Chapter 32 – 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 to them. 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. 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 she did not know, people who had no reaon to care what happened to her. Yet, here they all were, come out to support her. She stopped in the middle of the empty courtrosom 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.
Girl in an Empty Cage Page 37
