was what she’d been afraid of.
“Where is everybody?”
He shrugged. “Middle of the day, most folks stay out of the sun.”
“Do you know if there’s a telephone booth?” The batteries on her cell phone were flat from hours of talking to her mother in the airport and on the train trip.
“You can call from the petrol station up the road.”
“Thanks.”
The driver got back in his bus, made a U-turn in the middle of the wide empty street and pulled away in a cloud of red dust. When the pall had cleared Sarah gazed around her for anyone who might be Luke Sampson. There was no one in sight but a lone sheep chewing the stubble beside the road, its fleece as red and dusty as the dirt. Could this deserted place really be the bustling town of her mother’s childhood?
Panic fluttered in her breast. Spooky music echoed in her brain. She’d entered the twilight zone.
And not a drive-through coffee stall in sight.
Stop it, she told herself. Think. Petrol was gasoline. So the petrol station would be that low-slung building up ahead with the pumps. Looking closer, she saw that in the dappled shade of a gum tree, two men sat on a bench, drinking soda from bottles and watching her.
With the sun crisping the skin on her nose and the sweat dripping down the back of her neck, Sarah hitched up her bags, quashed her misgivings and set forth across the baking tarmac. Her spirits picked up a little when she saw the men wave. At least the locals were friendly. Her hands were full and she couldn’t wave back, so she smiled, instead. The men kept waving languidly. Sarah kept smiling. She smiled and smiled.
Until a fly buzzed around her nose and she shook her head to send it away. Another fly came and landed on her chin. Half a dozen more lit on her arms and on her hands, still wrapped around the suitcase handles. One landed on her upper lip and tried to fly up her nostril. Eeeuuww. She dropped her bags in the middle of the road and batted at the cloud of flies buzzing around her head.
The men weren’t being friendly—they were waving away the damn flies!
A once white Land Cruiser, now red with caked-on dust, motored around the corner and pulled in at the service station. A man in beige pants and a light-brown shirt with the sleeves rolled up got out. He lifted his broad-brimmed hat, revealing wheat-colored hair streaked with gold and ocher. “G’day. Sarah Templestowe?”
The voice from the telephone. “Luke. Hi.”
A large sun-browned hand enclosed hers in a callused grip. “Bus must’ve been on time for once.”
She shrugged and smiled, too hot and weary to make small talk. But not too tired to notice his piercing blue eyes.
He picked up her bags. “If you don’t need anything in town we’ll save the Cook’s tour for another day and head straight to Burrinbilli.”
“Fine.” She doubted there was a single thing in this godforsaken town she wanted. As for tourist attractions, the concept made her want to laugh. Which was maybe his intention, though it was hard to tell from that dry-as-dust tone.
They went past the men on the bench. The younger man, deeply tanned and not more than twenty, wore a large sheathed knife strapped to the belt of his dusty shorts, and an open shirt with the sleeves cut out. Around his neck was a choker of some carnivore’s teeth. He raised a smoothly muscled brown arm to tip back a leather hat with a feather stuck in the band. “Luke. How ya goin’, mate?”
“Could be worse.” Luke gestured to Sarah. “This is Sarah, from Seattle. She’s the new part owner of Burrinbilli. This is Bazza.” He indicated the young man. “And this is Len,” he added, nodding at the older man. “Len’s the mayor of Murrum and he owns the general store.”
Len. Sarah eyed him curiously. He looked about Anne’s age, and under his broad-brimmed hat his face was kindly and intelligent. A hearing aid was tucked discreetly behind one ear. He wore a blue cotton shirt with the sleeves rolled up and navy twill pants. He was studying her, too.
She smiled at them both. “Hi. Nice to meet you.”
“I’ll be mustering in a week or so,” Luke said to Bazza. “Interested?”
“Yep. I reckon Gus and Kev’ll be interested, as well.” Bazza pulled out tobacco and rolling papers and leisurely prepared a cigarette. He glanced at Sarah. “You been to Hollywood?”
“Uh, no,” she said, caught off guard. “Although my mother took me to Disneyland on my tenth birthday.”
“I was in a movie some American blokes filmed out here last year.” He lit his rollie and squinted through a puff of blue smoke. “Outback Ordeal. Ever heard of it?”
Bazza’s drawl and thick accent forced her to listen hard to understand his words. Aware of Luke standing slightly behind her, waiting, she searched for a tactful remark. “I don’t get to a lot of movies.”
Len spoke. “You’re Anne Hafford’s daughter.”
“Yes,” she said, happily seizing on a link with reality. “Mom told me about you. Well, she didn’t actually tell me anything. Just that I should say hello if I saw you. It’s so cool to meet someone from her childhood. Did you know her very well?”
He smiled blandly. “A little. For a while.”
She couldn’t read his face so she just babbled on. “She’ll be so pleased I met you. And on my very first day, too. I’ll tell her you said hello, shall I?”
There was a long pause. “If you like.”
Behind her, Luke cleared his throat. She glanced back and he nodded toward the four-wheel-drive. Sure, Sarah thought, as she turned to follow him, why waste words? She’d used enough for all four of them. “Nice meeting you,” she said again over her shoulder to Bazza and Len.
When she was a few steps away she heard Bazza say in a low voice obviously not meant for her ears, “Not hard on the old peepers, but a bit of a dag, don’t you reckon?”
Sarah couldn’t make out Len’s softly spoken reply. Dag? she thought, and strode after Luke. What the heck was a dag? Or had he said dog? She’d never been called a dog before.
Luke was placing her bags in the back of the Land Cruiser. “Is he for real?” she asked.
“Bazza?” Luke smiled. “Ever since he got a bit part in that movie he’s been waiting for a call from Spielberg. Thinks he’s bloody Crocodile Dundee. Don’t pay any attention.”
“He doesn’t bother me,” she said. It was Len she found unsettling. She’d give anything to know what had gone on between him and her mother.
She climbed in on the passenger side and strapped herself in, noticing with dismay that her top and skirt were dusted with fine red earth. So much for first impressions. She tried to brush the earth off and it smeared, staining the pale fabric. Perfect.
She caught Luke staring at her. “It’s okay. Rust is my color. What’s a dag?”
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