“Are you going to watch us shower?” Gemma demanded.
Ellie blushed. “Gosh, no. I'm sorry.” She stepped outside, keys jangling on her hip.
“She's kind of dorky, isn't she?” Hayley disappeared inside a cubicle.
“Times one thousand,” Gemma agreed.
Forgetting the talk of bats and spiders and the restricted orchid greenhouse, Gemma sloughed off her dress and underwear. Naked, she stepped under the water. She soon realised that she didn’t need to turn the hot water on—the water was warm enough without heating it. Above, through the bamboo leaves, she could see the first stars in a brassy blue sky that was tinged with sunset colours. Not long now to twilight.
Closing her eyes, she luxuriated in the tingly feel of the water running over her body. Washing everything away.
She dressed in clean underwear, shorts, and a halter top. Tugging her fingers through her wet hair, she wondered if she’d see Clay at dinner. Grabbing her backpack again, she rummaged through until she found her tiny makeup case and applied a light layer of lip gloss, tinted moisturiser, and eye pencil. Those were the only makeup items she owned.
Across from her, Hayley pulled on a sundress, her back and shoulders red and sunburned through the crisscrossing straps. She ran a comb through her fair hair and then twisted it up into a loose knot, leaving long tendrils to fall free around her face. Gemma noticed it was a style she wore a lot—it made her seem somehow delicate.
“I’m starving.” Hayley applied lip gloss, smacking her lips together.
“Me too. I wonder what’s for dinner?”
“Mango stew?”
Gemma laughed as she buckled her sandals.
Ellie was waiting patiently outside. “Feeling better, girls? Come on, I’ll take you to your accommodation, and you can offload your bags. Then I’ll have to take you to the office, where Sophie can sign you onto our books. Have to make everything official and explain the pay and workplace conditions. Next, I’ll show you the areas you’ll be working in tomorrow and where the tools are to be found. After that, we’ll head to the food hall, okay?”
Hayley obediently trekked after Ellie like a lost child. Gemma took her time, studying the house as they entered the ground floor and then into a large office. The only person in there—a blond woman of about twenty-five—swivelled around on her chair. She introduced herself as Sophie.
Sophie greeted Gemma and Hayley with businesslike handshakes and a rundown of their working day schedules. She had them sign a register and took their banking details.
“Thanks for taking us on at such short notice,” said Hayley.
“Oh, it’s not set in stone yet,” Sophie replied coolly. “But if everything works out during your trial period, we’ll offer you a stay of three months. Which is the entire mango season.”
“I hope we work out then.” Gemma meant it as a little joke, but it came out awkward.
Sophie cast her a sharp look. Everything about Sophie looked kind of sharp. Her pinched features, the angled cut of her hair, the icy-blue eyes that gazed out from beneath her straight fringe.
“Come on,” said Ellie, ushering them out. “Time to eat. I bet you’re hungry.”
Ellie guided them out of the house and across to the food hall. Other backpackers were already streaming inside, all wet-haired and fresh from their showers. Scents of soap and shampoo mingled with the cooking smells coming from the kitchen. Everyone seemed interested in Gemma and Hayley, each one asking the same questions. Where are you girls from, and how long are you planning on staying?
Large metal bain-marie were set up on a table near the kitchen, filled with vegetable lasagne and a variety of salads. It seemed that a group of farm workers had made the meal. People filed across to fill their plates.
Someone bumped her arm. “Meet you after dinner—near the well?” Clay flashed a smile at her.
She turned her head to where Hayley was ladling salad into her bowl. “Do you have a friend to bring along? I can’t leave Hayley alone on her first night.”
“Sure thing. A pretty girl will always have guys wanting to meet her.”
“Just… pick someone nice.”
He chuckled.
“So, where’s the bigwig?” Gemma asked. “The dude who runs this whole shebang?”
“The Chemist? Up in his ivory tower, I think.”
“The Chemist?”
“Yeah, that’s what my buddy Eoin and I call him. He doesn’t like you to call him that though—so don’t.”
“Okay. Doesn’t he have dinner with the workers?”
“Not usually. You’ll probably see him about tomorrow.”
Gemma caught sight of Ellie staring hard in her direction. She couldn’t quite put a finger on Ellie’s expression—was she anxious or angry?
“Are you and Ellie, um…” Gemma started. “I mean, have you and Ellie ever been together?”
“Me and Ell? No way. She’s as uptight as they come.”
“Oh yeah? Any reason why she’s like that?”
“No idea. She’s always snooping around and checking up on what everyone’s doing. Hard to sneak a snooze under a shady tree when she’s around.” His right eye crinkled in a wink.
Ellie stayed close to Gemma and Hayley during dinner, and she even insisted upon walking them to the activity lounge afterwards. “You can play cards or read or just hang out here. Go and meet some of the crew. I have some things I need to do right now, so I'm sorry to say I can't stay with you.” She paused. “But don’t go wandering off. Everyone needs to be back in their cabins by ten. And that’s strict.”
Gemma yawned. “I’m pretty tired already.”
“Well, you’re welcome to go and sleep right now if you want. Early to bed, early to rise.” Her voice ended on a high, upward inflection as she gave an awkward smile. She was a strange mix of stern and nervous.
“Are you really going to bed now?” said Hayley quietly as Ellie walked quickly away.
Gemma shook her head. “Uh, nope. Just wanted to get her off our backs for a minute. C’mon, let’s head for a little walk.”
“Out there? With the snakes and spiders? No thanks.”
“Just as far as the well.” Gemma started walking before Hayley could ask any questions.
Clay was waiting there with another guy.
Hayley shot Gemma a wry look when she spotted the men. “Okay, so we’re getting to know a couple of the other backpackers? You planned this, didn’t you?”
“Yeah,” Gemma admitted sheepishly.
The heavy scent of pot carried itself through the sultry air.
Clay passed Gemma a joint as the girls stopped at the well. “This is Eoin. He’s Irish, so no Irish jokes, okay, girls? Unless you can’t control yourselves. Then it’s okay.”
Hayley’s cheeks dimpled. “My grandmother’s Irish.”
“You just went from pretty to perfect,” Eoin told her, flicking back the mess of dark hair that brushed his shoulders. Even in this darkness, Gemma could tell that his eyes were a vivid colour.
Gemma inhaled the joint and then passed it to Hayley. Hayley did the same and passed it onto Eoin, with a slightly shy inward curl of her shoulders.
“What do you think of the farm so far?” Eoin asked in his Irish brogue, emphasising each R.
“It’s amazing,” Hayley breathed, her eyes bright despite the long day they’d had. “I mean, kind of scary with the critters and everything. But apart from that, it looks like fun.”
“And what do you think of me, Hayleee?” Eoin raised his eyebrows suggestively, drawing out her name on his tongue. “I’m the icing on the cake, no?”
“You’re not bad, Owwww-en,” Hayley answered, giggling, drawing out his name in the same manner. It seemed to Gemma that the single puff of pot had already affected her.
Gemma raised her eyes to the distant glass frontage of the mansion. A tall figure slowly walked up the flights of stairs that were clearly visible through the plate glass.
“What abo
ut you, Gemma?” Clay prompted. “What do you think of the farm?”
She snapped her head around to him. “Oh, uh… I’m not sure yet. We’ve only been here three hours.”
Clay tilted his head, frowning deeply. “It’s great here. What’s not to like?”
She laughed nervously. “Ask me again tomorrow, once I’ve had more of a chance to look around. And once I've had a chance to talk with The Chemist. I'm not exactly impressed that he didn't come to meet us himself.”
Eoin laughed derisively at her answer, handing the joint back to Clay.
Clay sucked hard on the tiny nub of joint between his thumb and forefinger before blowing a puff of smoke high into the air and tossing the nub to the ground. He seemed vaguely annoyed.
“Who—?” Hayley started.
“Apparently that's Tate Llewellyn,” Gemma cut in. “That's what Clay and Eoin call him.” An uneasy feeling crawled down her back, like unseen fingertips. The people at the farm were a bit odd. She couldn’t be sure yet whether coming here was a good idea or not. But they were here now, and all she could do was to make the best of it.
16
Hayley
She hadn’t slept well. The weed she’d smoked with Eoin and Clay had made her paranoid, and it didn’t help that in the middle of the night she’d crept onto the communal computer and Googled what mouse spiders looked like. While she was there, she'd decided to try to log onto Facebook to see what her friends were up to. Were they missing her? Had any of them tried to message her?
But when she'd tried to load the site, it was blocked. She tried Gmail, Twitter, Instagram, Hotmail… all blocked. Ellie wasn't messing around about outside contact. It was worrying, but at the same time it did make sense to block everything out while she was here.
After shutting down the computer, she’d tiptoed back to bed staring at the ground beneath her feet, convinced that the enormous spider was going to leap out into her path. Then she'd checked the duvet and under her bed before settling down to sleep. But the damn spider worked its way into her nightmares. Gemma, now with eight legs, pounced on her bed in her dreams, and she'd woken with a start.
Why was Gemma the spider? Maybe it was because she’d sprung that whole double-date thing on her without asking. It was their first night in a new place, and all Hayley had wanted to do was curl up in bed, alone, and sleep. Instead she’d ended up spending time with two guys she didn’t know.
Eoin seemed all right. He was attractive, dark haired, and that Dublin accent was a bonus, but he just reminded her of home, her Irish cousins, and the family she’d left behind in York. She liked being immersed in a new country because it made her forget, but all she saw when she looked at Eoin was the boyfriend who’d left her in Thailand, the parents who’d pressured her into being top of the class, and the country she’d run away from, as well as all the negativity she’d tried so hard to leave behind.
She hadn’t come to Australia to smoke weed with boys. She’d come to find herself.
Maybe Gemma didn’t understand.
She glanced at the clock on the wall of their room. Seven. Good. Work didn’t start until 8:30, which meant she could hurry to the shower block before it got busy. Gemma was still snoring in the bed next to hers as she gathered a few things and rushed out to the shower, checking the ground for spiders.
One thing she knew for certain as she quickly undressed and showered was that she was completely out of her comfort zone now. If she’d wanted a change from her private school in York, she’d certainly found it in an Australian mango plantation. The old Hayley was gone, shed like snakeskin, and this new and improved Hayley would stop seeing the worst in people or thinking the worst was going to happen. She was going to grasp this opportunity in both hands and not let it go.
She changed quickly, throwing on a dress with spaghetti straps. It was all she could wear in this heat, especially after losing a few pounds during the journey up to the farm. Her jeans and shorts hung off her frame like sacks. After combing her wet hair, she smeared sunscreen onto her skin and left the showers to go back to her room.
But as she made her way back, the fine hairs on her arms stood up in warning, and a prickling sensation spread over her body. She felt eyes on her back and turned around to see a tall guy walking away. There was nothing sinister or strange. He was just a guy walking in the opposite direction, probably on his way to another part of the farm. But she’d felt as though he was watching her.
He had dark hair and walked with a straight back. She hesitated for a moment, but the guy didn’t turn to face her. One thing she did notice was that he was dressed differently to the other backpackers at the farm. He wore a shirt tucked into chinos. It seemed far away from the Caucasian dreadlocks and lip piercings she’d seen on the farm so far. Hayley shrugged and ignored her gut. She was being paranoid. It was all leftover from the weed last night. A little of the old Hayley kept rearing its ugly head every now and then, demanding to be listened to.
“You’re in Field B.”
The harsh European voice squeaked up, making Hayley start. She spun on her heels to see the small shape of Ellie staring at her, unblinking. “You can come with me if you like. We’re in the same field.”
“I should probably tell Gemma—”
“No need,” Ellie said. “She’s already on her way out to Field C.”
“We’re not together?” Hayley asked, surprised that whoever organised the workers would split them up on their first day. Maybe Ellie had done it herself. Perhaps it was a way to make sure the workers actually worked and didn’t stand around chatting.
“No, You’re with me. Are you ready?”
“One sec.”
Hayley rushed back towards her room to dump her toiletry bag, thinking about how Gemma seemed to be fitting in here well. She’d already met a guy she liked and appeared to be comfortable moving around the farm on her own. Or it felt that way.
“All set,” Hayley said brightly, still determined to maintain this new persona of optimism.
“We’d better go. Lots to do. The farm supplies all the local shops and restaurants. Some of our mangoes are even shipped further. We supply a few supermarkets in Sydney too.” Ellie slipped through the communal area, turning sideways past a group of tall backpackers in tie-dyed elephant pants and flimsy vests cut down way past the beginning of patchy chest hair. Their upper arms were already slightly damp with sweat.
“Why do they call him ‘The Chemist’?” Hayley asked, squeezing her way past the group of lads, who all seemed to be speaking French.
“Because of his father’s company,” Ellie replied. “Didn’t you know?”
“Know what?”
“Tate Llewellyn is the heir to the Llewellyn corporation. It’s a huge pharmaceutical company worth billions of dollars.”
They made their way out into the sunshine where the compound bustled with the early morning crowd heading to the food hall. Ellie hadn’t even asked if Hayley wanted any breakfast, and her stomach was rumbling. At least she could snack on mangoes out in the fields.
“Then why does he spend all his time here? At a mango farm full of backpackers?” Hayley asked, still bemused by the set up.
Ellie shrugged. “I guess it’s what he wants to do. He has a lab here too. He does work on his own projects as well as run the farm.”
But nothing about this place looked like a pharmaceutical company. Not that Hayley knew what one looked like. But surely it would not look like a state-of-the-art farm sprawling with outbuildings, a glass mansion, fancy greenhouses, and mango fields full of complicated machinery. Tate had obviously had this place built to his own specifications. Why go to all this trouble to pick fruit?
Hayley watched as the workers yawned, stretched, and raised their faces to the sun. They climbed into pickup trucks, or utes as they called them here, and sped off towards the fields in groups, laughing, joking, and rubbing sleep from their eyes. The vibe was chilled and easygoing, yet somewhere on this farm was a laboratory fo
r a billionaire. It was certainly a strange setup.
Perhaps that was the old, suspicious Hayley again. Why was she questioning a place that so obviously made people happy? The entire farm was filled with happy people.
Ellie drove them a short distance away from the outhouses to a field of mango trees heavy with fruit. Dotted amongst the trees were people with long poles and a few hydraulic ladders, like the kind firemen use to assist people out of burning buildings. When the fruit was picked, the people threw them onto a vehicle that was rigged up with tarpaulins. The mangoes rolled down the tarpaulin through some sort of liquid and out of sight. Hayley was surprised to see people in the fields already, thinking that the hours were from 8:30 onwards. Perhaps it was best to get ahead of the hot sun and begin work early.
“Not a great job if you hate heights, then?” Hayley said.
To her surprise, Ellie’s face broke into a grin, and high-pitched hee-hawing sounds like mating foxes emitted from her tiny body.
“No,” she said between bouts of her alarming laugh. “Not good at all.”
Hayley found herself joining in with Ellie’s laughter as the truck was parked. Even as they piled out of the cab, Ellie continued to chuckle at the joke.
The oddness of Ellie’s sense of humour broke the awkwardness and made the rest of the morning fly by. Ellie taught Hayley how to use the extendable poles, and where to break the stem of the low-hanging fruit so that the sap didn’t get onto her skin. Then they’d take the buckets of mangoes over to the harvest aid—the vehicle rigged out with tarpaulins—and put the mangoes through the strange liquid, or ‘mango wash,’ to get rid of any sap. While they were working, Hayley learned that Ellie was from Lisbon.
“I’ve never been to Lisbon,” Hayley said. “But my parents took me to the Algarve twice.”
“All the tourists go,” Ellie noted, as she peeled a mango with a knife. “It’s pretty. But too English.” With a giggle, Ellie took a long slice of mango peel and placed it under her nose like a moustache. “Oi. Mate. Sausages. Beeeeeer.” Her terrible mash up of a cockney and Portuguese accent had Hayley doubled over in laughter. “LAGER!”
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