bit … shit?’
Cody laughed at Rose’s disappointment. ‘Compared to all this, yeah. They only do one show a week and the tradies get zero screen time. But we need carpenters and you’re a carpenter, so if Steve recommended you, he must think you know how to keep your mouth shut.’
‘Is that important?’
‘Ask Steve. Not that he’d tell you anything.’ Cody winked. ‘Steve knows when to keep quiet.’
Rose didn’t say anything.
‘You’re a fast learner – I like that,’ Cody said. ‘I’ll give Bernie a call, let him know you’ll be there tomorrow.’ She went back to her forms.
Rose watched her for a moment, then cleared her throat. ‘So, um,’ she said when Cody looked up, ‘where exactly do they make The Dock?’
Cody stared silently at her.
Rose coughed. ‘The docks?’
‘I like a fast learner,’ Cody said.
Rose felt like skipping back to her car. She had a new job, and it didn’t involve manufacturing basic equipment from scratch. She looked around with new eyes at the hustle and bustle of the TV show taking place; she belonged here now. The entertainment industry was her home, and this hub of activity was her workplace.
Walking behind a truck, she noticed a large marquee set up on an empty block, with a clear plastic windshield wall pegged down on one side, and a food truck parked in front of the other. People were taking trays from the truck to sit at long tables set up in the shade under the marquee; clearly this was their version of a cafeteria, only the food looked fancier than anything she’d seen on a worksite. Usually you’d be lucky to get a meat pie from a mate who’d done a run down the shops, and a drink out of an esky someone had brought from home; here they were chowing down on burgers and salads, and chatting workers were ignoring plates covered with steaming piles of rice and pasta.
She was idly thinking about how much she’d save here on lunches alone when she bumped into someone. ‘Sorry,’ she mumbled, deeply embarrassed; what kind of person gets distracted by free food their first day on the job?
‘Don’t worry about it,’ the someone said, a chuckle in his voice. She looked up; the first thing she noticed was that he had tissues sticking out of his collar. What would those be for? Was he sweating a lot? He did have a nice shirt on. Maybe he was protecting it from his sweaty neck?
He saw her noticing and laughed. ‘Sorry, they put the tissues in to stop us from getting make-up on our clothes.’
Now that she looked more closely, she could see he did have a touch of bronzer on his face, and maybe some tinted moisturiser on under that to even out his complexion. But he didn’t have many wrinkles or spots to hide, and his green eyes were already startling enough to draw her attention, and then she realised she was staring because he actually was pretty good-looking, so she turned away and shit, was she blushing now?
‘So um, yeah,’ he was saying, ‘I don’t usually wear make-up, just so you know, but they’re recording some of the to-camera pieces this afternoon and –’
‘You’re one of the contestants?’ Rose said.
‘Yep,’ he said, ‘I’m Dave.’ He held out his hand, but before Rose could take it a young woman wearing a headset – not the one she’d seen before; they must have an army of them here – had appeared out of nowhere and grabbed him by the arm.
‘I’ve found Dave,’ she said into her headset as she towed him away, ‘filming in five.’
As he was dragged off, Dave looked back at Rose and shrugged, giving her a smile before he turned away.
If all the contestants looked like him, Rose thought, then maybe she should have been watching this show. She turned away and promptly walked directly into someone else.
‘Sorry,’ she said, taking a step back.
‘No worries,’ he said. ‘Always happy to bump into an attractive young woman.’
She looked him over. At least this guy didn’t seem to be a contestant. He was maybe in his mid-thirties, wearing jeans, elastic-sided boots and a zip-neck jumper under a quilted vest. He had the same general appearance as the vest: shiny and upholstered, like a private-school sports star made sleek by years of business-class travel and fine dining. His thinning hair looked as if it had grudgingly agreed to stay after he’d promised it he was going to change.
‘So,’ he said, ‘you look like a woman who’s good with her hands.’ He laughed. ‘Sorry, you must get that a lot.’
‘Yep,’ she said. This guy seemed like the kind of man who cruised through life on a wake of his own confidence, which might mean he was important. ‘I’m Rose,’ she said.
‘Leary Barker,’ he said. ‘Executive Producer, Endeavour Productions.’
‘Oh,’ Rose said, holding out her hand. ‘You’re my boss. I’m Rose, I’ve just started on The Dock.’
A look of panic bloomed on Leary’s face. ‘I’m not gonna get Me-Too’ed! Not again!’
Rose looked at him in complete puzzlement. ‘I’m sorry, what?’
Leary laughed nervously, holding his hands in the air as he rapidly backed away. ‘I mean, I’m sure we two will get along fine … you know, seeing as I’m extremely respectful and professional …’ A look of relief came over his face. ‘Yes, that’s what I just said – we two!’
Rose watched him go, not sure whether to laugh or call out. He quickly disappeared around the back of the food truck; she turned and headed back towards her ute.
When Rose arrived home, her father Alan was pottering around the front yard. For a moment she was pleased – it was already two weeks into spring, and maybe today, at last, he was mowing the lawn.
Their rented Victorian cottage was built on clay and shifted with the seasons. Rose was forever planing bits from the tops and bottoms of the doors to make them fit the frames, and the front fence never quite stayed in a straight line. Rose had repositioned the latch on the gate at least five times, repeatedly oiled the keyhole on the worn-out front door lock, and freshened up the flaking paint. The wooden palings on the fence were now mostly just metal and putty, because Rose had needed to nail them back in place so many times.
Now, she admired how neat the house looked from the street in the last golden rays of the late-afternoon sun. But the garden was a disgrace: a tangle of weeds and ivy. Rose’s mother Sarah was always complaining that couriers never bothered walking the few metres to the front door when they delivered her parcels of review books. But why would they bother, Rose wondered. It looked like the bloody Amazon out here.
Her heart sank as she opened the gate and saw her father was doing nothing much, as usual. ‘This is the darkest timeline!’ Alan shouted at his phone. ‘Huge if true!’
She sighed. He’d clearly
