She had been busy trying to tug her parka sleeves down over her freezing hands when something made her glance across to her right – and there it was. The charming old weatherboard with its deep, wrap-around veranda, the steeply graded tile roof with two dormer windows, the huge willow tree off to the side generously shading the gravel driveway, the clean, white fencing with the rolling greenery beyond, the scattering of cheerful chooks. It all looked like a romantically rural painting, where haywains would be just around the corner, and windmills, and small boys in broad straw hats fishing while a man sits on the riverbank chewing on a reed. Chris had always thought scenes like that, dripping with picturesque rusticity, just didn’t exist. Too stereotypical to be real. But here it was – right in front of her. And none of that tasteful but deceiving black and white, or those tiny little photos that were guaranteed to be hiding something – no, this farm was a full colour 10 × 8, and holding pride of place within the pictorial plethora of properties for purchase.
