On the Right Track

by Penelope Janu

  We both watch as he threads our fingers together. My heart thumps.

  ‘You were wearing jeans and a shirt in the cafe. Your face was pale.’ He lifts his other hand and traces a gentle path with his index finger across the top of my cheek just beneath my eye, over the bridge of my nose and across the other cheek. ‘I noticed your freckles.’ One side of his mouth lifts. ‘Golden freckles.’

  Some sensible part of my brain is trying to remind me of why I was pale. Finally I remember the circumstances and then I can’t believe how I could ever have forgotten them, even for a moment. Tor had told me I was raised on dirty money.

  When I stiffen, his finger lifts from my cheek. His hand hovers for a moment, and then goes back to his side. Yet his other hand is still entwined with mine. I take a shuddering breath before lifting my hand. His lifts with it. Which shouldn’t really surprise me because I’m clinging on to him just as firmly as he’s clinging on to me. Within an instant our hands rest against his chest, rising and falling with his breath. His body beneath his shirt is hard and warm. His lips are slightly parted.

  ‘What about last week?’ I whisper. ‘Did you notice anything then?’

  There’s desire in his eyes, like there was on the dance floor, and I’m sure it’s mirrored in mine. When he points, I follow his gaze.

  ‘What?’

  He eases my coat off my shoulder and rests the back of his hand, through my shirt, against my collarbone. My heart jumps into my mouth when he turns his hand to rest his palm against the ridge, the tips of his fingers brushing the skin at my throat.

  ‘I noticed this. Fragile, yet … ’

  He’s not touching my breasts but my nipples respond as if he were. I’m much too warm. I’d like to pull my shirt over my head. I want him to touch my other collarbone too—it aches with not being touched.

  ‘Golden?’ When he dips his head I smell his soap. He comes closer and closer with each word he says. ‘Pretending would never have worked because I notice you. All of the time.’ He’s still for a moment, and then lifts his hand. He untangles our fingers. ‘But there’s not a thing we can do about it. Not while we’re working together.’

  Suddenly he’s half a metre away and I’m left standing where I was. I close my eyes and remind myself of the facts. He manipulates people to get what he wants. He’s paid to do it. It’s his job.

  ‘We’re not working together,’ I say. ‘You’re forcing me to do this.’

  His mask is back in place. He doesn’t contradict me. And he doesn’t remind me about the dirty money, or the dirty dancing. He probably appreciates that he doesn’t need to.

  ‘Have breakfast with me,’ he says.

  ‘No.’

  He nods curtly, but doesn’t say anything.

  ‘Who’s next on your list?’ I say, taking off my coat. ‘Not the expendable women like me list, the other one.’

  A flash of anger, then nothing. ‘Marc Ferguson.’

  Finding out Tor can activate a million nerve endings in my body is bad enough. Hearing Marc’s name makes things even worse. Because Marc isn’t just a threat to my father or Grandpa like everybody else on the list, he’s a threat to Angelina. And potentially to me. My voice is so high that it squeaks.

  ‘Right. Marc.’

  ‘He used to go out with Angelina, didn’t he? Is that a problem for you?’

  Hardly anyone knew about Marc and me so it’s not too surprising that Tor doesn’t seem to be aware of it. If I keep breathing the way I am, I’ll hyperventilate. I unravel my coat and search in the pockets for my keys.

  ‘It’s not a problem. Tomorrow week okay? At Randwick Racecourse?’

  The Autumn Racing Carnival has started. At eleven o’clock next Saturday Marc will be standing on a platform in the betting ring wearing a bookie hat. He’ll have a leather bag strapped to his chest and he’ll be taking on-course bets. The Fergusons employ a team of bookies, and these days they’re likely to earn a lot of their revenue through other forms of gambling, but Marc’s father, Marc senior, is a stickler for tradition. He wants his son to carry it on. By midafternoon Marc will be socialising with wealthy race-club members, racehorse owners and silvertail corporate-types. They all congregate for the important race days.

  ‘Solomon told me you haven’t been to a racetrack for years,’ Tor says.

  Last time I went to the races was almost six years ago, on the day Grandpa was taken to the police station for questioning. He was bustled into the back of an unmarked car. They wouldn’t let me travel with him so I sprinted to where he’d parked his car and drove to the police station myself. Then I waited at the front desk until they let him out. He was only in custody for a few hours because the officers worked out that, thanks to Eric, an investigation into the payments he’d been getting was already underway. Even so, it was a terrible day. And it meant that people at the track knew something was up.

  It ended Grandpa’s career. Maybe if we were wealthy, or more active on the social scene, or if he’d fought back, things would have been different. As it was, Grandpa never returned to the track. I could understand why people who didn’t know him well saw it as an admission of guilt. But friends and associates who had known him for decades abandoned him as well. ‘We’ll keep to ourselves for a while,’ Grandpa said. ‘You concentrate on your university studies, Gumnut. There’s a good girl.’

  I look behind me to the entrance to Solomon’s stables, and blink a couple of times until my vision clears. Then I turn back to Tor.

  ‘We’re bound to catch up with Marc at Randwick,’ I say. ‘It’ll be good to get him out of the way.’

  And be one step closer to getting you out of my life. Maybe he guesses what I’m thinking because he frowns as he opens my door. He leans against it until I’m seated and my belt is on. When I pull on the handle to close the door, he refuses to shift.

  ‘Golden, listen to me. Your only role in this investigation is to trigger people’s recollections of your father and grandfather. Keep a low profile. It’s important.’

  ‘That suits me. Can I go now?’

  He opens his mouth like he wants to say something else, but then closes it again. He takes a step back and slams the door shut.

  CHAPTER

  12

  I’m barely awake the following Friday morning, when Angelina tiptoes into my bedroom at two o’clock. She does this occasionally, arriving out of the blue and using her key to let herself in. It takes a lot longer to drive to my house than it does to Clovelly, but she doesn’t have to worry about Eric if she comes to me. It’s hard enough to get established boyfriends past Eric to her bedroom, let alone men he might not have heard about before.

  ‘Golden?’ Angelina’s whispers are louder than her spoken voice. ‘It’s me.’

  I groan as I squint into the light, filtering in from the hallway. ‘Hey, Ange. Night.’

  ‘Nathaniel drove me all the way here. Wasn’t that sweet?’

  ‘Sweet. But he has to be out of the house by eight. Client coming.’ I yawn. ‘Parents won’t want him wandering about.’

  Angelina laughs. ‘I’d like him to stay, but I don’t think he will. Just wanted to warn you anyway, in case you came out and got a shock. I’m making him coffee. Go back to sleep.’

  I think I go back to sleep, just for a minute, but then I sit up. My head is spinning. Nathaniel?

  I don’t put the light on before I roll out of bed, which is probably why, on the way to the door, I trip over one of the boxes of folders I took out of the ceiling. There are thirty of them. Some are still closed. Others I’ve opened, their contents spread out in messy piles at the foot of my bed. I’m limping and rubbing the sleep out of my eyes when I walk through the living room barefoot towards the voices in the kitchen.

  Nate, dressed casually in a blue hoodie and jeans, has his back to me. His shoulders fill the doorway so I can barely see Angelina. But she must do something to indicate I’m there because he spins around, a guilty flush colouring his cheeks. If he is a spy thi
s must be his first assignment. Like I said to Tor in the cafe, he can’t be very experienced.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ I say.

  ‘I … Angelina and I bumped into each other at the polo.’

  I can’t fully weight-bear on my heel, so stretch out my ankle as I glance at the kitchen clock. ‘The polo finished at one in the morning?’

  He looks around as if he’s searching desperately for something to say. He focuses over my shoulder and then on the rug. The silence stretches as his gaze goes to my leg, half exposed by my knee-length nightie. His eyes open wide. And all of a sudden I’m fully awake.

  Angelina is half Nate’s breadth but almost as tall as he is. He doesn’t know what’s hit him when she pulls her arm back and belts him in the shoulder with her fist.

  ‘Hey, buster!’ she says. ‘Keep your eyes on her face!’

  I feel a little sorry for Nate as he looks over the top of my head. ‘Golden, I apologise for any offence I might have caused.’

  Angelina crosses her arms over her breasts and glares. ‘That’s too little, too late!’

  I put my hand on her arm. ‘It’s okay, Ange. I wanted to talk to Nate anyway, so I’ll walk him out. Can you grab my coat?’

  She flounces away, returning a minute later with the silky wrap she keeps in the spare room. It swamps me; a swathe of aqua fabric pools at my feet.

  ‘Thank you for driving me home,’ she says to Nate. ‘Please don’t keep Golden out too long. She has a client coming early in the morning.’

  The ancient pair of gumboots I keep at the door feel damp and cold on my feet. As Nate quietly closes the door behind me, I hitch the wrap above my ankles. The leaf matter on the path is soft, and the night-time eucalyptus scents are fresh and familiar. I breathe in deeply as Nate and I walk into the shadows beyond the house. When we get to the driveway our footfalls are loud on the gravel. The black BMW is parked near the road, under the canopy of the red gum tree.

  ‘I told you to stay away from Angelina,’ I say.

  ‘A group of us went to the pub after the polo. I’d only had a beer so I offered to take her home. I was thinking I’d be driving to Clovelly.’ He grimaces. ‘But we ended up here.’

  ‘Angelina knows little about what’s going on, and I don’t like keeping secrets from her. I don’t want her involved in any controversy involving my father or Grandpa, either.’

  He smiles apologetically. ‘It won’t happen again.’

  ‘It’d better not.’

  He stops suddenly. ‘Golden, I really am sorry about before. I should have been better prepared. I mean … we knew how terrible it was, your accident.’

  ‘We? Tor and you?’

  He nods.

  ‘My accident is none of his business, or yours. I don’t want you to say anything about my leg.’

  Nate touches my arm. ‘I told you already, Golden. I have three older sisters at home.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘I know when to keep my mouth shut.’

  ‘Good,’ I say, walking towards the car, ‘because my leg was difficult in many ways, not just the way that it looks. It’s not something I like to talk about.’

  All I ever wanted to be was a jockey. I had the heritage and physical attributes, the opportunity to learn from top trainers, and access to the best horses in the country. I was talented and fearless. What could go wrong?

  Many trainers, like Solomon, let me do track work on a casual basis. So if a rider didn’t turn up to morning or evening training I’d get a ride. Always under supervision—Grandpa’s, the trainers and the other riders. I was fifteen and had been riding racehorses for a couple of years when Eric found out about it. It was bad enough that my father was a jockey; the idea that I’d work in the horse racing industry, let alone follow in his footsteps, horrified him.

  ‘You’re underage,’ he said. ‘I forbid it.’

  Grandpa was wary of Eric in only one respect. Ever since he’d taken me home from the hospital as a newborn, he’d been scared that one morning Eric and Mum would wake up, realise they’d made a terrible mistake in giving me away and demand that Grandpa give me back. This meant he did what Eric wanted on the rare occasions Eric put his foot down. Grandpa prohibited me from galloping on the thoroughbreds anymore.

  ‘You’ll be eighteen soon enough, Gumnut,’ he said. ‘Hold your horses till then.’

  I was still fuming about Eric’s veto, and the fact that Grandpa was enforcing it, when I heard about a second-rate trainer in Wollongong who needed a substitute jockey to step in for a Group 3 race. I thought it would give me a chance to prove, if only to myself, that I was competent. I also thought no one at the country track would recognise me wearing another jockey’s silks. And they might not have done if my horse hadn’t fallen just after the finishing post.

  CHAPTER

  13

  Angelina is still asleep in the spare room and I’m mopping the kitchen floor when Tor’s number comes up on my phone.

  ‘It’s Tor. Can you speak?’

  ‘My client will be here in a minute.’

  ‘Sam?’

  ‘No … Sam will be here after Lachlan. Then there’s Andrew, Bruno and Elka.’

  ‘I’d like to apologise for what happened earlier this morning. Nate told me about it.’

  My voice raises at least three octaves. ‘What did he tell you? What did he say?’

  I sense him thinking, assessing what I’ve said. ‘He told me he gave Angelina a lift. But that’s not what you were thinking about just then, was it? What else happened?’

  ‘Nothing.’ I can’t even get away with hiding things over the phone. ‘And Nate’s already said sorry for bringing Angelina home. He was trying to be nice. He was being nice. Even though he shouldn’t have done it.’

  ‘Golden, what else?’

  ‘Nothing! Lachlan is here. Are we still spying on Marc Ferguson tomorrow? I’ll see you at the eastern gate, where the horse trucks come in, at nine o’clock. There are dress regulations at Randwick so you’d better wear a tie.’

  I’ve said goodbye to Lachlan and his mother and I’m updating my files when Angelina walks into my office. She’s dressed in my white shirt and short black skirt but her legs and feet are bare. She kisses me.

  ‘My runners will have to do to get me to work. I booked a car, better get going.’

  ‘What? It’ll cost you a fortune to get to work from here.’

  ‘That’s okay.’

  ‘What about heels?’

  Angelina works on the desk of the Qantas First Class Lounge. Her presentation isn’t as crucial as her memory for names and her smile, but it’s still important.

  ‘Your boots are all too small. I called a friend. She’ll bring some in.’

  I’ve been putting off telling Angelina what Tor has planned. This is my last chance to warn her.

  ‘Tomorrow, Ange. I’ll be introducing Tor to Marc Ferguson.’ When she slowly shakes her head, I stand. Tor frightens her. For some reason Nate doesn’t, even though he works so closely with Tor.

  ‘I’ll do my best to shut Marc up,’ I say, linking my arm through hers as I walk her to the door. ‘Tor as well, if I need to. Until then, try not to worry too much.’

  If Tor finds out Angelina invested in a gambling venture, will he tell Eric? Or will the media get hold of it? It’s not like I can call in a favour by asking Tor to keep quiet. He thinks I’ve been raised on dirty money, and I’m unpleasant. He doesn’t have any reason to like me. All we have is a physical attraction, and I have no idea whether that’s significant for him or not. Maybe he notices things like hands, freckles and collarbones all the time. That’s why he’s a spy.

  I’m making coffee when I hear a car on the driveway. I assume it’s Sam and his mother until a horn honks three times. Leo Beresford always does that, to check whether I’m free or not.

  I wave from the front porch. ‘Hey, Leo. Coffee?’

  He shouts over his shoulder as he walks towards the stables. ‘I’ll look in on Pep
per first.’

  Even on days like today when there’s nothing wrong with Pepper, Leo insists on examining her. I follow him down to the stable and hold Pepper’s halter as he feels down each of her legs, frowning and pursing his lips. He’s tanned and solidly built; his wiry blond hair trails over his shirt collar.

  ‘You’ve got chinos on, and decent shoes,’ I say. ‘You must be on your way to somewhere. Get out of the stable, Leo, and come inside.’

  He continues to examine Pepper’s fetlock joint. ‘I’m giving a lecture on equine tendon damage to veterinary postgrads this morning. Pepper’s looking good, Golden. Never better.’

  It was severe tendonitis, inflammation of the tendon, which ruled Pepper out of racing as a two year old. After Grandpa bought her and she was rested for most of the year, the tendonitis settled down, but the bony splints in her foreleg will never go away.

  ‘I saw Solomon Bain the week before last.’ The words are out before I think them through.

  Leo lets go of Pepper’s leg. ‘What brought that on?’

  ‘I’m thinking of putting Pepper to a stallion he knows of. What do you think?’

  He pats her rump. ‘I approve. She’s eight now. Wouldn’t want to leave it much longer for a first foal. Biological clock and all that.’

  ‘I hope you’re more subtle than that with your girlfriend.’

  I haven’t been with anyone else since Leo and I drifted apart, but Leo has had a number of partners since.

  ‘We broke up weeks ago,’ he says. ‘I’m on the prowl again.’

  I laugh.

  ‘What’s so funny?’

  ‘I don’t think men who prowl stay as friendly with their exes as you do.’

  He winks. ‘What about you? Got anyone lined up? You’re twenty-seven in …’ He makes a show of counting nine months from my conception date, the first Tuesday in November, when the Melbourne Cup is run. ‘August!’

  When I swing a net of lucerne hay towards him he darts out of the way, laughing. Then he fetches Pepper’s rug and throws it over her back. I’ve buckled the chest strap and he’s secured the leg straps before I answer.