Christmas Belles (Gillies Ridge)

THE BELLES OF BLUEBERRY LANE

Book 1

Gillies Ridge Series

Release Date: 17 December 2025

G RACE PULLED THE STRAWBERRY -red sports car to a halt at the end of a narrow track crowded with overgrown blackberry bushes, cross-eyed cows and mud-splattering potholes.

She exhaled. “One of us has to get out and open the gate.”

Pom groaned. “Not me.”

In the rear vision mirror Grace watched her sister let her head fall back onto the headrest and close her eyes.

“That leaves me, I guess.” Ali, the youngest of the trio, opened the passenger’s door and move towards the gate.

Grace grinned. Her sister, Alice Marie Belle, was a perfect little Alice in Wonderland who always aimed to please. Grace felt bad taking advantage of her but the two hour drive up the mountain had taken more out of her then she cared to admit.

She watched with increasing mirth as Ali tried to work out the latch on the gate. Her efforts screamed city-girl.

Grace took pity and the threw open the driver's door. “Move over, kiddo, and let an expert have a go.”

She made quick work of the loop of chains that pinned the gate to the gate post.

She had been seven years old the last time she was here and if her memory served her, the visit hadn’t ended well.

Which might explain why their mother didn’t seem overly keen for Grace to collect her inheritance, but with Grace’s need to escape the city, to her it was a godsend. Thank you, Grandmother Belle, for saving my ass at an opportune time.

Her mother didn’t know about her latest artwork, and when she did, Grace wanted to be as far away as possible.

A mountain or two between them seemed a smart option.

Having her sisters along for the ride was added insurance.

Granny Belle was an enigma in their family the crazy old witch, their mother had called her, and the girls had learnt not to ask about Granny Belle who they knew lived in the mountains but as far as they were aware, was as crazy as a coot.

Crazy or not, her grandmother had left her the farmhouse and all it contained, and Grace planned to make the most of her luck while it lasted.

“Back in the car,” she ordered. “On second thoughts, you're supposed to stay here and shut the gate after us. Did you see how the latch worked?”

Ali grinned. “On it.”

Grace maneuvered the sports car through the gate, silently praying that the driveway that meandered out of sight around a bunch of wild oak trees would support the low-slung sports car. Potholes were not doing the chassis any good and she didn’t want to think about the mixture of mud and cowpats that decorated the underside of the car.

Once Pom regained her faculties, she was going to be horrified to see where Grace had taken her pride of joy.

Too bad. Grace needed, to see their inheritance for herself. To see if it could act as a bolt hole until the furor over her latest artwork died down. Her mother made it clear that she would no longer bail Grace out if she screwed up again.

She wasn’t sure painting a tiny pink penis on a caricature of a local unidentified local politician could be considered a screw up exactly. In her defense, she had made sure nobody could recognise him by his face. And she’d made up the size of his penis. Or at least she thought she had.

It wasn’t her fault the local radio station decided to run a competition to identify the artist. They’d already identified the politician, and rumour had it he wasn’t happy.

If they found out that Grace Belle, local graffiti artist known for her subversive political statements, was the artist in question her mother would kill her. Sleaze-ball or not, said politician had the power to block several of her mother’s more lucrative real estate developments.

Best Grace high-tailed it to hills before Frederika Belle, billionaire shopping centre developer, found out her daughter had done it again.

She dragged her attention back to her mother who was focused on assuring Grace not to get her hopes up about their inheritance.

“The farm was a dump when I was growing up and I can’t imagine anything has changed,” she assured Grace as the girls poured over Granny Belle’s last will and testament. “Your grandmother didn’t exactly have a brain for business. She was too busy creating her potions to worry overly much about her surroundings.”

Grace smiled innocently her mother and warned her sisters not to say anything about their plans.

The idea was to head up the mountain, assess the farm’s potential, and be back in the city before nightfall, their mother none the wiser her daughters were MIA on a wild goose chase for an inheritance that wasn't worth inheriting, according to her.

The sisters had bombarded Grace with questions about the place but all she could do was shrug. “I was seven, for crying out loud. And seven-year-olds are full of fairies at the bottom of the garden and romantic notions.”

If she was truthful the things that she remembered from Granny Belle’s farm with things that she had buried deep within her because it seemed disloyal to mum and their city penthouse overlooking the river to think nostalgically of country lanes and fairies at the bottom of the garden.

It wasn't as if Grace was prone to romantic dreams.

She was an industrial artist.

Streetwise.

Smart.

On-trend, cutting edge, with a dash of graffiti rebel on the side.

The caricature had been a piece of art, damn it, the penis pure inspiration. Proof she was absolutely, categorically, not into fairies at the bottom of the garden.

Pom was no help. She'd hooked into the expensive champagne, put on loud music and danced. Grace and Ali could have taken her anywhere today and Pom would have slept right through it.

Grace crossed fingers and hoped her sister would survive a day in the country.

She drove through the gate and pushed open the passenger door, “Hop in. And remember, whatever happens here on the farm stays on the farm.”

Ali, being the youngest, had the unfortunate habit of blurting things out at inappropriate times, getting confused about what was secret and what was not when it came to their mother. How she hadn't managed to blurt out their plans for today, Grace had no idea.

Beside her, Ali grinned. “Come on, Sis. You’ve got to be a little bit excited. We’ve inherited all this.”

Grace crossed her fingers on the steering wheel and looked around her. “If we believe half of what Mum told us, we’ll be lucky if I’ve inherited a goat shed in a rundown paddock.”

Ali hooked the seatbelt over her shoulder. “Didn’t you see the sign?”

“There was a sign?” Grace had been too busy guiding the low-slung car over the ruts of the laneway to a halt without scraping the muffler.

“The Belles of Blueberry Lane. Have you ever heard of anything so romantic?”

“Belle’s our surname so there is no surprise there. And it looks like were on some kind of fruit farm. I would have said grapes but what do I know?”

Ali chuckled. “Yeah, me too. But Blueberries? We can make blueberry pies and blueberry muffins and blueberry milkshakes.”

“Something tells me it's not blueberry season right now,” said Grace, glancing across at the rows of trellised bushes.

It hadn't been blueberry season for some years by the look of the overgrown branches, but who was she to spoil her little sister’s dreams.

She inched the sports car along the rutted lane, conscious that Pom could wake up any minute. The car bounced and bucked even though they were going slowly.

When Pom saw they were in a paddock in the middle of nowhere she would likely snatch the car keys out of Grace's hands and zoom back the city, leaving Grace an Ali to check out their inheritance on their own.

To be fair, Pom didn't need the money. Pom was an entrepreneurial business whizz-kid, following in their mother’s footsteps, the local darling of the rich and under 30s Rich List set. She rarely admitted to anyone that she had one sister who was made graffiti porn for a living and another sister who qualified for permanent student status.

Well, at least one of them had fulfilled their mother’s dreams for them.

Grace turned and grinned at her sister. “The Belles of Blueberry Lane,” she said. “Fairy country if ever I heard it.”

She pulled the car to under the shade of a huge old oak tree, taking care to avoid the lowest branches.

“Welcome to our inheritance.”

An old Queenslander with wide verandahs greeted them, with the emphasis on old.

At least it hadn’t fallen down.

Yet.

Ali was already out of the car and rushing forward. Grace heard her excited squeal.

Grace snatched up the keys as she alighted the car, her quick gaze in the rearview mirror showing that Pom was still fast asleep, her mouth slightly open. She’d have to remember to tell her sister she snored.

She shut the door gently and followed Ali.

She came up beside her sister and took her hand, giving it a squeeze. “Ready?”

Her sister nodded and together they followed the path around the back of the house.

Grace closed her eyes briefly and opened them again. She couldn't believe it. Her seven-year-old memory had created a picture-perfect cottage at the end of the world.

And there it stood, with its wide verandah stretched out in front of them, the posts propped up by ramshackle wisteria, with its thick purple flowered vines twisting and weaving around the posts, teasing the sisters with hints of floor to ceiling timber shuttered windows, and a wide front door painted the same pastel violet as the flowering vines.

“Wow,"”Ali breathed. “I feel like I’m about to enter a storybook. Enid Blyton, eat your heart out.”

Grace let go of her sister's hand as Ali opened her arms wide and breathed in the essence of the place, before taking the timber stairs two at a time to follow the wrap-around verandah to see what other secrets it revealed.

Ali had been at design school forever and was Belle Corporations secret weapon when it came to the décor wizardry. Ali would take whatever their mother and Pom were marketing and turn their ideas into the dreams clients never knew they wanted until Ali worked her magic on them.

Ali had already forgotten Grace was there as she dragged the ever-present notebook from her back pocket and began to sketch.

Grace left her sister to it as she turned and followed the stepping-stone path that led down the side of the cottage.

It was bigger than she remembered but then back then she hadn't been interested in the house so much as the gardens. She veered to the left of the cottage following the path as it opened to reveal a complete, albeit overgrown, wonderland with a stone shed at the bottom of the garden.

“It's exactly as I remembered,” she murmured. “It even has its own little stone chimney. It's where Gran used to take me.”

She couldn't remember why she and her grandmother spent so much time at the bottom of the garden, but she remembered picking things from the garden and placing them in big wicker baskets and then going into the shed and creating delicious smells in a big iron pot over an open fire.

“Grandma's potions,” she said. “Grandma used to make potions like Mum said.”

Ali eyed the shed warily. “She really was a witch.”

Grace shook her head. “No. Not a witch, a magician. She used to make magic potions. She told me that one day they would be mine and that I’d know what to do with them.”

They reached the bottom of the garden and a large heavy wooden door, the only thing that stood between her and the contents of the shed she hadn't thought about in twenty years.

She wasn't sure she wanted to think about them now, but her sister had no such qualms.

Ali had tested the knob on the door. “It's locked.”

Grace's gaze narrowed. The garden was overgrown, and the shed totally hidden, but there was a brand spanking new deadlock on the door.

“At the will reading, did the solicitor give us any keys?”

“Pom would be the one who knows that. I nodded off at about page three of the reading.”

Grace knew what she meant. She had trouble concentrating on the legalese herself. It was only when Pom explained she’d inherited their grandmother's worldly possessions she'd been interested.

Because of her mother’s stories, she knew she wasn’t going to be rich but maybe she could turn the farmhouse into an Air B&B and create a bit of income.

Was that too much to ask?

Pom soon dissuaded them of that notion. “The will stated you’ve got a live here and pay down the debt or it goes to the caretaker.”

Grace and Ali looked at her, aghast.

“Debt,” Al squeaked.

“Caretaker?” Grace said.

Had they fallen into a Victorian novel.

Was some old bloke about to steal their inheritance?

If Grace had thought their mother would explain the mystery of her grandmother's strange will then she had another thing coming.

Mum had laughed and said, “I told you the old bitch was crazy.” Then proceeded to buy a dozen bottles of French champagne to celebrate her mother's demise and the inheritance that she didn't have to deal with. “Good riddance,” she said. “To bad memories.”

Nothing Grace could say would induce their mother to speak another word.

Pom was inclined to agree with her. “We don't need to take on some crazy old lady’s debts. Leave it to the caretaker. Let it be his problem.”

But something in Grace was stubborn. Granny Belle was their namesake. And Grace was proud of their name. There was something that made her want to see their inheritance before they let it go.

“I told you that you were chasing a pipe dream.” Pom appeared from around the side of the house, voicing what Grace was already thinking.

Grace finally gave in to the inevitable. “Looks like you're right, Sis. Coming up here was a wild goose chase and if anyone should know the futility of wild goose chases it's me. Let's get out of here.”

If she'd been holding onto some faint romantic dream that Granny Belle was the missing part of her then she was as foolish as her mother had told she was.

Fairies at the bottom of the garden weren't real and Grace might as well get used to it.