I was ready for hostility, anger, bitter resentment, even blame, thought Casey.
Instead it was like they all knew she was going to turn up one day. Kindness and generosity seemed to emanate from Darcy. Her big sister?
âYouâre too nice to me,â Casey said abruptly.
âWho could deny a goddess?â Troy pressed back in his chair, smiling his bold, tantalizing smile.
âItâs settled, then,â Darcy said, eyes sparkling. âGive us a call when you want to come home.â
Never had Casey been so glad she had her sunglasses on. She, who never cried except on increasingly rare occasions when she was flooded by her nightmares, felt the sting of tears.
Home? Did she have a home? If she hadnât been such an undemonstrative person she would have put her arms around Darcy and hugged her.
IF SHE hadnât landed on planet Mars, she didnât know where she was. The heat and the blinding glare! The colour of the desert sand was unbelievable, fiery-red, burnt-orange. It glowed like a furnace under the rich blue sky. The very vastness stunned her. The plains ran out to the horizon without anything to connect them to humans. It must seem the same to a sailor adrift on a great ocean she thought. Her trip was turning into quite an experience. The lack of anything except the land in all its savage glory was amazing. Space. Pure air. Freedom. In a place like this she might be able to regain her soul. These desert areasâand she realised she was only on the desert fringeâwere seemingly barren except for the eternal porcupine grasses, the Spinifex. It had covered huge areas of her journey into Queenslandâs vast Outback. The legendary name, The Never Never was right on. She had never seen such a surreal landscape outside of a painting.
Brilliant red earth, cobalt vault, totally cloudless, large rounded clumps of Spinifex like giant pincushions scorched to a dull gold. In the distance the baffling mirage danced in waves, conjuring up alluring green oases with lots of lovely water. She could well understand how the early pioneers had followed it, never catching up. This had to be somewhere near the place the English explorer, Captain Charles Sturt had battled his way with horses in search of the inland sea. What had he called it? The Iron Region. Or maybe that was the Stony Desert named after him. Either way it was awesome country, with enormous drawing power.
Casey pulled off the dead straight road that went nowhere. Goodness knows why, she thought wryly, no one else was on it. Sheâd been travelling for days yet sheâd hardly seen a soul. She turned off the ignition of her battered old ute and consulted her map again, resting it on the steering wheel. To be landed in this immense empty wilderness could turn out to be extremely hazardous. One wouldnât need to have a breakdown or run out of water. The glare alone was soporific. It had damned nearly put her to sleep. Of course the ancient ute had no air-conditioning and it was blazingly hot.
It was well she was tough. She had to be. No one had looked after her. She had lived hard. Born in a shack on the outskirts of a tropical town. Reared by a mother who hardly knew how to look after herself let alone a child. Then after her mother had died of a drug overdose, The Home. Bad, bad days. Sheâd endured that until she was sixteen when she left with nothing but searing memories. Truth was she had never had a real home anywhere.
Youâve got a lot to answer for, Jock McIvor.
Casey reckoned heâd be in hell and deservedly so.
There was nothing else to do but drive on, hoping Old Faithful would make it into the Three Rivers Country. For years she had heard mention of the Channel Country in the Stateâs far South-West on the weather report. She hadnât taken much notice except to register it was darn hot! To her mind it sounded like the end of the earth. Only very recently had she learned it was the legendary home of the nationâs cattle kings. The domain of men like Jock McIvor.
She had never known who her father was. The kids at school had given her hell about that. Her poor little mother had been a joke, the butt of many a sick prank. Kids were so cruel. Pretty as a picture but so overwhelmed by life her mother had eventually sought solace first in alcohol, then in drugs. She had once confessed to Casey she didnât want to live.
She hadnât. Sheâd ODâd at the grand old age of thirty-six. Casey had always blamed herself for not being able to protect her mother but then she was only a kid at the time. At eleven sheâd been put into The Home. Plenty of kids there didnât have fathers or mothers, either. It wasnât unusual for parents to dump their kids or make life so unbearable for them even The Home was preferable.