An autograph. She blew out a breath. Yeah, asking for an autograph might have been tricky. When would she have done it? When he was sliding his fingers under her bath towel and stirring up her lonely, lonely soul? Or when he was telling her to fuck off?
‘Joanne.’
Jo looked up at her ex-husband, who had come to the door. ‘Craig,’ she said, trying to match the tone. Or, to be precise, the total lack of tone. It was hard to hear it (the lack of it) and not think about the time in the long, long,longago past when there’d been affection there. Respect. Not the toxic mess everything had become.
‘Ready to go, honey?’ she said to Luke. She and Craig had agreed not to air any differences in front of their son. The easiest way to uphold that was to get the heck off the premises, pronto.
‘Um …’ Luke glanced at his dad. Gauging the temperature, perhaps; something she imagined kids of broken homes were adept at. Evolution in practice, only the meteors that crashed into homes these days to annihilate the lives within were manmade.
Or womanmade, in her case.
‘What’s the plan?’ said Craig.
Jo cleared her throat. Unbeknownst to her ex-husband, Luke had just handed her a tool that, if she had any pride at all, she wouldn’t use, but where her and her son’s relationship was concerned, pride was something she couldn’t afford. ‘Actually, Luke and I have that camping trip to organise.’ She looked at Luke. ‘To Yindi Creek. There’s a plane out to Longreach early Monday morning that we might get seats on, but we’d better get home and jump online before they’re all booked.’
She’d text her boss and say she’d be taking that extra annual leave she was owed, after all.
‘Yes, Mum!’ said Luke. ‘Awesome.’
She let thatawesomewarm her for the whole drive home.Take that, Craig, she thought.You’re not the only parent who can put a smile on Luke’s face.
Back at her little townhouse, she booked tickets and set about doing laundry and hunting up spare camping gear, while Luke occupied himself texting everyone he knew that he was headed out west and might even meet someone famous.
As she slung socks and knickers and bras into the washing machine, Jo wondered how she was going to explain to her son that not only was he likely to bump into Hux, he was also going to figure out that his mum and Hux had a past.
A complicated past.
CHAPTER
25
News had spread.
Hux knew this from the reaction of Pam at the bakery when he’d walked past earlier, who pointed at him through the glass window and gave him a double thumbs up; from Mrs Saxwood-Chang, who passed him in her ute on the main street and wound down her window to cooee at him; and from Lance, the owner of the third largest shop in town (after the IGA and Leggett’s Drapery) that served as newsagency, giftshop, bookstore and craft store. You needed a lotto ticket? You went to Lance. A barbecue apron that said World’s Best Dad? A jasmine-scented candle in a fake silver candlestick? A sudoku puzzle book? You went to Lance.
‘Wondered when you’d show your face,’ the newsagent had said.
‘Yeah. The Friday papers are in, I’m guessing.’
‘We’ve got theCourier-Mail. We’ve gotThe Australian. We’ve got theLongreach Leader. I’ve had a flick through them all and they’re leaving me with a burnin’ bloody question, mate.’
Here it came. The beginning of the onslaught.
‘You ready to tell me why I’ve been buying those Gavin Gunns all this time and you’ve not come in to sign one bloody copy?’
Hux blinked. ‘Um. Sorry, Lance.’
‘You’ll be signing the ones on the shelves before you go.’
Hux took a surreptitious glance at his watch. In one hour and fifty-five minutes, there was a power cable guy turning up at the airstrip expecting to be in the air on schedule and Hux needed to be there, ready to rumble. Pointless saving Charlie’s business by giving up his anonymity, then destroying it by not turning up. He had a couple of other stops to make before he could head to the airfield, but he could sign quick. He had, after all, had plenty of practice.
‘Sure. Let’s do it. You got a pen?’
‘Make the first one out to Elsie,’ Lance said, following him over to the bookshelves where, Hux was pleased to note, he could only see a few copies.
To Elsie. Happy reading, Gavin Gunn.
‘The wife, is she? Did I know you were married, Lance?’
