The Girl in Steel-Capped Boots (33 page)

Praise for The Girl in Steel-Capped Boots

‘A funny, touching tale . . . Let the escapism begin’
Cleo

‘Her hilarious novel is authentic in every detail. More than an enjoyable comedy, it’s a blinkers-off expose of a workforce employed to extend to an industrial wharf: five women and 350 men. These males aren’t lovable larrikins; they need help. My tip for the next Miles Franklin Award’
Country Style

‘An A-plus debut novel’
Grazia

‘Drama, humour and romance – Hill provides it all in this insightful glimpse into the life of an engineer in the Pilbara’
Sunday Herald Sun

‘A fun story of friendship, overcoming preconceptions, and unexpected love. The ideal summer read’
West Australian

‘Well written, funny and fascinating, The Girl in Steel-Capped Boots is a wonderfully entertaining novel’
Book’d Out

‘A charming down-to-earth love story’
Take 5

‘Romantic and entertaining reading for the girls’
Weekend Gold Coast Bulletin

‘Laugh-out-loud fiction delivered with relish’
Write Note Reviews

If you loved
The Girl in Steel-Capped Boots

read on for a taster of Loretta’s new novel

What do you do when you are the most hated person in town?

Wendy Hopkins knew her Uncle Mike had got her the job as Safety Officer at the Barnes Inc. site on the Pilbara. What she didn’t know – until her first day on the job – was that he achieved it through blackmail . . .

It’s not the greatest of starts – and it’s about to get worse.

Her new boss doesn’t want her there.

The 350 men on site don’t want her there.

Even her uncle doesn’t want her there now . . .

In fact the only man who does is an outrageous flirt whose interest is certainly not professional. And yet, he may be the only person who can help her find the truth she seeks . . .

Available early 2013

Wendy knew something was wrong the moment she stepped into TCN’s open plan office.

Perhaps it was the frosty looks she got from the staff as they peered at her over their short cubicle walls. Or the fact that the receptionist wouldn’t let her past the hat hooks by the front door but directed her instead to a room set apart from the main office space.

‘You’ll have to sit in the meeting room until Mr Hullog is ready to deal with you.’

Deal with me?
The woman made it sound like she was toddler with a dirty nappy.

This was supposed to be her first day of work. She had dressed carefully in the TCN uniform that Dan Hullog had given her just yesterday. Her shirt was ironed, her khaki pants neat. Her blonde hair tied modestly at the nape of her neck with black elastic.

So if it wasn’t her appearance they disapproved of then what had happened between yesterday and today that she didn’t know about?

She walked into the meeting room. It was furnished in the usual sparse style of a construction site donga office. A white trestle table and eight uncomfortable plastic chairs filled the space. The vinyl floor was marked red with boot prints and the white board on one wall held a list of milestone dates. She knew the chairs were uncomfortable even before she sat down and after twenty minutes she had to get up and walk around to stave off a numb bum.

Where is he?

She looked out the window, anticipation momentarily overcoming her concern. The Cape Lambert iron ore wharf stretched out before her – a majestic masterpiece almost like a painting framed by the dingy office window. Standing nearly five stories above the water, the jetty wove out more than three kilometres across the sea. The end of it was imperceptible as it faded into the horizon. Every day, ships from around the world docked there, picking up tonnes and tonnes of the precious red dirt that fuelled Australia’s economy.

A shiver of both excitement and trepidation flitted through her body.

I can’t believe I’m going to be a part of something like this
. . .
again.

She heard the snap of a door closing and spun around. A tall, dark-haired man with the most intense blue eyes she’d ever seen advanced into the room. ‘I’m sorry to have kept you waiting, Wendy.’

‘Er . . . that’s okay, Mr Hullog.’

‘Call me Dan.’ He indicated the chair she had been sitting in before and took the one opposite it. ‘Have a seat.’ He laced his hands together on the white chipboard, somehow lifting the table’s image from backyard picnic to boardroom meeting. ‘I have to ask. Do you know how you got this job?’

Her eyes narrowed. ‘My uncle said you owed him a favour.’

Dan grimaced. ‘That’s putting blackmail politely.’

Red-hot heat infused her neck, and kept working its way up. She knew she shouldn’t have trusted Uncle Mike. She barely knew him and he seemed as inclined to want to get rid of her as to help her, but she had been at her wits’ end. Out of money and out of luck. When she’d stumbled across him in Karratha, she had thought it was the hand of providence not the bite of corruption.

What had her mother told her?
Nobody does anything for nothing.

She swallowed hard before casting an apology at the man before her. ‘I had no idea. Honestly. I haven’t seen Uncle Mike in years. I should have questioned his motives more closely.’

You should have listened to your conscience.

She had known Mike was the black sheep of the family. No one talked about him unless they absolutely had to and even then their comments were never complimentary. But then she wasn’t exactly number one with the family at the moment either. When she’d met Uncle Mike unexpectedly, it had almost been like meeting a kindred spirit.

How wrong you were.

She waited on Dan’s response, breath held.

‘I had a feeling from our conversation yesterday that you had no idea what the full story was. The truth is,’ he sighed, ‘there is no real position for you here. I have a safety officer already and he does a very good job.’

Her heart sank. It was all a farce. He wasn’t going to take her on, which was a great pity given he had been her last hope at job in the area.

‘Also,’ he lifted an unsmiling face, ‘I no longer care what your uncle says or doesn’t say. The person I was protecting . . .’ He changed track. ‘Let’s just say, his silence is no longer of any value to me.’

Pride stiffened her back, causing her to stand. ‘Well, I’ll just get out of your hair then, shall I? There’s no need to drag out this conversation any longer.’

‘Wendy, whatever beef I have with your uncle is nothing to do with you or your ability. And I am deeply mortified that you have been used as a pawn in this very tasteless game.’

Used. Yep that’s me.

However Dan was still talking. ‘I want to honour the agreement, not for his sake but for yours.’

‘But you said there was no job.’

‘Not here. But somewhere else.’ His tone softened. ‘Please sit down and let me tell you what I have arranged. TCN is the EPCM for this project. Do you know what that means?’

‘You run the show, don’t you?’

‘Sort of,’ Dan smiled. ‘The wharf owners make the rules, so we don’t have a choice about that. But essentially we govern the place for them. As in, we make sure everyone else such as our principal contractor Barnes Inc, follows the guidelines set by the wharf owners.’

She didn’t say anything but sank slowly back into her chair.

‘Unfortunately Barnes Inc have not been meeting the safety standard for some time now. They have a safety officer over there but he doesn’t seem to be able to keep up with the workload. On behalf of the wharf owners I have rung Barnes Inc and told them that they need to take on another safety person in addition to the one they already have. I’ve suggested you as a likely candidate.’ He paused. ‘The project manager at Barnes Inc, Carl Curtis, said he is willing to interview you this morning.’

A job was a job.

This office.That office down the road.

What did it matter as long as she got paid?

She licked her lips. ‘When?’

‘Now.’

Relief swept through her. All was not lost.
‘Well, that’s not a problem.’

‘I assume you bought your vehicle with you.’

She nodded. She’d passed the Barnes Inc office dongas on the way to TCN so she knew how to get there too.

Okay, let’s do this.

She stood up more firmly this time, holding out her hand. ‘Thank you for this opportunity . . . er . . . Dan.’

‘I’m very sorry that I didn’t have a job for you.’ His tone at least was genuine. ‘I really think we could have worked well together.’

‘Thanks.’ She had an inkling that Dan Hullog was an honourable man unlike her slimy excuse for an uncle. What the hell was Mike’s game anyway?

She gritted her teeth as she made her way out. Was there no end to the lies she had been fed by her family her whole life? Out here in the outback as far away from Perth as you could get without actually leaving the country she thought she was beyond all that. But no, the one uncle she thought might understand her was keen to offer her for sale instead.

Enough is enough.

She couldn’t wait to give him a piece of her mind later. Right now though she had a job to score
on her own merit
. After all, she was the only person she could really count on these days.

TCN had three office dongas lined up in a row, framed by red rock on one side and a car park on the other. Her car stood out easily amongst the dirty white utes – a blue Nissan with floral seat covers and a collection of stuffed animals peering out the rear window. It looked completely out of place against the backdrop of iron ore stock piles, cranes and conveyors belts.

She made her way down the well-trodden path towards it, the only asset she had taken with her on her trek across the country in the last six months. For a while, it had been her sole companion in this search that never seemed to end. And those toys had brought her luck. Even in their sun-damaged state, she’d never throw them out.

She got in the car. It was only a five-minute drive down a gravel track that ran alongside the red beach and through the port facilities. Like TCN, there were three Barnes Inc office dongas. An odd looking flag with an extra thick circular pole had been pushed into the ground in front of one of them. The flying emblem of the company was bolted rather than strung on the pole and a group of guys were having smoko underneath it on a couple of sad looking park benches. Two more were sitting in the back of a ute, chowing down on Mrs Mac’s pies still half in their plastic microwaveable wrappers. When they saw her car, they immediately all stood up and waved. She parked and they cheered as though she had stopped for them.

Oh brother!
Clearly they hadn’t seen a new female face in a while.

She alighted cautiously from her vehicle, mentally noting that maybe at some stage (sooner rather than later) she should move those stuffed animals into her boot.

‘Hey, love, where you going? Wanna stop for a bite?’ One of the guys grabbed his friend’s pastry as it was on his way to his mouth and held it up in the air like a trophy. ‘We’ve got a spare one!’

She chuckled at the pie owner’s expression of outrage and watched him snatch it back before pushing the thief away. Maybe it was the thief’s lack of attention or the roughness of the shove but the man fell out of the side of the ute and landed starry-eyed in the dirt.

The others lost interest in her and roared with laughter. She took the opportunity to slip past and enter the Barnes Inc main office donga.

Compared to the TCN equivalent, it was an absolute mess. All the desks seemed to be covered in a film of dust and papers, with the occasional computer bursting through the chaos. There was no official reception desk. The two guys seated closest to the door both eyed her up and down before one said, ‘And who might you be, blondie?’ The guy who addressed her had his eye on her shirt pocket, the TCN logo seeming to repulse him. She wished she’d had a change of clothes in the car. The last thing she wanted to do was give anyone any false impressions.

‘I’m Wendy Hopkins. I’m here to see Carl.’

The man raised his eyebrows. ‘Do you have an appointment?’

‘No . . . I–’

‘Just pulling your leg.’ He grinned. ‘I don’t think Carl makes appointments. He’s never around for them. He must be expecting you though because he’s in his office.’

Not quite knowing what to say to this, she merely nodded. ‘And which way is that?’

‘Only office in this donga, darlin’.’ He jerked his thumb over his shoulder. ‘Down the end next to the kitchen.’

‘Thanks.’

She knew his eyes were on her rear as she walked off in the direction he had pointed. Her skin prickled in annoyance but decided it was a fight for another time. The door to Carl’s office was wide open so she heard the man inside before she saw him.

‘What the fuck do you mean there’s no fuckin’ bolts with it? . . . How the fuck should I know? . . . Didn’t a pallet arrive last week? . . . Why the fuck would I cancel it? If it’s not there then it must be somewhere else . . . Have you looked up your own fuckin’ arse before you’ve shoved your head in mine?
Fuck!
’

SLAM!

Carl reconnected his phone with its receiver before he looked up at her standing there, her hand frozen in the ‘about to knock’ position.

‘Who the fuck are you?’

Wendy licked her lips. ‘I’m Wendy Hopkins. Dan Hullog said–’

‘Oh shit! You were fuckin’ quick! Come in, come in.’ He waved his hand at her in resignation. ‘And shut the door behind you.’

He was a heavy-set man in his late forties with dark brown hair and skin that tanned easily. In fact, he’d probably be quite a good looking man, if he didn’t radiate stress like a wild bird in a cage.

‘So you’re in OH and S, are you?’

‘Yes,’ she nodded.

‘What’s your experience like?’

‘I’ve done about seven years in the field. My last job was at the Parker Point Wharf in Dampier two years ago. So I actually do have some jetty experience in my-’

‘You’ve been out of work two years. Why?’

It was a perfectly reasonable question – one that a future employer was definitely entitled to ask. Her reasons, however, were many, personal and complicated. So she decided to tell half the truth.

‘I wanted a holiday.’

‘Pretty long fuckin’ holiday.’

As she began to bristle defensively, he put his hand up to stop her responding. ‘The reason I ask is if I hire you, I want you to stay for the duration of this project. So if you feel like you might need to take off again, like
on holiday
, you need to tell me now.’

He said the words ‘on holiday’ as if he didn’t entirely believe them. Not that she blamed him but at least she could reassure him on one point.

‘I will definitely be staying to the end. If you’re worried I won’t take this job seriously, don’t be. I’m not going to let anything happen to Barnes Inc’s people. I have a debt to pay to myself and there’s no better motivation than that.’