surely the shire council is falling over itself trying to protect the wildlife?” Chloe lifted a brow.
“Up to a point. Hell, is it us or the koalas? They’re all over the place. Shift the little devils. All they need is a good feed of gum leaves,” Rose muttered.
“The right gum leaves, Rosie. And they are being killed on the roads despite all the signs.”
“Want the job or not? We could send Pamela.”
“Pamela can’t give an accurate account of anything. No, we’ll be there.” Chloe lost no time switching off the monitor. “If people are prepared to talk instead of shouting at one another they might be able to come up with a solution.”
“I know Rowlands,” Bob, fortyish, almost as short as Chloe, said casually. “He’s not much good at listening.”
“I don’t suppose he’ll be there. It’ll be one of his people.”
They arrived at the Ashfield parklands in twenty minutes flat, Chloe jumping out almost before the BTQ8 van streaked up onto the footpath.
“Oh-oh, trouble,” Bob chortled. “I wasn’t expecting anywhere near as many people.”
“The more, the merrier,” Chloe said briskly. “Get a move on, Bob. Let the camera roll.”
“People do wacky things when a camera’s on them, Chloe,” Bob called. “Take care. I don’t want any more broken equipment.”
“Look at that! BTQ8,” someone cried as Chloe made short work of crossing the parkland. “Chloe Cavanagh. That’s a blessing. We might get heard.”
By the time Bob arrived with his camera, Chloe was right in the thick of it. She’d be on the side of the koalas, of course, but you couldn’t please everyone. A lot of people seemed to want the shopping centre to go ahead, when as far as Bob could see there was a perfectly good one back down the road.
Chloe, one of those journalists who could really get people talking, worked the crowd briskly, taking opinions left and right. Most were concerned citizens, a few troublemakers, a couple from the lunatic fringe, their heads swaddled in red bandannas, with matching red waistcoats.
“They won’t be satisfied until there are no koalas left.” A very tall woman glowered.
The Rowlands’ representative, an attractive, middle-aged woman, stylishly dressed, smiled and took Chloe’s hand. “Mary Stanton, Miss Cavanagh, a pleasure. I’d like you to know no company is more environmentally conscious than we are at Rowlands, as I’m trying to tell these people.”
This was howled down while Bob, busy videoing at Chloe’s side, suddenly aimed the camera at a tree. Chloe looked up expecting to see a koala so dopey on gum leaves it hadn’t noticed it was broad daylight and there was a rally in progress, only to find a boy about nine or ten waving at her when he should have been at school.
“You’d better come down,” Chloe called, swinging ’round in surprise as a voice spoke softly in her ear. No one. That was odd. Disconcerted, she began again. “Come on down from there.” The child was straddling a fairly high branch. None too substantial. Hadn’t anyone noticed?
“I’m all right.” He gave her a wide toothy grin, and slid further along the branch.
“The koalas have absolutely nothing to fear from us,” the woman from Rowlands was saying very earnestly. “We try to get along with everybody. Not all of these trees are grey gums. The wildlife people will be only too pleased to rescue the very small koala population.”
“Who does that boy belong to?” Chloe asked, trying to puzzle out where the voice had come from. A soft melodic voice, young, infectious, with a kind of bubbling happiness. She really didn’t like the boy up there even if she knew she was being overly protective. It all had something to do with losing her little brother. Boys were always climbing trees. They had a lot of talent for it. But just looking up was giving her vertigo.
“All I want to ask is this,” a stout woman in baggy jeans and a T-shirt two sizes too small, cried over the top of the male protester beside her. “Do we really need another shopping centre? There’s a good one about a mile down the road.”
“We don’t all have cars, love,” an elderly lady decorated in beads piped up. “The way I heard it they’re going to sell out to a chain store. I feel terrible about the koalas but a new shopping centre right here would be exciting. I could walk over every day. Meet people.”
“And you, sir?” Chloe asked, confronting an elderly man with military medals festooning his jacket.
“Why doesn’t Rowlands pack up and go back to where he belongs,” he barked.
“We can’t give in to the greenies,” a young mother with fuzzy blond curls, babe in arms, was exclaiming. “We all want the shopping centre. Everyone except those guys.” She gestured towards the red bandannas.
“You couldn’t put it somewhere else?” Chloe asked Mary Stanton doubtfully.
“Not a chance. We’ve done our homework. We have community backing.”
At that there was an outcry, people on the fringes rushing in to protest, some with the light of battle in their eyes.
It should have made Chloe uneasy but for some reason she was focused on the boy in the tree. What was the big deal? It wasn’t all that high. Yet...
When the branch suddenly snapped it was no real surprise to Chloe. People underneath panicked, running out of harm’s way, but Chloe, the slender, the fragile, the petite, zeroed in. She wordlessly put up her arms, waiting for the boy to topple into them.
Incredibly he did.
People gaped in amazement, blinking like rabbits, honestly not believing their eyes. Chloe was spinning across the springy grass almost dancing, holding the boy aloft before they both suddenly fell, full stretch, side by side, to peals of merriment.
The crowd, a moment before in full roar, fell silent, then broke into a delighted round of applause and some giggles, as first Chloe then the boy leapt lightly to their feet. “How the heck did she do that?” one of the red bandannas asked in wonderment.
“She must be pumping iron,” his companion replied.
“Look, isn’t that sweet?” the old lady cried.
The boy had leaned up to kiss Chloe’s cheek, fumbling in his pocket for a piece of paper for her autograph. How could a skinny, five-three maybe five-four girl with a mop of wild red hair have the strength to catch him? He figured she had to have had some help from her guardian angel. His had disappeared the same day his dad had left home and never returned.
Everyone wanted to shake Chloe’s hand.
“It was nothing,” she felt compelled to say, still trying to grasp how the boy had seemed to weigh little more than Samantha, her baby goddaughter.
“Adrenaline,” an elderly man, an ex-professor explained. “One becomes absolutely superhuman in a crisis. Wonderful, my dear, and your cameraman got it.”
“What a turn-up that was!” a protester in scruffy running shoes cried.
