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CHAPTER
29
The text Kirsty had been waiting for came:Dastardly scheme underway. Come to the museum as soon as you can. LOL Carol.
She wondered if she needed to be the one to break it to the museum curator that LOL didn’t mean lots of love. She tapped icy fingers over her phone screen. The clouds had been greying up and promising doom and gloom since mid-morning, and when the rain started falling, the temperature in the stable workshop had dropped about ten degrees.Give me a hint. I hate surprises. But please let it be a way to help her rescue Bill’s plane.
Nice try.C u soon.
For an eighty-something-year-old, Carol was up with the cool lingo.
I’m on reno duty,she texted.I’ll come straight to you afterwards :)
She dropped her paintbrush into an old coffee jar filled with turpentine and stood back to admire her morning’s work. The front door of Mount Barney had been a scratched and worn messof yellowed enamel when she’d wrestled it off its hinges. She’d dragged it into the stables then spent an age sanding it back and bogging its bumps and scratches.
Now it was perfect, a gleaming mossy green.
If only she could sand and bog her thoughts as easily. The first one she’d be making vanish would be those words that had been circling her brain.
What if I don’t want you to go?
It wasn’t fair, saying that to her. She was a Fox, for crying out loud; of course she was going to go. And it had probably been just the beer talking, anyway. She was overthinking it.
The other thing she’d be sanding off and bogging over would be the reminder Mike had sent her during the evening to call Mediflight’s psychologist, Helen Best. And there’d been no LOL in his text message.
She was working herself up to it, wasn’t she? She just had a lot on, like glazing windows in Mooball, and replacing ancient wiring on the Wirraway’s tail rudder, and damping down her feelings for Farmer Joe.
Besides. Her problem was mending itself. A 737 had soared through the sky the other day, way up high where its tailwind left a plume of white vapour, and she hadn’t felt faint or breathy or sick or anything.
She was probably a hundred per cent cured.
‘Looks great, Kirsty!’ piped a high voice behind her. She spun on her boot heel to find a rain-spattered Amy galloping into the work shed on an old broom, Gus hot on her heels.
‘Shouldn’t you be at school?’ She braced herself, then peered out into the rain to see if Amy’s uncle was on his way in because … well … shoot.Those words.
Luckily—or unluckily, depending on which part of her brain was doing the thinking—a tousle-haired Joe clad in a rain-wet shirt was nowhere in sight.
‘Pupil free day. Mum thought Uncle Joey might need a friend and I’m pretty much his bestie now.’
She winced. A friend … exactly what she’d told him she wasn’t.
But he had Amy looking out for him, didn’t he? And Daisy. It was about time she started remembering she was a stranger here, not part of the Wirraway Farm community.
She dropped her gaze to the broom. ‘Are you … riding a horse?’ she said. ‘Or … a unicorn? A dragon? I know. A giant friendly fairy.’ Mud was plastered up Amy’s skinny legs to knee height, and the usually apricot dog looked like he’d fallen in a vat of chocolate ice-cream.
‘Close,’ said Amy, patting her broom handle and telling it to stay. ‘This is Wimble, my giant earthworm. I had to ride him over the grass from the house because it’s raining out.’
Amy dismounted from Wimble and chucked him in a corner, then gave the miniature horse a careless pat on the rump. ‘Uncle Joey sent us outside. He says he can’t crunch numbers on his computer with us lunatics clattering round the house.’
Kirsty glanced at her watch. An hour until her shift was done. ‘Do you want me to find a job for you in here for a bit?’
‘Dunno,’ said Amy. ‘I’m supposed to check the chook pen for eggs when the rain stops.’
The hammering on the tin roof sounded like it would never stop. ‘Maybe you could help me for a bit before you and Wimble invade the chook pen.’
‘Could we invade it like we’re on an army mission?’
‘Um … sure.’
