was going home to Scotty and Grandma and a hundred cows.
That was a good thought. No matter how appallingly she’d messed up, she was still going home for Christmas.
She was very noble to share, she told herself.
Hold that thought.
Tandaroit wasn’t so much a station as a rail head. There’d been talk of closing it down but Letty had immediately presented a petition with over five thousand names on it to their local parliamentarian. No matter that Letty, Scotty and Meg seemed to be the only ones who used it—and that the names on the petition had been garnered by Letty, dressed in gumboots and overalls, sitting on the corner of one of Melbourne’s major pedestrian malls in Scotty’s now discarded wheelchair. She’d been holding an enormous photograph of a huge-eyed calf with a logo saying ‘Save Your Country Cousins’ superimposed.
Tandaroit Station stayed.
When Letty wanted something she generally got it. Her energy was legendary. The death of her son and daughter-in-law four years ago had left her shattered, but afterwards she’d hugged Meg and she’d said, ‘There’s nothing to do but keep going, so we keep going. Let’s get you another job.’
Meg’s first thought had been to get some sort of accountancy job in Curalo, their closest city, but then they’d found Mr McMaster’s advertisement. ‘You’d be away from us almost completely for three months of the year but the rest we’d have you almost full-time. That’d be better for Scotty; better for all of us. And look at the pay,’ Letty had said, awed. ‘Oh, Meg, go for it.’
So she’d gone for it, and now she was tugging her bag down from the luggage rack as William extricated himself from his wedged in position and she was thinking that was what she had to do now. Just go for it. Christmas, here we come, ready or not.
Her bag was stuck under a load of other people’s baggage. She gave it a fierce tug and it came loose, just as William freed himself from his seat. She lurched backward and he caught her. And held.
He had to hold her. The train was slowing. There were youngsters sitting in the aisle, she had no hope of steadying herself and she had every chance of landing on top of a child. But her boss was holding her against him, steady as a rock in the swaying train.
And she let him hold her. She was tired and unnerved and overwrought. She’d been trying to be chirpy; trying to pretend everything was cool and she brought someone like her boss home for Christmas every year. She’d been trying to think that she didn’t care that she’d just ruined the most fantastic job she’d ever be likely to have.
And suddenly it was all just too much. For one fleeting moment she let her guard down. She let herself lean into him, while she felt his strength, the feel of his new-this-morning crisp linen shirt, the scent of his half-a-month’s-salary aftershave…
‘Ooh, I hope you two have a very happy Christmas,’ the lady she’d been sitting near said, beaming up at them in approval. ‘No need for gifts for you two, then. No wonder you’re taking him home for Christmas.’ And then she giggled. ‘You know, I married my boss too. Best thing I ever did. Fourteen grandchildren later…You go for it, love.’
And Meg, who’d never blushed in her life, turned bright crimson and hauled herself out of her boss’s arms as if she were burned.
The train was shuddering to a halt. She had to manoeuvre her way through the crowds to get out.
She headed for the door, leaving her boss to follow. If he could. And she wouldn’t really mind if he couldn’t.
The train dumped them and left, rolling away into the night, civilisation on wheels, leaving them where civilisation wasn’t. Nine o’clock on the Tandaroit rail head. Social hub of the world. Or not. There was a single electric light above the entrance, and nothing else for as far as the eye could see.
‘So…where exactly are we?’ William said, sounding as if he might have just landed on Mars, but Meg wasn’t listening. She was too busy staring out into the night, willing the headlights of Letty’s station wagon to appear.
Letty was always late. She’d threatened her with death if she was late tonight.
She couldn’t even phone her to find out where she was. There was no mobile reception out here. And, as if in echo of her thoughts…
‘There’s no reception.’ Her boss was staring incredulously at his phone.
‘There’s a land line at the farm.’
‘You’ve brought me somewhere with no cellphone reception?’
Hysterics were once again very close to the surface. Meg felt ill. ‘It’s better than sleeping at the airport,’ she snapped, feeling desperate.
‘How is it better?’ He was looking where she was looking, obviously hoping for any small sign of civilisation. There wasn’t any. Just a vast starlit sky and nothing and nothing and nothing.
‘She’ll come.’
‘Who’ll come?’
‘My grandmother,’ Meg said through gritted teeth. ‘If she knows what’s good for her, she’ll come right now.’
‘Your home is how far from the station?’
‘Eight miles.’
‘Eight!’
‘Maybe a bit more.’
‘It’s a farm?’
‘Yes.’
‘So Tandaroit…’
She took a couple of deep breaths. Hysterics would help no one. ‘It’s more of a district than a town,’ she admitted. ‘There was a school here once, and tennis courts. Not now, though. They use the school for storing stock feed.’
‘And your farm’s eight miles from this…hub,’ he said, his voice carefully, dangerously neutral. ‘That’s a little far to walk.’
‘We’re not walking.’
‘I was thinking,’ he said, ‘of how long it might take to walk back here when I decide to leave.’
That caught her. She stopped staring out into the night and stared at her boss instead. Thinking how this might look to him.
‘You mean if my family turn into axe-murderers?’ she ventured.
‘I’ve seen Deliverance.’
Her lips twitched. ‘We’re not that bad.’
‘You don’t own a car?’
‘No.’
‘Yet I pay you a very good wage.’
‘We have Letty’s station wagon and a tractor. What else do we need?’
‘You like sitting on rail heads waiting for grandmothers who may or may not appear?’
‘She’ll
