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He reached out and tugged a strand of her hair. ‘Pete’s idea. You look different.’
Pete?‘I look a wreck, I imagine. I’ve had about eight hours’ sleep in two days, and that was in my swag in the back of my ute at a truck stop.’ With her mother—was it too soon to be mentioning her?
‘A clear sky. Stars twinkling in the velvet black. Doesn’t sound so bad to me.’
Wait—was he quoting her own words back at her? She couldn’t believe he’d remembered.
‘Maybe I was in too much of a hurry to get back to Clarence to notice.’ The flirty comment came out in a rush before she’d filtered it through her brain.
His eyebrows shot up so high they nearly collided with his hairline. ‘Um … what?’
Applause roared up from the crowd in the tent and Thelma came bustling out. ‘Kirsty,’ she hissed. ‘Awards are about to start, so get back inside in case your name’s called out as a finalist for the Larrikin Award. And Joey, Angelo is trying to get you on the walkie-talkie.’
‘Oops. I turned the volume down in the tent. Hope it’s not another kid stuck in a portaloo.’
Thelma made a huffing noise. ‘Merv’s with him; he’s probably broken a nail or something. You know what he’s like.’ And with that, she whisked back into the vinyl tent.
‘I’d better go,’ Kirsty said.
‘Yeah. Me too. Come find me after the awards, all right?’
‘Sure.’
He leaned forward and pressed a kiss to her temple that made her forget (almost) the padlock and remember (belatedly) he probably hadn’t seen the newspaper yet today. Then he was gone.
Kirsty blew out a breath. All right then … she’d seen Joey, and he hadn’t seemed mad at her, which was excellent, and he’d made her pulse race same as always, which wasamazingand now they had—sort of—a plan.
Bring on ‘later’, she thought. Good or bad, she wasn’t running away from her feelings now; she was facing them head-on.
She spied a market stall that had sold out for the day, so dumped the schooner glass she’d been carrying, and made her way back to the tent’s main entrance just as fat raindrops landed on her arm.
‘That’ll put a damper on things,’ said a voice beside her.
‘Ken! Hey, thanks for that newspaper this morning. Carol did such a great job pulling that article together; I don’t know what I would have done without her help.’
His eyes crinkled, and his giant caterpillar moustache rippled. ‘Oh, she’s not the only one who can be helpful, my love. Make sure you stick around for the speeches. There’s a little something you might be interested in.’
He was lookingverypleased with himself. ‘Ken,’ she said, ‘don’t tell me you’re a finalist for one of the written poetry awards! That is awesome.’
‘Yeah, nah,’ he said. ‘No such luck.’
Another raindrop landed on her arm, followed by another and another.
‘Hell’s bells. It’s an hour too soon for this rain. We’ve got a dozen marquees to dismantle and my ticket stubs will get wet.’ Ken lifted up a wicker box that looked like an old-fashioned sewing kit. ‘If you’re after a raffle ticket, better be quick. Joey’s selling the last of them now before’—he waggled his eyebrows, and raindrops flew off them—‘he makes the big announcement you will want to hear.’
She moved her eyes away. ‘Oh, I don’t buy raffle ticke—’ she started saying, but the queue shifted around them, and Ken was split off down one aisle, and she ended up down the side of the tent where it was standing room only. She had a good view of the stage, but where was her mother?
Oh! In the front row, near to where the Miles family had gathered.
‘Who’s happy to be here!’ Thelma roared into the crowd, who roared back with equal fervour.
‘We’ve had a wonderful day, and our trusty team of judges have been hard at work deciding on winners. Can I welcome PoetLaureate and National Bush Poetry Champion Frank Featherstone to the stage!’
Kirsty slid between a retiree in twinset and pearls and a barefoot kid sporting dreadlocks and a nose-ring.
‘Frank is no stranger to Clarence; he’s won our top written prize, The Billy Tea, twice and been a finalist in the Larrikin for best performance. He comes to us today all the way from Tamworth to present the adult category awards.’
Joe was walking the aisles, a bucket in his hand, stopping here and there to exchange a smile or a word with someone, and then walking to … her breath caught … her mother, who started nodding eagerly to whatever it was Joe was saying, before flashing up a fistful of twenty-dollar notes.
