The Tying of Threads by Joy Dettman Page A

July ended. He’d been given some figurehead job at a university. Politicians, once they’d served their stint, had it made for life. The taxpayers supported them, supplied them with secretaries and chauffeurs, picked up the bills for their world tours – and if it was acceptable for them to gourmandise on the taxpayer teat, then who could blame the bludgers for sucking up the leftovers?
    Back in the old days, the peasants had slaved in the fields to keep the rich in their palaces, and as far as Jenny could see, not a lot had changed – apart from the workhouses for the poor. Maybe a bread and water subsistence diet had encouraged a few back to work – or at least slowed down their breeding. Every time she turned around she saw a new Duffy baby in a pram – and wanted to sterilise its mother.
    Not a good year, not from day one. She missed Georgie, missed Trudy, worried about Elsie, who was refusing now to leave that bungalow, which at least was warm. Jenny escaped there too often to get away from the annoyance of Jim’s typewriter now rattling all day on her kitchen table. He did a lot of typing for a Willama chap who wrote textbooks.
    The Wallis couple were a permanent annoyance. In August, that shop sucked more money from Ray’s insurance account when their minor drip became major, and Jenny was certain the bantam had been up in the roof with a chisel. They’d get a bargain if that sale ever went through. She didn’t want them to get a bargain, but by August they were pushing to buy and Jenny was damn near ready to forge Georgie’s signature to get rid of that shop and its problems.
    Elsie and Harry wanted to report Georgie as a missing person, but she’d cashed another cheque in June, which, unless someone else was cashing her cheques, proved to Jenny that she was okay.
    On a sunny day in September she ran into Jack Thompson and his widowed mother in Willama. He was Sergeant Thompson now, but in ’58–59, Jenny had known him as Woody Creek’s constable and Georgie’s first and only serious boyfriend. He’d been down at the old place drinking coffee with them the night Joe Flanagan came bellowing across the orchard paddock. Joe – or his red kelpies – had found Tracy taped into a cardboard carton and dumped beside his front fence.
    ‘How’s Georgie?’ Jack asked, always his first question.
    ‘We haven’t heard from her. Harry wants to report her missing.’
    ‘Was she well when she left?’
    ‘She was quiet. We know she had her stiches removed, that she’s got her chequebook with her. She cashed one in June.’
    Jack’s mother lived in Molliston, fifty-odd kilometres east of Willama. An only son, most of his days off were spent on the road, and twice in the past months he’d continued on to Woody Creek. He’d read Georgie’s note.
    ‘She’s got a good head on her shoulders and an independent streak a mile wide,’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t be too concerned about her while she’s cashing cheques.’
    ‘I’ve been wondering if, on the strength of that note, I could sell her shop.’
    ‘She told you to do what you like with it,’ he said. ‘She signed that note – and she’s not likely to sue you, Jen. Have a chat to your solicitor . . . speaking of which, you could be hearing from one in the next weeks. Collins is going to trial. It’s more than likely that you and Georgie will be called.’
    ‘I spoke to a chap a few months ago and told him I’d do backward somersaults off a thirty-foot springboard if it would get that swine convicted,’ Jenny said.
    She’d seen Dino Collins running towards Joe Flanagan’s land that night. She’d heard Raelene call his name.
    ‘From what I’ve heard recently, the prosecution will need all the help they can get. He’s got himself a damn good story and a top solicitor.’
    ‘They found his fingerprints on the masking tape used to seal Tracy into that carton,’ Jenny said.
    ‘A partial. They got good prints off the shifting spanner King used