Page 61 of Down the Track

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‘But you’ll lose your—’ said Regina.

‘I know,’ he said.

‘Will someone finish a damn sentence?’ roared Ronnie.

Regina thunked her mug onto the table. ‘Dad, it’s like this: Gavin’s going to break the news to everyone in Yindi Creek—and, one assumes, everyone in the whole wide world—that local larrikin Gavin Huxtable, part-time pilot at Yindi Creek Chopper Charters, is also Gavin Gunn, celebrity crime writer.’

‘There’s more,’ said Hux. ‘The book event is just the start. I’m also going to announce on social media that I’m going to use my crime-solving skills to work out who this Dave bloke is—or was—and what he could have been doing. And where he might be now.’

‘Struth,’ said Ronnie. ‘Pass us the jam, will you, love?’

‘But I wanted you guys to okay this. The media interest … a missing person’s case. We all know what’s going to happen as soon as the journalist who’s sniffing around starts adding two plus two. We need to be prepared. But if you’d rather we just maintain silence and wait it out while the stories die down, I’m okay with that too. Charlie might need to put his pride aside and accept enough money to keep the business afloat.’

No-one spoke for a long moment. Malvina’s hand was on the table and he saw his dad cover it with his. Regina was already crying, but wiping it off with a grubby, blunt-nailed hand while the oldies were looking at each other in a silent but charged way. Oh shit, now Hux was probably going to cry.

‘Do it, son,’ said Ronnie, after everyone at the table pulled themselves together. ‘This family—well, not you lot, but me—treated Charlie pretty harshly when Jess went missing. I said something dumb and the town got a hold of it, and that poor kid’s pride took a hiding. Jess did what she did and she paid for it. Charlie was a kid and he shouldn’t have had to pay for anything, least of all me blaming him when I should just as easily have been blaming myself. I’m not letting him suffer again just so we can be left alone. Is it agreed? We look after Charlie now, the way we weren’t able to look after Jess then?’

Malvina nodded. ‘Agreed.’

Hux nodded. ‘Okay, then. I’ll be getting my publicist to start posting on social media today. There’s no telling where this journalist is at with his story and we want our news to break first.’

Regina looked at Malvina. ‘You going to be okay, Mum? All this getting dragged up again?’

‘Actually,’ his mum said, ‘I think we don’t talk about our Number Two enough. Perhaps it’s time we did.’ She lifted a corner of Ronnie’s apron and pressed it to her eyes. ‘Now, if the hordes are about to descend on us, someone had better start clearing all this mess out of the kitchen so I can start making lunch.’

While his parents sat with Charlie and Sal and their kids, Laura and her girls, and the late-but-apologetic Fiona in the kitchen, enveloping them in the familiar warmth and squabble of a Huxtable gathering, Hux disappeared into the old sleepout where the Gunn Station paperwork was kept. When he’d been a kid, this place had been all louvres and oscillating fans, painted rocks made by various children at school craft sessions keeping the feed invoices and sheep sale cheques from flying around. Heavy screens had kept the flies out, but they’d lived with the heat.

Not so now, thank god. A streamlined aircon set at a blissful twenty-two degrees had turned the narrow old space into an oasis.

The publicist who looked after the Gavin Gunn release schedule for his publisher answered first ring. Paul could talk under wet cement, as the saying went, but he was also, thankfully, accustomed to dealing with drama in a low-octane way.

‘A press release will go out when you give the word,’ said Paul. ‘I’m thinking we time it so the news desks can fit it into their Saturday editions; the big papers devote a lot more space to the arts on weekends.’

‘Like, we release it tomorrow afternoon?’ That might have worked if there wasn’t already a journalist in Yindi Creek, who could write an article at any minute and pop it up online for the world to see.

‘Yep. We might see some TV news coverage Friday night, but the Saturday papers will have enough time to do an article if they’re interested.’

‘Can we bring it forward? Release something this afternoon and try and crack the Friday papers?’

‘If you want to. What’s the rush?’

‘I’m just trying to control the narrative, that’s all.’

‘Fair enough. You want to draft something, or do you want me to? You’ll have to send me the details of what you want covered.’

‘I’ll draft something, send it to you to okay, and when you’ve sent the press release, I’ll give it an hour or so and then put something up on the Gavin Gunn social media sites.’

‘Okay. Looks like we’ve both got a busy afternoon ahead.’

‘Thanks, Paul. I’ll talk to you soon.’

Hux put the phone down and stared out across the brown stubble that was the backyard of the Gunn family homestead. Possum had ignored his advice to stay inside and was now backed into a scrappy-looking shrub, three of Number One’s kelpies crouched around him, nose-in, keeping him penned there. Change was good, right? No need to feel like the world was caving in. There might be a media ruckus, but hopefully it’d be positive rather than negative.

Good wasn’t quite the word, though, was it? None of this was good, it was all bad to the highest degree, but at least now he felt like he was doing something, andthatwas good.

‘You got a minute, Hux?’ said a voice from the doorway.

‘Charlie. Yeah, mate. As many minutes as you need.’