by Karen Wood
She sat bolt upright. Damn. She had forgotten to close her blinds. ‘What do you want?’
He quickly put a finger to his lips. ‘Open the window,’ he mouthed silently, gesturing at the catch at the top of the sash.
She shook her head. ‘Go away!’ she silently mouthed. Why should she even speak to him? She had half a mind to yell out to her dad and bust him for perving on her while she slept. Where was his stupid girlfriend while he was over here at her bedroom window?
‘Open,’ he hissed forcefully.
Kirra unlatched the window and slid it up just enough to whisper angrily through the gap. ‘Are you trying to get me sacked? What do you want?’
Daniel placed both hands under the sash and yanked at it. He had the window fully open in seconds and was climbing inside.
‘Hey!’ She grabbed at the sash and yanked it down. Daniel growled as it crashed onto his lower back. But he kept coming. Once inside he turned, pulled it shut and quickly closed the blinds.
Holy heck! He was in her bedroom and her parents were still asleep in the room next door. ‘Daniel! You can’t keep doing this. My job is at stake! You’re going to ruin my whole life!’
He stepped towards her. ‘Kirra, listen, please.’
She took a step backwards and banged into her dressing-table. ‘Don’t even think about touching me.’
He held his hands up. ‘I’m not here for that!’
Kirra didn’t know whether to be glad or offended.
‘Kirra, please give me some time. Please . . .’ He broke off and a hopeless look crossed his face. ‘Wait.’
‘Wait? For what? For you to fool around with Lisa? Get lost, Daniel!’
‘No,’ he said in a frustrated whisper. ‘Just wait while I sort my life out. I can’t turn my back on Lisa, she’s . . .’
‘She’s what?’
He clammed up again.
‘Pregnant?’
Daniel looked like a horse fly had flown down his throat. ‘No.’ He shuddered violently. ‘Not that. I’ve never touched her. Don’t say things like that.’
Kirra stared at him. A mix of emotions eddied inside her.
‘I nearly lost my job over you, Daniel. Boss Carney threatened to sack me. Whatever it is she holds over you, I don’t care. I just want to do my job and go to college next year. I want to save up and buy Iceman so he doesn’t get dogged. You need to stop messing with my head!’ Her voice began to choke up. ‘Just leave me alone!’
He stepped towards her and for a moment she thought he was going to try to hug her.
She leaned back until she was sitting on her desk. She couldn’t let him do that. ‘Don’t come anywhere near me,’ she warned.
He stepped away. They stared at each other for a long moment and she saw that searching look again.
‘Can you please just stay away from me?’ she whispered.
After a while, he nodded. ‘I’m sorry. I never wanted to drag you into all of this. I just wanted you to know, she’s not my girlfriend. It’s not like that.’
She nodded.
Daniel turned to leave, kneeling onto her bed and reaching for the sash window again. Everything inside her began to collapse.
‘Wait,’ she said.
He turned.
‘Stay there.’ Kirra slipped out the door and got a small pair of nail scissors from the bathroom cabinet. She sloshed some antiseptic over them and grabbed a bag of cottonwool balls.
Back in her room, she sat Daniel down on the chair. ‘These should have been taken out by now,’ she said, as she snipped at one, pulled the end through and discarded it onto a tissue. She dabbed some antiseptic over his cut and removed the crusty bits, trying to ignore the way he stared into her face while she was working. The world’s biggest kiss hung between her lips and his, dangling agonisingly between them. She could feel his breath on her chin and the warmth from his skin.
His hand touched her upper thigh. ‘How’s your leg?’
She gave a sharp tug on his stitch and he winced. His hand instantly retreated. ‘Ouch!’
‘It’s fine.’ She snipped at the next stitch.
His hand reached for her face. He took a strand of her hair and placed it behind her ear, with one of those half smiles. She focused firmly on his cut. ‘Don’t make me restrain you again.’
‘You can if you like.’ Mischief glinted in his eyes.
Kirra tugged sharply at the silk thread, making Daniel’s eyes squeeze shut. Air sucked through his nose.
‘There,’ she said, taking some cottonwool and dabbing at a tiny trickle of blood. ‘You can go now.’
‘Thanks.’ His smile ran through her soul. He turned and slipped out the window, leaving her aching, as always, for him to come back. She took a long slow breath, exhaling fully, trying to rid him from her system. It didn’t help.
Twenty minutes later, she sat on the deck of the foreman’s residence, trying to eat breakfast. Beyond the main yard, the gardens and the outbuildings, Moorinja Station stretched endlessly over ironbark and bloodwood country. It dipped into open hollows and rolled over gentle ridges, covered with silvery Mitchell grass and rich red Charolais cattle.
Kirra looked out over the property, glad to be alone. She appreciated moments like this, when she could stop and smell the grass and the rain and the cattle and horses. She could hear the cockatoos screeching in the back paddocks and the road trains roaring along the distant highways. In her head, she could try to untangle the mess that was her home, her job and, whether she wanted it to be or not, her love-life. And while she was thinking of complicated messes, Jamie’s ute rolled down the driveway.
Kirra gave him an awkward smile as he got out of his ute and pulled his sunnies from the top of his head, knowing he wasn’t there to work. His boots clunked on the timber steps, across the decking. ‘Want a coffee?’
‘Sure.’
Kirra tried to think up excuses for her behaviour while she waited for the kettle to boil. But anything truthful – she was drunk – she was on the rebound – she was an idiot – didn’t help her cause. There was no alternative but to be straight with him and then cop the resentment that she deserved. Everyone else was thoroughly disgusted with her, why shouldn’t he be too?
She placed a cup of coffee in front of him and took up her seat again. ‘Jamie, I . . .’
‘It’s okay,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to hear it.’ He looked crushed.
She sat, staring at the globs of tea leaves in the bottom of her mug.
‘It’s him, isn’t it?’
In the distance she saw Iceman grazing in the horse paddock. She shook her head. ‘Boss Carney gave me a bollocking, threatened to sack me if I don’t focus on work.’
Jamie whistled through his teeth.
‘Please, Jamie, I need some space.’
There was a tense silence.
‘He’s with Lisa, Kirra. They’re over there now.’
‘He’s not with her,’ she snapped. ‘He’s just . . .’
‘. . . with her,’ Jamie finished for her.
‘Yeah, but not like that. How do you know her anyway?’ Kirra asked.
‘I used to work with her,’ he answered. ‘At Blackbrae.’
‘You worked at Blackbrae?’
‘Only for a few months, before I started here. I didn’t like it. The people were . . .’ He broke off and shook his head.
‘And Lisa worked there too?’
‘Her mum did. She was a governess for Jarred and Nate. Lisa was brought up there. They’re all like family.’
Kirra frowned.
Jamie kept talking. ‘She goes to uni in Townsville now, but I think her mum still lives there. She does the housekeeping now that the kids have grown up.’ He downed the last of his coffee and stood to leave. ‘The guy’s a loser, Kirra.’
As Jamie’s ute rolled out of the driveway Kirra folded her arms on the table and dropped her forehead onto them.
Iceman: the only uncomplicated thing in her life. She needed one of his big
hugs.
She made her way over to the horse shed and stopped in her tracks when she found Daniel and Lisa in the harness room collecting horse gear. Were they going for a ride?
‘Lisa, have you met Kirra?’ said Daniel, keeping his eyes averted from her.
Kirra took a deep breath. Despite the heat outside, the air in the shed became glacial. ‘Hi.’ Hard as she tried, Kirra couldn’t force a smile.
‘Daniel’s been telling me about you,’ said Lisa, her lips pressed tight. No hello. No smile.
‘Yes, well, don’t believe everything you hear,’ Kirra said whimsically. ‘Hey, there’s a nice black gelding out the back. I’ll saddle him up for you.’ She reached for Iceman’s halter.
Daniel took the halter from her. ‘Isn’t it your day off?’
Kirra kept hold of the halter. ‘Won’t take me a minute.’
‘Daniel told me about him too,’ said Lisa. ‘No thanks.’
‘Okay, whatever.’ Kirra put the halter back on its peg. As her eyes brushed past Lisa for what she hoped would be the last time in her life, they fixed on a small green ink mark on her upper arm. It was a rocking B. Like the one on Daniel’s upper arm. She reeled. They had matching tattoos? Whoa. Okay. Lisa had even branded him. Stuff all of this.
Kirra spun on her heel and left the building.
She rang Natalie from her bedroom.
‘So how was the ex?’ asked her friend, when she picked up.
‘She and Daniel have matching tattoos,’ Kirra blurted out.
‘Oh, well, there’s nothing very intimate about a tattoo,’ said Natalie. Kirra could tell she was trying to sound light. ‘Long, slow, painful process from what I’ve heard, worse than pulling teeth. Let me guess: hearts and cupid arrows?’
‘Er, no. They both have a letter B.’
‘Which stands for?’
Kirra could think of a few things that started with B, but that wasn’t what these tatts symbolised. ‘She was brought up on Blackbrae Station, it’s probably their brand.’
There was a dumbfounded silence on the other end.
‘That’s kind of twisted.’
‘It’s beyond twisted, Natalie. It’s creepy! She’s branded Daniel like he’s a prize steer.’
‘So what are you going to do?’
‘I need to ditch him,’ she said. ‘But he keeps pulling me back and forth like I’m on the end of a pulley rope. He’s so hard to say no to.’
Later that afternoon Kirra spent some time brushing Iceman. She washed out his tail and put some special oil through it to soothe the itch. As she brushed his legs, she inspected the old scar on his hind leg. He had knocked some skin off it and it was bleeding. As she walked to the shed to get some cream for it, she saw Lisa and Daniel stride to her ute. Her face was hidden under a huge pair of sunglasses. Her gestures were hidden behind the clutch of her huge handbag. Daniel kicked at the ground and averted his eyes from her. Lisa looked straight ahead.
As she drove away, Daniel sat on the front steps that ran from the verandah of the cottage, his head bowed into his hands, fingers gripping tightly at chunks of hair, his back lifting with heavy sighs.
Kirra kept walking. Whatever was going on between them was none of her business. She couldn’t risk all her dreams by getting involved.
20
Kirra was exasperated to find Daniel in the horse shed the next morning with two horses already saddled.
‘Ride out with me,’ he said, holding out Iceman’s reins to her. He was fully saddled. No one but she had ever been able to catch him, let alone saddle him up.
She took the reins. ‘Aren’t you supposed to be working with Tom?’ She hadn’t planned on riding out this morning. She wanted to do more in-hand work with her youngsters.
‘Not today. I have to work these breakers.’
‘Why? Am I not doing a good enough job?’
‘Of course you are. They just need riding out, that’s all.’
‘Daniel?’
‘What?’
‘Why don’t you work your three and I’ll work mine, okay?’
‘Nup. Boss wants them all ridden out.’ He pulled a third horse out of the stalls and thrust another set of reins at her.
‘I don’t want to work with you today, Daniel.’
‘Why not?’
‘You push me away, reel me back in, push me away, reel me back in. I’m not playing this stupid game any more. I just want to get these horses worked, without you messing me around.’
He turned to mount his horse. ‘That’s why we need to go for a ride. So we can talk.’
‘I don’t want to talk. I don’t want to get involved in your life.’
He rode to the stalls, untied a youngster and led it along from the back of his horse. ‘Boss’s orders. He wants them ridden out. And we need to talk.’
She watched him ride out of the shed, this person who had saturated her thoughts, this person who was still only an outer shell to her. This person who seemed to reach so deeply into her and yet keep such stringent guards around himself. Intrigue got the better of her.
Kirra took the nervy chestnut colt and led him next to Iceman, out through the gate to the legume pastures. It had never been ridden. Great. But part of breaking in young horses was putting miles on them. Wet saddlecloths. Hours of sweat to condition the horse’s back muscles to carry a rider. Miles of walking built them up slowly. It would do the colt good.
She swung a leg over Iceman and reined in his half-hearted humping and frolicking while she led the colt alongside. They set off through saddle-high grass. The seed heads brushed at the bottom of their boots. Kirra breathed in a huge lungful and gave Iceman his head, letting him relax and enjoy the day too.
They rode in silence for a good hour and she inhaled the day around her. The recent rain unravelled a spell all around them, making everything smell like cinnamon and rust.
Beside her, Daniel looked down and adjusted his reins, sliding them through his hands. She let her horse walk out a bit faster, hoping to get ahead of him.
His horse came up beside hers and he reached out and grabbed at her reins, pulling Iceman to a stop. ‘Don’t ride away from me.’
‘Why won’t you tell me what’s going on,’ she blurted out. ‘If you can’t be open with me about who you are, then there’s no point us even being friends. I don’t know what you want from me!’
He looked at her easily and shrugged. ‘I want you. Simple.’
‘You’ve got a funny way of showing it.’
‘And what about you and Jamie?’ Daniel retorted.
‘Oh, that.’
‘Yeah, that.’ Daniel didn’t look at her. There was something behind his voice when he said Jamie’s name. Was it anger, frustration? Was he jealous? That notion made Kirra feel gratified. ‘What’s with you two?’
‘I kissed him last holidays,’ she said. ‘I was more curious than anything.’
‘And then what happened?’
‘I went back to boarding school and he got with a French backpacker.’ She pulled the reins from his hands and kicked Iceman on.
He rode after her. ‘So you didn’t ditch him for me or anything?’
That was a strange question. ‘No,’ she scoffed. ‘We were never going out.’
Seemingly satisfied with her answer, he pushed his horse into a trot and dragged the other behind. She pushed Iceman to catch up.
Soon all four horses broke into a canter. Kirra felt the wind billow around her and run its cool fingers through her hair. They cantered until the horses were frothy with sweat and blowing hard. Then they brought them back to a walk, ducked into the long, snaking creek, where shallow water slid like glass over smooth sand, cooling the horses’ bellies as they splashed through it. Around midday, they dismounted.
Kirra stretched her legs. Daniel started tethering his horses to trees and she did likewise. She sat on the grassy bank and lay back with her arms behind her head. The cool air danced off the creek water and flowed over her skin. The rustl
e of the leaves overhead swirled around her in a language she understood. They brought calm to her chaotic insides.
Daniel sat down next to her without speaking.
She closed her eyes, wishing time could just stand still and she could lie like this forever with Daniel next to her. When she was out on the station with him, it was as though they were the only two people in the world. Like Adam and Eve. He wasn’t some horrible violent drunk driver. He was just Daniel, a boy from the land, a boy whose heart and actions and every move seemed to fit with hers so perfectly. Lisa didn’t exist.
‘I broke my parole,’ said Daniel, resting his elbows on his knees and staring into the river.
She gave him an apologetic look. ‘I didn’t know you weren’t allowed to come to the rodeo.’
‘No, you didn’t, but I did. It was my fault; I was stupid.’
‘Why didn’t they take you back to juvy?’
‘I have a case review in three weeks. Tom managed to keep me out on a work release agreement until then, with a whole lot of new strict conditions. I have to go in to report twice a week until the hearing. I can’t get in any trouble. If I can get some new evidence about the accident I can use that review to appeal my sentence. If I could just prove the accident wasn’t my fault I could get acquitted. If I don’t . . .’
‘You go back to juvy,’ she finished for him.
‘For a while, until I turn eighteen in a few months, then I’ll be transferred to jail.’
Kirra felt sick. She rolled her head sideways and was met with Daniel’s dark eyes. She reached a hand over to his cheek and brushed the thin scar below his eye with her thumb. Tiny spots dotted each side of the line, scars from the stitches. ‘What do you think about when you see this in the mirror every morning?’
The corners of his eyes creased. ‘You,’ he said. ‘You, putting me back together again.’
‘That was one messed-up night,’ she whispered to him.
‘It was. You’re a messed-up girl,’ he said with a teasing edge to his voice.
‘You’re more messed up than me.’
His half smile went away.
