She’d expected a well-tended stud farm, but the Arnold house was surrounded by junk. There were crooked piles of old bricks, tangled steel, old engines and slabs of timber, all cluttered along the muddy, potholed driveway. There was just enough room for a vehicle to grind its way through. Among the debris, an assortment of horses chewed on their morning feed. She recognised Buster, who stood out from the rest in a clean blue rug and a clean blue halter, eating out of a clean blue feed bin. Fat red chooks waddled between the horses’ legs, pecking at the morsels of grain that fell from their mouths. As Jess rode up the driveway, the sour-sweet smells of manure in mud and hot, moist lucerne hung heavily in the still air. It was a smell that, before the rain, would have been quite delicious. But now, only hours later, it had a slightly decomposing edge that didn’t travel up the nostrils quite so smoothly. There was a sudden frenzy of squawking and barking as a black kelpie chased a chook across the front yard.
