The Lost Man(63)

A thick teaching folder supplied by School of the Air lay open and Nathan remembered his conversation with Sophie on the verandah.

I don’t think she’s a real teacher.

He looked up. Katy was blowing her nose again. He flicked through a few pages in the folder. The lessons were all laid out for the home supervisor to follow.

Introduce the unit, he read. Hold up the book and say to students: ‘Today we will be exploring picture books. We will be learning about characters in this story.’ Show students the front cover. Ask them to read the title out loud.

Nathan frowned. He read on. The instructions were all there. It didn’t seem too hard to supervise if you followed them. He thought he could have a crack at it himself, at a push. He closed the folder and saw Katy watching him.

‘Better?’ he said.

‘Yes.’ Her voice was a touch too bright and her makeup had smudged slightly, making her eyes look strangely dramatic. ‘I’m just a bit homesick. I’ll be okay.’

‘Are you going back to the house?’ he said. ‘I’ll walk with you.’

She opened the cabin door, and he followed her down the steps into the blinding daylight.

‘Are you in charge here now?’ Katy said as they walked.

‘Me? No.’

‘Who is then?’

It was a good question. ‘Ilse, I suppose. It depends what you want.’ Nathan looked over in time to see something flicker across the woman’s face.

‘Simon and I need to move on soon. Not because of what’s happened,’ Katy added quickly. ‘I’d actually discussed it with Cameron but –’ She stopped.

‘Right,’ Nathan said. ‘When were you thinking?’

‘I’m not sure. Soon. Next week maybe. I have to check with Simon.’

‘Just make sure you say goodbye to someone before you go. If a worker goes missing we’re required to report it, in case they’re –’ He stopped. Lying dead in the middle of nowhere. ‘For their own safety.’

‘It’s not that we’re not grateful for the work,’ Katy said quickly.

‘It’s fine. No-one stays forever. Will you go back to England?’

‘I want to but –’ Katy shook her head. ‘Simon isn’t ready yet. He likes it out here.’

‘Right,’ Nathan said again. He had the distinct sense he was missing something. ‘You two been together long?’

‘Three years.’ Her voice was completely flat. ‘We’re engaged.’

That may be so, but Bub was right for once, Nathan thought with some surprise. She wasn’t happy.

‘If you need to talk to someone,’ he said eventually. ‘Someone not on the property, I mean, there’s always Steve at the clinic.’

‘Why do you say that?’ Katy said, a sudden sharpness in her face.

‘No reason. Sometimes workers have stuff they don’t want to discuss with their employers. That’s all.’

‘Oh.’ She nodded. ‘Sorry. I’m not usually like this, I promise. I’m struggling a bit with everything that’s happened.’

‘It’s okay. I don’t blame you.’

‘My head’s all over the place,’ Katy said. ‘I know Cameron was your brother and I’d only known him a few months but I can’t stop thinking about what happened.’

Across the yard, the windows of the house were dark against the daylight. There was no-one else around and it felt like they were all alone. Harry’s car was still absent from the driveway.

Nathan hesitated, feeling a little treacherous. ‘Simon said he heard Cameron and Harry arguing one night.’

‘Oh. Yeah,’ Katy said. ‘He mentioned that. It can’t have been too much of an argument, though. I slept through it.’

‘Do you think Simon might have got the wrong end of the stick?’

‘I don’t know. Simon liked Cameron a lot. He thought he was a good boss and he liked working here. It’s possible he read more into it than there was. Having said that –’

She slowed her pace, then stopped entirely.

‘What?’ he said.

‘Listen, I just work here,’ Katy said finally. She gazed out across the yard. ‘I didn’t take this job looking to make friends or get involved, definitely not in anything like this. I’m just trying to earn some money.’ She turned to look at him. ‘And I don’t know what’s going on, but there’s something really messed up about what happened to Cameron.’

Nathan waited, the silence pressing in on them.

‘When I saw Cam that last morning, he told me he’d be back the next day,’ Katy said. ‘And I can’t explain, so don’t ask, but I’m sure that he meant it. I don’t know what happened in between, but that morning Cameron was planning on coming home. I wish someone else had been there to see him. Simon, or the girls even. They’d tell you.’

‘Well, there was Ilse.’ Nathan hesitated. ‘She saw him.’

‘Yeah. I suppose she did.’ Katy started walking towards the house again.

‘And she reckons he said much the same as he said to you. That he’d be back the next day.’

‘Well.’ A small shrug. ‘I was too far away to hear, so we’ll have to take Ilse’s word for it.’