between her long gangly legs and the stranger’s gaze but opaque tights and a few metres of thin air.
    ‘Luke?’ The passenger door of the Porsche opened and a pair of dangerously high, black patent boots swung out. ‘Can you make mine a decaf soy latte?’
    ‘Whoa,’ gasped Nick, as a
Vogue
-cover blonde unravelled herself from the car. ‘Will you look at that? I hate this guy.’
    Charlotte, looking away at last, was inclined to feel the same.
    ‘Come on,’ she said, seeing Andrea emerge from the hotel. ‘Mum’s coming back.’
    Nick climbed into the driver’s seat. ‘I wonder what a guy has to do,’ he said, still watching the sports car in the rear-view mirror, ‘to get one of those.’
    ‘A Porsche?’
    ‘Sure.’ Nick smirked. ‘Let’s go with that.’
    Andrea opened the door. ‘Right,’ she said briskly. ‘We’d better get going.’
     
    There was a decent turnout for the service. The men of the district had scrubbed up well, with barely a checked shirt in sight. None, perhaps, could actually claim to have been a friend of her father’s — but no one looking around the aptly named Church of the Good Shepherd today could doubt that John Black had been well respected.
    As they followed the hearse up to the cemetery, the rain came down in earnest. Charlotte and Nick flanked their mother at the grave, taking an elbow each, and the three of them watched the high country earth thud down on John Black’s coffin. Behind them, solid as the hills, stood Rex and Kath. Andrea, as she had done for most of