Page 45 of Return to the Waratah Inn

As she stepped into the station, a ticket officer asked for her ticket. She said she wanted one to Central Station, and he was about to hand it to her when two police officers rushed up behind her, puffing hard.

“Miss Everest?” one of the men asked.

She recognised the other one. He’d arrested her months earlier. He glared at her, then his eyes crinkled as a lazy smile played on his lips. Panic washed over her. Her gaze darted around the station. Could she escape? Make a run for it? Not at this late stage in the pregnancy. Her panic was soon replaced by hopelessness.

“We meet again, Miss Everest. Where are you going? Mrs Thompson called us to enquire about you.”

“I’m visiting my parents.”

“They don’t want to see you.”

“You don’t know that,” she said, her throat tightening.

“I do, and that’s a fact. I called them on the telephone after our last encounter. Wanted to see if they’d take you. They said they wouldn’t. Your father was pretty firm on the topic. So, Mrs Thompson is your only hope, I’m afraid. Come on, girl. Let’s get you back home.”

Mima sobbed. “It’s not my home.”

“It is for now,” the officer replied as he took an iron-like grip of her arm. “Don’t make a scene. You’ve got to think of the baby.”

She relented and stumbled meekly to the car as he propelled her along.

He bent low to whisper into her ear. “You’re a second-hand girl, Miss Everest. Haven’t you heard? Nobody wants you.”

Mima bit down on her lip. She wouldn’t let him see her cry. She tilted her chin up and climbed into the police car. He slammed the door shut behind her. She leaned her forehead against the window and watched the train station and all of her hopes, disappear into the distance as the vehicle pulled away.

Back at the hospital, Mrs Thompson met the officers and followed Mima up to her room. Mima slumped onto her bed, her lower lip trembling. But her eyes were dry.

“You’ll be punished tomorrow. I’m too tired to deal with you today. But if you do this again, I’m sorry to say, you’ll regret it, girl. Your redemption is under threat with this level of rebelliousness. I thought you understood what you had to do. But apparently, you need further instruction on the matter. Wash up for tea, and you can spend the evening embroidering to make up for missing laundry service this afternoon.”

After Mrs Thompson left, Mima lay on her side on the bed, her hands tucked beneath her chin. What she wouldn’t do to Mrs Thompson given half the chance. That woman deserved to be pummelled to within an inch of her life. And no doubt Mima was going to get the walking cane tomorrow. She cringed at the thought of it. Why had she tried to run? She should’ve known her father didn’t want her. Should’ve realised the police had already tried her parents, and they’d turned her away. It wasn’t fair. None of it was fair.

“Are you okay?” Fran’s voice startled her.

She sat up. Fran stood in the doorway, framed by the light behind her. Wisps of hair flew around her head, making her appear like an apparition in the gathering darkness.

“I’m fine.”

“They caught ya, huh?”

Mima’s nose wrinkled. “They did. At the train station. I’d almost made it through. I didn’t think you knew…”

Fran walked over to sit on the bed beside Mima. She patted Mima’s leg. “I tried to do a runner three times before I finally gave up. In the end, it’d be harder out there than it is in here. At least, that’s what they tell me. And at some point, I started to believe it.”

Mima looked at her. “How do you stay so strong? I don’t think I can do this…”

Fran looked away. “I’m not strong.”

Mima knew what she meant. They sat there, side by side, in the silence as the room grew dark, hands bound tightly together like one fist clenched in anger against a world that had rejected them.

Chapter Twenty-Four

January 1998

Cabarita Beach

Charlie Jackson, or Jack, as he was known these days by his friends, was starting to feel every single one of his seventy-five years of life. He’d always been a fit, lithe type, and his age had never hampered him much in all that time. But these days, he felt the creaking in his bones and aching in his joints a little more with each year that passed.

He pushed the Akubra back on his head and rested an elbow on the car door. The knob on his window winder had broken off the previous week, and a sharp piece of metal jutted out instead. He glanced down at it, making a mental reminder to himself to go to the wreckers and find another winder. He hated to sell a classic like his Ford F100 ute in powder blue, with a roaring V8 engine. They didn’t make them like this anymore. So, instead he simply replaced anything that broke, and worked on it anytime it needed a bit of love. It was one of the many pleasures of his very full life.