Chapter 14

Did I tell you I hate clothes shopping?

I’m a ‘Jeans-shorts and T-shirt’ type of girl. Buying a dress for a date was also a new experience for me. Since I lived at home, I don’t spend much of my wage, so I knew I could splash out a bit. I did want to look nice for James but not sluttish.

I had to buy a dress because I didn’t own one. A sad indictment but true. Possibly, if my mother had lived longer, I might have had a bit more girl training, but Dad had been a bit lost in that department.

The fact that I was just as happy to go camping and hunting with him and his mates. That I’d never expressed a wish to own a dress or lots of girly type things, possibly let my girl training slip past him.

Knowing my dad approved of the bloke that I was going out with also meant I had to make sure I was presentable. I think my dad started worrying about my lack of social life after I left school. Cutting out of mainstream school at fifteen had bothered him as far as this aspect went.

However, he knew I’d go nuts if he kept me there. Trust me, as a tall, skinny, gawky girl whose dad was the Chief Superintendent of the local Police Force, not a lot of blokes were game to come near me anyway. I think Dad thought I might break out of my shell once I was away from home.

I was so wrapped up in learning the job and keeping up with my studies that the few genuine offers I did receive were not hard to brush off. True, I had thought about sex a bit more, but I wasn’t desperate, and I didn’t desire to get involved sexually with people I’d not see again in a hurry.

I was also coping with living on my own for the first time. Dad had sprung for a self-contained one-bedroom unit that was designed for businessmen. It wasn’t far from the Precinct in Cairns, so I didn’t even need a car.

I also had a modest shopping centre nearby, a movie theatre, and even a pub my co-workers liked to drink in if I did want to go out. I was too busy to be lonely. Dad says that my views on love and sex were about two centuries out of date.

I knew he’d had a few flings, but he didn’t bring them home, and he didn’t talk about them. Dad, in many ways, is as reserved as I am. As I got older, I understood that he had needs that I’d not discovered in myself.

Now I had James. I did know about his other girls. I even knew when he broke it off with them. He hadn’t been a monk waiting for me while I was away doing my training, but like my dad, he didn’t tell tales out of school.

Dolores Hill was one lady he had been dating when I turned up back home. I learnt that she was the one doing the pursuing, and James had been uncomfortable when she tried staking her claim at work. With fewer men to choose from and him being a good-looking bloke, James was considered a catch.

He had dumped Dolores from his dating list after she had tried to act as if James was her property when she saw him with me in the cafeteria one morning. She had even gone as far as to warn me off. Unfortunately for her, one of James’ other old girlfriends had told him.

To my knowledge, he had stopped dating about three months before. I knew that we got a lot of looks, but I think we had our colleagues baffled because they never saw us together outside of work, and they all knew I still lived at home.

They couldn’t believe he wasn’t screwing someone when he had the pick of the single females. The fact I was on the night shift on the weekends, and he was on days, also made it hard for them to work out when we got together.

There was a rumour floating around that he was back with Dolores, but I knew it was false. He avoided her like the plague. She hadn’t been happy about being dumped. However, he always greeted me when I came off shift, and he asked me out every couple of weeks.

He came in early the three days I worked during the week, so we could study before he had to start work, and I went home to sleep. We worked in the cafeteria, so people did see us together at work.

Now I had to buy a feakin’ dress.

How the bloody hell can you get into trouble buying a dress?

For me, it seems that it is easy. I had headed uptown early Wednesday morning to do my shopping. I had just entered a fashionable boutique on Macrossan Street, near the bank, when a Linger slammed into the front plate-glass window of the shop.

What was weird was that I had felt this strange warmth on my chest as I walked to the shop from the bank. For some reason, I hurried into the shop. The Linger just missed me. It slammed into the corner of the slim doorway and then smashed through the pillar and into the window.

I dived for the floor, and the worst of the glass shattered into the clothes racks. I heard several women scream as many of the frames were pushed into the room. I rolled over and caught one rack as it went to topple down on me.

Once the glass stopped raining down on me, I dug myself out of the clothes and hangers and stood up to survey the destruction.

Two women were still lying on the floor, and another stood up from behind the counter at the back. A fourth woman ducked her head out of a change room; she was trying to see what the fuss was about.