Romancing the Girl

  Romancing the Girl

  By Camryn Eyde

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Kindle Edition

  Copyright © 2016 by Camryn Eyde

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof

  may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever

  without the express written permission of the publisher

  except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Cover design & book design by Camryn Eyde

  Author Note

  This story is unapologetically Australian.

  Set on a rural sheep station, it’s full of dust, dirt, flies, Aussie clichés and beer. A lot of phrases and slang may be confusing and bizarre to an international eye, so I’ve added a quick cheat-sheet below to help decode the Aussie language for overseas readers. Hopefully, the unique turns of phrase to this gloriously arid country don’t take away from the heartfelt story being told within the pages.

  Camryn.

  Ute = pickup, and in this case, a four-wheel drive (four-wheeled drive) with a tray on the back.

  Verandah = Veranda, patio, terrace. This has many names and is essentially an outdoor covered area that (in this story) wraps around the house. I prefer to spell it with a ‘h’ at the end.

  Shopping centre = Shopping mall.

  Final note, rabbits and foxes are considered feral animals in Australia and do a significant amount of damage to native wildlife and native vegetation. Farmers spend a lot of time and money trying to control them.

  For

  Every true blue Aussie giving rural life a red hot crack. It’s tough out there.

  Prologue

  With her arms open wide, she stood in the spring sun and let it warm her bronze skin. Halfway between the main buildings of the place she called home, she’d paused in her mission when the allure of heated rays became too much. The winter chill had finally left the property, the scattered grass no longer crunching with frost under her feet when she ran to the stables each morning to check her latest possession. A toothy grin sprouted on her young face when she heard the whinny of her horse. Today, she was finally allowed to ride her, for today was a very special day. Today, Aimee Turner turned seven.

  “Kite!” she called down the stable run as she continued on her path from the stone homestead to the wooden stables. Breathing in the cooler, hay-scented air, she hurried to the grey foal her father had brought to the property a week earlier. A horse was a big responsibility. It required care, feeding, training, riding, and nurturing. Like her seventeen-year-old brother and sister had done before her on their seventh birthday, it was time to take a step into maturity.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” her father said in a mock grumble as he joined her in the stable. Aimee ran to him and wrapped her arms around his waist. A second later, and her feet left he ground as the strength of her father lifted her from the dirt floor. “I heard a rumour that it’s someone’s special day today.”

  Aimee nodded and grinned.

  “Yeah, mine,” said a gangly boy joining them and ruffling the child’s long brunette hair.

  “Is not,” Aimee said, swatting away her brother’s teasing. “I’m seven,” she said proudly at her father.

  “Really?”

  “Unh huh. And I get a horse.”

  “Is that so?”

  “Yep. Kite,” Aimee said, pointing to the grey foal looking at them with curious brown eyes.

  “Kite? She doesn’t bloody fly,” her brother said as he moved past them to peer at the horse.

  Their father playfully swatted at his head as he moved off. “You named your horse Arton Senna. Last I checked, it doesn’t drive Ferrari’s.” Putting Aimee back on the ground, Gary Turner said, “Joey, put a halter on young Kite here. It’s time Aimee started training her.”

  With a grin of pure glee, Aimee proudly took the guide rope from her brother when he passed it to her, and the three spent the early hours of the morning in the horse yards leading young Kite around in a circle.

  Just as they were taking Kite back to the stables, a man ran puffing into the area by the homestead and started yelling.

  “They’re gone!” he screamed. “Katie and Mica, they’re missing!”

  “Joe, get Kite settled. Make sure Aimee brushes her down.” Gary strode quickly to the distraught man in the middle of the quadrangle. While Joey moved off and called his kid sister over his shoulder, Aimee stayed still and watched her father talk to the stranger who had arrived at the property a few days previous.

  He spoke funny. All clear and important. She remembered overhearing her parents calling them city slickers that were about to get a shock to the system. She got a shock once, from a low electric fence they used around the sheep paddocks near the homestead. Aimee wondered if her dad was going to push them into the fence. Idly frowning at that curious notion, she heard her father shout, “Gav!”

  Aimee’s attention moved to the shed behind her where Gav emerged from covered in the oil of the car he had been working on the past few days. “Yo.”

  “Get the boys together. We’ve got people missing.”

  Missing? Aimee ran to her dad, only to be overtaken by Joey who had been drawn from the stables by the commotion.

  “Who’s missing?” Joey asked as Aimee caught him.

  “My wife and daughter,” the stranger said. “I can’t find them. They went for a walk and didn’t come back.”

  At Joey’s frown, his father said, “They’re staying up at the old cottage. They must’ve got turned around.” To the man, he said, “We’ll find them. Just stay put.” Jogging to the homestead, Gary was followed by two of his children, finding the third in the kitchen with his wife, Bridget. “Bridge, the Pollick girls are missing. They’ve been gone since yesterday afternoon.”

  That’s all Gary need to say to his wife before she started gathering together things the searchers would need in their pursuit.

  “I’ll saddle up,” said Joey, making for the kitchen door.

  Gary stilled his son with a hand on his arm. “No, you won’t. You stay here and mind Aimee.”

  “I want to come, too,” Aimee said, putting her hand on her hips to mimic Joey.

  “No, honey. Stay here and enjoy your birthday.”

  “I’m not a babysitter,” Joey said to his father. “Sally or Mum can mind her.”

  “I’m seven.”

  “Mum’s coming with me,” Gary said. “You and Sal stay here. I need someone on the radio. You can do that for me, can’t you mate?”

  Joey glared at his father. “I can help.”

  “You can, by being here and looking out for your sister. It’s her birthday, Joey.”

  “And for my birthday, I want to help look for the people.”

  Gary looked to Aimee and put his hand on her head. “No, little bug, stay here. We’ll be back in time for cake.”

  Aimee spent the majority of her birthday alone. Joey hovered around the radio listening for news and snapping at his sister anytime she interrupted. Sally spent her time in the kitchen having been relegated with the task of preparing the meals for the family and crew that evening. With the exception of providing Aimee with lunch or a snack, she was too busy to play. Aimee best and only friend that day was the storm-grey foal in the stables. At least Kite was pleased with her company.

  As the afternoon sun began to hang low in the sky, lighting up the insects skipping over the dry yellow grass in the paddocks around the homestead, the searchers returned unsuccessful. Greasy but buoyant,
the stranger Aimee had spent the day glaring at from her bedroom window ran to the group returning from their search and she could hear him say that his plane was repaired. They could fly around in the last light of day and find them. Forgiving the man slightly for ruining her birthday, Aimee ran downstairs to the group discussing where to fly. She inserted herself between her parents and listened intently. A grid was soon established and Aimee shadowed them to the vehicle that would take them to the airstrip behind the homestead.

  “Aimee, honey, head back to the house,” her mum said, stilling her youngest daughter with hands on her shoulders.

  “I want to come and help. I have good eyes.”

  “I know you do, honey, but Dad and I can handle it. Go back and see if your sister could get you a piece of your cake.” Her mother looked over her shoulder to Sally watching from the porch.

  “I don’t want cake, I want to come!” Aimee said, trying to get into the car.

  “I’m sorry, honey. Not this time.”

  “I want to help,” Aimee said with a whine only children can create.

  “That’s enough,” her dad snapped as he strode around the vehicle.

  “Gary…”

  He held a hand up to his wife. “Aimee, this is a job for grownups. You need to go back to Joey and Sally.”

  “I don’t want to. I’m a big girl.”

  “Now, Aimee.”

  “But—”

  “Now!”

  Aimee felt the touch of her sister behind her. Usually comforting, this time, she was too upset with the man she idolised to accept any form of soothing. “But Daddy…” Aimee’s chin began to wobble as her father strode away from her. Her mother gave her a kind look and tried to touch her shoulder. “I hate you!” Aimee screamed at her parents with a stomp of her foot. She stepped back and bumped into Sally before spinning away and running back to the house with tears streaming hot down her face. From her bedroom window she watched her parents and the stranger drive away in a cloud of dust. She lay her head in her arms and silently cursed them all.

  ***

  “Where are you going?” Sally asked as her brother rushed past the kitchen with his backpack on.

  “Joey, they said you have to stay here,” Sally said, hurrying after him.

  “Bugger that, Sal. I can help. Aimee doesn’t need a bloody minder. Besides, you’re here.”

  “Someone has to man the radio.”

  “So do it.”

  “I can’t watch Aimee and be in the office.”

  “She’s seven! She’s bloody old enough to look after herself. Jesus, Sally.” Joey turned around and jogged across the yards to the stables. He saddled the horse he received for his seventh birthday and charged to the north just as the sound of a light aircraft that brought the strangers to Yarrabee Station climbed into the sky.

  Aimee watched him leave through the screen of her bedroom window. Joey was gone, Sally was downstairs, and somewhere out there were two strangers wandering around lost. Strangers that had been told to be careful. Strangers that had stolen her birthday away from her. Strangers that made her dad cross. Strangers that had ruined her special day.

  Pushing off the sill, Aimee spun around and grabbed her My Little Pony backpack, and stuffed it full. In went the torch Gav gave her that morning, the compass her grandparents gave her last week before they left on their holiday, a blanket, jacket, and sparkly lip gloss Sally had loaned her unwillingly. Downstairs she crept to fill the remaining space with food and fluids. Wearing her favourite wide-brim hat and her favourite boots, she walked unseen from the homestead to the place where she’d be able to see the plane.

  The path of its proposed route over the property was fresh in her mind, and if she hurried, she’d get to watch as they searched for the missing wife and daughter. Maybe she could even find them herself and she’d get even more presents. Grinning with that thought, Aimee began a long walk to the ruins of the old homestead, and wished more than once that Kite was big enough to ride. What could have taken fifteen minutes at the trot took her much shorter legs more than an hour.

  She chuckled to herself when she finally made the old ruins when she heard the sound of the plane the moment she arrived. Grinning, she hid low and watched it pass nearby before banking and going back the other way. Once it was too far away to follow with her eyes, she listened to the plane while casting her eyes around the landscape nearby. Intermittent patches of grass speckled the light brown dirt around the site of the old homestead. Rock, coarse and bleached, rose from the ground a hundred metres away to form an outcrop that circled the old ruins like a horseshoe. Spring warmth and a recent sprinkle of winter rains had encouraged dark green plants to grow and bud wildflowers that burst into colour along the ridge and all over the ground nearby. Smiling, Aimee emerged from her hiding place and gathered an armful of flowers to put on the old graves of her forefathers protected by a wire fence near the ruins.

  Twice more she dove into her hiding place as the plane neared her position. The old, beige rock, harvested from the ground around her, stood tall and proud in places, and in others, crumbled as the mortar eroded beyond its ability to bind. Her favourite part was the tall chimney against the western wall. The strongest part of the old homestead, it provided the perfect cubby at the base. The wide chamber was the ideal size for a girl of seven to utilise as a secret hideout. Lined with the contents of her backpack, she nibbled at her food as the light of the day began to dwindle. Tempted to return home in the fading light, the sound of the plane still circling the property kept her in place. What was the point of being home enjoying her birthday cake when there was no one home to sing her happy birthday?

  As the sun touched the horizon, the plane neared the ruins once more. Sneaking over to a low wall, she watched its approach as it returned to the homestead. The steady whine of the engines popped and stuttered and she saw a little puff of smoke come from the plane. That couldn’t be right?

  She stood up, shielding her eyes from the setting sun with her hand. The plane popped and dipped and soon, Aimee was stepping over the low wall watching as the aircraft wobbled through the air. What was the stranger doing?

  Silence pierced the air like the ricochet of a gun. It was sudden, it was disturbing, and it scared Aimee with a chill right to her core.

  “Turn it back on,” she muttered as she began to take steps toward the flailing aircraft. “Turn it back on!” she screamed as it took a sudden turn towards the ground.

  It was all over a second later. One moment the plane was gliding in silence, the next, it had pierced the low outcrop around the ruins with a sound that would terrify Aimee in her sleep for years to come. Shock at the booming crunch of metal against rock and dirt trapped Aimee in place for several heartbeats. She blinked at the mangled pile trying to absorb what had just happened. Her parents were in that plane. Eyes flying wide, she screamed, “Mum! Dad!” and ran as fast as her legs would take her.

  “Daddy?” she yelled when she heard the sound of a male voice as she reached the base of the outcrop. She began scrambling over granite burning orange in the dwindling light of the day, before her world turned upside down. The concussion wave of the explosion tossed her young body ten metres backward, instantly rendering her unconscious as she rolled across the gravelly dirt. By the time Aimee opened her eyes, the sky was filled with the distant glow of twilight. Disorientated, she blinked and rubbed her eyes, whimpering as the battering her body took registered in her nerve endings. Her head throbbed.

  Trying to sit up, she noticed the smouldering mass on the hill. Her eyebrows furrowed together as she tried to make sense of what she was seeing. Where was she? Looking around as she slowly got to her feet, she saw the ruins. A familiar and comforting sight. Turning again to the smoke on the outcrop above her, she frowned once again. What was that? A gasp nearly knocked her over as her memory returned. “Mum!” she screamed. “Daddy!” she screamed with the same amount of desperation and fear that made the back of her throat ache. Clambering u
p the rocks to reach the plane, she was greeted at the top of the outcrop with nothing but the charred frame of the twisted aircraft. Fire still burned near the tail of the plane.

  She wasn’t fast enough to save them. “Mummy?” she said in a low voice choking with grief. “Daddy?” Her chin trembled and tears streamed across her skin. “No,” she said, her voice cracking with emotion. Feeling herself overwhelmed with a darkness her youth couldn’t comprehend, she did the only thing she knew how to do. Run and hide.

  In the chamber that once housed fire, she shivered and sobbed while her hands covered her ears trying to block out the sound of the crumple of plane against rock. Back and forth she rocked trying to shake the memory of the plane taking its fatal gravity-assisted path to the earth.

  Sometime that evening she heard the approach of several vehicles and noticed red and blue flashes of light. She blocked out the sound of the people discovering the fate of her parents. Aimee, caught in her own nightmares, was rendered paralysed as the word got out and the grieving began.

  Daylight came and curled up in the foetal position, Aimee stared in a daze as the sun travelled over the sky and changed the shadows across the ruins. More cars came that day, noticeable to Aimee by the dust blowing across the ruins.

  More days passed, and after hearing the sound of her name being called over and over again, Aimee was forced re-join the living.

  Sally and Joey found her. Three days after their parents had been taken from their lives. The shell of what was once Aimee broke their hearts. Not only had they lost their parents, but they had let their little sister become a victim of a terrible tragedy thanks to neglecting a simple request by their parents. Joey’s discovery of the wife and child safe and well on the day of the crash went unnoticed in the local newspapers as the community mourned.

  It had taken years to learn the truth of what Aimee witnessed that night. The plane, taken down thanks to a loose fuel hose, had been clinically and swiftly diagnosed by forensic investigators. But Aimee’s eye-witness account of that terrible night didn’t emerge until the night before her seventeenth birthday.