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Her mouth went dry at the thought of flying anywhere, ever again, and she was pretty sure shortbread couldn’t cure what was ailing her. ‘I’m not at home at the moment. I’ve got some, er … things to do.’
‘Oh?’ John dropped his voice to a conspiratorial rumble. ‘Secret things? Like the whole mother breaking-into-your-house thing?’
It had been a relief to confide in him about it. Too bad he was thirty-five years older than she was and a happily married grandfather to boot. John Mann was a keeper.
‘Yeah. Thing is, I’m going to need some time. Mike in a good enough mood this morning for me to ask him for some leave?’
‘Is he ever in a good mood?’
Good point. She huffed into the phone. ‘Put me through anyway, would you, mate?’
‘Will do.’
Turns out a grounded outback pilot asking to take the eight weeks of annual leave she was owed had put her boss, Mike, in a good mood.
‘That’s perfect,’ he said. ‘The ATSB will want to speak to you so stay available. Now, about this joker, Shaun Ullrich. He wants to apologise … are you up for that?’
She breathed in, and out, and in again. ‘Can you tell him I’m on leave? I don’t need to hear an apology.’ She was running away from that. Especially that.
‘It’s your call. I’ll tell you what’s not your call, though, and that is the booking you need to make to speak to the psychologist. Her name’s Helen. I’ll text you her details.’
‘There’s absolutely no need for that,’ she said. She was fine today. She held her free hand up to the light coming through the hotel-motel window.Look, she wanted to say.No tremor. She put her hand down and pressed it into her lap before it made a liar out of her.
‘The grounding doesn’t lift until Helen says so, which is Mediflight policy after an incident involving one of its airplanes, Kirsty. See you in October.’
A psychologist. Crap.
Well, eight weeks was a long time, and luckily, she’d just realised she’d made a decision.
She was going to stay.
A project here in Clarence would block out all her guilt about the bad landing. More, it would be a chance to learn something, anything, about the side of her family her mother had told her nothing about.
She’d just get a few chores done before she handed back her hotel-motel room key and took the handsome (but mercenary) Farmer Joe up on his offer.
She gathered up her dirty clothes and was in the laundry out back, stuffing her coins into a slot in the massive commercial washer, when she heard a booming voice behind her.
On the outer Barcoo, where the washtubs are few
And the drovers stink six ways to Sunday
Lives a man called McStrum who likes bathing in rum
That he flogged from the publican’s pantry
She turned around, and there was her host, an ironing board in one hand and a screwdriver in the other. ‘Um … hi, Ken. Hotel-motel owneranda poet; a man of many talents.’
He gave her a wink with one of his bristling eyebrows. ‘That was the opening verse from my entry in last year’s muster. No prize, sad to say. The judges didn’t think the outer Barcoo was original enough.’
Um … even she knew that was true. But it didn’t seem polite to mention it.
‘It was anhomage,’ said Ken, dropping the h and rolling the word out like he was French. ‘A tribute to the bush poets of the last century. Plus, one of the judges reckoned washtubs weren’t a suitable subject for a bush poem.’
‘That’s tough,’ said Kirsty.
He snorted. ‘Wanted horses and ironic emus and sheep skeletons, no doubt.’
An ironic emu? Nope, she wasn’t questioning that, either. ‘Sounds like the muster is a pretty big deal in Clarence.’
