down, she told herself. Make yourself think.
‘Will someone come and get us?’ Karli asked, her tone totally trusting, and Jenna struggled to find an answer.
‘Maybe,’ she told her. ‘I need to figure things out.’
Karli obediently subsided into silence—a feat she was all too good at. Karli had spent her whole five and three-quarter years being seen and not heard. Jenna was determined her silence had to end, but for now she was grateful for Karli’s silence. She had to think what to do.
Which was hard.
As well as being panic-stricken, Jenna was almost unbearably hot. They’d emerged from an air-conditioned train into an outside world so scorching it could almost bake bread. It was the middle of the day in the Australian Outback.
Forget the heat. Think, she told herself.
When would the next train come through?
She forced herself to remember the timetable she’d studied back in England. Brian’s suggestion that they take the long train journey across the centre of Australia had been a surprise, and she’d looked the train’s route and timetable up on the internet.
Think, she told herself desperately once more. I must be wrong.
She wasn’t. She was sure she wasn’t. The train ran across the continent only twice a week. As well as unloading goods, the stop at Barinya Downs had been to allow the train running in the opposite direction to pass them. It had rumbled through ten minutes ago.
There’d be no more trains for three days, she thought. This was Thursday. There was no train until next Monday.
Feeling sicker by the minute, Jenna hauled her cell phone from her bag and stared at the screen.
No host.
She was out of range of any of the communication carriers. Of course. What did she expect?
But she’d seen those guys in the trucks. They have to live somewhere, she told herself. She put Karli gently aside and walked to the edge of the platform. That was another mistake. The force of the midday sun hit her like a blast from a furnace. She recoiled into the shade, and Karli snuggled back against her, finding security in the curves of her body.
Great security she was.
‘We’ll be fine, Karli,’ she whispered. She narrowed her eyes against the glare, gazing around in a three-sixty-degree sweep. Surely somewhere there had to be something.
There were rough tracks leading in half a dozen directions from the siding. Nothing else.
No. Something.
There was definitely something, she thought as she came to the end of her sweep. Buildings? She wasn’t sure. It was too far to see.
She stared down at her half-sister in indecision. What to do?
There was little choice. They could stay on this platform with nothing to eat, and—worse—nothing to drink, and wait for the next train. That was the stuff of nightmares. Or they could walk to whatever it was on the horizon.
She thought back to literature she’d read when they were preparing for this trip. ‘In the case of breakdown in the Outback stay with your car,’ was the advice. ‘Tell people where you’re going. Your friends will send out a search party and they’ll find a car. They may well not find someone wandering in the desert.’
That was fine as far as advice went, she thought bitterly. But the only person who knew they were stuck here was Brian.
The vision of Brian’s face floated before her. She’d never seen such malice.
He’d do nothing. They’d walked into his con brilliantly. She knew he’d do nothing and the thought made her feel ill.
How could she ever have trusted him?
Let it go, she told herself. Don’t even think about it. We’re going to have to look after ourselves.
So what was new?
We need to wait, she told herself. She glanced at her watch. One o’clock. The heat was at its peak. ‘We’ll change into something sensible,’ she told Karli. ‘Then in a few hours we can head over and see whether that’s a house. If it’s not we can always come back. We can always…’
Always what?
Good question.
‘What will we do while we wait?’ Karli asked.
That was another good question. They had to do something. The alternative was thinking and who wanted to think?
‘We could make dust-castles,’ she suggested, and Karli looked doubtful.
‘You don’t make dust-castles. You make sandcastles.’
‘Yes, but that’s according to the rules,’ Jenna told her and she finally managed a smile. ‘We’re in unchartered territory now, sweetheart, and rules need to be stood on their head. Dust-castles it is.’
Riley walked in the back door and dumped the last of the supplies on the kitchen floor. Then he stood back and stared down in distaste. He’d hoped to be out of here by now, and even though the supplies Maggie had sent were necessary he didn’t have to like them.
Baked beans. More baked beans.
Beer.
Another week, he told himself, and then he’d be back in civilisation. Back to Munyering, with his lovely house, Maggie’s great food and a swimming pool. All the things that made life in this heat bearable.
Why hadn’t he sent one of his men to do this job?
Because they wouldn’t come, he told himself, and he even managed a wry grin. There was bound to be something in the union rules about existing on baked beans and dust.
But he was wasting time, talking to himself in this dump of a kitchen, and time was something he didn’t have. So… Priorities.
He unloaded the beer into the fridge, packing it in until the door barely shut.
‘That’s my housekeeping,’ he told himself and then he gave another rueful grin. Damn, wasn’t talking to himself the first sign of madness? Maybe he should get another dog.
Maybe he shouldn’t.
It was just after one o’clock. He had seven hours of daylight left. That was at least one more bore that could be mended.
What do they say about mad dogs and Englishmen? he demanded of himself, but he already knew the answer. Working in the midday sun might well lead to madness, but the bores were blocked and the survival of his cattle depended on him getting them unblocked. If he rested, maybe another thirty head of stock would be dead before nightfall.
‘Okay, mate,’ he told himself, looking at the beer with real longing. ‘That’ll wait. It has to. Get yourself back to work.’
As sunsets went this one was amazing. The sun was a ball of fire low on the horizon, and the blaze of light across the desert would, in normal circumstances, have taken Jenna’s breath away.
Not now. Karli was starting to stumble. The buildings had looked a mile or so away when she’d judged distance from the railway siding, but it’d ended up being closer to three or four miles. They’d abandoned their luggage back at the siding and were wearing only light pants, shirts and casual shoes, but even then it had been a long, hot walk. The sand was burning and their shoes were far too thin.
And now… The closer they grew to the buildings, the more Jenna’s heart sank.
The homestead looked abandoned. It consisted of ancient, unpainted weatherboards, and its rusty iron roof looked none too weatherproof. There were no fences or marked garden—just more red dust. All around the house were tumbledown sheds. The house itself looked intact, but only just. Broken windows and missing weatherboards told Jenna that no one had