The Girl in the Yellow Vest (18 page)

‘A task that will no doubt fall to me,’ he said as they were waiting in front of the reception counter to pay the bill, glancing intermittently at his watch.

‘You need to get back to the office, don’t you?’ Charlotte said, watching this movement shrewdly.

‘I’ll have to stay back late tonight,’ he sighed. ‘I didn’t expect this to take as long as it did.’

‘Well, don’t blame me,’ she sniffed. ‘It was all your idea.’

‘Thank you for the reminder.’

‘No problem.’ She tossed her head. ‘And just so you know, I’m not having that bird sleeping inside my unit.’

‘I’ll buy it a cage and it can sleep outside.’

‘And when do you propose to buy this cage?’ she asked, hands on hips. ‘You just said you have to go back to work after this.’

‘Well, maybe,’ he glared at her, ‘you’ll just have to buy it for me and I’ll sort it out with you when I get home.’

‘I knew this was going to happen.’ She glanced at her watch. ‘I’m going to have to hurry if I want to get there before they close.’

‘Er . . . excuse me.’ The receptionist knocked on the desktop to get her attention. ‘Will you or your husband be paying for today?’

Zara covered her mouth.

‘We’re not married,’ Charlotte choked, going that cute but annoying shade of pink.

He clenched his teeth against an answering shade spreading up his chest and slapped his credit card down on the counter before snarling at the startled receptionist, ‘I’ll be paying.’

He finished work at eight o’clock that night, leaving the office when it was dark and making the short trip back to the resort bone-weary.

He was in no mood for a battle of wits with Charlotte Templeton, a circumstance that seemed to characterise all their meetings, but he had a feeling she would be very put out if he didn’t show up to collect his turkey.

He walked into reception and rang the bell. She appeared a few minutes later not looking nearly as fresh as she usually did. Was it his imagination or did her eyes seem red-rimmed and her nose a little pink? She put the cage with the turkey in it on the floor in front of him.

‘Good luck,’ she said darkly as though hoping his new pet would punish him rather than really wishing him well.

She turned to go and something made him say, ‘Ms Templeton, wait.’

Looking back she said somewhat impatiently, ‘Yes, Mr Crawford?’

The words,
Are you okay?
hovered on his lips unasked. How was it any of his business? Why did he even care that she looked like she’d been crying? Or that her delectable lower lip was swollen as though she’d been chewing on it while nutting out a problem.

‘Well, Mr Crawford?’ She folded her arms.

‘What should I call it?’ he finally asked, lamely.

A twinkle lit her eye and he was glad to see that at least he had improved her mood. ‘How about a family name, like Augustus?’

Refusing to acknowledge her jibe at his nickname, he merely nodded. Besides, he rather liked the calling; it had an intelligent ring to it. Picking up the cage by the handle, he said, ‘Please tell your sister she may visit Augustus whenever she likes.’

‘Trying to palm off responsibility, Mr Crawford?’

‘Not at all,’ he murmured. ‘I just thought it might help.’

She drew in a sharp breath. ‘Help with what?’

Realising that he was once more involving himself in her personal life, he hastily ignored the question. ‘Good night, Ms Templeton.’

‘Call me Charlotte,’ she called after him.

He ignored that too.

The turkey proved to be rather easy to look after. He put it outside next to his bedroom window and it made not a peep all night long. In fact, he put its wellbeing completely out of his mind until the following morning while eating his breakfast. At this point, he realised that he hadn’t given the bird anything to eat.

After yesterday’s debacle he was already behind on his workload, so he decided that this was definitely a task he needed to delegate. He took Augustus into work with him.

‘Ann, I need you in my office.
Now.
’

Momentarily stunned by the sight of him and his new pet, it took Ann a couple of seconds to grab a pen, a notepad, his morning coffee and follow him into his office, thus breaking for the second time in a fortnight his hour of silence. He hoped this wasn’t the beginning of a string of more inconveniences.

He put the cage down on the desk and turned around. She handed him his coffee.

‘Thank you.’ He took a sip and then gestured to the cage. ‘Ann, do you observe my turkey?’

She looked at it, licked her lips and inclined her head. ‘Yes, sir, I do observe your turkey.’

The bird looked at her, cocking its head, its wattle trembling on its rubbery neck.

‘Excellent. His name is Augustus. I would like a steel pen built behind this donga for him. Nothing fancy, you understand. I’m sure there’s plenty of mesh and old steel members lying about. Have Dipper and a few of his men knock something up.’

She did allow herself a momentary pause before writing this down. ‘All right, sir, I will notify him.’

‘And I would also like you to buy some food for Augustus.’

‘Food, sir?’

‘Yes, food.’ He raised his eyebrows. ‘Turkeys eat, you know.’

She swallowed. ‘Yes, I do know that, sir. But what do they eat?’

‘How am I supposed to know?’ Mark retorted crossly. ‘Do I look like a turkey expert to you? Honestly, Ann, sometimes you can be incredibly tedious. Call someone. Find out.’

‘All right, sir. And once I have the food, where should I put it?’

Mark rolled his eyes. ‘In its mouth, of course. You will need to feed the turkey. He is quite sick and with that bucket on his head will probably need assistance.’

‘From me, sir?’

Mark looked heavenwards for patience. ‘Is there anyone else in the room?’

She squared her shoulders. ‘I’m sorry, sir, but I have no experience taking care of turkeys.’

‘Please don’t apologise,’ he sighed. ‘I find forgiving people incredibly exhausting. If that’s all your questions, I think you can go now, Ann.’

‘But,’ Ann blinked as though realising for the first time that she wasn’t going to get out of this, ‘but . . . I –’

She opened her mouth and then shut it again. As she began to walk out of the room, he stalled her. ‘Er . . . Ann,’ he murmured, ‘aren’t you forgetting something?’

She slowly spun back to observe that he was holding the cage out to her. The bird inside gobbled, though it did not move.

With a trembling hand she reached out and took the cage.

He dusted his hands. At least that was one task done for the day.

Charlotte must have told her sister about his offer because Zara turned up after school that day. Out the window of his office, he saw her talking to the bird while a couple of his men built a large pen for it under a grey mangrove tree. She was talking to Augustus with such animation that after a moment he had to go outside and listen to what she was saying.

‘Anyway, that’s why Taylor Swift is way cooler than Miley Cyrus.’

‘Who are Taylor Swift and Miley Cyrus?’ Mark inquired.

Zara jumped and then looked over her shoulder at him, her lip curling in a superior little smile. ‘Friends of mine,’ she quipped in a way that made him certain she was mocking him. Surprisingly, he found this intriguing rather than offensive and the next day when he saw her sitting outside with Augustus he deliberately went out again.

Unlike his men, she had no regard for his position or his power.

She chatted to him about her life like he must be interested in it so he feigned that he was, only to discover halfway through their conversation that he was actually enjoying the naive perspective of a fifteen-year-old. For the next four days, he went out and spoke to her when she came to visit. Whether it was for a break from work or the masochistic need to spend some time with this pet, he did not know. But it was almost a routine now.

‘Anyway,’ she told him on Monday afternoon, ‘so I didn’t go to the party and now everyone at school is talking about it. I feel so left out.’

‘So talk about something that they didn’t do.’ He shrugged.

‘I’m not that cool.’

‘Coolness is all relative. Look at me.’

‘You’re not that cool either,’ she grinned.

He chuckled. ‘Tell them you snatched a turkey from the jaws of death and are now nursing it back to health.’

Her brow wrinkled. ‘That’s not cool, just stupid.’

‘You’re lucky: most teenagers with the exception of yourself aren’t that bright.’

‘Geez, Mark,’ she laughed, using his first name with ease now, just as though she wasn’t one of two people in town who did so. ‘You never pull any punches, do you?’ She got up off the ground next to Augustus, dusting her jeans. ‘I better get back home before my sister flips out.’

He looked at her. ‘Doesn’t she like you coming here?’

‘She doesn’t like me going anywhere. But it’s worse lately.’ Zara hunched a shoulder. ‘We aren’t really speaking to each other.’

‘Why is that?’ He couldn’t understand why he had asked the question and even as the words were leaving his mouth he regretted it. Now he would have to listen to the answer and being embroiled in Zara’s problems was the last thing he wanted.

She hesitated, however, and for a moment he thought he was in the clear until she said without looking at him, ‘To be honest, it’s more me than her. I’d rather keep my distance.’

The way she wriggled uncomfortably made him sigh. ‘What have you done?’

Her face snapped to his. ‘What makes you think I’ve done something?’

‘You look guilty as hell.’

She grimaced. ‘It’s not as bad as you think. I’m probably freakin’ out over nothing . . .’ She looked almost scared as her words dried up.

He groaned inwardly as he realised he was about to do the unthinkable and give her advice. ‘I think you need to make a full confession to your sister.’

Zara chewed on her lower lip. ‘I . . . I find it difficult to talk to Charlotte sometimes. She’s never said anything but I know I’ve already cost her a lot. She had to give up her career in Brisbane to help raise me.’

He considered this thoughtfully. Unbidden, Charlotte’s beautiful yet forthright expression appeared in front of his mind’s eye. His landlady may look like an angel but there was nothing remotely soft about her. He knew instinctively, even without the benefit of Zara’s insight, that she’d been through the wars and come out swinging.

He saw the scene in the Silver Seas reception again. That earnest way she’d lobbied him for the sake of the family business. Charlotte Templeton clearly had a huge sense of responsibility. She had continued to press him even to the point of embarrassment. He saw her pert pink nose, her wide irises and her mouth formed in that mortified ‘o’. As annoying as she was, she was a generous soul and sacrifice came as naturally to her as milk to a cow.

‘Earth to Mark! Earth to Mark!’

He looked down. Zara was tapping her feet impatiently with hands on hips.

‘You’re not even listening to me any more, are you?’

‘Yes, you are quite right.’

She rolled her eyes and then gave a dismissive flick with her hand. ‘It doesn’t matter. You wouldn’t understand what I’m going through anyway.’

How trite of her. He was sure he would very much understand if she gave him half a chance. But he wasn’t going to push it. It was none of his business what went on between her and the woman who kept disrupting his life . . . and now his thoughts as well.

That blasted turkey.

What’s that about?

A pet, be damned. The man was up to something. And it was up to her to find out what.

Why? Can’t you just leave well enough alone? Don’t you have enough problems?

Immediately, the image of Zara’s tear- and dust-streaked face as she sat on the edge of the road holding the injured bird rose in her mind’s eye. She wished she knew what was going on in her sister’s head right now.

Her mother had slept the entire time they were at the vet. She had rung a member of the resort staff and asked them to keep an eye on her while they were out. When they returned she clearly didn’t remember anything of what had been going on earlier that day. She was in a very cheerful mood, chatting about the shocking news report she’d just witnessed on the television. Zara went straight to her room and when Charlotte tried to talk to her she found the door locked.