Little Girl Lost (3 page)

‘So, whadda you say? Can I buy you a beer?’

‘No, thanks.’ Tia kept walking.

‘But why not? What harm can it do? It’s just a drink. Between friends. Workmates, even.’

‘And that’s what you’ll tell your wife when you go home next week?’

There was a smattering of laughter from the nearby men. The one walking next to her had the grace to look slightly abashed.

‘If not him, how about me? I’m not married,’ his companion offered.

‘No. Sorry.’

Didn’t these guys ever get sick of asking? It was annoying.

‘Tia has the good sense to recognise a bunch of losers when she sees them,’ Blue stepped in, with a mock punch at Tia’s admirers. ‘Come on, the first one is on me.’

There was a rumble of approval from the group. Blue caught Tia’s eye and she smiled her thanks.

‘Don’t worry, any day now these thickheads will get the message,’ Blue said to her as he led his team away.

Tia hoped so. All these attempts to get her on a date were getting a bit annoying, although some small part of her that she kept hidden deep behind her rough exterior might be a little bit flattered. But accepting any of the offers was out of the question.

‘Have one for me,’ she said as she left them at the gates. Her refusal was as much for their sakes as it was for hers. They had no idea of what she had been and who she really was. If they knew the baggage she carried they’d avoid her like the plague, which would be the best thing for everyone. It was far too soon. She still didn’t know if she was truly free of her past. Getting close to her was dangerous for everyone.

She walked slowly back to the residential compound. Dusk was falling, but that had little effect on the energy-sapping heat. Inside her trailer, she splashed some water over her face and grabbed the black and red motorcycle helmet that was sitting on her table.

The Harley was parked next to her trailer. The FIFO workers didn’t have cars – they used mine vehicles when necessary. The hog had created as much of a stir as Tia herself the day she arrived, but the men had quickly learned the bike was as out of their reach as she was.

She ran a hand over the black and red flames painted on the tank, feeling the thin layer of gritty dust that seemed to settle there within seconds of her cleaning the machine. She shrugged. There was nothing she could do about the dust. And it wasn’t as if she loved the bike. She didn’t. She loved what the hog represented. She’d spent too much time as a pillion passenger on this bike, forced to hold on for dear life to a man she hated as he broke every rule in the book. And not only the road rules. She was done with that now. Even though she might have preferred a car, riding the bike was a constant reminder that she was a new person now. In the front seat. In control. She never ever wanted to forget how she had turned her life around. It hadn’t been easy. It still wasn’t. But she was working on it.

She slung her leg over the Harley and straightened it off its stand. She pulled her gloves on before pressing the starter on the handlebars. The engine roared instantly into life. She slipped the helmet over her head and twisted the throttle to set the big bike into motion.

Tia paused where the mine road met the highway. North was the town. There were people there. Probably good people with whom she could be friends. But she wasn’t ready for that. That cop was in the town too. She needed to avoid him in case he got curious about her. Or the Harley. The last thing she needed was him sticking his nose into her life. Instead, she turned the bike south, away from the town. She hadn’t explored the Birdsville Road yet. It couldn’t hurt to know where that road led. In case she had to run again.

There was something to be said for outback roads. They were long and straight and mostly empty. A girl on a motorcycle could really let her hair down. Tia opened the throttle. The big engine roared like the monster it was, as the bike gathered speed. The noise was almost loud enough to drown out her thoughts and her memories. The rushing wind was almost enough to make her forget the dark stuffy rooms and the stifling smell of lost souls. The feel of the powerful machine was almost enough for her to forget the feel of cruel hands reaching for her in the darkness, and the sound of harsh laughter. The rush of adrenaline was almost enough to make her forget the rush from the weed and the speed.

Almost, but not quite.

She twisted the throttle again, forcing the Harley to even greater speeds, right down the dotted white line in the centre of the road. Ahead of her, a truck suddenly appeared through the heat haze. A road train pulled by a huge blue and white Mercedes prime mover. Their combined speed was enough to make it appear that she was driving headlong into a wall and she was about to die in a terrible scream of twisted and torn metal.

At what seemed the last second, she twisted the handlebar a fraction and raced past the huge truck on into the slowly gathering dusk.

‘Shit!’ Pete Rankin exclaimed at the blur disappearing in his rear-view mirrors. That biker was a nut job. He’d pushed that far too close for comfort. Didn’t he realise that road trains couldn’t stop or turn as quickly as a bike? Or a standard truck for that matter. He was driving nearly eighty tonnes at ninety kilometres an hour. If he’d hit the bike, there would have been nothing left of bike or rider but a thin smear along the bitumen.

Pete shook his head. He was a professional driver. He knew the road and how to treat it with respect. He really hated amateurs. The people who thought the roads were a playground. He’d seen far too many accidents in the last ten years and seen too many people hurt or killed by the amateurs.

He sighed and flexed his fingers on the steering wheel. He’d been driving steadily for several hours and would need to take a break soon. He looked forward to a chance to stretch his legs and relax his concentration. Maybe talk to someone. A lot of drivers had dogs. They wanted another living creature to share the long hours on the road. But he didn’t. It didn’t seem much of a life for a dog. But more than that, he enjoyed the solitude. He would occasionally turn on the radio, or listen to some music on his iPod, but mostly he drove accompanied by nothing more than the noise of the big powerful engine and the hum of eighteen tyres on the road surface.

Pete liked to read. When he pulled over to sleep, there was always time to read a chapter, lying in the bed at the rear of the cab. He read almost anything and everything. He read fiction and non-fiction. He liked crime novels and books about nature. But most of all, he liked to read biographies. The stories of people who had done great things. Travelled and invented. People who made discoveries. He admired people like that because he would never be one of them. Not that it mattered; he was content with his life. He liked the solitude that allowed time for his mind to do the travelling for him, the feel of the steering wheel under his hands and the long straight line of bitumen.

At least, that had been enough.

He grimaced. Here it was again; that restlessness that had been pulling at him for weeks now. He blamed the wedding.

A few weeks ago one of his fellow drivers had married his long-term girlfriend at a tiny wooden church on the outskirts of Mount Isa. All the drivers from the depot were there to celebrate. Pete had taken his girlfriend Linda to that wedding. For almost a year Linda had been a barmaid at the pub next to the transport depot. It was the drivers’ favourite watering hole and they all knew and liked her. Some had even made a pass at her, but she’d made it clear right from the start that Pete was her favourite. They dated, in a casual way, and it had seemed the right thing to take her with him to the wedding.

The wedding was small but nice. The bride and groom looked very happy together and Pete was happy for them. He was a big believer in marriage. His parents had set him a wonderful example in their relationship, and he had always thought that one day he would like to settle down and maybe have some kids of his own. But not yet. He wasn’t ready for a house and a picket fence, kids and a dog. He liked his freedom. That’s why the relationship with Linda worked so well. When he was in town, they were together, but not once had she ever tried to tie him down. Nor had he hinted at any sort of commitment. He’d made it clear to her right from the start that he wasn’t that sort of a man. They didn’t have that sort of a relationship.

But since the wedding, Linda had changed. Maybe marriage was contagious, and she had caught it. She was dropping hints. Talking about houses and families and not wanting to be a barmaid all her life. There was nothing wrong with that … but he couldn’t see himself in the picture she painted. He liked Linda. Cared about her. But he didn’t love her. Not the sort of love that led to marriage.

Pete ran a hand through his close-cropped brown hair. It was this birthday thing. He knew it was. He was going to turn thirty in a few days, and it seemed everything was changing. He had no idea why. Thirty wasn’t old.

A sign flashed past and he began slowing down. In a couple of minutes he was driving through Coorah Creek. It was a nice town. Small but friendly. He’d been delivering supplies to the shop since he was a trainee driver and in recent years he’d taken some really big loads to the mine, stopping occasionally for a meal at the pub.

He saw a figure emerge from the town’s one big general store. A girl with long blonde hair. She was wearing shorts that showed off a pair of very nice legs. She waited on the footpath as the truck went past. Pete looked in his mirrors as she crossed the road behind him. She was really attractive, the sort of girl he’d like to meet.

And there it was.

If he loved Linda enough to consider marriage then he wouldn’t be checking out a blonde in his rear-view mirror.

It was time to break if off. Linda deserved the chance to find someone who was right for her and could give her the things she dreamed of. Because he couldn’t do that. Last week, Linda had decided to throw him a birthday party. He wasn’t all that keen, but she was enthusiastic so he had agreed. It was set for this Friday at the pub. All his driver mates would be there. He wouldn’t break it off with her before then. That would be too cruel after she’d gone to so much trouble for him.

But as soon as possible after that, he’d break it to her as gently as he could.

He felt as if a weight was lifted from his shoulders. That was the right thing to do. As he drove past the northern edge of the town for the last stage of the run back to base, he turned on some music and the evening light began to fade into darkness.

The little girl was running as she came through the door of the shop and collided with Tia.

‘Hey.’ Tia reached down to grab the girl by the shoulders. She crouched down in front of her. The little girl was clutching a carved wooden toy of some description. ‘Where are you off too?’

A second later a young woman came hurrying out of the store, her eyes wide with anxiety. She saw Tia and the little girl, and immediately swung the youngster up into her arms.

‘Anna, you mustn’t do that,’ the young woman said. ‘You must never run away like that. You might get lost.’

‘Sorry, Mummy.’ The little girl looked crestfallen.

The young mother turned to Tia. ‘Thank you for stopping her. I only turned my back for an instant and she was gone.’

‘I want Sergeant Max.’ The little girl waved the toy she was holding. ‘More animals. I wanna make a farm.’

‘Sergeant Delaney has more important things to do than make you more toys,’ her mother said. ‘Come on we have to go home and make dinner for your daddy.’ With another tentative smile at Tia, the woman carried her child away.

That was interesting. The cop made toys for children. In her experience cops destroyed more than they made. Shrugging the thought aside, Tia entered the shop.

‘Can I help you?’ the girl behind the counter asked.

Tia’s first instinct was to say no. She’d been to the store before and knew where to find the essentials she needed. But she bit the word back. The girl had done her no harm. She’d simply offered to help. It wasn’t her fault that she was so young and pretty, with her long blonde ponytail and sweet summer dress. It wasn’t her fault that she looked so innocent, or that she had a freshness about her that Tia had lost a long time ago. She felt a twinge of envy, but crushed it quickly. There was no point in envy or regret. She was who she was. Her life was what it was. She had started turning it around the day she left Brisbane. And she’d done all right. She had a job, and a place of her own to live. A place that had a kitchen and a door she could lock. That was the first step. She needed to feel a lot more secure before she took another. It would be so easy to fall, and falling would bring too much pain.

‘Shampoo,’ she said. ‘And I don’t suppose you carry kitchen stuff, do you?’

‘Shampoo is over there to your left,’ the girl said. ‘And we do have some crockery and cookware, if that’s what you’re looking for.’

‘Yes. Just the basics to stock my kitchen.’

‘Sure. By the way,’—the girl smiled—‘I’m Sarah. Sarah Travers. My parents own this place. You’re new in town, aren’t you?’

Tia nodded abruptly and went in search of the shampoo. The girl was simply being friendly. But Tia wasn’t looking for friends. And certainly not a young girl like that. A girl like that wouldn’t last a week in Tia’s world. Tia glanced at her again. Thinking she was unobserved, the smile on the girl’s face had faltered a little. She looked thoughtful and kind of sad. Perhaps worried would be a better word. Tia suddenly realised that just because Sarah had everything that Tia didn’t, her life was not necessarily a bed of roses. Perhaps the two of them were not quite such a world apart.

Tia wandered around the store, selecting some items she needed. The store was fairly large, but nothing like the supermarkets she had been used to in town. This wasn’t a supermarket – it was well … a shop that sold everything. From shampoo to casserole dishes. There were huge bags of dry dog food, Akubra hats and what looked like plumbing supplies. Well, she thought, maybe it was a
super
market after all.

She grimaced at her own bad joke and returned to the main counter where her purchases were accumulating into quite a large pile. And she wasn’t finished yet. Surely she didn’t need all this stuff! She’d lived for years without a Pyrex casserole dish. Why on earth did she need one now? Because now she had a kitchen and she wanted to cook. Her trailer wasn’t everybody’s idea of a home, but she’d spent much of her life in places far worse. It couldn’t be wrong to want to try her hand at cooking. Or to want nice towels when she showered.

She had lived for so long with next to nothing; just what she could borrow or sometimes steal. There was little point in having nice things when you lived in a squat. Someone would steal it the first time you turned your back. But now she had money. A job and a place of her own. It couldn’t be wrong to want these things … but it felt strange.

She was as out of place in this world as the girl behind the counter would be in hers.

Sarah was tapping numbers into a calculator as she bagged Tia’s
supplies. That brought a smile to Tia’s face. The few times she’d had money to shop in a ‘proper’ supermarket, it had been all bar code scanners and card readers. This small town store had no such technology. She kind of liked that. It made her feel a little more relaxed. A little safer.

‘That’ll be a hundred and thirty dollars,’
Sarah said.

It sounded like a lot of money to Tia. She slipped her hand into the pocket of her leather jacket. Her fingers closed around a wad of notes there. She’d had her first pay day at the mine. The money was paid into her bank account, but she had instantly removed it. She preferred to carry cash. In case she had to run. ATM records made it too easy to find a person, so she had spent her day off riding all the way to Mount Isa to withdraw her money in cash at the bank. That was a waste of a day off, but it had seemed the right thing to do. She would be harder to trace if her bank activity suggested she lived in a town several hundred kilometres away. Maybe when she was more settled here, she would use the bank and the cash machines in Coorah Creek, but she wasn’t ready for that yet.

‘Are you going to be able to carry all that on your bike?’ Sarah asked.

Tia looked at the bags and suddenly realised Sarah had a point. There were panniers on the Harley, but they’d never hold all that.

‘Umm … I guess I’ll need to make a couple of trips. If you could hold it all here for me.’

‘Don’t worry. You’re staying at the mine, aren’t you? I can drop it off for you after work. I’ve got some stuff for a few other people as well.’

‘You deliver?’ Tia couldn’t keep the surprise out of her voice.

‘It’s that sort of town.’ Sarah smiled in what Tia imagined was a welcoming and encouraging manner. ‘We are happy to drop stuff off when people need us to.’

That sounded an awful lot like home delivery to Tia, but she wasn’t going to argue. She handed over her cash.

‘There’s a cream trailer home on the left as you drive in,’ she said as she put her change back in her pocket. ‘Set a bit back from the others. That’s me.’

‘I’ll find you,’ Sarah said. ‘I’ll just look for your bike.’

Tia nodded and turned to go. She took a couple of steps, and then hesitated. She was here to start over. That’s what she should do. This girl seemed friendly enough. Harmless. It might be time to relax. Find a friend. Just one. Then maybe she would spend fewer nights riding the roads alone. Sarah had no connection with the past. There was no threat here.

But there was. Unconsciously, Tia lifted her hand to rub the place on the right side of her chest where her tattoo was hidden under her shirt. The threat was Tia herself. And those who would still be hunting her. She walked out the door.

The store was particularly quiet that afternoon. Sarah had been left in charge. Her father was asleep. He’d returned from his latest treatment looking even more frail, telling Sarah there was nothing to worry about. The side effects were expected. The chemotherapy was almost as tough on him as it was on his disease. But, he reassured her, it would cure him, he was certain. Sarah desperately wanted to believe him.

She was also terribly worried about her mother. Gina’s hair, which, a few years ago, had been the same golden-brown as her daughter’s, was now a dull grey. Her face was lined with worry, making her look so much older than her years. She had been working in the shop with Sarah that morning, but Sarah could tell she was both exhausted and distracted by worry. At lunchtime, Sarah had banished her mother to the house, where she was hopefully resting.

To keep herself occupied on such a slow day, Sarah was organising the shelves and dusting. Since her father had fallen ill, things had been let go a bit. Ken Travers would never have allowed so much as a single dust mote to accumulate in the store of which he was so proud. As a child Sarah had often sat on a wooden crate and talked with him as he’d sorted and stacked, dusted and put tiny white price labels on each item. It had been a special treat for her to use the label machine. Her father would set the correct price, and she would then work her way along the row of canned fruit or bottles of jam, carefully placing the labels just so in the middle of each lid.

Sarah took a can off a shelf, and looked at the fine film of dust on the top. She should have come home much sooner. If her parents had only told her how sick her father really was. Going to college had always been more her parents dream than hers. She wished now that she hadn’t agreed. She’d certainly enjoyed her time in the city. She’d met people and gone to parties. She’d even taken a few holidays with her friends. But her college degree really didn’t matter to her. She was unlikely ever to use it. One didn’t really need a degree in business to run a store in a tiny town on the edge of nowhere. Still, her parents had worked hard to afford to send her to college, and she would not deny them the pleasure and pride of knowing she’d achieved something they had never been able to even attempt. She had spent those years away from home because it was right for her to know a little more about the world before she did the one thing she had always known she would do – settle back in Coorah Creek.

She used a cloth to remove the dust from the can before setting it back in place. Tears pricked the back of her eyes and she angrily rubbed them away. She wasn’t going to cry. Her parents had given her so much. It was her turn to give back. Her turn to be the strong one. She set back to work.

The results soon began to show. The store began to take on the familiar air of prosperity and care. Sarah wiped her hands on a rag, feeling satisfied with her afternoon’s work, but still restless. Leaving the connecting door open in case a customer came in, she turned her attention to the storeroom.

The first thing she noticed was that the boxes were neatly stacked, in a logical order. That had always been her father’s way, but she doubted he’d done this. He wasn’t really strong enough to be hauling boxes about and nor was her mother. Perhaps the delivery man had stacked them. She took a closer look at the boxes. Yes. That must be it. The boxes were neat, but not arranged quite to the same order her father had always used. She turned in a slow circle, noting as she did some half empty boxes, and shelf space that was not being used. The storeroom, like the shop, was suffering from lack of attention. Well, she could fix that.

Sarah started sorting the contents of some half empty boxes, setting aside new stock to go on the shelves, and stacking the rest for later use. As she did, she noticed a small cardboard box pushed to the back of a high shelf. The sides of the box were battered and stained and very dusty. That box had not moved in a long time. Sarah stood on a wooden crate and reached to retrieve it. She smiled as she realised it was the box that had once contained her first pair of heeled shoes: some sandals she had been given for her twelfth birthday.

Deeply curious, she sat on the crate and placed the shoebox on her lap. Trying not to create a dust cloud, she opened it. Inside she found the sort of accumulated nearly-useful things most people put into small boxes and then forget. There was a key ring with a couple of keys, although Sarah had no idea what they might open. There were a couple of old pens, which would obviously no longer work. A pile of rubber bands had more or less melted together and lay on top of an envelope that was old and brittle and yellow and empty.

Sarah reached into the box and retrieved the keys. She’d show them to her father before she threw them away. Nothing else in the box looked like it was worth salvaging. She shuffled the contents around a little, and the corner of an old photo appeared underneath the envelope. She removed it and turned it to catch the light streaming through the storeroom window.

The colours had faded over the years, and the edges of the paper were curling, but the photograph clearly showed a girl of about ten sitting behind the wheel of a big prime mover. Her small hands gripped the big steering wheel tightly, but her feet were far too short to reach the pedals. She was grinning widely as she strained to see through the windscreen. Sitting beside her, his arm protectively around her shoulders was a handsome young man. His hair was long and dark and slightly wavy. He was smiling in a slightly bemused way.

Memories of that day came flooding back, bringing a smile to her face. She’d had a terrible crush on that driver. Pete, his name was. It was a moment of such excitement to be lifted up by him and placed gently in the driver’s seat of his truck. How far up she had felt. How very grown up. And how wonderful it had felt to have Pete’s arm around her. To have his approval. Her father had ducked back into the house and grabbed his cheap little camera to capture the moment. They had kept the photograph on a corkboard at the back of the shop for a while, before it got lost among the receipts and orders and notes. Strange that it had ended up here.

It would have been different for Pete, of course. To him it had no doubt been a little act of kindness to a lonely girl in an isolated store at a tiny truck stop on his road. She doubted that he would remember it now. She had forgotten all about it, until she saw the photo. Briefly she wondered where Pete was. Was he still driving this same route? Maybe he was the one who had stacked the boxes for her parents? If so, it just went to show that he was – if not a knight in shining armour – a good Samaritan at the very least. He was probably married now with a house full of kids. As for her; she had an education and a degree that could take her away from here. If she wanted to go. And right now, she didn’t. She couldn’t. She wouldn’t leave her father. If she did, she might never …