Page 78 of A Home Among the Snow Gums
‘Yes,’ she said.
He smiled. ‘Because you’re unrecognisable?’
‘Because I’m not a total narcissist. And, since you know all my secrets anyway, I can tell you that I’ve been going through some of my old therapy journals and revisiting the behavioral therapy exercises. What does it matter if my photo winds up on someone’s social media page and all that tagging nonsense identifies me? There’s a zillion trillion more images out there in the world now than there were all those years ago, and nobody cares.’
‘I care,’ he said. ‘But in a good way.’
She sighed. ‘I care in a bad way, but not so much as I used to. I’ve worked out that I’m a lot more than one dumb photo image—be it real or fake.’
A strand of her auburn hair had curled forward out of her cap and clung to her cheek. He tucked it back into place and smiled at her. ‘I’m proud of you.’
She blushed, and it took a moment for him to recall that they were here standing in the sunshine for any reason other than for him to stare at her.
‘Er … right. I’ll get us some tickets,’ he said.
He was an idiot. Hannah needed him to be a good sport about squiring her to out-of-town events, that’s all this was. That’s all this could be.
He tried to buy their entry only to be told it was free, then fell into step beside her.
‘Okay then.’ He pulled out his phone to check the screen. ‘Manson Rous is competing in the Picnic Maiden Plate. It’s eleven hundred metres, starting in an hour. You want to look around the stalls first?’
She looped a hand into his arm. ‘Only if they’re serving snag sangers.’
He grinned. ‘I’ll buy you as many as you can eat.’
CHAPTER
28
Telling herself back in Hanrahan that she was all grown up and totally sorted was one thing. But Hannah was discovering that actually being relaxed so far from home was another thing entirely. At the Dalgety Showgrounds, she’d had Skipjack. She’d had an event to think about, a riding helmet to wear, a mob of steers and heifers to concentrate on. And she’d still lost it.
She found herself covertly scanning the crowd—not an easy habit to break. Keeping up the banter at the same time, slipping her hand into Tom’s arm and acting all casual, joking about sausages in bread while people were looking and snapping selfies all around them … yeah, that was crazy hard. She’d be knackered by the end of the day.
She decided she’d split the anxiety up. Go full science and observe the crowd. Take the kid in the stroller for example. He was staring at her with wide dark eyes, but he also looked like he was more concerned with filling his nappy than outing her as a woman who’d once starred in a viral porn pic. So, she could quit worrying about everyone in nappies. It was a start.
The officials and the canteen workers were too busy to be bothered with anything but their jobs, so she could quit worrying about them, too.
Kids eating hamburgers? Not a threat.
If she had been tracking all this on a pie graph, with green for safe and red for unsafe, the green pieces of pie were growing.
‘I can smell sausages this way,’ said Tom. ‘Or shall we lay a bet first? What do you say? Two bucks each way?’
‘I can just about afford to lose four bucks.’
They stood in the queue to make a bet then headed around the track to where the local CWA members were running a food stall with marvellous efficiency.
‘One for you?’ said Hannah, moving into the queue behind a kid being towed by a dalmatian.
‘I’m good. I’ll get us both a coffee in a bit.’
‘That’ll be three bucks, love,’ said the plump woman behind the trestle table, handing her a snag in bread wrapped in a paper napkin. ‘Help yourself to sauce.’
Hannah handed over a bunch of coins, loaded the snag up with barbecue sauce and they headed over to the marshalling yard, where jockeys in coloured shirts were milling about, gossiping and carrying saddles.
This was better than hanging out with the spectators. The air smelled like horse and manure and sweat; it smelled like most of her vet callouts to the farms around Hanrahan. She had this. Keep calm, chat with Tom, get home and chalk up the day as progress; a step towards the next day out being easier and the one after that easier still.
‘Did you read the form book on the mare?’ she asked between bites.
