Free At Home With The Templetons by Monica McInerney Page B

o’clock morning news jingle on the radio brought her back to the present. Time for work. As she put the local paper into the recycling bin, she imagined the excitement this latest Templeton antic would cause around town. And at home too.
    ‘Why haven’t you taught me to drive?’ she imagined Tom saying. ‘All the Templeton kids learnt to drive when they were babies. They all got mini-BMWs for their third birthdays. Babysized ones. With their names monogrammed on the doors.’
    It felt good to laugh about it. She knew Hilary would enjoy hearing about it too. She was just reaching for the phone to give her sister a quick pre-work call when it rang. She wasn’t sur prised. Their link was so strong they often rang each other at the same time.
    ‘You’re a mind reader,’ she said, settling down into the worn armchair.
    ‘Am I? Why?’ It was another of the school mums. ‘Did you see the newspaper this morning? That Templeton girl’s crash? It has to be a publicity stunt, don’t you think?’
    Nina had to stop herself laughing. She bit back all she wanted to say and put on a bright, casual voice instead. ‘A crash? Really? What happened?’

CHAPTER FOUR
    The next time they met at the yabby dam, Spencer told Tom all about Gracie’s crash.
    ‘She was driving down the main street at a hundred kilometres an hour and she went into a skid and the car rolled four times and her arm nearly got torn off. The policeman had to carry her into our house and after he left the entire floor was covered in blood.’
    ‘Is it still there?’
    ‘A bit of it. Mum cleaned up the rest. Do you want to see it?’ Spencer asked eagerly.
    Tom remembered his mother saying he wasn’t allowed to go beyond the boundary fence. He remembered her saying she didn’t want him going to Templeton Hall again. He just couldn’t remember why not. ‘What about the yabbies?’
    Spencer shrugged. ‘They’ll be there tomorrow, won’t they?’ Thirty minutes later, Tom couldn’t believe all he was seeing. He’d done a tour of the Hall the day of that fete, but he didn’t remember it being anything like this. How come he’d never been back here before now? It was fantastic. Better than fantastic. Spencer showed him through every room,
     
    upstairs and
    names. He saw the big kitchen, the pantry, the three bathrooms, with enormous baths that could easily hold three people each. Eight bedrooms - eight of them! Spencer also proudly showed him the blood on the hallway floor. Tom thought it looked more like a speck of paint, but Spencer insisted it was blood. His mother must have done even more cleaning up that morning, he said.
    Tom met some of Spencer’s family too. Spencer had told him to prepare himself: that his three sisters were revolting, especially the two home on holiday from boarding school. But Tom thought they were all nice, even if they looked a bit surprised to see him. ‘Did your parents leave you behind after the weekend tour?’ one of the older ones, Charlie, Tom thought her name was, asked him.
    ‘He’s a local,’ Spencer said, in a voice that made local sound like something unpleasant. ‘We met at the dam.’
    ‘Damned if you do, damned if you don’t,’ the other sister said, which made the one called Charlie laugh loudly. Tom didn’t get the joke but smiled anyway.
    The sister around his age called Gracie, the one who’d been in the crash, was much more friendly and normal. She was in the drawing room. Tom wanted to ask if they did their drawing in there, but something stopped him. He was surprised to see she wasn’t wearing a sling on her nearly torn-off arm but decided not to ask about it. She was polishing a row of silver jugs. Spencer picked one up and pulled a face into it, showing Tom his distorted reflection, urging Tom to try it. So he did. Then Gracie did it too and it was funny, all three of them poking their tongues at the jugs. Spencer’s dad came in then. ‘Welcome to Templeton Hall,