Love and Muddy Puddles by Cecily Anne Paterson Read Free Book Online Page B

mirror. Streaks. Big ones. “Let me just fix this and then I’ll come.”
    I grabbed a cotton ball and wiped my face, reapplied my eye liner and straightened up my mashed hairdo.
    “Here,” said Charlie, holding out something small. “Your bindi fell off.”
    I peeled it off her finger and pressed it firmly back on my forehead. If I had to go and talk about insane life changes with my crazy dad, I would do it with as much style as possible.
     
      
     

Chapter  7
     
     
    Taking a deep breath I followed Charlie down the stairs. As we went into the lounge room I held up my chin slightly, tightened my mouth and walked with exaggerated model-like steps over to the sofa. Looking from left to right I surveyed the room and sat with a flourish, my back straight and my head high.
    “Oh good, Coco,” said Dad, putting his head up from the laptop on the coffee table. “You’ve come back. I was just about to show everyone the photographs of the farm on the website.”
    Mum smiled at me, an encouraging sort of smile. “It really looks great, Coco,” she said. “You okay?”
    This was unbelievable. Did they have no idea that when I ran out of the dining room screaming it was because I was definitely not okay? I don’t think Dad had even really noticed that I had been gone for half an hour or more.
    I blinked at Mum a few times with a stern face, hoping that she would get the message that I was angry. I didn’t want to talk. I thought I’d just burst out crying which wouldn’t be dignified or stylish at all.
    She opened her mouth to speak but just at that point Dad started to talk.
    “So here it is,” he said, adjusting the screen so that we could all see.
    Josh and Charlie were kneeling by the coffee table sticking their heads in close trying to see the photograph of a big green field. They looked like 10 year-olds. I stayed on my sofa, refusing to be keen.
    “It’s a hundred acres, with a stream running right through. It backs on to national forest and it has quite a few different paddocks, and an olive grove and a piggery,” said Dad. He had a huge smile on his face, and I’ve never heard his voice so excited. He was whipping through the photographs like he couldn’t show them fast enough.
    “Oh, it’s so beautiful,” said Mum. “Just look at all that land—and the view!”
    “Are we going to get pigs?” asked Charlie. “I think they’re so cute.”
    “I don’t know yet,” said Dad. “We will just have to take it slowly and see what we can do. There are no pigs in the shed at the moment.”
    Pigs?  I thought to myself. My mouth tightened.  I’m never going in a pig shed. You can forget that!
    “So where exactly is it?” said Josh. “What’s the nearest town?”
    Dad fiddled around for a minute and brought up a map on the screen. “Here we are in Sydney.” He pointed to a large yellow spot. Then he moved his finger down ten centimetres.
    “This is it here, approximately,” he said. “It’s about two hours south, just in from the coast. I guess the nearest town is probably Kangaroo Valley.
    Kangaroo Valley ? I thought to myself. My neck felt tight.  That’s not even a town. It’s a postcard caption .
    We visited Kangaroo Valley on our last family holiday. Well, I say visited, but I mean ‘stopped in’. It’s the tiniest little pit stop I’ve ever been through. If ever there was a town that was blink-and-you-miss-it, it’s Kangaroo Valley. It had a bakery. And a shop selling rocking horses. And I think that was it. Oh, wait, there was also a sign saying ‘World’s Best Pies’.
    As if. I don’t even like pies. Could this be any worse?
    Oh yes, it could.
    “But it’s not in town,” said Dad. “It’s about 30 kilometres out. It’s down a fire trail. And apparently if it rains a lot the road gets cut off sometimes.”
    “Awesome,” said Josh.
    “That’s cool,” said Charlie.
    Mum put her hand on Dad’s and held it like she was really pleased. No-one even looked at