Lost Girl Diary

by Graham Wilson

  Chapter 34 – Pickup

  Over six months had passed. Amanda found herself working on an island resort in the far north of Queensland.

  Fortunately she had kept the money that she had been paid by her Newark professor in cash, not having lodged it into a bank account.

  In the late afternoon when others were off having a drink she had slipped unobtrusively into the share house and gone to her room, quickly packing an overnight bag with her best clothes, anything else valuable and her passport and cash, still over fifteen thousand dollars, plus another four thousand in the envelope.

  She made a snap decision, as she was packing, to head for Australia via the West Coast. So she booked an evening flight from Newark to LA. In LA she bought an open return ticket and arranged a working holiday visa for twelve months Australia, it was easy with US university student status. By lunch time next day she was airborne, flying across the Pacific Ocean knowing that in another half a day her next touchdown was Sydney. It had all seemed so easy it was hard to believe that there could be any problems following her, but still she knew she must take care.

  She only stayed a week in Sydney, it was an expensive city and she wanted to ration her money. So first she went down to Melbourne, the other main city, and got work in a bar for a couple months. Then, when Christmas came, she returned to Sydney for the fireworks show, meeting up with a few casual friends she had made when she first came here. She stayed in a backpacker hostel near Bondi Beach, during the long hot days of summer, doing odd jobs as they turned up.

  By February, with the heat of summer easing, she decided to go north and follow the sun; that was the way the other backpackers talked of it. She worked her way up the east coast, stopping here and there and taking more short term jobs to replenish her money.

  Learning to dive interested her so she booked a diving course on the Barrier Reef in Queensland. It was at a place called Airlie Beach. With her qualification in hand and using her friendly manner, inside a second week she had a job offer at a nearby resort at a place called Hamilton Island.

  It was an hour and a half by ferry from the mainland town. She had now worked here for two months and found it easy and enjoyable, with the chance to practice her diving in the afternoons or when tours were going out and they had an extra space to give away.

  Her job was in customer service, booking local tours and island activities for overseas visitors, particularly the rich world of an American traveller clientele. Her American accent always ensured good tips when she gave service with a smile to her fellow citizens, and she had a good story to tell of an American student, on a gap year, seeing the world.

  Now she had a stable address she sent a post card to the Professor as well as a letter to her Mum telling of her decision to make an Australian trip and defer her studies for a bit.

  Her Mum wrote a letter back which came two weeks later, telling of the local news. It said nothing said about the police or other authorities looking for her. Perhaps with her gone and no money to trace it would just fade away, like she and the professor both hoped.

  She would like to know she decided, she could stay here for another month but ultimately she wanted more from her life than jobs in holiday resorts. It needed to know if there was an arrest warrant or open criminal investigation that would cause problems should she return home.

  She tried to ring the Professor but the University receptionist merely informed her he longer worked there. They would not provide information on where he had gone, only that he left unexpectedly late last year. She realised this was due to her and felt a bit sad about it.

  She was starting to find life dull on the island, she had done most of the tours and activities, she had added an additional $3000 to her bank balance since coming here, she had tried a couple very transient affairs with other tourist staff, but all in all it was becoming boring.

  One night, a mid-week night when business was quiet, she was sitting in the resort bar where she worked, having a drink with a Canadian girl who worked with her. There was something comfortable in their accents and backgrounds that made them each enjoy the company of the other.

  She noticed a man in his thirties, buy a drink, a rum and coke. He took it to a corner table, in the furthest corner away from the bar. There was something incredibly self possessed about him.

  He was not exactly handsome, quite weather beaten looking, tanned from many long days in the sun, but there was a sense of physical power and toughness that she found appealing. His body had that hard look of a person doing manual work.

  She tried to catch his eye, to see if she could draw a smile. It was as if he sensed her interest and avoided it. She felt her interest piqued.

  She asked her friend if she knew who he was, few came to the island as unknowns except the tourists and he did not look like a tourist.

  Her friend replied. “He just arrived today. I think he is here for three days to do some maintenance on the resort machinery, maybe the air conditioners. I heard his name was Mark, Mark something. That’s right, he was talking to the Resort Manager when I was on the front counter and he was introduced to our head of maintenance as Mark Brown.”

  Amanda said, “Let’s go and introduce ourselves to him. If he is here on his own he might be looking for some company. God knows, interesting men, who are not jet setting tourists, are few and far between.

  So they went across and said hello, smiling brightly in their best girlie way. He nodded politely but evidenced little interest in keeping them company. He was not rude but it was as if a dark spirit sat on his shoulder, giving him a serious demeanour and little ability to smile.

  He sat and talked to them in a low key way for a few more minutes while he finished his drink then said, in a quaint and almost courtly way, “Well, nice meeting you ladies. Got a big day’s work tomorrow, replacing several air conditioning units in the west wing, then the same the next day in the east wing. So, at this stage of the evening, I wish you good night.”

  Amanda felt her interest doubly drawn. He had the edges of a nice smile that she had almost glimpsed a couple times, as if in response to her obvious pickup lines which he clearly saw through. It was like he was saying. I have been around lots of bad places and tough motherfuckers and I have seen it all before. There was an edge to his manner. It spoke of challenge and maybe danger. She refused to accept his brush-off.

  He was there in the bar again the next night. This time he stayed for two drinks, though he refused her offer to buy him one and did not offer to buy her one in return.

  However she sensed that she had intrigued him too, just a tiny bit, but he was now conscious of her and intrigued by her interest. He told her a small bit about his work as a jack of all trades across the vast open spaces of Australia. She told him she was at University in New Jersey, just the other side of the Hudson River from New York and had decided to take a gap year and travel and see the world. Now she said she was enjoying life in Northern Queensland.

  She knew as she spoke that he had seen through her shallow lies, not that he seemed to care, but his manner told her he had a nose for scenting out things that were not fully truthful.

  He said, “We all have our stories; I have given you a tiny bit of mine, true but telling nothing. You have given me a tiny bit of yours, part true and telling even less. That’s how it goes.”

  With that he stood up and left again.

  The next night he was not there, Amanda asked around and found he had departed to the mainland on the last ferry. She felt disappointed that he had left without her knowing or saying goodbye.

  A week later her Canadian friend left. Now she had no more drinking partners and there was no one else she found interesting at the resort at present. She decided she needed to do something to pass all the empty nights. She went to the bookshop and bought a novel with good reviews. It had stickers saying it had won a major prize, something called “Man Booker”. It seemed like a big deal prize in England, not quite a Pulitze
r but still a big something.

  Hopefully it will be OK, she thought as she settled in to reading it that night, nursing a drink on a corner table of the resort bar.

  She realised that a person was coming to sit at her table, she looked up. It was the man, Mark. This time he was carrying a drink for her as well as one for himself. He had ordered her regular mojito and she wondered how he knew what it was, but his eyes were sharp, little went past him.

  She looked him up and down appraisingly wondering if tonight would be her lucky night, the start of something new and exciting. She was confident in her ability to bait the hook and catch the fish from here.