The Girl in Steel-Capped Boots (17 page)

In the end, Lena didn’t catch up with Sharon until nine am due to her own work keeping her in the office. Sharon was unloading boxes of paper from the bus when Lena found her.

‘Sharon, could we talk for a minute?’

Sharon slowly put down the box she was carrying and nodded. ‘Okay.’

‘I just want to apologise again for last night,’ Lena began quickly. ‘I don’t want this whole Gavin thing to ruin our friendship.’

Sharon folded her arms and examined a scuff on her boot. ‘I appreciate that and I apologise too for leaving you at the pub last night. I shouldn’t have done that.’

Lena’s body started to relax. ‘Thank you.’

‘But can you see why I was so upset?’

‘Yes, of course I can,’ Lena immediately declared, glad they were already making progress towards a reconciliation. ‘I totally understand why you were hurt by me. Who wouldn’t be in a situation like that?’

‘Well, good,’ Sharon nodded, still not looking at her. ‘So . . . I guess you can understand then why I might want to keep my distance from you for a while.’

The statement took the wind out of Lena’s sails. ‘Sorry?’

‘I can’t be around you while you’re with him.’ Sharon’s hands dropped to her sides. ‘Just for the moment anyway; it’s too awkward for me.’

Lena’s eyes widened. ‘But I’m not with Gavin, Sharon. It’s all a big misunderstanding – just like I said last night. I don’t like him that way.’

Sharon’s brow wrinkled as she finally lifted her eyes. ‘If you can’t be honest with me, Lena, then what’s the point of this conversation?’

‘I
am
being honest with you.’

‘Everyone knows you and Gavin are an item now.’ Sharon shook her head. ‘It’s all over site.’

‘It’s just gossip.’ Lena couldn’t believe Sharon was taking their word over hers.

‘It’s not just gossip,’ Sharon said. ‘I saw the boys laying into Gavin about it this morning on the bus. They were all laughing about his new girlfriend and he just went red and
smiled
.’ Sharon’s voice wobbled, but she got herself in hand immediately.

Lena faltered. ‘He w-what?’

With a sigh, Sharon picked up the box at her feet again. ‘When you’re ready to admit the truth, Lena, we might be able to talk properly.’

Outrage with Gavin and frustration with Sharon rendered Lena temporarily speechless. In the end, it didn’t matter because her friend had already walked away. Lena would have followed her, if Radar hadn’t chosen that moment to stroll by.

‘Heard Gavin’s on cloud nine this morning. Must have been some night.’

Outrage floored frustration and Lena pounced on him like a woman possessed.

‘Hold it right there!’

Radar looked back in surprise. ‘Something got your goat, Madame E?’

‘Don’t give me that,’ she growled. ‘You’re the king of gossip. Tell me what the hell is going on here.’

‘With what?’

‘These rumours about me and Gavin.’

‘Oh ho ho.’ He leered at her. ‘Calling them rumours, are you? A little too late for that with all the eyewitnesses floating about.’

‘Radar, are we friends?’ she demanded.

‘’Course we are.’

‘Then be straight with me.’

‘I’m
straight
with you all the way, baby.’

Her fingers itched to strangle him. He wasn’t her friend. He was just another teasing, hormone-driven male who would never be sincere with her.

‘I’m serious.’ Her voice broke as she turned away.

She didn’t expect her pain to have much effect on him. In fact, she’d been speaking more to herself than to him. But her words seemed to get through because he sobered suddenly and put a hand on her shoulder. A friendly hand.

‘No one means any harm by it, Madame E.’ His voice was gruff. ‘In fact, I think it’s great you and Gav got it together. At least nobody thinks you’re gay no more.’

‘Great. Lucky me.’

He took his hand away. ‘Look, er . . . what’s the problem?’

‘Gavin did kiss me last night, but I had no idea he was going to. I told him to back off,’ she explained. ‘We’re not together; we never were. He should be telling people that.’

Radar shrugged. ‘Don’t see why he should.’

‘But it’s the truth.’

‘It’s an opportunity is what it is,’ Radar said wisely. ‘Everybody’s been watching out for who you’ll get with. He probably wants to enjoy the fame a little longer.’

‘For Pete’s sake, why does anybody care?’

Radar choked and looked away. ‘Have you seen yourself?’ he mumbled.

‘I know exactly how I look,’ Lena replied tartly. ‘I put a lot of thought and effort into creating this look. Do you think I enjoy the frumpy uniform, the lack of mascara and the hair untouched by product? I haven’t filed my nails in days.’ Her hysteria increased in intensity as she warmed to her theme. ‘The only thing I don’t deliberately apply is the dust. Lucky for me I attract the stuff along with every other loser on this job without any effort on my part at all.’

His cough sounded suspiciously like a chuckle. ‘All the same, I think he’ll risk your anger for a couple of weeks, just to show off.’

‘So what you’re saying is, this is all male pride and testosterone. Testosterone, at the expense of my professional reputation.’
And my friendship with Sharon
, she added silently.

‘Yep.’ Radar nodded in a manner which made her think that he considered testosterone a good enough reason.

Her anger reached its peak. ‘Yeah, well. Two can play at that game!’

Five days passed.

Sharon went on R and R, a circumstance that Lena was actually grateful for. Gavin’s rumours were still flying free and fast and she hadn’t figured out a way to scotch them yet. The man himself was proving to be singularly unhelpful, avoiding her whenever possible. The one time she managed to corner him, they got whistled and heckled at before she could get a word out. He made his escape while she was still glaring at the perpetrators.

Meanwhile, work that needed to be done for the skid team was piling up fast. She knew that instead of focusing on her personal life, she should be concentrating on what she’d come to the Pilbara for. She did her best to clear the colossal list of tasks she had on her plate, but there was not a single move she did not question, what with Kevin sitting on her right shoulder shaking his head and Sharon perched on her left, repeating the words she couldn’t seem to get out of her head.

‘You’ve been a disaster zone since you got here.’

It was true on all fronts, including her engineering.

She tapped a pencil on her notepad. What she needed was some firm goals – a road map she could use to avoid the
personal traps laid for her by Mike and Gavin . . . and Dan. Something that would prove her worth, not by getting Dan’s approval or even Carl’s but something tangible that she could hold up and say, ‘That’s what I did and that’s why I’m good.’

Lena knew it would be nice if the guys looked past her inexperience and sex and said, ‘She’s a great engineer.’ But what would be better than all that is if she actually believed it herself.

She flicked through her drawings, ran her finger down the index and shuffled them into a pile again.

They were twenty per cent behind and setting up a night shift. So what if she could catch the skid boys up? What if she could make it so that they didn’t need a bloody night shift to keep the skid on track? What if –?

‘Todd, you fuckin’ daydreamin’?’

Shit. Can I cut a break around here?

She glanced up and saw Carl peering over her shoulder. ‘Hey, Carl.’

‘I hear your R and R is coming up end of next week.’

It is?
She nodded anyway, not wanting to appear ignorant.

‘Have one of the girls book a flight for you,’ Carl instructed.

‘Sure.’

She turned back to her work, shocked that she’d actually forgotten she had a holiday coming up. It was amazing how quickly her five weeks on site had almost disappeared. Despite the welcome knowledge, she suddenly wished she had more time. As it stood, she had just over a week left to make some sort of headway with her new goal: zero per cent behind.

Lena worked solidly for the rest of the day, her new goal adding an extra layer of stress. As if that wasn’t bad enough, at about three o’clock Tony from the yard called.

‘Hey, Madame E, the first of the trusses have arrived.’

The trusses were her next task. They sat on top of the headstocks and made up the layer that widened the jetty.

Glad for an opportunity to stretch her legs, she went outside to have a look at them being unloaded off the truck. The trusses were like steel-framed building blocks. They were eighteen metres long, 1.5 metres deep and weighed about eight tonnes each. Once installed, the new conveyor would sit inside them.

All up, Lena knew there were one hundred and seventy trusses to be installed. Of these only five had arrived and the sight of them being placed on the red dirt behind the dongas did nothing to assuage Lena’s stress levels. In fact, it only served to increase them. One problem that had been lying quietly in the background of her mind leaped noisily to the forefront.

She hadn’t quite figured out
how
to install them . . . exactly.

I mean, how do you get an eight-tonne piece of crap two kilometres out to sea and welded to the side of a jetty?

Her heart sank even further as she reached one that was already resting on the dirt. The paint job was terrible! Nowhere near acceptable. Dan would chuck a fit if she tried to install them in this condition.

With a sigh she returned to the office and hit the phones to the fabricator. She wanted an explanation and also a repaint. They must have known she’d be after them because she had to chase their manager for the next couple of hours. Some idiot in their office kept foiling her attempts to make contact. The first time she called he said, ‘I’ll get the manager to call you back.’ The second time she called he said he’d forgotten to pass on the message and the manager had since gone out. And the third time she called he said the manager was actually home sick for the day.

What the –?

The manager was called Neville Smart, which only infuriated Lena further. After all, if you were going to go around publicly passing yourself off as ‘Neville Smart’, the least you could do was actually
be
smart, she reasoned. If she had to
call him again, he’d have to settle for her calling him Neville Dumb. By knock-off, her mood was acid. There was nothing like going backwards when she’d just made all these plans to go forwards, to really make her jumping mad.

Lena went to dinner early, not looking forward to her meal, given there was no Sharon to sit next to and she was fed up with all men in general. She noticed Harry sitting on his own and decided to join him. Perhaps she could tell him about her zero-per-cent-behind goal and see if he had any more brilliant suggestions.

He jumped as she sat down next to him.

‘Whatcha reading?’ Her eyes flicked to the pink leaflets scattered on the tables. He had picked up one and was reading it.

He reddened. ‘Oh, just some . . . propaganda.’ He cleared his throat. ‘See for yourself.’

She picked up one of the pamphlets and read the title on the cover.
Prevention of Suicide.
Do you know someone who’s thinking about it?
‘Geez,’ she muttered.

‘Yeah.’ Harry went silent.

‘Do they put these out often?’

‘Once a month.’ Harry swallowed a mouthful of food. ‘The isolation gets some guys down. You know, being away from family and everything.’

She felt goose bumps on the back of her neck. ‘There haven’t been any suicides on this job, have there?’

‘Oh no.’ Harry’s Adam’s apple jiggled in his haste to reassure her. She saw Dan walk in at that moment, looking equally weary. Immediately, the weight of his brooding touched her.

‘I guess it’s easy to lose touch with your loved ones out here,’ she said, watching Dan’s progress across the room, remembering the long phone calls he made to his lawyer instead of talking to his family.

She hadn’t seen him since their . . . what could she call it? Near miss? She cringed every time she thought about herself
standing there with her face up and her eyes closed waiting for his lips to meet hers.

What an absolute idiot!

Maybe it was even a plus that he thought she was with Gavin. At least that indicated that she wasn’t, as he might think, pining for
him
. Even now she wriggled uncomfortably in her seat trying to banish the disturbing thought from her mind. Thankfully he had not noticed her, but was also engaged in reading the pink leaflets on the table. She watched his brow darken even further before he screwed up the paper into a tight ball.

‘I miss my kids.’ Harry’s soft murmur broke into her thoughts.

‘You have kids?’

‘Yeah.’

It made Lena feel bad for not having talked to him more around the office. She didn’t like to think of herself as one of those people who ignored their friends when they weren’t useful to them. She was embarrassed to remember that she’d only sat down next to him to ask his advice about the trusses.

Very bad form, Lena.

‘So how many do you have?’

‘T-two.’

‘I guess you only get to see them on R and R.’

‘No, not really.’ He hesitated as though trying to figure out whether he could trust her or not. She kept her features neutral.

He looked away. ‘My ex has a new partner. She’d rather I didn’t see the children at all any more.’

Lena gasped. ‘Harry, you can’t let her do that!’

‘There’s n-nothing I can do about it. She’s very g-good at . . . never mind.’

‘Of course there is something you can do.’ Lena was appalled. ‘Take her to court. Get joint custody. You have rights. You’re the father.’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Harry, do you care about your kids or not?’

Harry’s knife clattered loudly on his plate. ‘’C-course I care. Love ’em, you know. H-heaps.’

Her heart sank looking at Harry’s stricken face. He was the kind of guy who was too sweet to have a backbone, too nice to take a stand – but really the sort of person who should.
He must be a great dad.
Lena chewed on her lower lip.
He helped me out of a jam once, maybe it’s time to return the favour.

Her gaze drifted to Dan, who was sitting quietly on his own, also with a bowl of soup.

‘Leave it with me,’ she said to Harry. ‘I might know someone who can recommend a good lawyer. In the meantime –’ She threw down the pink leaflet. ‘What are you doing this Sunday? We’ve got it off, you know?’

Harry looked startled. ‘Me?’

Her mood lifted as a plan to annihilate Gavin, his testosterone and any other masculine attribute he may have had sprang fully formed into her mind. ‘Of course.’ She nodded and then lowered her voice. ‘Actually I’m inviting everyone.’

‘W-what are we doing?’

‘We’re going to Millstream.’ She flicked the pink leaflet so it blew down the table. ‘Hell, I would have done it sooner if I’d known this camp needed cheering up.’

The following day, Lena asked Carl for the bus.

‘You and your fuckin’ jaunts.’

‘I can’t sit around camp on my day off, Carl,’ she protested. ‘No one should have to.’

He gave her a long resigned look. ‘I suppose these trips do boost morale. Fuck. Take it.’

Despite her ulterior motives, Lena firmly believed that too. Nothing appealed to her less than a day in her aluminium box and she was sure others must feel the same way. Something
to look forward to improved her whole attitude towards the week. Nonetheless, there was no way
she was going bloody fishing again. So instead of enlisting the help of Leg and Radar to inspire her with options, she had gone on the internet and googled things to do in the Pilbara. That’s when she’d discovered the Millstream–Chichester National Park, a lush oasis of palms and cool lakes. Perfect.

Apparently, it used to be the estate of some rich European settler who had tried to transform the Australian landscape to match the Old Country. The original homestead was still there and the green gardens he had planted had been maintained. Nothing like a piece of history and a barbecue.

Pleased with her own ingenuity, she put together a colour poster with some of the photos from the internet and stuck it in the tea room. Soon word was out that a new adventure was being planned for Sunday and she didn’t want for takers. All in all, she was pretty proud of herself.

Carl returned from the yard after lunch and saw her advertisement on the noticeboard. ‘Fuck! You’d think you were selling blocks at Millstream or something. No wonder everyone’s gone fuckin’ mental.’

Lena blushed but luckily he changed the subject. ‘How’s it going with the trusses?’

‘Still no word from Neville Du–
Smart
.’

‘Call him again.’

She did. Surprisingly, this time she got through. However, instead of dealing with her issue, Neville asked her to explain it formally to him in an email so he could keep his records straight.

Great.
Three hours later, Mr Smart replied, saying that after much thought he had decided that he didn’t quite understand what she was talking about and was passing her on to a colleague called Paul Belch, who would be better equipped to deal with the matter. He then included the number to call Paul on. Her fury knew no bounds when dialling it meant hearing the following message:

‘The number you have called is not connected. Please check the number before trying again.’

Luckily, when she then called Neville Dumb to get the right number, it was a secretary who picked up his phone. She was able to simply put Lena through to Paul and they set up a meeting on site for the following day.

It was, in her opinion, a fluke win.

Time was running out and she was still putting out fires. At least Mike wasn’t playing up. The skid was finally getting faster. Now that the new access platform was up and running, they were putting in four headstocks a day, sometimes five. After a routine stop at the skid, she rode the bus to the sea end of the wharf, enduring the stone-cold silence of Sharon’s temporary replacement. Loneliness sharpened her determination. She hated the fact that Sharon had left for R and R still angry with her.

She needed to find Gavin.

Today she would give him one more chance to tell people the truth before she unleashed her punishment on Sunday. When she got off the bus, she scanned the end of the wharf for him. He was standing on some temporary scaffolding erected over freshly driven piles. She joined him there, noticing in disgust that the other guys who had been talking nearby melted away discreetly, grinning at each other as though they were doing her a huge favour.