CHAPTER
23
Rockpools that could have been plucked from the Garden of Eden dotted these hills. As kids, Joey and his friends had ridden their bikes along the back country roads, dumped them beside trees or in clumps of wildflowers, and followed the narrow foot tracks that only the locals knew.
As teenagers, they’d done much the same but snuck the odd stubbie of beer with them, and sometimes—a much bigger sin for a Miles kid from Bangadoon—bags of chips, and blocks of chocolate that had gone all squishy in their foil-wrapped ride up from town.
A little flirting.
A little skinny-dipping.
The rockpool visits had grown more fun as the years passed. He shot a glance at Kirsty walking beside him, a faint smile on her face as she watched Gus prance about like a show pony. Like today.
He’d worked his arse off, and sure he was feeling a little cheesed off—with Will, with Felicity, and whatever secret they were guarding, with the impellor on his water pump—but who the hell cared?The bank sniffing over his every move was irritating as hell, too, and his mum—who he’d just spent thirty minutes on the phone with—was being vague and evasive.
But, some thingsweregoing well. The next batch of avocado seedlings would go into the ground tomorrow. The rain squad at the Bureau of Meteorology had forecast a pleasing quantity of rain in September, and even one of his share stocks—a little gamble he’d dropped a few bucks into back before he’d even had his first job—had just scored a tech contract and its share price had inched its way up from nothing to something.
So yeah, he was going to have a swim, damn it. He was going to take an hour to enjoy having made a little step forward on his comeback trail. And if he just happened to be in the company of a smoking hot stranger who was in Clarence towing as much emotional baggage as he was—so what?
Flirting didn’t mean losing his heart; that would happen when he wanted it to happen, not before. His spreadsheet said so.
The rockpool he was leading Kirsty to was not far from the old shed, but granite boulders on either side of the creek which fed it kept it hidden from view. Some travel blogger had included it in their ‘rockpools of the wild’ list, which had been a pain for the locals, and there was a layby on a small road before the Shannon Gully Bridge where cars would park on hot summer days.
But today, they were on their own.
He stepped through a cleft in the boulders, stopping to run his fingers through the grooves that had been carved there over the years. Initials, love hearts, the ubiquitous willie … he’d jammed a pen knife into his wrist the day he’d been trying to carve his and Natalie’s initials there: a boomerang-shaped scar that had kept him company in the years since.
The waterhole opened up in front of them, and Gus barked like he’d found dog heaven, then threw himself into the water.
Kirsty stepped up beside him. ‘Wow.Thisis on the farm? The Bluett farm?’
He slanted her a look. ‘Well, technically it’s on Crown land just past the border ofmyfarm, but it’s too pretty a day to be getting hung up on technicalities.’
She grinned at him, and it loosened the knot in his chest.
‘Slip of the tongue,’ she said. ‘It can be Gus’s pool, then.’
‘You know, if Daisy was here,’ he said, ‘or Patty or Robbo, they’d say this pool was no-one’s and everyone’s. They’d press their hands on the rocks and imagine all the other hands that had been here before them: ours, the Bluetts, convict settlers, generations of Bundjalung families.’
Kirsty’s voice was thoughtful. ‘That’s a lovely image. You know much about the local history of the area?’
‘Are you kidding? I had Carol Wallace as my social science teacher. We didn’t get little lunch if we didn’t know our local history.’
‘Not seriously?’
‘Absolutely seriously.’ He held back a branch so it wouldn’t whip at her as she followed him through.
‘Carol’s been giving me a hand at the museum. Well, when I say, “giving me a hand”, she’s really taken over and I’m her assistant. I’m allowed to boil the kettle and carry the heavier books while she does the brain work.’
He’d let the problem of the plane sift its way down to the bottom of his problem pile, and that might have been a mistake. From the glimpse he’d had through the shed doorway, Kirsty had been doing more than visiting the Wirraway—she’d been spending money on it.
Treating it, in fact, as though it was hers to do with as she liked. ‘Research doesn’t seem to be all you’re doing.’
‘Carol says Bill’s legacy needs a story to go with it, so we’re working on that.’
He turned to look at her. ‘I’d like to hear it.’
‘Oh. Well, it’s not finished yet.’ She was silent for a moment. ‘This plane, Joey … it’s not just my history, it’s the nation’s history. And it shouldn’t be hidden away like it is, with no-one knowing the story behind why the Bluetts abandoned it. Maybe it’s time we talked about what’s going to happen to it. I have a plan … I’m just not sure how receptive you’re going to be about it.’