She lifted her head and squinted down at her wrist, but the room was too dark to make out where the big and little hands were on the face of her watch. She flopped back down so her face was pressed into the un-pillow-like pillow. She’d get up. Any second now.
The journal article she’d been working on had to be to blame for her falling asleep by mistake. Her article on whether early crocodiles, or crocodylomorphs as they were known in science circles, preyed on dinosaurs was currently as exciting as gecko poop, given it was missing its most vital element: proof. Funky layouts and margins and reference materials listed alphabetically in glorious detail in the back pages could only carry an article so far.
And—she had no problem admitting it—she had more than her share of anxiety about writing articles for academic journals. She could fill a bathtub with the number of rejection letters she’d received. If only science for adults was as carefree and easy as science had been at school. She’d done well, then. So well that her parents had seen a future for her studying pharmacy and dispensing blood pressure medicine and buying a house in an upmarket suburb (their life dream, not hers), whereas she … well. She’d not bought into her parents’ dream for her future, but she had learned that doing well felt good. Felt awesome, in fact.
Junior science prize at school for best potato-powered torch. She’d accepted an award in assembly and there’d been applause, and for a shy kid who’d been lousy at sport and even lousier at making friends, the moment had remained etched in her memory. Then there’d been the National Secondary Schools Science Tournament in Canberra: biology champion. ‘A truly gifted young scientist,’ one judge had said. Science accolades were to her what parental love and support were to other people.
Jo sighed. Was it totally tragic that she was still clinging to that accolade two decades later?
Of course it was tragic.
But what was with all this sentimental thinking anyway? Dot and Ethel had given her emotional wall a little poke and now the wall had cracked and stuff was busting out in every direction. She needed to wake up, properly, and get on the road out to Corley, not slide back into the threads of a dream that was hovering gently just beyond reach.
Thank heavens she’d packed already. She showered in three seconds flat (after a long moment with her head poked through her doorway into the corridor to check she was the only one on her floor who was awake, and a double-triple-check she’d locked the bathroom door) and scribbled a note, which she propped on the till behind the bar.
Hi Maggie, I’m headed out to the station. Thanks for everything! Jo.
She munched on muesli bars as she headed out, promising herself a coffee once she’d arrived and found a minute to set up her little butane stove. The AM radio station she’d found was filled with static but played a few songs she could sing along to, but at five o’clock switched over to a news bulletin. ‘Arrest made,’ announced the radio announcer. She turned the volume up to listen.
‘Joint Task Force Osprey, comprising Australian Federal Police, Queensland Police Service and the Royal Papua New Guinea Constabulary, has arrested a Queensland fishing camp owner in the Karumba district on alleged links with a drug importation scheme involving drugs transported by banana boat to PNG from Indonesia, and from there to Queensland via a black flight. It is anticipated further arrests will be made in the coming days.
‘The use of PNG as a transit corridor to bring drugs into Australia is a concern to both nations given the proximity of the countries and the difficulties of patrolling their extensive coastlines.
‘Earlier this year, the joint task force seized 52 kilograms of crystal methamphetamine with an estimated street value of $15 million AUD. In a separate bust, 500 kilograms of cocaine, with an estimated street value of $80 million, intended for Australia was found when a Queensland registered plane, flying illegally, crashed on take-off from a remote grass airstrip in PNG. The pilot has to this date not been located and police are urging anyone with knowledge of this or any other illicit drug importation activity to contact Police Watch.’
Enough already, Jo thought. Bring back the music. She’d just spied the packet of lollies on the passenger seat hiding under the tourist map she’d picked up in Winton the other day of the Dinosaur Trail, and a singalong with Dancing Queen or Sweet Caroline would be just the thing to distract her from eating junk before the sun was even up.
She was a hundred and fifty clicks out of town, watching the rising sun light up the eastern plains in her wing mirror when her phone buzzed.
Who’d be calling her at—she looked at her watch—not even seven o’clock in the morning? She’d forgotten to connect her phone to the vehicle’s bluetooth, so she applied the brakes, and as the four-wheel drive slowed to a crawl on the shoulder of the back road in a spray of red rubble, she grabbed the aged vinyl case of her phone from the front seat. She scraped a thumb over the call icon and pulled it to her ear without checking who was calling.
Big mistake.
‘Is there some reason why my son has been abandoned on the steps of the Fortitude Valley Pool?’
She snapped to adrenaline-spike alertness. What had her ex-husband just said?
‘Abandoned?’
‘Synonymous with forsaken, stranded and dumped. I’d like an explanation, Joanne.’
That was the way Craig spoke: like the senior barrister in a television court drama who liked to show off in front of a jury. He’d learned the knack of weaponising pronouns, too. Luke was never ‘Luke’; instead he was ‘our son’ or ‘my son’ or ‘your son’, depending on whatever point Craig was trying to make.
‘Luke’s at camp until Sunday, with a horde of other boys and a water polo coach. As you well know, Craig.’
‘Camp which ended early because one of the boys tested positive for meningococcal. Asyouwould know if you had any inkling at all what was going on in your son’s life. You are the custodial parent for these holidays, are you not?’
Jo stared at the fresh spatter of insects the windscreen had acquired in the two hours she’d been on the road as she pushed aside the ominous phrasecustodial parent, which could be worried over later in the day when her ex-husband wasn’t in her ear, taking such cold delight in her having fucked up. Again.
‘Why didn’t anyone call me?’
Crap. Why didn’t Luke call her?
‘I’m not your secretary, Joanne. I’m on my way to collect Luke now. Hopefully he’s not too distraught at being the only child whose parent couldn’t be arsed collecting him.’
Craig ended the call and Jo looked at the blank screen. Her ex-husband was a total dick. That had been established (by a truly gifted scientist) time and again and she didn’t need to relive every dicky deed he’d ever done—she saved that sort of rant for the shower, where it was easier to cry unnoticed …
But—as much as it stunk—Craig wasn’t the parent who Luke was currently refusing to call. She was. And she only had herself to blame.
