‘Cut him deep, poor lad. I’m pleased to know he’s got some company again, love.’
‘Oh … I’m not company.’
‘Sure you are,’ said Hogey. ‘The way I hear it.’
She narrowed her eyes at him. ‘You’re not on the Bush Poetry Muster committee, are you?’
‘Of course I am. And young Joey just stepped up as Acting Chairman.’
He did? But that was—
She huffed out a breath. It didn’t matter what it was or wasn’t. ‘Well, you can tell those morons that I am not in the running for Mrs Farmer Joe. Not now, not ever.’
Hogey grinned. ‘If I were a betting man, I’d lay you odds.’
Her stomach went cold. If Joe Miles weren’t a betting man, she wouldn’t be feeling like she’d had her heart cut out.
‘This one’s toast, love. I can put a replacement battery in for you, and I’d recommend new back tyres, too. These ones are about as useful as a fart in an elevator. You got anywhere you can go visit for forty minutes?’
‘Um … I don’t suppose you have a desk here, do you? I have some work to do for Carol, but I’m staying at the hotel motel at the moment and Ken’s cleaning my room this morning.’
‘Understood. Bloke’s a menace with a feather duster. Help yourself to my office. If you fancy a cuppa, there’s mugs in the sink that might have been washed sometime this week. I take mine with plenty of sugar,’ he added with a wink.
She winked back. ‘Coming right up.’
Tea made, Kirsty settled herself down at Hogey’s cluttered desk and pulled her laptop out of her duffle bag. The story for the Wacol War Museum was nearly done. Bill’s early life and war history was sorted, thanks to Carol. His post-war project to reclaim the wreck was in print already thanks to the articlesthe Historical Society had saved from the defunctClarence Daily.
Now it was her turn to add to the story.
She typed in a heading: FINDINGMYGREAT-GRANDFATHER’SWWII PLANE.
Restoring a vintage aircraft takes persistence and …Crap. She sounded like a boring narrator on a documentary nobody wanted to watch. Her fingers paused on the keyboard. Whathadshe done after the initial surprise of finding the Wirraway? Research, of course. And she’d painted, and stitched cracked vinyl, and greased cables and buffed steel rivets until her fingers blistered. She’d worried about whether some bank was going to sell Bill’s history out from under her.
Far out, this was difficult. She wasn’t a journalist. She couldn’t take a bunch of dry old facts and make them interesting. She deleted the heading and typed in a new one: 10 LESSONSFIXINGUPANOLDPLANETAUGHTMEABOUTLIFE.
She took a breath and flexed her fingers.
#1: If you’re the kind of person who gives up when things get difficult, then don’t try and restore a plane. I used to be that sort of person …
She smiled and—what waswithher eyeballs these days?—blinked away the sting. Okay, so maybe she had started the Wirraway project to get out of dealing with the stuff she didn’t want to deal with back in Port Augusta.
But it had been a long time since she’d thought that way.
Hunching her shoulders, she began clattering away, words coming quicker than she could spell them.
#4: It’s okay to rely on friends for help. Especially if you are crap at painting women onto the fuselages of planes. She was halfway through#5: My grandmother’s suitcase: not all emotional baggage is badwhen her phone rang.
Joe. She closed her eyes. She couldn’t avoid him forever, so she slid the green marker across her screen.
‘Hi, Kirsty. Can I see you?’
‘I don’t know, Joe.’
‘I have some stuff to say. I’m hoping I mean enough to you that you’ll listen.’
Wow. If that wasn’t a punch to the guts, she didn’t know what was. ‘Umm …’
‘Are you free now?’