Laments and Liaisons

While Sydney woman, Lauren, is ecstatic about her writing career taking off, her relationship is heading in the opposite direction. When she realises there is no going back, she accepts the long extended invitation from her friend and mentor, Emma, a married middle-aged woman she met through the Internet, who lives in Mountain Creek in the Yarra Valley region of Victoria.

For Lauren, the better part of her life is just beginning. Emma, on the other hand, is going through mid-life crisis, and dealing with the emptiness and boredom in her life caused by her grown up sons moving away. She hopes that Lauren, who is younger and from a very different background will bring some excitement into her life.

On her arrival, Lauren is enchanted with the country and her new lifestyle. However, she soon becomes attracted to the local vet Susan, a well-to-do, well-educated and rather solitary enigmatic person with many secrets in her life. It doesn’t take long for them to realise that the attraction is mutual; however, both have to overcome their initial apprehension before they can embark on a relationship.

The peaceful neighbourhood is shaken firstly by strange goings-on on the ‘haunted’ property that once belonged to a woman who is now known to the locals as ‘Lady of the Creek’, whose spiritual songs everyone misinterprets as lament songs that keep reminding them of the myth that was spun around her decades ago, and for which they are keeping a fearful distance to her part of the bush. Later things are getting worse when an old hippie disappears and one of the neighbours is assaulted.