Kaya Sterling does not dislike Estella Munro. The fact her new neighbour appears aloof and self-satisfied does not faze her. As far as Kaya is concerned, encountering someone like Estella Munro is a bit like drinking a flat white with bitter froth. The first acrid taste cannot be all there is to her – there has to be something pleasant beneath.
Kaya and Ollie have only lived in their new home for four days. Palm Cottage, which is not really a cottage at all by virtue of two spacious floors and four bedrooms, sits on the cliffside looking proudly out to sea, the first in a row of five houses a little along from the winding bend that leads from the heart of Pacific Pines to St Ignatius’ Grammar. Four bedrooms is far more than they need for just the two of them and Kaya feels they rattle around in the big house, but Paul had insisted they move to his childhood neighbourhood and to the house he had always cycled past as a boy. He had loved the way it sits clad in a jacket of snowy white slats along the cliff face, with an overgrown, oval backyard fenced off to the perilous headland beyond; and how the beauty of the house can only be appreciated from the water, sitting atop the cliff face as it does, or as a steering wheel is twisted round that perilous turn, leaving the heart of Pacific Pines far behind in the rear-view mirror.
One day, Kaya will charter a boat so she and Ollie can see their new home from its best vantage point, bobbing together on the very waves they hear caressing the cliff face as they fall asleep each night. She has added it to her never-ending to-do list stuck to the imposing chrome double-doored fridge, which is also way too big for their requirements: ‘paint shed’, ‘make new friends’, ‘charter boat’.
Estella has been standing on Kaya’s new driveway for less than a minute, both of them under the hot October sun, with Bandit weaving through their legs as retrievers do. Kaya has already watched her neighbour take in the front yard up close, her pursed lips suggesting disapproval. The previous owners of Palm Cottage had introduced a variety of species of plant in both the front and back gardens, the effect being an unruly, almost English feel, wild and overgrown, unlike the landscaped affair next door with its perfectly clipped hedge and slick, pruned palms…
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