Terry came over ten minutes later. She put out her hand and smiled. ‘Leah Jackson, safety. Nice to meet you, Terry.’
Taken aback, Terry swiped his hand on the backside of his jeans before reaching out a meaty paw to shake her hand.
‘Terry, has the excavator been moved since Ryan’s accident?’
‘Yep. I finished the job yesterday after Ryan went arse-up. Then I cleared and levelled the site where the cement-batching plant’s going. Dozer’s already gone. Low loader’s coming back for the excavator this morning to move it to the next job. You’re lucky it’s still here.’
‘I’ll need to look at the logbook and the service record, if you don’t mind. Then I’ll get you to put the excavator through its paces so I can check the reversing alarm, lights and all that stuff.’
Terry didn’t look too happy about it but he nodded and went to swing himself up into the cab.
Leah watched him and called out, ‘Be careful as you climb up. There’s what appears to be hydraulic fluid in places it shouldn’t be.’
Terry grunted and heaved his considerable bulk up into the driver’s seat. He rummaged around for a minute and then passed down the logbooks before starting the excavator and following Leah’s shouted instructions. It took fifteen minutes for her to check everything was as it should be. When they’d finished, Terry turned off the machine and Leah’s ears rang in the sudden silence.
‘Thanks, mate,’ she said and Terry nodded and went back to where the workmen were laying out the thick, black plastic liner for the dam.
She finished her inspection and tied a Danger: out of service tag onto the cab of the excavator before helping Jason and the other men with the liner.
‘I’m off,’ she said to Jason when they’d finished. He followed her across to her vehicle. She threw her hard hat onto the passenger seat and refastened her shoulder-length hair into its clasp.
‘You tag it, did you?’
‘I did.’
Jason nodded, his mouth turning down. He rocked back on his heels. ‘Good luck with that,’ he said when she raised her eyebrows.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Oh, nothing.’ He wouldn’t meet her eyes.
A tug of uncertainty had Leah glancing over her shoulder at the excavator, the tag flapping in the breeze. When she turned back to Jason he was intent on scuffing at the dirt with the toe of his boot. ‘You’ll find your way back all right?’
‘Yep, I sure will,’ Leah said slowly, wondering if it was worth pressing Jason for further explanation. ‘Turn left onto the main track, and then follow my nose.’
‘You’ve got it. And watch out for the rig coming to pick up the excavator. You’ll hear him on the UHF. You’ll need to get right off the road.’
‘Okay, and thanks.’
‘Anytime. See you at dinner . . . or breakfast,’ he said. She watched him leave, stared at the excavator for a moment longer, and then climbed into the dual cab.
Leah had driven out onto the track when her radio burst into life. Before she had time to reach forward and grab the handset to say where she was, she saw a heavy vehicle barrelling towards her.
She slowed down, edging her 4WD as far to the left as she could. The prime mover and low loader passed in a clanking cloud of dust and stones, the driver high up in the cab and anonymous behind a pair of mirrored sunglasses. When she could see the rig clearly in her rear-view mirror she drove back onto the track.
On the main track, there were six gates to open and close between bore number two and Camp One. By the fourth, Leah fully appreciated the value of a gate bitch riding shotgun.
Accelerating across a stretch of gibber after closing the gate, conscious of the time, Leah felt a dull thud and the steering wheel was almost wrenched out of her hands. The ute swerved across the road before she had time to react and tighten her grip.
Stomach in her throat, she fought to keep control as the tonne of metal slewed drunkenly, finally coming to a jarring halt as it stalled in the middle of the road.
Blood pounding in her temples, mouth dry as the dam crater at bore number two, Leah leaned forward and rested her forehead on the steering wheel. She sucked in a lungful of air. Slowly she raised her head and laughed, a hollow, half-hearted glad-to-be-in-one-piece sound.
She opened the door and slid out, almost landing on her backside. Her legs and arms felt like jelly. She took a moment and then did a slow circuit of the vehicle, dropping to a squat beside the front passenger wheel. There was a tear in the wall of the tyre big enough to put her fingers through. The tyre was as flat as she felt.
Sinking back onto her haunches, she closed her eyes and urged herself not to panic. She’d had a blowout. No big deal. If she couldn’t change the tyre and no one came along, and then she couldn’t raise anyone on the UHF, she’d have to walk back to camp. She looked down at her feet and experienced another wave of contempt for the heavy, uncomfortable boots.
First she flicked on the vehicle’s hazard lights and placed a couple of iridescent witches hats front and back, then she set about changing the wheel.
Everything would have gone smoothly if she’d been able to loosen the wheel nuts. The spare she’d easily manhandled off the back of the ute; the jack had slid firmly into place. But it didn’t matter how many times she grunted and swore and jumped on the end of the wheel brace, the wheel nuts would not budge.
‘So, this is you taking care of yourself?’
Leah’s foot slipped off the wheel brace and she plonked down onto her backside.
‘What the —’ She squinted up at Alex. Pulling off one leather glove, she swiped at the grit on her cheeks. ‘Where the hell did you come from? I didn’t hear a vehicle.’ She peered around his khaki-clad legs at the LandCruiser parked on the opposite verge.
‘No. I’m not surprised. You were too busy cursing to hear anything.’
She stood up, dusted off her backside and picked up the wheel brace. ‘Well, don’t stand there looking all superior, see if you can loosen the sodding things,’ she said and shoved the wheel brace at him.
He took it from her and hunkered down beside the 4WD, running a finger around the tear in the tyre. ‘What happened?’
‘I don’t know. One minute I was driving along and then there was a thud and the ute swerved.’ She reached down to pick up a tennis-ball-sized rock, and slid her thumb along one edge. ‘These things are sharp as razors.’
‘How fast were you going?’
She threw the rock to the edge of the track and folded her arms. ‘About 60 kilometres an hour, if that.’
He nodded, fitted the brace over one of the wheel nuts.
‘I’d come through the gate. There’s no way I could have been going any faster.’
‘I didn’t say you had been,’ he said through gritted teeth as he strained on the brace.
Leah backed away. ‘I’m just going to have a look at the skid marks,’ she said and slipped the digital camera out of her shirt pocket. She disappeared behind the vehicle.
Alex loosened the wheel nuts and squatted to finish unscrewing them, all the time conscious that Leah had returned and was watching his every move. Minutes later he had the damaged wheel off and together they lifted the spare into place.
He handed her the brace. ‘You tighten them this time. Then you’re more likely to be able to loosen them next time.’
‘I hope there isn’t a next time. This was one time too many.’
Alex frowned. ‘You didn’t hurt yourself? Hit your head or something?’
Their eyes met and held for a moment.
‘No,’ she said, and dropped down beside the wheel to do up the wheel nuts. The vehicle dropped back onto all four wheels as she released the jack before dragging it out. Using the wheel brace she gave the nuts one last tighten while Alex lifted the ruined tyre onto the back of the ute, fixed it into position and put the jack away.
‘Drop it off to Trev when you get back, and pick up another spare from him. Never go anywhere �
��’
‘— without a spare. I get it,’ she said, grunting as she stood on one end of the brace to tighten the last wheel nut.
He stood watching her, dusting off his hands.
She picked up the brace and brushed the stray hairs off her face. ‘What?’
‘You really have got a smart mouth, you know that?’
‘And you really are a sexist dinosaur, you know that?’
He dropped his hands to his hips. ‘And what exactly would you have done if I hadn’t come along?’
‘Kept trying to loosen the nuts. Radioed the camp. Waited for someone to appear. Walked back if I had to.’
‘You wouldn’t be able to do that in summer. Too bloody hot.’
‘No. In summer I’d stay with my vehicle and keep as cool as I could. I’d radio in, conserve what water I had. But it’s not summer now.’
His hands dropped to his sides. ‘No, it’s not.’
They stared at each other some more. An unsolicited thought flitted through his mind that she was good to look at even when she was pissed off. This time she was the first to glance away.
‘I’d better get on the road. I need to get back for the inductions.’
‘Yeah, I’ve got work to do myself.’ He took his sunglasses out of the top pocket of his khaki work shirt and put them on.
He was halfway across the road when she called out his name. He paused, looking back over his shoulder.
She walked around to the front of her ute. ‘Thanks. I’m glad you came along when you did.’
He nodded, raised his hand and kept walking towards his vehicle.
‘Oh, and one more thing —’
He stopped and turned around. She took several tentative steps towards him. ‘Alex, I’ve been thinking, for me to do my job properly I need to know more about the actual project. I’ve read the project brief, been to the company orientation and induction sessions, talked to Steve and all that, but I’d appreciate it if someone explained, and physically showed me, how it all happens on site.’
He swiped at a fly. The breeze stirred his hair, and the silence was as vast as the landscape.
‘I’ll take you out, after lunch. Give you the tour.’
‘Thanks. Great.’
‘Any other questions?’
She shook her head, lifting a hand to shade her eyes. ‘Thanks again. I’ll see you later.’
When he stopped to open the gate she was collecting the witches hats. By the time he’d driven through and closed the gate he could barely see the dust from her 4WD behind him.
At least with a smart, mouthy woman a man was never left in any doubt about what she thought. Alex glanced in the rear-view mirror. Leah was the antithesis of his ex-wife. With Claire it had always been more about what wasn’t said than what was.
Alex had assumed throughout their marriage that Claire hadn’t complained about anything because she had nothing to complain about. How wrong he’d been. She’d saved up fifteen years of grievances and growing resentment until it overflowed, and then she’d walked out. Taken the boys, the two people who made the lonely nights in cramped impersonal rooms and the long days working in ferocious heat worthwhile. He did it all so he could give them the life they deserved.
Alex shifted in his seat and tried to relax his hands on the steering wheel, to ignore the biting churn of his gut. It didn’t seem to get any easier. Claire had divorced him two years ago, taken almost everything he had in the process. Continued to take whatever she could get. And she’d had the gall to show up at his father’s hospital bedside the week before.
While both Heather and his younger sister, Lisa, liked Claire, Alex’s father had only ever tolerated her. Looking back he could see that Fergus had never really liked his daughter-in-law but had done his best for Alex’s sake. He’d obviously been a better judge of character than Alex had been. He wondered what his mother would have made of it all if she’d been alive.
Seeing Claire at the hospital had been a shock. She’d looked very well. He hadn’t actually clapped eyes on her for about a year – whenever he picked up the boys she never showed her face. Afterwards, he’d given his sister, Heather, a burst for telling his ex-wife that Fergus was unwell.
‘I told her so she could tell Connor and Liam, maybe bring them to visit their grandad,’ Heather had replied.
But Claire hadn’t brought the boys to the hospital after Fergus’s brush with death. Alex knew they loved their grandad and, at nearly fifteen, he’d hoped they were old enough to speak up if they’d wanted to visit him in hospital. Had Claire stopped them from coming?
When he’d asked his sons they’d shrugged and hadn’t looked him in the eye. He wouldn’t be surprised if keeping them from visiting had been another way for Claire to get back at him for all the perceived grievances she’d ‘endured’ during their marriage. He wouldn’t put it past her. How had he got it all so wrong?
He rolled his head from side to side in an attempt to ease the stiffness in his neck. Rehashing the past never did any good. He shifted his thoughts to how his safety advisor had looked, flustered and flat on her backside, when he’d made his presence known. She could curse as well as anyone he’d ever heard. But the flash of amusement faded when he reflected on the earlier conversation he’d had with Cameron Crawley. Initially taken aback by the call, Alex had been left in no doubt about Crawley’s motivation for making contact. His stance on women in remote construction camps had been made abundantly clear.
After they’d disconnected Alex had searched his inbox for Leah’s contract. As her supervisor, the probation clause gave him the perfect out – he could get rid of her if he could prove she wasn’t suitable. Cameron Crawley would be satisfied by whatever ‘unsuitability’ Alex could come up with, though he might have to convince Paul.
The whole episode had left him feeling uncomfortable. While he basically agreed with Crawley’s premise that women didn’t belong in a camp like this, Alex had always worked at being a fair boss. He wasn’t about to fabricate or exaggerate anything to prove Leah’s unsuitability for the job. But if she proved it herself, she’d be out; he’d already told her that.
A dull ache started behind his eyes and the desert scenery slid by unnoticed. Like an automaton he opened and closed gates. Lost in his thoughts, he almost missed the dropper stake with the red flag signalling the turnoff to where he was meeting up with the surveyors. He forced himself to focus. There’d be plenty of time to worry about Leah later.
Paul Prentice shoved his hands into his pockets and gazed out at the Adelaide CBD skyline, not really seeing it. On the desk his in-tray was overflowing but he’d have no time to deal with it; he’d come from one meeting and had another to prepare for. He let out a slow breath through pursed lips.
The transmission tower construction project in the state’s far north wasn’t the only project he was managing, but it was the biggest and it was proving to have its fair share of headaches. These days it was becoming increasingly difficult for him to maintain a semblance of enthusiasm for the job. The world was changing and Paul felt a keen nostalgia for the old days and the old ways.
He’d had the misfortune earlier of sharing the lift with Cameron Crawley. He didn’t like or trust the man: Crawley’s machinations had put Leah in a precarious position, and that bothered Paul. Alex McKinley had made his position clear about Leah’s transfer and if the men conferred, Leah could end up without a job. Paul should never have recommended her for the transfer.
‘You’re worrying about nothing,’ Eve had said the night before when he’d voiced his qualms. ‘She needs this, and not only for the money. Knowing her the way I do, she’ll be the first one to put her hand up if it’s not working. And think of all the men she’ll meet!’
Paul’s mouth turned down at the corners. From what he knew of Leah, after the debacle with her ex, meeting men would be the last thing on her agenda, if it was on her agenda at all. The breakdown of her long-term relationship had left its mark. She gave
the impression she was satisfied with her home and her dog – and her work.
Paul contemplated the traffic on King William Street, many storeys below. Hermetically sealed in the high-rise, he imagined the smell of the exhaust fumes. Ant-like people scurried across pedestrian crossings when traffic lights changed. He was sure if he strained his ears he’d hear the rumble of the buses, the familiar sounds funnelling up between the multistorey buildings.
His fingers curled around the mobile phone in his pocket as it began to vibrate. He took it out and glanced at the screen and his shoulders tensed. It was unlike Eve to phone him at work. She’d usually text, not wanting to disturb him. But then a lot about her behaviour of late had been very unlike the Eve he knew.
He sat down at his desk and tentatively took the call from his wife. ‘Eve, how’s your day? I thought you’d be at the hairdresser now.’
‘I cancelled.’
‘Why?’
‘I couldn’t be bothered.’
Paul tried loosening his tie but the band around his chest didn’t ease. ‘Shall I come home for lunch?’ He scanned his schedule. If he moved one appointment he could do it.
‘No,’ Eve said.
‘Do you want to meet me in the mall? Have lunch there?’
He heard her slow intake of breath. ‘No,’ she repeated. ‘My hair looks terrible.’ Her dry laugh was forced, loaded with irony rather than humour. ‘I rang to see what you wanted for dinner tonight. Chicken schnitzels or grilled fish?’
Paul glanced down at his thickening waistline. ‘Fish, I suppose.’ He hated fish, except if it came deep-fried with chips.
‘Fish it is. Will you be late?’
‘Not if my afternoon goes to plan. I’ll text if anything changes.’
There was an uncomfortable silence and then she said, ‘I’ll see you about six.’
Paul dropped the phone onto the desk. Today was the first time Eve had rung to ask what he wanted for dinner. She’d never cancelled an appointment with her hairdresser. The six-weekly ‘touch up’ was a ritual.
With no plans to retire, Eve had been shocked when the not-for-profit organisation, her employer for the last fifteen years, had had their funds cut and her senior executive position had been made redundant. The alternative part-time job the board had offered her was a token, and a demotion they hadn’t expected her to accept. In effect, she’d been squeezed out. He’d heard her telling a friend that she felt like she’d been tossed aside like a pair of old shoes. At the time he’d smiled. He didn’t think she owned a pair of old shoes.
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