Hope's Road Read Free Page B

in momentary agitation, lifting a tendril of elegantly styled, blue-rinsed hair.
    â€˜I’m sorry.’ Wasn’t much he could say. You never got over them leaving you, just learned to live with it.
    â€˜You a bush or city boy?’
    â€˜I was born here, but we moved to a property north of Yunta when I was a little kid. The old man inherited a station on the road to Arkaroola.’
    â€˜Why’re you here then, not there?’
    Why indeed? He often asked himself that question. Unfortunately the answer, as always, hurt like hell.
    â€˜My father left the station to my older brother when he died and my mother’s family property here became vacant. She’s in the little Lake Grace nursing home now. She wanted to come back to the mountains and I wanted to bring the boy up on a farm.’
    â€˜Mmm . . . figures. Show me your hands.’
    Trav held out two big paws, palms up, calluses and all. Not sure why he was doing this old lady’s bidding, but hell, he may as well humour her. After all, he’d got a sponge, even if it was by default.
    â€˜Looks like you know how to get them dirty.’
    There was a flutter of her right eye again. Was it a wink? Surely not. Wearing those pearls she looked as straight as the Virgin Mary.
    â€˜Well, I’d best be off. Another delivery to make this morning. New little girl, a teller at the bank. Tra-la-la.’ She waggled her be-ringed fingers and was gone.
    Trav let out a deep breath, one he hadn’t realised he’d been holding. He was guessing it would take all of . . . oh . . . ten minutes for those snippets of information to spread from one end of Lake Grace to the other. There wasn’t too much distance between the newsagents, chemist, bank, bakery, stock agents and corner café, and he reckoned it would take Mrs Nosy Parker less than that to do them over.
    He spared a thought for the new teller at the bank. Beatrice Parker would chew her up and spit her out for smoko. He was thirty-nine – a jaded, cynical old fart – and he’d struggled to keep his head.
    An orange flag caught his eye as it whizzed past the window. He stood up and took a peek through the fake wood venetian blind. Make that five minutes. Mrs Parker, on a motor scooter, riding flat-knacker up the footpath, was heading for the chemist, the first in the Lake Grace line of shops.
    He sat back down in the chair, his six-foot frame folding gracefully, and dropped his head against the backrest. He still didn’t know if he’d made the right decision six months earlier to move so far from the red dirt of the South Australian and New South Wales border, where he’d been a boundary rider. The Narree Valley was a lush, green Ireland plonked in the furthermost south-eastern corner of Australia. It was like he’d come to another country. And Lake Grace was a small town which thrived on a daily fodder of gossip. He’d purposely avoided the likes of Mrs Parker until today. He should have known that in doing so he’d probably just encouraged her.
    â€˜I see you’ve met Mrs Parker?’ Rob Sellers, the community ambulance officer, walked in from the ambulance station next door.
    â€˜How’d you guess?’
    Rob pointed at the sponge. ‘Legend material, those sponges. The locals nearly kill each other at the Friday Street Stall to get their hands on one. She either likes you or wanted information.’
    â€˜Information,’ said Trav as a glob of cream dripped onto the plate. He still felt guilty.
    â€˜Well, it looks like she was happy with what she got,’ said Rob leaning over to look out the window, where Mrs Parker’s orange flag could be seen flying past the stock and station agent’s en route for the corner café. ‘She should make it in time for a morning latte and natter and clatter.’
    â€˜Morning latte and what ?’
    â€˜Natter and clatter. All the old