Chapter 28 – Release
At last they separated and walked into the court room together. A handful of people had left but most were still sitting there, still looking stunned.
As she and Vic started to walk in the door together, holding hands all eyes turned towards them. Suddenly a spontaneous cheer erupted and people started clapping for her, perhaps for Vic too, but it seemed mostly for her.
It came to her, I thought most of these people were my enemies, wanting to see me locked away, in previous days they would have been calling for my blood. But most of these people are actually on my side. It was a big room with more than a hundred people packed in and most of them were clapping and cheering for her, celebrating her freedom.
She looked around. There were Anne, David, her family, her cousins from Sydney, Buck and other station people, Sandy, Charlie and Rosie. But there were lots of others that she did not know, people who had no reason to care what happened to her. Yet here they all were, come out to support her. She stopped in the middle of the empty courtroom floor and smiled and waved, tears running down her face.
She said, “Thank you everybody, thank you with all my heart.”
Then she turned to Vic and said, loudly and clearly, so all could hear. “And most of all thank you to this man. For those of you who do not know him, his name is Vikram. He is the pilot of the helicopter which crashed on the Fitzmaurice River just before New Year’s Day.
“He has walked without stopping for the last 75 days with a broken leg to get here today. He tells me that now he has made it all he wants to do is go to the pub for a cold beer with a big plate of steak and chips. So if you will excuse me that is where we are headed.”
With that she gave him another hug and then walked across to her family and friends to say her thanks to them as the clapping and cheering continued. It was far from over but she had hope again.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Graham Wilson lives in Sydney Australia. He has completed and published six books, including three in this Crocodile Spirit Dreaming Series.
The first novel of the series, "Just Visiting." tells the story of an English backpacker who visits the Northern Territory and becomes captivated and in great danger from a man who loves crocodiles. The second book in the series, "The Diary follows the consequences of the first book based around the discovery of this man's remains and his diary and the main character being placed on trial for murder. This third book, "The Empty Place" is about the struggle of the main character to retain her sanity in jail while her family and friends desperately try to find out what really happened on that fateful day before it is too late. Two further novels are planned to conclude this series
There are also two other previous novels by this author. They first is "The Old Balmain House", a story based on an old a weatherboard cottage in Sydney where the author lived. Here a photo was discovered of a small girl who lived and died about 100 years ago. It imagines the story of her life and family, based in the real Balmain, an early inner Sydney suburb, with its real locations and historical events providing part of the story background.
The second novel in this series, Lizzie's Tale" builds on "The Old Balmain House" setting, It is the story of a working class teenage girl who lives in this same house in the 1950s and 1960s, It tells of how she becomes pregnant she is determined not to surrender her baby for adoption, and her struggle to survive in this unforgiving society.
Graham has also written a family memoir "Children of Arnhem's Kaleidoscope." It tells of his childhood in an aboriginal community in remote Arnhem Land, in Australia's Northern Territory, one of its last frontiers. It tells of the people, danger and beauty of this place, and of its transformation over the last half century with the coming of aboriginal rights and the discovery or uranium. It also tells of his surviving an attack by a large crocodile.
In his non writing life he is a wildlife veterinarian working with zoo animals and on national parks.
Additional Books in this Series
Book 4 – Lost Girls
This book tells the story of the girls in the passports and the man they met on their travels.
Book 5
This book concludes the story. It tells of how a vanished girl tries to rebuild her shattered life without any past memory.
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Crocodile Spirit Dreaming - Possession - Books 1 - 3 Page 67
