just be throwing shit together.’
‘I’m making nails out of wire. Anything’s a step up.’
‘Okay, gimme your phone.’ She handed it over, and he typed in a number. ‘Give these guys a call, tell them I sent you. They’re always looking for joiners and carpenters for behind-the-scenes work.’
Rose felt a tap on her shoulder. It was a Mundell 15mm chrome-plated easy turn, attached to a powder-coated galvanised steel garden post. ‘Very funny, Steve,’ she said.
‘Less talkin’, more walkin’,’ Old Steve said from behind her. ‘There are seven kilometres between us and those axe handles.’ Without waiting for a reply he set off down the aisle.
‘Oh well, great to see you,’ said Rose.
‘Don’t forget to make that call,’ Young Steve said. ‘I’m surprised Old Steve lets you have a mobile you didn’t make yourself.’
Rose had been driving through Ocean Springs for two hours and she still wasn’t entirely sure she was getting closer to where Endeavour Productions was filming Mansions in the Sky.
According to Young Steve, this was a renovation reality show filmed in a housing estate that had failed to find any buyers and had been abandoned in a half-finished state. And now Rose could see the reason it had failed: it was at the end of kilometres of winding suburban streets.
Rose was used to navigating grids of main roads and side streets, but today she’d been travelling in endless near-identical curves. She guessed the streets were laid out this way as a means of engineering a quiet neighbourhood; they would certainly deter hoons, rat-runners, and other fast drivers. But they also deterred through traffic. Worse, a highway passed by the back of the failed housing estate, but the linking roads had never been built.
Ocean Springs was a deserted outer-suburban citadel: the only way in was the longest possible way. Her satnav was barking instructions to ‘take the third exit’; it thought some of these streets didn’t even exist. More than once, Rose considered giving up and turning around.
Eventually, though, she started passing by vacant lots, and soon there were entire stretches of bare and undeveloped land between clumps of McMansions. A few tattered banners still fluttered, advertising the proposed estate. And at the final turn-off before the cul-de-sac that had become the Mansions in the Sky set, Rose spotted a billboard promising the development would be completed by 2014. Someone had spray-painted ‘PENIS’ under that. She guessed they wouldn’t be showing that on camera.
There wasn’t an official car park, but a group of cars was parked on the vacant block of land on the corner, so Rose left her ute there. As soon as she opened the door, a warm, gritty wind hit her in the face. The ground was bare, with no trees as far as Rose could see – only tufts of weeds and pale, bleached grass struggling up through cracks in the clay soil. No surprise that the cars around her were already covered in dust. Rose ran a finger along the bonnet of her ute and it came up black. She rubbed her fingers together, feeling the dirt.
She’d had no idea how to dress for a job interview in television; Young Steve had just said she should turn up at any time and introduce herself, so she’d chosen her newest and cleanest work gear, and had arranged her hair in a neat bun. She hesitated, then wiped her fingers on her pants. She wasn’t going to be on camera anyway, so how she looked shouldn’t matter. Should it?
The activity seemed to be concentrated at a cluster of houses at the bulb end of the court. The developers hadn’t bothered putting in footpaths, so she stuck to the road as she walked. Tradies in dusty hi-vis were busily making their way in and out of the houses she passed, while others without vests stood around; Rose figured they must be part of the production team. Some of the houses looked almost ready for the owners to move in; others looked half-finished, with walls missing and tarps flapping in the breeze. A couple were little more than frames, and one block just had the slab in place.
Ahead she saw a sign that said ‘SITE OFFICE’, with an arrow underneath pointing towards one of the nearly finished homes. The driveway was still bare earth, but there was a concrete path leading to the front door; Rose was halfway along it when a young woman wearing a headset rushed out from behind the garage, waving silently at her. Rose stopped. ‘Where do you think you’re going?’ the young woman said in an urgent whisper.
‘Site office,’ Rose said, pointing at the door.
‘They’re filming in there!’ the woman said. ‘You tradies should know to use the back way.’
Suddenly the door opened, and the woman grabbed Rose’s arm, pulling her off the path. Two male tradies in their twenties stood in the doorway, talking to someone still inside. They were both tall and blond, and a little too tanned for mid-September; compared to Old Steve they were gods.
‘Go round the back,’ the woman hissed, giving Rose a shove between the shoulder blades. Rose frowned at this indignity, but decided to say nothing. The woman was talking into her headset, not even looking at Rose; in the doorway the tradies laughed like they’d just heard the funniest joke ever.
The back of the house was more like the site offices she knew. The scruffy grass by the back door was churned up by boots, and a stack of offcut wood was piled against the house’s back wall. The back door opened, and an electrician came out.
‘Excuse me,’ Rose said, ‘I’m looking for Cody Somerville?’
The man jerked his head to indicate the door he’d come through; his hands were full of coiled electrical leads.
She didn’t want to knock on the door – what if she was interrupting a conversation being recorded inside? – but then she realised that just barging in wouldn’t be any less disruptive. Hesitating, she peered through the window, but fortunately she didn’t spot a film crew. An older woman in jeans and an oversized grey cardigan, her frizzy hair pulled into a messy bun, was sitting alone at a kitchen table, looking through a stack of forms.
Rose stepped through the doorway. ‘Excuse me?’ she said. ‘My name’s Rose, and I’m looking for Cody Somerville.’
‘That’s me,’ the woman said. ‘Unless you’re from my kids’ school, in which case, I died in a fire.’
She took a long gulp from a mug. Rose noticed the dark circles under her eyes. The logo on the mug had originally read ‘The Dock’, but someone had graffitied out the ‘o’ with permanent pen and replaced it with an ‘i’.
‘Um, no, I’m not,’ Rose said. ‘I called the Endeavour office and they said you were the person to speak to. I’m here because Steven Lewis told me you were hiring at the moment.’
Cody took another gulp from her mug. ‘Looks like you heard wrong,’ she said.
‘Oh,’ Rose said. ‘I thought you might need carpenters.’
‘A carpenter? You’re hired,’ Cody said, then drank from her mug again.
‘Really? That was easy.’ Rose beamed. ‘When do I start? This place looks amazing.’
‘Just one problem,’ Cody said. ‘You’re not starting here.’
‘Oh,’ Rose said. ‘Is there, like, an off-site space where
