There was no accounting for taste. Personally, she approved of Guy, who was a lot more practical than one would guess from a first impression. It was Guy who got things organised and who sorted the flights while Lucy was saying an emotional farewell to Kevin.
Meredith woke late that morning with the sick feeling that she had left something vitally important undone. Scrambling out of bed, she rushed along to try and book Lucy on to the London flight from Darwin and was pleasantly surprised to discover that Guy had already done it all. For someone used to dealing with everything herself, it was a huge treat to find that she could relax for once.
Now she stood on the dusty airstrip next to Hal and waved as the little plane that Guy had chartered sped down the runway. Looking like a toy, it lifted up into a sky so blue and so enormous that it made Meredith’s eyes ache behind her sunglasses.
Beside her, Hal wore a hat, his eyes narrowed against the glare as he watched the plane disappear into the blueness. The red dust churned up by the take-off was drifting back to earth and the silence once they had gone seemed to settle around them like an immense weight.
The sheer size of the horizon and the stillness of the landscape was overwhelming. Meredith felt tiny in comparison and she thought that if Hal hadn’t been standing beside her she would have been almost frightened by the uncanny sensation that the land was waiting for something.
As it was, Hal’s solid, self-contained presence was immensely reassuring. Outlined against the dusty backdrop of spindly gum-trees and scrub, his profile was extraordinarily distinct in the crystalline light. Meredith was sure that she could see every pore in his skin, every quirk in the battered felt hat. He wore a pair of faded jeans and scuffed boots, his sleeves were rolled up above his wrists, and his hands were brown and steady. He looked completely at home in this strange, alien place and Meredith was suddenly conscious of a childish urge to hold on to him and feel safe.
‘We’d better get on,’ he said.
‘Yes,’ said Meredith briskly. Enough of this. She was a sensible woman. Of course she didn’t need Hal to feel safe. Whatever next? This was Australia, not the end of the world.
It just felt like it.
She put her shoulders back as Hal turned to the truck parked in the meagre shade. Beside it, Meredith had been chagrined to notice earlier, stood a small plane with a propeller on its nose.
‘Why didn’t you fly into Whyman’s Creek yesterday?’ she had asked when Hal admitted that it was his. ‘It would have been a lot more comfortable than two hours in that truck!’
‘I want Jed to have a look at the tail rudder,’ Hal said. ‘He’s the mechanic, but he hasn’t got time at the moment. He’s been checking the water pumps, which is more important than being comfortable on a trip into town.’
That, thought, Meredith, was a matter of opinion.
The plane looked awfully small, she decided, eyeing it askance as she followed Hal to the truck. Under normal circumstances, she wouldn’t have set foot in it, but she couldn’t help hoping that Jed got round to fixing it before Lucy came back. A flight would be much more comfortable, and a lot less dirty, than another bone-shaking trip into Whyman’s Creek before she caught the plane home.
Home…Meredith looked around her at the eerily silent scrub and sighed. Her cosy house in Tooting seemed very far away.
‘You can get in the cab this time,’ Hal pointed out as he opened his door.
‘Big of you,’ muttered Meredith. The airstrip was about half a mile from the homestead and there hadn’t been room for more than three in the front seat. Meredith had wanted to say goodbye to Lucy at the plane, and as Hal had to drive and Guy and Lucy had a long trip ahead of them, it had made sense that she’d been the one who had sat in the back with the suitcases. By the time they had jolted down to the end of the track, she had been wishing that she’d said goodbye at the homestead as Hal had suggested.
He must have known that she would end up covered in dust-again!
‘I’m not sure that sitting inside is going to make much difference to this outfit now,’ she said, grimacing down at her pale trousers and sleeveless white top. Well, it had been white when she had put it on that morning.
‘Haven’t you got anything more practical to wear?’ Hal asked as she climbed into the cab anyway.
‘No,’ said Meredith, who thought she had done well to find these trousers.
He switched on the engine and the truck juddered into life. ‘I’d have thought you could have packed something a bit more sensible,’ he said disapprovingly.
‘My wardrobe is perfectly sensible for what I thought I’d be doing,’ Meredith objected. ‘I didn’t realise I would be put in the back of an open truck and driven through a dust bowl! So far I’ve ruined two outfits,’ she remembered glumly. ‘At this rate, I won’t have anything to wear at all next week! I’ll be cooking in my underwear.’
Hal raised his eyebrows. ‘That sounds interesting,’ he said.
His voice was dry but when he glanced at her Meredith realised with a tiny shock of recognition that the cool eyes held a distinct gleam of amusement and a shiver of something that was perilously close to excitement skittered down her spine.
More worryingly, her palm was actually tingling with the memory of how it had felt to touch his hand last night. ‘Deal,’ they had said, and his fingers had closed around hers. She shouldn’t be able to remember
Her mouth dried at the very idea, but luckily Hal was changing the subject without waiting for her to think of a suitably pithy answer.
‘Did Lucy have time to show you round?’ he asked, sounding so prosaic that Meredith wondered if she had imagined the awareness that had sparked in that brief glance a moment ago.
Embarrassed by what felt like a betraying flush in her cheeks, she clutched the dashboard and looked out of the window. ‘No. She was busy cooking the meal last night and I’m afraid it was all a bit of a rush this morning. She had her own stuff to pack, and I’d slept late.’
‘You were tired.’
‘Yes, I’m sorry about last night,’ said Meredith a little stiffly. ‘One minute I was eating beef and the next my head was in the gravy. I was completely zonked.’
‘Are you going to be OK to do lunch today?’
‘Of course,’ she said quickly, reading criticism in his tone. ‘I said I could do Lucy’s job, and I will.’
Hal glanced at her. ‘I’d better show you where everything is, in that case. It’ll save you a bit of time.’
Emma and Mickey were still in bed, in spite of strict instructions to be up and dressed by the time Hal and Meredith got back from the airstrip. Hal hauled them up and sent them grumbling along to the kitchen to find their own breakfast while he gave Meredith a brisk tour of the homestead.
Some of it she remembered from the night before. There was the austere dining area that opened out from the kitchen. A long, rectangular table sat on the painted concrete floor, dominating the room, but for Meredith the most noticeable feature was the way an entire wall had been left open to the air, but screened off to keep the insects out.
Another screened veranda led from the other side of the kitchen. It was more comfortable-looking, with a number of old wicker chairs ranged in a rough semicircle facing the screen. Lucy had told her that they all gathered there for a cold beer before supper but, having watched her sister at work, Meredith couldn’t imagine ever having the time to sit down herself.
Hal pointed out the store rooms, the laundry room and a whole wall of stainless steel fridges and freezers of varying temperatures.
‘And this is the cold store,’ he said, opening a door.
‘Ugh!’ Meredith recoiled at the sight of the carcass hanging from a butcher’s hook. ‘What’s that?’
‘It was a cow and now it’s food,’ said Hal.
‘I hope you’re not expecting
‘No.’ Hal gritted his teeth and hung on to his patience. ‘One of the men will butcher it for you when you need more meat. There’s still a couple of joints left,’ he went on, indicating some smaller cuts hanging at the side. ‘Those are for roasting or steaks. There’s a mincing machine as well, if you want it, and I think Lucy should have some diced meat for stewing in the freezer.’
Meredith grimaced. She was used to her meat wrapped in nice sanitised packets at the supermarket, where
