No Job for a Girl Read online

  In the distance she could hear a low rumble: the camp generator. Jason and Tyler climbed out. McKinley tipped his sunglasses onto his forehead, slammed the driver’s side door and strode across the car park to the office.

  ‘Don’t get too settled,’ he threw back over his shoulder, and Leah’s mouth dropped open. The door snapped shut behind him.

  Jason looked at her and raised his eyebrows. ‘What do you reckon that’s all about?’

  ‘I have no idea,’ she said, unease settling heavily in the pit of her stomach.

  Tyler opened the back door of the vehicle and began lifting out their luggage. When he came to Leah’s he said, ‘What do you want me to do with yours?’

  She took a deep breath and snatched the canvas tote off the floor in front of the passenger seat, slammed the door and marched around to the back of the vehicle.

  ‘I’ll take it, thanks, Tyler,’ she said with a tight smile. They hauled her suitcase out of the back.

  Jason came around to stand beside Tyler. ‘Do you want us to do anything?’

  She shook her head, slung the tote over her shoulder, pulled up the handle of her suitcase and wondered what they thought they could do about her intractable boss.

  ‘Thanks, but it’ll sort itself out. There’s obviously been a m­is­communication of some kind.’ The words caught on the angry tears clogging her throat. She hadn’t come this far to be sloughed off by a bad-tempered boss with a bee up his backside. With a muttered curse she hitched up the canvas bag, wrapped her fingers around the handle of her suitcase and bounced it across the rocky car park to the admin office.

  While he waited for project manager Paul Prentice to answer the phone, Alex McKinley logged onto his computer without sitting down and began scrolling through the two hundred or more emails in the inbox, scanning for anything needing urgent attention. In this business a week was a long time to be away from the site. The engineer they’d pulled in to relieve him hadn’t worked in the field for years. And today was half over already.

  ‘Paul,’ he said when his boss finally picked up. ‘What have you done with my safety advisor? I turn my back for a few days —’

  ‘Mandy Simons has been diagnosed with advanced breast ca­ncer. Things are not looking good for her – it all happened with terrifying speed. Steve was going to quit. He’s been with the company twelve years and shouldn’t have to resign so he can be with his wife. We’ve pulled him out of the field and for the time being he’ll work part-time from head office so he can be there for her. End of story.’

  ‘Oh, the poor bugger.’ Alex closed his eyes, massaging the knot forming in the back of his neck. ‘But a woman, Paul. You’ve sent me a woman!’

  ‘And? By all accounts Leah Jackson is more than up for it. Human Resources would have emailed you her CV. Read it.’

  Alex shoved his fingers through his hair and his sunglasses cl­attered to the floor. He picked them up and poked them into the top pocket of his shirt. ‘You know I don’t have anything against women, Paul. I’m not a sexist. But they don’t belong out here.’

  ‘You have other women working out there.’

  ‘Yeah, but they don’t look like her. The cook is over fifty and built like a brick shithouse; I couldn’t tell you what the cleaner looks like; and the contractor’s admin assistant, well, let’s say Dee does the best with what she’s got.’

  ‘Careful, Alex.’

  ‘Paul, you of all people know how it is out here. I don’t need any more problems than I have already.’

  ‘Leah knows how to handle herself. You can trust me on that one.’

  Frowning, Alex pulled at his bottom lip. ‘And why is that? You seem to know an awful lot about this woman.’

  ‘Eve has known her for years.’

  ‘Oh, I get it —’

  ‘No, McKinley, you don’t.’ Paul’s voice took on an edge Alex had only ever heard directed at others.

  ‘Leah’s been with the company for eight months and knows how our systems work, and she’s a qualified and experienced registered nurse. We should be thankful we had someone skilled and willing to step into the breach at a moment’s notice. She deserves a fair go. You remember that.’

  The silence began to hum. ‘Point taken,’ he said, knowing he had no other choice.

  Paul’s voice softened. ‘How did you go at home? How’s your dad?’

  Alex closed his eyes again, felt the burn of acid in his stomach. ‘He’ll stay with my older sister Heather when he gets out of hospital.’

  ‘Mate, if you need more leave —’

  ‘No, I don’t,’ he snapped, and then lightened his tone, feeling guilty. ‘I’m all right, Paul, and thanks for asking. The doctors say Dad will recover, but it’ll take a few months. He’s not as young as he was.’

  ‘No, none of us are.’

  Alex heard Paul sigh, and tried to picture the older man sitting at his desk in the company’s ivory tower in Adelaide. Alex always had a clearer picture of him on the site, hard hat clamped on his head. No matter how long Paul Prentice sat behind a desk Alex was certain he’d always be a field man at heart.

  ‘I’m fine, it’s all good,’ Alex reiterated, after a pause. But he knew he was far from fine and it had been a long time since everything had been all good. He needed to work, to keep his mind busy so he didn’t have time to dwell on what a stuff-up he’d made of his personal life. And the fact that this time last week his father had nearly died.

  Cold fingers curled around Alex’s heart as he remembered the cardiothoracic surgeon phoning to say Fergus McKinley’s life was on a knife edge. Complications following routine coronary artery bypass grafts, she’d said. In post-op recovery one of the grafts had bled. Fergus had been taken back to theatre, and there’d been more problems.

  Alex and his sisters had spent forty-eight hours not knowing whether their dad would pull through. Thankfully he had, and when the doctors had moved Fergus out of ICU, Alex had flown back to work. A week he wouldn’t want to go through again. The only upside had been getting to spend time with his boys.

  ‘All right then, I’ll take your word for it,’ Paul said, bringing Alex back to the present. ‘See you at the management meeting in the Bluff on Friday. And Alex, don’t forget what I said about Leah.’

  Alex dropped the phone back into its cradle. Perhaps he was a sexist. But men would be men no matter where and what the c­ircumstances. In his experience it didn’t matter if they had wives or girlfriends at home. You added booze into the mix and you could count on there being trouble eventually. He had enough to do w­ithout having to deal with drunken men fighting over s­omething they couldn’t have – a good-looking blonde with long legs and smoky grey eyes.

  He looked up to find the blonde in question standing in the doorway of his office, hands on hips, watching him, those grey eyes as cold and unflinching as slate.

  ‘So, what exactly did you mean by “Don’t get too settled”? Is there something I should know?’

  Alex sat down at the desk. Leah didn’t move from the doorway. The crease between her eyebrows deepened. With two fingers he typed in her name and did a search of his email inbox and sure enough, there it was, Leah Jackson’s CV.

  He scrolled quickly through the multi-paged document. Paul was right – she was qualified for the job. But. There was always a but. The ink was barely dry on her diploma, and although her remote-area nursing experience was worth a mention, it had been ten years ago, and she had minimal field experience as a safety a­dvisor.

  Before he realised what he was doing he’d scrolled back to the start of the document. These days information like date of birth and marital status were optional but Leah wasn’t shy about her age – she was closer to thirty-nine than thirty-eight. He also noted that her address was in the Adelaide Hills, and she had a driver’s licence for heavy vehicles and motorbikes. She liked to bushwalk and read.

  She cleared her throat and her feet scraped across the floor. ‘Find what you were after?’

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p; Alex looked up and noticed that her fingers were ringless. He berated himself for noticing. What did it matter to him if she were single or not? Though it might be easier for her here if she were already taken.

  He stood up. ‘That’s your space over there,’ he said with a nod in the direction of a shabby metal desk.

  The desk was pushed into the corner, the adjacent walls busy with maps, lists and a battered-looking whiteboard. It was cluttered with a computer, phone, several stacked in-trays, a pile of document folders, a hard hat and a can of flyspray. Everything was coated in a fine layer of red sand. From the corner a thin wedge of window sent a shaft of dirty light across the dusty desk.

  ‘Make yourself at home.’

  Leah’s heart sank. She moved into the room. Not for a nanosecond had she imagined she’d have to share an office with her boss. His desk was at right angles to hers with barely a metre separating them. His back was against the end wall of the block. A split-system air conditioner protruded from the wood panelling above his head.

  From where he sat he could see straight out the door into the utility area of the office block. All she’d see was the wall. Drab wood panelling lined all the walls; scuffed, heavy-duty vinyl tiles covered the floor; and a filing cabinet and two grey cupboards took up what space remained.

  ‘There’s no chair,’ she said.

  ‘It’ll be around here somewhere, in one of the other offices most likely.’ He shuffled a pile of papers on his desk, avoiding eye contact. He was less abrupt than he’d been earlier but not exactly warm. ‘Camp office is out the back door and to your left. Ben Reece is the camp manager. You can get your room key from him and ask him to show you around the camp and the first-aid room. Your vehicle’s the white dual cab out front. I’ll see you back here after lunch.’

  He sat down again and started tapping and clicking away. In no uncertain terms had she been dismissed.

  ‘Okay, thanks, Mr McKinley,’ she said brightly, amused when his head shot up.

  ‘Alex,’ he growled.

  ‘No worries, Alex.’ Leah clomped from the room in her heavy boots.

  The office block was rectangular and out of curiosity Leah paced the distance from the front door to the back door – about 6 metres. Next to their office on the south-western corner was another slightly smaller room, labelled Manager/Visitor’s Office. Opposite that was a small reception area that looked as if it’d never been used for that purpose – the counter was covered with a bank of UHF and VHF radios and what looked to Leah like a satellite radio. It backed onto another room, which had Contractor’s Office emblazoned across the door in large black letters. Leah thought she could hear muffled voices coming from behind it.

  A small galley-style kitchen with a bench, sink, urn and a bar fridge was squeezed between the Contractor’s Office and the external wall. A rubbish bin in the corner overflowed with used polystyrene cups, the small stainless steel sink sticky with spilled c­offee granules and sugar. A carton of long-life milk sat on the bench in a puddle of condensation. Without giving it a thought Leah put the milk back in the small fridge and wiped down the sink before going in search of the camp manager.

  She found Ben Reece at his desk in the camp office, about 20 metres from the back door of the office block. The building was about the same size as the main office block and she’d passed a door marked Camp Maintenance on her way. A plant pot with a well-tended rosemary bush sat in a shaft of sunlight beside his doorway.

  ‘Welcome to Camp One,’ Ben said with a flash of white teeth amidst a bushy, black beard threaded with silver. He was a bear of a man who she estimated to be well into his fifties, with greying temples and piercing blue-green eyes. He heaved himself out of an ancient-looking office chair and reached for a bunch of keys on the board beside the desk.

  ‘Thank you.’ Leah smiled at him, grateful for a warmer welcome. ‘How many camps are there?’

  ‘Only this one, so far. When the project started the blokes doing the surveying, building the roads, laying down the first pads for the transmission towers and so on stayed in Nickel Bluff. Camp One was finished about six weeks ago and the crew moved here. In a couple of months, as the build of the transmission line progresses further south, they’ll open Camp Two, and we’ll transition to there. Eventually this camp will be dismantled. You’ll never know we’ve been here.’ He handed Leah the keys and a map of the camp. ‘You’re in room A5, Steve’s old room. It’s in the first accommodation block, the one closest to the first-aid room.’

  ‘Great, thanks.’ She studied the map. Room A5 was highlighted and looked to be only a short distance away.

  There were four keys on the ring – one was stamped A5, clearly her room key. Another had a metal tag with First Aid written on it and the other two were unlabelled.

  ‘That’s the office key and the key for the bowser on the diesel fuel cell,’ Ben said. ‘It’s your job to unlock the bowser in the m­orning and lock it up again at night. Dip the cell daily, to keep track of usage. Whenever anyone gets diesel for their vehicles, or the g­enerators, they’ve got to write it in the folder by the bowser. You put in a new sheet every day, tally what’s gone from the cell with what’s on the sheet. Your report goes to the admin blokes in the Bluff.’

  Leah nodded and slipped the keys into the pocket of her jeans. She’d never dipped a fuel cell before. Didn’t know what a fuel cell looked like. Was it really the safety advisor’s job? Her previous position as junior safety advisor on the wind-farm construction site had been all about workplace safety, and vehicles had been fuelled at the service station in the nearby town. She took a deep breath. There’d be a lot of things here she’d never done before. But her predecessor Steve was only at the end of the phone.

  ‘Follow me,’ Ben said. When he stepped out into the sunshine he blinked rapidly, and dragged a pair of sunglasses out of his shirt pocket. ‘Where’s your gear?’

  ‘Oh, damn! I left it all out the front of the office block. It was too heavy to hump up the steps. My wallet, my phone . . .’ She threw her hands in the air. ‘I can’t believe I left it all just sitting there.’

  Leah hurried past the camp office and around the end of the admin block, only to find her luggage wasn’t where she’d left it. She stopped, closed her eyes and counted to five. Her suitcase couldn’t have gone far. The car park was empty except for a lone 4WD dual cab; the safety vehicle, she surmised. Alex’s LandCruiser was gone.

  The front door of the admin office screeched as she opened it. Now all of the rooms were empty, the only sounds the gurgle of the urn bubbling away on the bench and the intermittent crackle of the radios. And no sign of her luggage.

  She crossed the space and pushed her way out the back door.

  Ben was waiting by the camp office where she’d left him. He raised his bushy eyebrows. ‘Not there?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘Come on, I’ll give you the grand tour of the camp, show you the first-aid room and then we’ll go grab some lunch.’

  ‘But my suitcase, my bag —’

  Ben gave her a fatherly pat on the shoulder. ‘Don’t worry, it won’t be far away.’

  ‘But what if —’

  He looked at her, sucked air in through his teeth. ‘All right, we’ll go and check your room. What’s the bet someone’s dropped your bags off outside the door?’

  Her hand flew to her forehead. ‘You’re right. It was probably Jason Roberts, or his mate.’ Her shoulders loosened with relief. ‘Don’t worry about it, Ben.’

  ‘You’re sure? You don’t want to check?’

  ‘No, it can wait. On with the tour, please.’

  ‘Let’s go,’ he said and she followed him across the compound.

  Camp One covered about half a hectare. Eight transp­ortable accommodation blocks had been laid out in two rows of four with a well trampled corridor running between them. Each accom­modation block had four rooms, each with its own bathroom. At the northern end of the compound was the laundry, a toilet block an
d the first-aid room.

  Near Ben’s office was a sea container used for storage, and the wet mess and community room. Outside the bar area was a shade-cloth-covered pergola and half a dozen tables and chairs. Freezer and chiller units stood alongside the purpose-built mobile kitchen and adjacent dining room.

  ‘When we dismantle the camp, a prime-mover hooks up to the kitchen and literally tows it away to the next place it’s needed,’ Ben said. As they walked around he pointed out where the gas, water and electricity were connected to the kitchen unit. ‘In case you ever need to shut them off.’ Leah hoped the situation would never arise where she’d have to.

  ‘When we move, a crane’s used to load all the other buildings onto road trains. Electrical cables, water pipes – everything we’ve put down, we remove. This land is part of Acacia Downs Station and when we leave, the site has to be as pristine as it was when we set up shop.’

  Further along the northern boundary Ben pointed out the fuel cell and bowser and the two huge diesel generators nearby.

  ‘One generator runs for twenty-four hours and then we switch to the other one, and refuel and maintain the one that’s shut down,’ Ben shouted, his voice raised against the sound of the generator.

  They followed a well-formed track towards the diesel bowser, which was surrounded by a low bund wall about half a metre high, making it look as if it was sitting in a shallow pit. ‘It’s lined with thick plastic in case of a diesel spill,’ Ben shouted again.

  Leah nodded, hoping she looked like she had a clue. The noise made two-way conversation difficult.

  When they’d retreated far enough from the noise to talk again Ben said, ‘Trev Turner does all the camp maintenance. What he doesn’t know about everything around here isn’t worth knowing. If it’s broke, he can generally fix it. You’d have passed his office on the way to mine.’

  ‘Yes, I did,’ Leah said, quickening her step to keep up with him.

  Two huge poly water tanks stood behind the wet mess. Ben stopped, put his hands on his hips and studied the tanks.