Chapter 10
Ten
Sweeney did not get on her flight. In fact, the flight was cancelled, along with several others leaving from Australia for Indonesian destinations.
Instead, she spent several hours on the phone at her mother’s house with her employer and the airline.
Neither of them could tell her anything definitive, given the situation was still evolving in Indonesia, but both hoped things would be clearer in the morning.
Thankfully no one had been killed in the latest eruption from the rather tempestuous volcano, which had misbehaved several times over the last decade. But the resultant ash cloud made aviation unsafe and grounded flights.
There was nothing Sweeney liked more than photographing the stunning array of scenery the planet offered, but Mother Nature could be a real bitch sometimes.
And now Sweeney had nowhere to be and wasn’t likely to be booked on another job until the situation with the Indonesian one became clear. Which meant there was no reason to rush out of the country.
No reason to rush out of Ballyshannon.
‘Do they know when flights will resume?’ her mother asked as Sweeney hung up from DFAT, who had issued a travel alert a few hours prior. They’d informed her they were monitoring things and that, as soon as it was safe, flights would be running once again.
‘No. Apparently meteorologists are working on weather models to figure out wind patterns and the like, but even if there’s not another eruption, it’ll probably be a few days before things are clear enough to open air space.’
‘Oh, that’s a shame,’ Connie said over her glass of red wine, doing her best to look crestfallen.
‘There was that one a while back somewhere near Bali, I think?’ Rhonda added conversationally. ‘It took up to three weeks before flights were allowed through that area again. I do hope it’s not that long for you, dear.’
Fin winked at her over his mother’s head and Sweeney suppressed a smile.
She didn’t blame her mum for being a little gleeful that she’d be sticking around for longer than planned given she so rarely came home.
Or Rhonda for being happy that her best friend was going to get to spend some unexpected time with her daughter.
But neither of them should give up their day jobs for acting gigs.
And surely they both had to realise that this development did not bode well for the big fat engagement lie.
Their mothers might suddenly be excelling at deception, but neither Sweeney nor Fin were comfortable with the situation, and their chances of accidentally letting the cat out of the bag increased exponentially the longer they had to perform publicly.
‘How were the photos you took today, sweetie?’
Glad to think about something else other than the logistics of reorganising her calendar, Sweeney nodded.
‘Better, I think. Thanks to Fin’s suggestion I got down really low to take most of the shots, and I think it worked well.
’ She’d been pleased with them through the viewfinder, at least. ‘I won’t really know until I look at them on the laptop, though. ’
‘That sounds positive,’ Rhonda said. ‘Can’t wait to see what Mai posts later.’
*
An hour later, back at Rhonda’s house with Fin watching the news on the couch beside her, Sweeney confirmed her gut feeling. They were better. Much better than she’d thought. ‘Fin!’ Her pulse tripped at the gold on the screen as she scrolled.
His eyes met hers and it must have been written all over her face because he grinned and said, ‘Good?’
She shuffled towards him and he shuffled towards her and they met in the middle, the computer half on his lap, half on hers, their arms lightly brushing.
The first shot on the screen was of a bunch of the kids in a huddle around the ball.
It was taken looking up through their legs and put the viewer right in the middle of the action.
‘Oh wow.’ He glanced at her. ‘That’s amazing.’
Sweeney nodded. ‘They’re all so much better.’
They scrolled through them together, Sweeney occasionally trashing the odd picture, but most of them this time were keepers and would go into the desktop folder she’d been building.
Then they got to the ones she’d taken of him aeroplaning around the field and she knew exactly which one Mai should put up on Instagram.
It was one she’d snapped after he’d leaped over her, rising above a stampede of little legs.
None of the kids’ faces were visible, just their backs and the backs of their heads as Fin looked over his shoulder at them, his arms out wide in full zoom, a large patch of blue sky overhead.
He was laughing, his dark hair flying from being in motion and, all around him, lifted in rock-star-like adoration, were a dozen pairs of hands reaching for him.
Just looking at it made her happy. Made her heart go kerthunk!
She’d managed to quickly snap about a dozen pics in sequence, but this one was the one. ‘Money shot,’ she said.
He nodded. ‘Money shot.’
She glanced at him. ‘You were really good today.’
‘Thanks to you.’
‘We make a good team.’
‘Right? I mean we obviously should have got engaged years ago. We could probably have taken over the world by now.’
Sweeney laughed, fisting her hand for a side bump, which he gave. The truth was, they’d always made a good team. But tonight, she was giving credit where credit was due. ‘Nah, it was all you. I just planted the seed.’
‘If you’re about to burst into dreadful nineties soft rock, I’m out of here.’
Well, she was now. ‘But, Fin …’ She batted her eyelids. ‘We walked in the garden.’
As teens the two of them had played the Heart song about a million times to giggle over the words and, in their last year of high school when home karaoke machines had become a thing to do at birthday parties, they had chosen it—to be all cool and ironic, of course—as their go-to karaoke song.
‘Sweeney. No,’ he protested.
She ignored him and sang the chorus.
‘Stop,’ he interrupted, placing a hand on his belly as he laughed. ‘I’m begging you.’
She stopped on a laugh of her own. ‘Spoilsport.’
‘Those lyrics have not improved with the years.’
‘Unlike us, who have clearly come into our superpowers.’
They laughed some more before it petered out. ‘You’re pretty chipper,’ he said, ‘for someone who’s just had her international flight cancelled.’
Sweeney shrugged. ‘Volcanos are going to volcano, I guess.’ Disruptions to her travel did sometimes happen due to acts of god or things like airline strikes and pandemics, but Veronica, her boss, always managed a workaround or was able—usually—to quickly reassign her.
She had no reason to doubt this time would be any different.
‘There’s no point being mad about something nobody has any control over. Covid travel disruptions were the worst and we got through that.’
Everything had been way trickier and there’d been many months with not a lot of jobs on offer, but she’d weathered the ups and downs of that and thankfully had enough financial reserves to hang on until the situation improved again.
He nodded. ‘Your mum didn’t seem very heartbroken.’
‘Oh?’ Sweeney cocked an eyebrow. ‘However could you tell?’
Laughing, Fin shook his head. ‘When did those two become so Machiavellian?’
‘I don’t know, but I’m beginning to think we shouldn’t have left them to their own devices this long.’ She sighed for dramatic effect. ‘Really, Fin, you need to baby up soon before they resort to ever more drastic measures.’
He snorted then nudged her with his shoulder like he used to. ‘You baby up.’
She grinned as she nudged him back. ‘No, you.’
Fin with a baby … Wow, that was hard to fathom.
Or it had been, anyway. But his rapport with the kids today had been next level and somehow now she could picture him with a baby on his hip.
A little boy or girl, all unruly dark hair and gangly legs, the mother of the baby—a gorgeous Irish redhead, of course—getting no look-in at all.
The image was like a needle jab to her heart and she sucked in a breath at the unexpected prick.
Her phone chose that moment to alert her to an incoming text and Sweeney could have kissed the damn thing. ‘Mai,’ she announced as she glanced at the screen. She tipped her chin at the laptop, still displaying the money shot. ‘I’d better get this off to her.’
He nodded. ‘It really is very good, Sweeney.’
Sweeney knew for a fact that Fin had no clue about photography, but it didn’t matter as her head swelled at his genuine, heartfelt compliment. Coming from the guy whose opinion she’d always valued so highly, it meant a lot. ‘Thanks.’
‘Mai’s going to be beside herself when she sees it.’
‘Oh, please.’ Sweeney snorted at the understatement. ‘Mai is going to pee her panties when she sees it.’
*
Mai did, indeed—metaphorically, at least—pee her panties.
She was more excited than Sweeney if possible at the stunning picture and raved about it so hard it swelled Sweeney’s head several sizes.
She not only declared she was putting it across all the Banshees social media but asked if she could make it the header image for the website.
Sweeney granted her permission and within half an hour Mai, true to her word, had it up everywhere.
There were few photos across Sweeney’s career that were standouts.
She’d taken hundreds—thousands, probably—of amazing pictures, but the special ones were few and far between.
Only a handful, really. But this one had already earned its place in that most prized realm.
And not just because it was technically perfect but because, as with the other exulted few, it not only told a story but it was about the feelings it stirred.