“I have to work with Natasha on a project.” The disgust on her face was clear. Natasha was Lara’s nemesis, just like Jerry had been Matt’s.
“What’s the project?” Matt asked.
“We have to pick a topic and then write a report and do a presentation on it to the whole class.”
“Have you chosen a topic?” Darcy asked.
“I want to do the shipwreck of the Retribution,” Lara said. “But Natasha thinks that’s lame. She wants to do it on a K-Pop band.”
“Perhaps you can find a compromise,” Darcy said.
Music and history. The girls had to have something in common. “Doesn’t Natasha do horse-riding with you?” Matt asked. “Maybe you could do something related to that.”
Lara brightened. “That’s a great idea! I could bring Starlight in for the presentation.”
Darcy laughed. “I’m not sure your horse will fit inside the classroom.”
She waved him away. “Then we’ll do it outside. Maybe we could do it on correct posture, or techniques, or taking care of a horse.” She shoved her chair back and strode towards the corridor calling, “Faith! I need your help.”
Darcy handed Matt a beer from the fridge. “Good suggestion. I wonder why her teacher paired them. She knows they don’t like each other.”
“Maybe it’s an attempt to make them get on. In sixth grade Mr Naughton made me do a project with Jerry.” Matt shuddered.
“Jerry…” Darcy pursed his lips. “From football? I didn’t realise you didn’t like him.”
“I don’t hate him,” Matt said. “But as a kid he was a racist prick and never missed an opportunity to insult me.”
“So how did your project go?”
“It came close to an all-out brawl,” Matt admitted. Jerry had taunted him at every occasion.Abo. Dumbass. Salvo.“If it hadn’t been for Charlie, I probably would have been suspended.” Charlie always had his back. They’d balanced each other.
Darcy swore. “I hope Lara has a better time of it.”
Amy and Brandon came into the kitchen, both smiling, hair damp from a shower. Brandon looked particularly smug. Matt didn’t want to know what they’d been up to.
“Can I help with dinner?”
“No, it’s been in the slow cooker all day,” Amy said. “It’s ready when everyone wants to eat.”
Matt checked the time. Georgie should be home. Should he call her now? It might be better to wait until later, when he’d gone to his room. Then he could take his time and not be interrupted.
“I’m taking a shower first,” Darcy said.
Matt placed his beer on the table. “Good idea.”
“OK, let’s say dinner in half an hour then,” Amy said.
Matt went back outside and crossed the yard to the shearers’ quarters. As he clomped up the stairs to his room it suddenly hit him how small his room was. He’d been living here for years and about the only changes he’d made since he’d first moved in was taking down the posters on the wall and buying a new dark green bedspread for his single bed. In the corner sat a small desk and his few clothes hung in a wardrobe next to the desk. Aside from that all he had was a laptop he used as a TV on the nights when he didn’t feel like hanging out with the Stokes.
It wasn’t much for ten years.
He couldn’t bring Georgie back here, make her dinner, seduce her.
Buying a house hadn’t seemed worth it. Not when his work was here, and he’d had the run of the shearers’ quarters with its communal kitchen and living area. If he’d bought a house in town, he’d have to travel over an hour each morning to get here.
Even Georgie who had only graduated from university at the beginning of the year had moved out and got her own place. He didn’t have anything to offer her.
He groaned at himself, grabbed a change of clothes and went into the bathroom.
