Her mouth twitched. ‘Simon and I haven’t been getting along for a while now.’ A fresh sheen of sweat had broken out across her forehead.
‘Did Cameron know?’
‘Yes.’
Through the door to the living room, the crowd shifted and Nathan could see the top of the backpacker’s dark head. The sound of laughter and chatter rose and fell.
‘Do you want to speak to the nurse?’ he said finally.
Katy shook her head.
‘Someone else?’
She gave a dry laugh. ‘Like who? Who else is there to talk to around here? There’s no-one.’
Nathan hesitated, then took Katy’s arm and swiftly led her up the hall.
‘Come in here.’ He opened the door to Xander’s bedroom. ‘Tell me.’
She sat on the bed, and he leaned against the wall. He waited while she picked at the faded floral bedspread.
‘Simon’s in debt,’ she said finally. ‘He has a plumbing business back home and I knew things were tough, but it turns out it was worse than I thought. Worse than he’d told me, anyway. He owes quite a lot to quite a lot of people, and I don’t know what he’s going to do about it.’ She shook her head in frustration. ‘The point is, we really need the money. Or he does, anyway.’
‘Okay.’
‘I didn’t want to come and work here.’ Katy’s fingers were still plucking at the quilt. ‘I’m sorry, but it’s too lonely and I’d had enough of that on the properties out west. I wanted to go home, but Simon said we needed to save as much money as we could, otherwise we’d have nothing at all when we got back.’ She paused. ‘I don’t know if that’s true or not. I don’t know what to believe from him anymore.’
‘So Simon wanted to take the work here?’
‘Yeah. We met Cameron in the pub in town, like we said, but –’ Katy looked at her hands, still picking. ‘I’m sorry, I know he’s your brother. But I didn’t have a good feeling about it.’
‘In what way?’
‘Just –’ Katy frowned. ‘I knew that it wasn’t Simon that he was hiring. Something about the way he looked at me. I’m not even a teacher.’ She looked up. ‘And I told Cameron that. Simon was annoyed with me later, he said I should have lied to get the job. But Cameron didn’t mind. He said the work was easy, that it was hard to find people and they needed the help for his girls, and if anyone asked – his wife, whoever – he’d say I was qualified.’ She balled her hands into fists, trying to still them. ‘So I owed him a favour before I even started.’
Nathan thought about his brother and what it felt like to need something from him.
‘Simon didn’t have a problem with this, though?’ he said.
‘Simon really needs the money. And Cam was offering good wages. More than we were making before, and cash in hand. So we agreed, and I thought maybe it would be okay. I mean, I’m thinking, it’s a family property, and he’s got his wife and his kids running around. And itwasfine, for about three weeks. Which was longer than I’d expected, actually.’
‘Then what?’ Nathan frowned. ‘Cam came on to you?’
‘No. Not exactly. He was smart about it, I’ll give him that. He was always friendly. Asking me questions and actually listening to the answers. I wondered if maybe I’d got him wrong, but it meant he ended up knowing all kinds of things about me. What I liked, what I found funny. My weak spots, like missing home. I was alone with him a lot. There’d always be some legit reason, and nothing exactly happened. I just felt a bit weird about it.’
‘Did you tell anyone?’
‘Simon, obviously. But Simon –’
‘Really needs the money. Yeah, I’m getting that.’
‘He said I should try not to be alone with Cameron. Keep things strictly professional, and there’d be no problem. Something had happened at our last place out west. Something –’ Katy paused, ‘– a bit worse than this, I guess. A guy out there who was a bit too keen. I complained, and me and Simon both got sacked, so he wanted me to keep quiet this time. He couldn’t really see what the problem was, and I couldn’t really explain. I stopped telling him, and he never asked.’
‘Right.’
‘Cameron started flirting. Making comments. Kind of sexual stuff, you know? If I got uncomfortable he would act surprised, like I’d imagined it. Or seen something I wanted to see.’ She shook her head. ‘But I didn’t imagine it. Or want it.’
Katy’s fingers started plucking again at the bedcover. A long way from home, Nathan thought. Few local connections, if any. Backpackers might enjoy the flexibility of casual postings, but it left them vulnerable in other ways. Everyone knew that. Cameron knew that. And Nathan found himself thinking again of that other backpacker, more than twenty years ago, with her messy braid glowing orange by the flickering light of the campfire. The blunted edges of the memory had suddenly become cut-throat sharp, threatening to slip and slice him if not handled with care.
