by Ros Baxter
Matt stood scowling at Gage and Lou, rubbing his neck. ‘I should have your arse for that, Westin,’ he snarled, stepping back a couple of paces. He waved a hand at the small crowd that had gathered nearby, watching the scene. ‘Plenty of witnesses to the way you just assaulted me.’
There was a short pause, before an old lady Lou vaguely recognised at the front of the group called out: ‘I didn’t see nothin’.’
‘Me neither,’ agreed a teenage boy, who looked flushed with the excitement of the stand-off he’d just witnessed.
‘Coupla old pals havin’ a chat,’ a man with baggy jeans and a rugby league jersey said, smiling crookedly.
And then they all wandered off.
Gage laughed, and gestured towards Matt, looking at Lou. ‘Off you go then,’ he said. ‘Go have your chat.’ Then he narrowed his eyes a little at Matt, whose smile from a few moments earlier had completely vanished. ‘Want me to come?’
Lou considered the offer, then shook her head. She didn’t need Gage knowing her father’s secrets and worries, especially when he had enough of his own to contend with.
‘Alright then,’ Gage said, shooting her a dazzling smile. ‘But call me if he plays up.’ And with that, Gage thumped Matt hard on the back in a caricature of bonhomie and strode off in the direction of the bank. Lou watched him for a couple of seconds, his long legs barely breaking stride as he dodged some slow moving traffic and waved at someone walking up the street. What an enigma he was, so dark and full of tormented menace in one moment, and the small town pin-up boy for sex-on-legs the next. No wonder she couldn’t find her sea legs.
‘Arsehole,’ Matt muttered, following Lou across the road to the council chambers.
Lou grinned. If Gage did nothing else, he got under Matt’s skin, which did more to endear him to her than anything else he’d ever done. Then she thought about his lips at her ear, reminding her about that night, twenty years ago. Almost anything.
Chapter
12
Dumb things
‘How deep is he in it?’ Lou annoyed herself by sounding scared, picturing her father’s clever, kind face, and hating that they were talking about him. She knew what her father had done to save the town, but she needed to find out how much Matt knew.
Lou could tell Matt relished the conversation they were having. He was in his element, even sitting in the cheap office swivel chair in the almost-broom closet she had been using, even removed from his big glass city office. They both loved to do a deal. This was one thing they had in common. The only thing, Lou thought, except for Sharni. Matt shrugged, assembling his features into a picture of concern. ‘Deep,’ he said, using some voice Lou was sure he’d heard on a daytime soap: the concerned protector voice. ‘He’s ruined, financially. But that’s not his biggest issue.’ Lou could almost hear the smile dying to break free. ‘Problem is, of course, once you start doing that shit, you’ve got to cover your tracks. If things don’t get fixed, questions are gonna get asked. He could be in real trouble then. With the feds.’
Lou toyed with the tacky paperweight in her hand – an insect, trapped in glass. It was some kind of long ant, its six legs splayed awkwardly to better show off their delicate furry intricacy. Poor little bastard. She closed her eyes. Sometimes you just had no choice about the life fate dropped you into.
Damn her father. Why? Why would he have tried to prop the damn town up from his own purse? That was a Business 101 no-no. Bad idea. Bad, bad, bad. If only Gary had talked to Lou about this all earlier. If only he had asked her advice before the whole thing became so tangled. Maybe then she could have done something better, something to offer a real fix.
But she knew why he hadn’t involved her. He would never have involved her. At least, not until he’d had no other choice and after she had landed so felicitously in his lap. It wasn’t just that her father loved this town, it was that he felt responsible. She didn’t think, not even for one second as Matt laid out his story, that her father had done anything untoward, not in a moral sense. But he had broken rules. And she knew, from all her corporate law experience, that kind of carry-on always looked bad once the shit came tumbling down. He’d be crucified – her lovely, bumbling, generous father would be finished.
She wanted to ask Matt how he knew, but she also didn’t want to give him the satisfaction. She had no doubt he would have some smooth, plausible lie for how he stumbled across the information. Here’s one I prepared earlier. She wouldn’t let him have anything from her. Because she saw that in his face too. After today with Gage, this was personal. Matt had never liked her, always resented the brake she had been on his careless messing with Sharni. But it felt different now. Sure, he needed something from her, that’s why he was here, but he wanted to mess her up as well. A little shiver ran through her body.
She was on Matt Finlay’s hit list.
‘So, spill, Matt.’ Lou kept her voice smooth and noncommittal. ‘You’ve brought me the problem. I’m pretty sure you’re also offering me a solution. What is it?’
Matt scowled slightly, then over-corrected with a smile so unconvincingly bright Lou almost giggled. ‘It’s simple,’ he said. ‘If the council sells the land to Clean Gas, the coffers will fill up, your dad can take back his loans and no-one will be any the wiser.’
So that was it. Matt was in the employ of Clean Gas. It made sense. He was good at what he did, but he also knew this area, was the local footy hero.
She shook her head. ‘Not gonna work. I’ve been checking it out for Dad. The company’s not gonna buy unless all the landowners in the exploration corridor grant access rights. It’s no good to them by itself.’
Matt smiled slowly and made a gesture with his hands, palms up. ‘So what’s the problem?’
Lou wanted to slap the smug look off his face. Why did they have to do this goddamn dance? Matt clearly had a plan, why couldn’t he just come out with it? He knew she already hated him and would mistrust anything he said, so it had to be good.
‘Er,’ she said, in a faux-dumb voice, ‘not sure if you’ve noticed, Matt, but some of the farmers in this neck of the woods aren’t the type who are keen on letting drills on their land to frack the water table. They’ve been in the game a long time. They don’t trust it.’
Matt sighed, like he was almost getting tired of the game as well. ‘But gas is clean.’
Lou waved a hand at him. She didn’t have the energy. ‘Clean, schmean, it doesn’t matter. They say no, we got no deal.’
Matt raised his eyebrows in a gesture that clearly suggested he thought Lou was giving up too easily. A dark thought shivered into her brain as she watched his smooth face, knowing the rapid calculations that would be percolating behind it. Would he? Could he somehow have been responsible for the thing with Bo? Or known who was? Lou had assumed the company itself would never get into those kinds of techniques, but she wondered if they were above outsourcing some of their heavier-handed tactics. She shook her head. She knew, as much as anyone in the corporate world, how clean Australia was with mining stuff. It would be suicide.
‘Maybe there’s another way.’ Matt stood up and stretched as he said the words, looking out the window at the big old jacaranda tree. ‘A way to do the deal.’ He turned back to her, blasting her with the old Matt Finlay get-the-girl smile. ‘Save the town. Save your dad.’
‘I figured you had a way,’ Lou said, the words sour in her mouth. ‘Matt to the rescue.’
‘Now don’t be like that, Lou,’ Matt admonished her. ‘It’s actually even better than that.’ He rubbed his hands together. ‘You’ll love it. ’Cause it’ll be the mayor to save the day.’
Later, Lou was able to pinpoint that as the exact moment Matt’s face fell apart. Up until then, Lou had thought of Matt as a total shit, albeit a pretty one. Women loved him. Not Lou; she had only ever had eyes for one Stone Mountain legend. But every other girl, woman or old lady she’d ever known had loved the hell out of Matt Finlay. So she had been perfectly capable of detesting him
, while acknowledging that something about his movie-star looks made other women forgive him all manner of transgressions, managing to laugh them off like some display of exuberant boyishness. But in that single instant, even Matt’s good looks abandoned him in Lou’s eyes. She watched as a sly victory spread over his bland, too-symmetrical features and suddenly the whole picture just fell apart, and she knew, she just knew, she would never be able to see the magic of Matt again. It was like learning your favourite burger was made of pig’s udders and cement. It would never taste the same in your mouth.
Lou moved very close to him. ‘Quit fucking around, Matt. Quit pretending this is a favour. Spill.’
Matt smiled. Now they understood each other. ‘There’s an almost-forgotten by-law, dates back to when the first free settlers were granted land parcels out this way.’
Lou nodded, frowning. She knew some of the local rules were pretty idiosyncratic. ‘Yeah.’
‘Well,’ Matt said, like he was waiting for some congratulations, ‘cut a long story short, council can override the landowners.’
Lou frowned harder. ‘You mean compulsory acquisition?’ God, but he was truly awful. Lou tried to imagine the shit fight that would ensue if the council tried to take the land.
‘No, no,’ Matt said quickly. ‘Piecemeal. They can grant certain rights, in exceptional circumstances. Including’ – he made quote marks with his fingers – ‘such mining exploration and access rights as may be required. From time to time.’
Lou exhaled slowly. ‘Sounds dodgy.’
‘Nah.’ Matt shrugged. ‘Just old. From a time when the landowners were getting a favour but the Crown wanted them to know who still held the reins.’
Lou’s brain whizzed and whirred, thinking it through.
‘What constitutes exceptional circumstances?’
Matt stretched again, moving his neck from side to side with some kind of sick clicking, like the whole thing was so easy it almost bored him. ‘A meeting of the full council has to agree.’
Yeah, right. Just that little thing.
‘Think about it,’ Matt said, gathering his briefcase. ‘I’m at the Welcome Inn.’ He grimaced slightly and Lou experienced a quick pang of satisfaction. How Matt must hate that place. ‘Let me know if you need anything more.’
Lou’s father had lost that quirky spring in his step that so defined him.
He stirred his tea disconsolately. ‘I’m so sorry, baby,’ he said, staring into the milky drink. ‘It was so stupid. But at first, I thought I could get on top of it. I thought …’
Lou reached across and squeezed his hand. ‘It’s done, Dad,’ she said, her heart contracting painfully as she watched him fumble for an explanation. ‘Now we just need to think this through.’
Her father radiated defeat, and the sight of it was almost more than Lou could bear. He had been upbeat her whole life, offering her a safety net when things had been especially bad at home. At first, there had been no question of going to live with him: Skye had been the centre of Lou’s world. And later, when Lou would have given anything to escape, she knew she had to stay. By then, there had been no option. She had responsibilities. Her father had understood that, the way he always understood everything. He had a big brain, and an even bigger heart.
He finally met her eyes, and she could see how red and shadowed his were. ‘I know this is hard for you to understand, Lou, but I’m happy to take my medicine. I could talk to the regulators, explain what happened and why and how I did it. But it’s the town that worries me.’
Lou’s brain was one step ahead. ‘But surely there are other options? Councils go bankrupt. There are always fallback positions. Who’s the responsible entity anyway – the state government? They’d have to step in to make sure basic services were being met, and …’
Gary nodded, slowly and sadly.
‘There’s something else.’ Lou could see it in the defeated lines of her father’s body as he sat in the little cafe, playing with his shortbread biscuit. She paused, not sure she wanted to know. ‘What is it?’ she asked finally.
‘The town might survive,’ her father said, patting her hand where she held his. ‘Short term. But the real problem is that the council –’ He paused, concentrating on a spot on the far wall. ‘No,’ he corrected himself. ‘Not the council, me, acting for the council. I underwrote the loans.’
Lou had seen the books. She understood about the loans the council had taken in the early days to try to secure services while it recovered its position. But the council couldn’t have underwritten loans to itself, which is why her father had taken personal responsibility for them.
‘The properties,’ her father continued sadly. ‘About two years ago, when the drought really started to bite.’ He waved a hand. ‘The town can’t survive, not really, without the properties. They’re all there is. There didn’t seem to be another option.’
‘So the banks were going to …’
‘Foreclose,’ her father finished for her, like he was back to helping her with her homework. ‘On lots of the larger properties. That happens, the farms fold, then the town just dies. They wouldn’t have been salvageable, the banks wouldn’t have taken them on, not as real enterprises, things were too messy.’
Lou closed her eyes and a familiar throb started at the base of her skull. ‘So when you say the town dies, you mean …’
‘They lose everything,’ Gary said, his mouth twisted in a sad slash.
‘And that includes?’ She didn’t want to ask. She didn’t even want to say the words. A thousand images raced across her vision as she shut her eyes tight against the answer. Old memories. Gage, at the waterhole. Gage, on his horse. And that other memory – the one she worked so hard to keep at bay. Gage, under the stars, on a summer night twenty years ago, looking at her like she was the most perfect thing he had ever seen. Gage, leaning over her and whispering to her that she belonged here, that no matter what happened, he would keep her safe. Gage, his lean teenage body so perfect and beautiful in its unashamed nakedness. She squeezed her eyes shut tighter.
Lou opened her eyes and picked up the teaspoon that had arrived with her untouched hot chocolate. She grabbed it, just to do something with her body, anything other than slide into the abyss of memory. Gage had been wrong. He hadn’t been able to keep her safe, not from what had happened. And she didn’t belong here.
‘Sunset Downs?’ she whispered.
Her father nodded slightly. ‘I’m so sorry, Lou. It really did seem like the right thing to do at the time.’ He brought a hand up to his face, rubbing his chin. ‘Lou, the other thing is, they don’t know. They don’t know why the banks gave them another round of chances back then. Things picked up a little after that, and they were grateful for the reprieve. But honestly, honey.’ He gave her a very direct look. ‘Once the council goes under, the bank will call in those loans, and there won’t be anyone left standing.’
Great. So it wasn’t just her father’s future that rested on doing this deal, it was the whole damn town too. And worst of all, Gage would lose control of everything he had worked for. He would hate her for getting into bed with Matt, and the gas company, for helping them do this deal. But the alternatives seemed pretty scant right now. She needed to get away and think. This wasn’t just about Gage. There was also Piper, and all the other farmers. Even Sharni’s parents, who had run the co-op since forever. None of them wanted gas, but neither would they want to lose everything. That shit cliché about rocks and hard places circled Lou’s brain, clogging up her logical thinking. Maybe they should just hold a town meeting, explain why they needed to do things this way.
But if the whole thing came out, what would that mean for her father? And surely the outcome was the same? Surely the deal needed to be done, regardless of whether the landholders agreed or not?
Lou needed to get away, and think.
Chapter
13
I guess that’s why they call it the blues
As Lou stumbled out of the l
ift at the Welcome Inn, she felt like a teenage virgin off to compromise her virtue. How appropriate that the meeting should be here, where so many teenagers had done just that. She could have asked Matt to come out to Sunset Downs, but then there was the very real risk that Gage might renege on his earlier generous reprieve and murder him on the spot. She could have met Matt somewhere else, but the last thing she needed was anyone to see her. She inched towards the door of the one and only ‘business suite’ the place boasted. She and Sharni hadn’t bothered booking it the other night – it had seemed too hilarious. Matt would never see the comedy of the situation. Sharni. Even thinking about her friend made Lou feel better. That’s what she needed tonight, after this deal was struck in return for thirty pieces, she needed to head over to the Pies’ place, drag Sharni out of there and take her somewhere the two of them could get very drunk. And she didn’t care what kind of idle gossip such a thing might provoke. Sharni would know how to make it feel okay; Sharni would understand. Lou’s whole life, whenever everything else had been crazy and gone to hell, Sharni had been there.
Lou stood in front of Matt’s door and raised her hand. Just do it.
She knocked viciously.
‘Hang about,’ Matt’s voice called from inside. He sounded very pleased with himself.
She wondered if it might threaten the deal if she kicked him in the balls for good measure as she left. Hmm … tempting.
Matt opened the door, wrapped in a towel. ‘Oh,’ he said, a small frown wrinkling his brow. ‘I thought it was room service.’
‘No such luck,’ Lou said, pushing her way into the room, suddenly eager to have it done. As she did, she saw two things.
Firstly, Sharni, mussed and naked on Matt’s bed, wrapped only in a sheet. Her red curls were wild and tangled, her cheeks flushed and her mouth open as Lou entered. The scene was so intimate – Matt in his towel, Sharni in the sheets, that Lou actually blushed, natural modesty momentarily trumping fury.