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CHAPTER
15
When Kirsty arrived at the farm to start work, she pulled up at the gate and frowned. A child wearing polka dot knickers and frog-green gumboots was perched on the top rail, holding up a hand-drawn sign that said—she squinted through the windscreen to make doubly sure she wasn’t reading it wrong—O.M.G. HELP! REWARDOFFURDTWOBUCKS ACHOOK!!!!!!!!!
What on earth?
She opened her door and found herself face to face with the kid, who had scampered to the ute’s side faster than she could blink.
‘Who are you?’ said the kid.
‘I’m Kirsty. I’m …’ She was the trespasser who broke into the shed? She was on the run from a family curse? ‘I’m … new to the area. I’m starting work here on the farm.’
‘Cool,’ said the kid, who ought to have been freezing in that barely dressed get-up. (The warmth of yesterday hadn’t repeated itself, and the curl of breeze whipping about the flat-topped hillhadn’t got the memo about spring.) This must be the niece Joe had mentioned.
‘What I really want to know is: how good are you with chickens?’
‘Er … I can roast one? Or maybe do a stir-fry, with some greens, some hoisin …’ She let her words drift because the kid’s face had grown nearly as green as her gumboots.
‘You eatanimals?’
Kirsty took a long breath. Wrong answer, clearly. She was anxious about being here, the queue at the bakery café on Lillypilly Street had been so long she’d given up hoping for a coffee, and she was just realising she hadn’t thought to bring any groceries up to the farm with her. About to spend the next four hours renovating to meet her end of the bargain, all she had in the ute to snack on was a pack of two-minute noodles.
Chicken flavoured.
‘Sometimes I eat animals, yes,’ she said, deciding truth had to be better than sarcasm when dealing with a young person.
‘But if you caught an animal, like, in the next half-hour or so, would you eat it? Or can Itrustyou?’
‘Ummm … you can trust me. But really, I’m just here to start work. Speaking of …’ Kirsty looked around. The farmer was nowhere in sight, nor was his goofball dog. ‘Is your uncle around?’
‘Forget him, he’s gone off with Gus somewhere and that is good news for you and me, girlfriend.’
Girlfriend?
The kid put her hands on her hips and announced: ‘I’ve lost a chicken. Joey’s going to have my guts.’
‘Joey? Farmer Joe? We are talking about the same guy, aren’t we?’
The girl gave her a withering look. ‘Uncle Joey hasn’t got a clue about farming.’
She grinned—she couldn’t help it. Even her caffeine-deprived sense of humour was finding this kid cute. ‘Is that so?’
The girl waved her in close and, when Kirsty leaned down, put her little hands on Kirsty’s shoulders and hauled her in close. She smelled like vegemite and cupcakes and sunshine. ‘Can you keep a secret?’
‘I guess.’
‘Uncle Joey had to get Mum to start his whipper-snipper. What sort of a farmer can’t cut down his weeds unassisted?’
‘That does sound pretty bad,’ she said, trying not to laugh. ‘Tell me more about this chicken.’
‘Oh. Well. Long story short, Mum dropped me off here—she’s Joey’s sister and her name’s Daisy, like the flower, only I call her Mum—because she had to go into the gallery at Byron Bay where they sell her art and she said I could make myself useful here instead of hampering her style there. So, I was being useful and doing some art for the chicken coop—I’m an artist.’
Wow. The kid could talk.
‘I do acrylics, mostly, but I’ve been thinking of getting into sculpture, because it’s just soreal, you know?’
‘So real,’ Kirsty echoed.
