‘That boy. Whatshisname. You dated him in first year uni after he wrote a poem about your hair.’
‘Him,’ she said darkly. ‘Far out, I cannot believe you remember that poem.’
‘Oh, Hannah, woman of desire, you burn me away in great balls of fire?’
She snorted, and then Kylie did too, and then she had to hold the phone away from her ear so she didn’t get permanent damage from her friend’s shrieks of laughter.
When she’d finally quietened, Kylie got thoughtful. ‘Besides, that was a long time ago, Han. What about in Wagga, studying biology with all those burly guy vets. Was there anyone special there?’
‘Sure, of course, heaps.’
‘My lie radar is pinging.’
‘I do not have to share every detail of my love life with you.’Or lack thereof.
‘True, but I expect you to, anyway. Tell me straight, Hannah Celine Cody. How well versed are you in the whole having-a-fling department?’
She rolled her eyes. ‘I’m a vet, Kylie. Procreation of the species is thirty per cent of my day job. Plus, it’s science. You know how awesome I am at science.’
‘Science? Holy hell, we need to workshop this.’
‘We are workshopping this. I’ve called you, haven’t I, in my hour of need?’
‘Bugger, the tyre man is here. Call me later, girlfriend, and that’s an order.’
Hannah was on her own again, and her thoughts circled back to Kylie’s idea that Tom may not be the emotionless rock he pretended to be. Hehadtried to be her friend—would a rock do that? He’d been kind to her when she’d fallen apart at Lake George and he’d kissed her (twice!) in a very unrocklike way. He’d bought her coffee, he’d listened to her donor proposal without making fun of her; he’d even agreed to support her decision to have a baby.
What had she ever done for him in return?
Nothing. She’d carried on like it was all about her.
Yet somehow she’d worked out that she liked hanging around with him so much that now she missed him. Did he miss her? Was that what all his texts were about?
She’d assumed he was just texting to harangue her about campdraft logistics because he’d promised the self-appointed Hanrahan intervention team he would.
Skipjack paused at the fork in the path. To the south lay the tourist trail that circled the eastern bank of Lake Bogong: an easy graded track they could plod along. To the north was the high country: gullies, snow, snags of fallen timber; weather that could whip from mild to maelstrom at will.
‘What do you say, Skipjack?’
He snorted and stamped his foot, looked back at her as though to say,Make a decision, girlfriend, I’m growing old here.
The high country it was. She pulled out her phone and typed the message before she overthought it.Dinner? Friday? My place at 7pm? #olivebranch
She read it through once, squeezed her eyes shut for a moment, then hit send. A meal. An apology. And maybe she’d try to be a friend, this time, not a hot mess.
‘Okay, Skip,’ she said, nudging him onwards. ‘Let’s see what the future holds.’
CHAPTER
21
The husband-and-wife handyman team Marigold had recommended spent hours on the interior of the Hanrahan Pub. The painted walls were washed down with sugar soap, the ancient carpet had been brought back to life—a thin, well-worn, slightly stained version of life—by a noisy machine that had somehow washed it, dried it and fluffed up its fibres, and the small room off the main hall with its half-wall, its boxes of accommodation ledgers and its scuffed, leather-topped desk, was beginning to look like an office again.
And Tom, much to his surprise, had fallen in love.
‘Move yer arse, pet,’ said Sharon, the wife half of the handyman team, and Tom stood to the side while she ran a lurid orange feather duster over a framed, sepia-hued photograph of a toothless old prospector holding a nugget the size of a deck of cards. Sharon tapped a fingernail—also bright orange and tapered like a talon—on the glass. ‘Story goes, old mate here used his gold to build the pub, which might have been the start of a good business for him, but he was a little too keen on the bottle. Lost it all a couple years later.’
Tom stood beside her and took a longer look. He loved finding out about the pub’s history almost as much as he’d come to love the pub itself.Jimmy Larkins and his 7lb nuggetread the inscription on a card at the bottom of the framed photograph.
