Chapter Thirteen
Fairy lights twinkled under the party tree, guitar music floated through the muggy evening air, buoyed by the smells of frying onion and popcorn and wood-fired pizza, and a giant fairy on stilts was blowing bubbles over a crowd of sugar-fuelled kids.
The Twilight Christmas Markets were underway, and the sky over Clarence had decided to cooperate with a streaky sunset and a slow-falling dusk.
Soon there’d be pinpricks of starry light that would (hopefully) be actual stars and not satellites.
There was no romance in satellites, after all, but starlight?
He shook his head, amused to note he’d made himself feel bashful. But the truth of the matter was that he’d had romance on his mind for some time now and tonight was the night he was going to say so.
To Jodie.
When he found her.
He stopped to check in with the volunteers at the entry points collecting gold coin donations (and debit card swipes) for the State Emergency Service: the front door of the pub; the huge French doors that opened out onto the verandahs; the wrought-iron garden gate that led from the beer garden down to the walking path along the riverbank.
‘How are numbers?’ he asked Hoges, who was in charge of the beer garden gate.
‘You’re gonna be chockers, mate,’ Hoges said. ‘I’d say we’ve let a couple of hundred in from this direction.’
‘Any dramas?’ There was always a drama of some sort: a lost kid; a missing phone; a fall into an ixora hedge after one too many mulled wines … it was only a matter of time until this evening’s drama revealed itself. Hopefully it wouldn’t be fisticuffs in the cake-judging tent.
‘Nothing I couldn’t handle. I hope you’ve plenty of water on sale, though. How bloody hot is it?’
‘We’ve plenty of water.’
‘The gardens have come up a treat,’ Hoges added. ‘I like these coloured lanterns.’
‘Thanks. Give me a shout on the radio if you need me.’
‘Will do, mate.’
Will left Hoges to it; the bloke was one of those aged larrikins blessed with an easy disposition and an authoritative manner.
And what he and Hoges couldn’t manage between them they had planned for: paramedics from the local ambos were on site running a face painting and fake bandage stall, and a policewoman was circling somewhere with Rocky, the police dog who’d had a career pivot from sniffer dog to community service.
Will was avoiding the section of grass where the ambulance had set up shop; one of the perks of being the person to whom Carol had delegated the markets layout masterplan was that it had allowed him to tuck anything to do with medical paraphernalia into the most obscure corner of the grounds.
Jodie wasn’t near the food trucks, nor on one of the outdoor beanbags by the small stage where the guitarist was playing.
As he searched, he focused on and discarded a half-dozen flashes of dark red hair or short denim skirts that might have been her but weren’t, and admitted to himself that he had it bad.
Or good.
Perspective was everything, after all.
It wasn’t as though he hadn’t seen Jodie for days—just a day, in fact, as Carol had needed her help with raffle tickets and menu laminating and chutney labelling and a million other tasks—it just felt like days.
His head was coming around to the idea that his heart had been telling him ever since his hamstring had gone ping : he wanted Jodie in his life. Every day.
Tonight was his opportunity to ask her if she was feeling what he was feeling.
To find out what hold Katoomba had over her versus staying here in Clarence.
To find out—and this would be a tougher conversation—what hold Clarence had over him versus upping sticks and rebooting his life again in some far away Blue Mountains town he’d never been to.
Tonight. He could ask the questions and they could both take some time to figure out their answers. His timing was terrible, obviously—he was working, Jodie was worried about Carol, and there was nowhere private to be found at the Clarence Pub tonight.
But … He looked up and smiled. Starlight. Finally. And the starlight was telling him he shouldn’t let another night pass into day without saying something. He didn’t want to just be content any longer. He wanted everything . Starting with Jodie.
Surely they’d find a quiet moment before the Christmas cake results were announced in which the two of them could think about things other than markets and great aunts and tangled family histories and dried fruit? Things that were just about Jodie and Will.
He still hadn’t laid eyes on her an hour later, what with pouring beers at the main bar and finding a replacement hose for the barbecue’s gas tank and adjudicating a spat between Fergus and the new backpacker, who apparently had ‘feck all’ idea on how to wipe down a table.
Now it was close to eight thirty, when the cake judging was scheduled, according to the last email the market committee had sent around.
Not long now.
He decided his plan to bump casually into Jodie and find a quiet patch of starlight was a washout and switched to Plan B: text.
Looking everywhere but not seeing you.
The answer came gratifyingly quickly: Same. Where are you?
Shit, where wasn’t he? Just as he was about to type Meet me behind the banh mi stall , the walkie-talkie in the back pocket of his shorts squawked with the ominous words: ‘Will, we have a situation at the portaloos. Need you here ASAP.’
He sighed, put his phone away, said, ‘On my way,’ into the walkie-talkie, then set off. The evening’s drama had arrived.
The market committee volunteer who’d called him was the drama teacher from the high school, Merv O’Connor. The guy looked flustered when Will reached the patch of grass where Merv was waiting.
‘It’s jammed, Will. The door. I’ve tried a knife, but these bloody things …
’ He lifted the mangled remains of one of the bamboo knives from the food stalls.
‘And this kid—’ he jerked his head in the direction of a grubby youth wearing a zippered black outfit that made him look like a gangster in training—or a child celebrity rapper, perhaps—‘reckons his mum’ll have his guts if he loses Bindi. ’
‘Bindi being?’
The kid looked up at him. ‘My sister.’
Hmm. ‘How old’s your sister, mate?’
‘Four.’
‘And she went to the loo by herself?’
The kid shrugged with just one shoulder. It was a slick move, which Will inferred meant ‘whatever’ and ‘um, actually, yes I’ve been super dumb’ and ‘it’s not my fault’ and ‘please help me’ all in the one go.
‘She got a phone?’
‘Mister, I’m eleven and even I don’t have a phone. Mum and Dad are weird like that.’
‘Tough break,’ he said. ‘What’s your name?’
‘Jackson.’
Will knocked a rat-a-tat-tat on the portaloo door and then listened. A second later, an answering tat-tat sounded. ‘Well, that’s a good sign.’ He leaned in close to the crack in the door. ‘Bindi? My name’s Will. I’m the boss here. Can you unlock the door?’
‘Nope. I’m stuck.’
He examined the outside of the lock. Merv had been onto something with that knife. There was a horizontal groove that looked like it would do the trick. ‘Merv,’ he said.
‘Yep? Want me to call the Rural Fire Service?’
He chuckled. Merv was in the right profession, that was for sure. ‘I don’t think we’re there yet, Merv. Great idea, though, if my plan doesn’t work out. I was thinking maybe a real knife from the kitchen or a screwdriver.’
‘Oh! Well, sure, we could give that a go, I suppose.’
‘You reckon you could go find Fergus—he’s the Irish kid working the bar—and ask him for a flathead from the pub toolbox? A biggish one. I’ll hang here with Jackson and Bindi.’
‘You got it.’
He and Jackson had just about exhausted chit chat about whether Jackson was enjoying the markets (shrug) and which food stall the family were going to choose for dinner (‘Dunno’) when a woman appeared from the shadows.
Jodie. With a screwdriver in her hand. A hallelujah moment on two counts.
‘Heard you were being a Hero Boy again, Will,’ she said, grinning.
‘You know me. Always looking for an opportunity to look good.’ He took the large flathead screwdriver from Jodie’s hand and used the handle to tap on the portaloo door again.
‘You okay in there, Bindi?’
‘I’m still trapped and somebody’s gotta wipe my bum.’
Will winced. ‘Sounds like a job for you, mate,’ he said to Jackson over his shoulder.
Jackson’s sigh was audible. ‘Little sisters are so annoying.’
‘I am not annoying,’ came a high voice from within the portaloo.
Will caught Jackson’s eye and winked, and the kid lost his fearful look and started laughing.
Jodie came to stand beside him as he worked the thin end of the screwdriver into the exterior of the lock.
The groove, designed for this exact purpose, looked like it had been warped by a lot of inexpert rescuers over a long time frame, and was weather damaged and pretty much rendered useless by age, but he leaned into it until the screwdriver had found some purchase and gave the thing a twist.
‘Your sister will be out any second now,’ he said to Jackson, ‘so your worries are over.’
‘Oh, I wasn’t worried at all,’ said the kid. Definitely a lie.
A bit of jiggery-pokery, some brute force, and a second later he was hauling the door open and a little girl in a spotty frock with fairy wings strapped to her back stood in the doorway, looking sweaty and dishevelled, but not at all unhappy.
‘I’m not trapped anymore!’ she said.
She seemed to have forgotten her bum needed wiping, thankfully, and Will was keen to move on to the next item on his agenda: snaffling that alone time he’d been wanting with Jodie. Somewhere a little more salubrious than the portaloo corral.
‘You right to get Bindi back to your mum and dad?’ he asked Jackson.
‘Sure. Thanks for rescuing me—I mean, her,’ said the boy.
All in a day’s work. Fingers crossed the rest of the evening’s dramas resolved themselves as easily. Will had places to go, a woman to woo.