Changing Seasons. Summer VI, part 2

Summer VI, part 2 “I can’t believe we’re living somewhere where people just ride over,” Bea said to her twin sister , Lara.
“Well, we’re just about to ride to Minnie’s, to see about paint,” Lara pointed out. They were, after all, standing next to their brand-new bikes.
“No, I mean ride. Really ride. Look behind you.” Lara did, and saw Chas arriving at Marcus and Annette’s place. On the back of a horse.
“That’s Demerara,” Bea said, coming up behind her sister and resting her chin on Lara’s shoulder. As far as Lara was concerned, it was one of the brown horses she’d sometimes seen in a field.
“How do you know?” “Race you to Minnie’s!” Bea said, and was away. Lara followed in her sister’s wake, smiling slightly. Bea was the restless one of the two of them. Lara was calmer, more measured. They’d been talking about starting at their new school last night.
“It’s alright for you,” Bea said. “You just have to be yourself, and you’ll be fine. I need to find a myself to be. I need a flavour.” Cycling ahead of her sister, enjoying the morning air, Bea was thinking about the same conversation. And about the horses, and Sal showing her round the stud.
“You have to be calm around horses,” Sal had said, but Bea had found it easy for once. The horses themselves calmed her.
“I wish we could afford riding lessons,” she’d said to Sal at the end of the visit. “But doing up the house is going to take up all our spare money for a while.”
“Tell me about it,” Sal had laughed. “Most of the rooms behind this smart façade are still a disaster! But if you want to come and muck out and generally help here, I’ll teach you to ride in return.”
I could start school being a horse person, Bea thought. If I get on okay with it. It would give me someone to be. The two girls went over to the DIY store first.
“Oh good, Minnie’s got some more white paint in again. Or maybe, Oh bad, because I know what we’ll be doing all day again!” “I think I want some flower seeds. And some gardening gloves as well,” Lara said thoughtfully. “It would be nice to get the outside looking a bit better too.”
“Pick up a pair of gloves for me too. I don’t mind helping. We could do it as a surprise for Janelle’s birthday.” “Painting! All we’re doing is painting! As you can tell by our clothes…Dad’ll be down later for yet more white paint. The house is going to look like a laboratory when we’re done, but Janelle says the white will be a good base for all the colour she plans to add. Though she’s choosing tiles in the colours she wants because re-tiling is a lot of work…” “Can I have those gardening things please, Minnie? And Dad says he’ll settle up with you for everything including the new paint, so can you sort the bill for him, please?”
“I’ll be happy to do that? What are you planning to grow?”
“Just flowers. We’ve none of us time for vegetables! We’ve cleared all the weeds and mostly it’s going to just be grass, but Janelle said some flowers would cheer it up no end.”
“Well, if you’re not in too much of a hurry, I can give you some instant flowers from out of the front here. They’re about ready for splitting up – just let me find my trowel and fork, and it won’t take me a minute. And your step-mother’s right – flowers do cheer a place up, and cheer folks up too, no end…” “Janelle will love these. Aren’t people here kind!” Lara said, looking at the flowers Minnie had just dug up for them.
“Be sure and plant them as soon as you get home, and water them in well. Don’t worry if it’s not the perfect place, they’re not like roses: you can move them again later. And they’ll spread, too,” Minnie had said. Definitely hard work! Bea had thought that all the work on the house that they’d been doing had been strenuous, but she was finding even more under-exercised muscles while she was mucking out. And Sal had promised that learning to ride would be even more demanding… “This is a long way up!”
“Yes, but don’t worry. Demerara’s very well schooled by now.”
“Are you planning to do riding lessons later on?”
“Maybe,” Sal said thoughtfully. “But that would be Chas more than me – and he’d have to learn to be a bit more friendly first,” she added pointedly. Only the fact that they were around the horses stopped Chas snapping back at his sister.
“Try and sit up straighter, Bea,” he said instead. “And keep your eyes straight ahead,” he added, swinging himself up on to Nutmeg’s back. “Look through your horse’s ears.” And he posed to show her how to do it. “So what was all that about?” Bea asked, once Chas had ridden away. Sal was unusually grim-faced.
“He’s been coming the elder brother over me, forbidding me to go to the bookshop, saying he won’t have Byron near the place…” Sal looked at Bea as they walked back towards her. “That’s better. Heels down, back straight, eyes ahead. Still nervous?”
“No. I love it!”
“Then I think we could try trotting now. There’s an art to it…” There was! And Bea didn’t think she’d quite grasped it.
“I think we’ll stop there for today,” Sal said kindly.
“Oh good. You were right about finding yet more under-used muscles! Anyway, why is Chas so set against Byron? I mean, it’s not like he’s going to be interested in you…”
“Thanks!”
“No, I mean because he’s fallen for Clara! Hard. And he’s a nice guy…”
Byron’s fallen for Clara. Now that, Clara didn’t tell me. But I’m going to have some words with my brother tonight. He needs to get himself sorted out… “Nice cups,” Lucie said to Amber.
“Yes – we found them in the same second-hand shop as the table and chairs.”
“Nice cupcakes,” Leo said. “Did you make them, Amber?”
“No, I didn’t,” Amber said with feeling. "And keep them that end of the table. I can’t stand the smell.”
“Oh, it’s meat with me,” Lucie said. “I’ve had to go vegetarian for the time being…” “And make sure the milk stays down that end as well,” Amber added, just before Rafe started the official business. Six weeks earlier, they’d had an end-of-quarter financial meeting and celebrated with champagne: the visitor footfall was twenty-five percent higher than they’d projected. The champagne had led on to Other Things, once they were back in their own homes – and the Other Things had led on to two slightly-earlier-than-planned pregnancies. “We’re not going to be able to keep a lid on things any more. I heard, on one of my grapevines, that Lee Popeman Enterprises has been sniffing around, and I think they’re going to come out of the woodwork and try and shut us all down, probably quite soon now.”
They’re going to need to take the Hunter boys on, Amber thought. They don’t know what they’re letting themselves in for!
“Legally, they can’t touch us. Leo made sure of that. So I think they’ll try intimidation. They’ll probably assume that we are a bunch of starry-eyed amateurs who can be over-awed by a big company.” “So tell us your ideas first, Rafe. Because they’re not going to wreck this town twice,” Leo said grimly.
“I think we should give Georgie permission to go public, now that the cat is out of the bag. She was telling me that she’d like to get in touch with the company who made that documentary about the graveyard. That documentary bothered Lee Popeman enough to install Euan as a caretaker for it.”
“And everyone loves a plucky underdog story! My thought was that it’s time we had a town council. A group of people with some sort of clout. Officials with titles.” “Who?” Lucie asked. And then it got lively.
“Someone as treasurer. Lucie, you’re good with figures…”
“Oh no. Not me. They’ll just look at me and think ditsy blonde, and I’ll have to work twice as hard to be heard or taken seriously. Rafe or Leo. Rafe looks scarier – it’s those sculptor muscles.”
“But we need women on the council. You all bring a perspective we might miss. And I want Vic Meithers, because he’ll be our town doctor one day, to represent the health side.”
“Patience or Honey for education: whichever of them is willing to do it.”
“Molly Preston as secretary or whatever. She’s done a brilliant job on all those old records Grandpa Geo helped hide before the town hall was demolished.”
“Georgie, for sure. She needs to be in on all this.”
“We need a mayor, you know,” Leo said. “Mayor and council. The town used to have one. But who?” “Old Tench, of course,” Amber said. “Two reasons. One, if it hadn’t have been for his determination to make the company pay for what they did, if he hadn’t have stayed, then this place would have died. And two, he’ll be brilliant at it. It won’t frighten him, and neither will whatever opposition Lee Popeman Enterprises comes up with.”
The other three fell silent. Amber’s suggestion was perfect.


The cupcakes are by Sandy at ATS3, also the teapot and milkbottle, just about everything in the shops and the bikes with the flowers in the baskets.

Bea and Lara’s house was made by Jessabeans for SamelaRita as part of the Amayzing gift exchange. https://www.thesims3.com/assetDetail.html?assetId=9310215