Page 15 of Down the Track
Readers loved a flawed character. The first book, where Tyson self-sabotaged every chance at happiness? Four print runs and a Golden Eye nomination. The recent book, with the flashback to that long-ago heartbreak when Tyson was gaffer-taped to a chest freezer in a burning shed on a feedlot outside Chinchilla and thought he was going to die? Highlighted by readers eighteen thousand times in the ebook edition.Eighteen thousand.
TYSON [smugly]: I know, right?
Hux sighed. If he’d known having theClueless Jonesnovels made into a TV series would turn Tyson into a voice in his head that never shut up, he might’ve thought twice about it.
He needed to get his hands on a copy of this week’sWestern Echo. Stat.
He pulled his phone out of the pocket of his shorts and tapped out a text message to Phaedracilla in the donger. If he knew her (and he did) she’d have a copy within minutes of him asking for it.
Heads up, he typed.Someone’s put an article about the missing guy in the Echo. Can you see if you can track down a copy? The Cracknells read it at the bakery, so maybe start there.
She must’ve been glued to her phone because her answering text flashed up before he could put his phone away.Will do. Your effing dog’s sitting at the door yapping for you, can you take off already before my ear drums burst.
He chuckled and typed an answer.If you didn’t call him names maybe he’d be happier about being looked after by Aunty Phaeds.
An eyeroll emoji was all the response he got, so he flicked the switch that let him turn his headset from isolated (pilot only) to everyone so they could talk over the roar of the six-cylinder horizontally opposed piston engine, wincing at a squelch of feedback. He disconnected the set slung over a hook on the console—Possum’s mutt muffs—and the squelch dwindled away to the usual staticky buzz.
‘Seatbelts fastened, everyone,’ he said into his mouthpiece. ‘Don’t remove them for any reason.’ It had been a month or two since he’d done charter work, but he’d given the spiel so often he had no trouble remembering. Which, he thought, was bloody lucky, since Yindi Creek Chopper Charters’ other pilot had been into the donger sometime between last night and this morning and scrubbed all references to ‘Charlie’ from the Pilot column on the whiteboard roster. Hux would’ve asked him why if he’d had the chance, but Charlie was proving hard to find. He’d been AWOL when Hux and Possum had made their way round to Charlie and Sal’s house last night to talk about the poorly stored R22, amongst other things.
‘He’s out,’ Sal had said, a tea towel over her shoulder and something that looked like snot on her collar. She looked tired, and in the month or so he’d been at the coast her belly had doubled in size.
‘Out where?’
‘If I knew, I’d tell you.’
‘I’ll go look for him.’
‘He wants to be alone, apparently. Be an angel and read Harry a bedtime story, will you, Hux? Lucy’s not well and I’m trying to persuade her a bath will make her feel better.’
Sal’s face had worn the red-welt look that spoke of a long day of crying, so he’d not pressed.
‘Maybe a bath would make you feel better, too, Sal,’ he said. ‘Why don’t I help you with Lucy then she can come have story time with me and Harry? I’ll get them into bed.’
That was all it took for the tears to spill over again.
‘I don’t even fit in the bath anymore, Hux. I’m a beached whale.’
He chuckled. ‘Rubbish. A beached dolphin at the most.’
She sucked in a breath and glared at him. ‘That is not funny.’
‘Come on, Sal. Go pour yourself a glass of wine or something and relax for a bit.’
‘I am pregnant, you moron. For the third time. At the age of thirty-seven. For starters, pregnant women don’t drink, and for seconds you know what the telehealth GP said to me today when I rang up and asked if stress was going to make me have this baby early?’
Hux had spied a snotty-looking three-year-old hiding behind the sofa, waving a plastic sword at him, so he hauled Lucy up and sat her on his shoulder so she could tower down over her mother.
‘I very tall,’ she said.
‘You very tall,’ he and Sal parroted in unison, before he returned to the conversation at hand.
‘What did the GP say?’
‘She called this—’ Sal waved a hand over her belly ‘—a geriatric pregnancy.Geriatric. As though having a surprise baby after all those years of IVF wasn’t bad enough. To think we paid all that money and then another one just pops along! For free!’
Oh god. More tears.
‘Mummy crying again,’ said Lucy matter-of-factly.
