Cara is Missing by Tim Buckley

Author:Tim Buckley
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Troubador Publishing Ltd
Published: 2019-02-08T05:00:00+00:00

34

I’d hoped that all of the talk about a curse at the lighthouse would just die out in the end, but it wasn’t looking like we were going to be so lucky. The mood had changed up at the site and where the place used to ring out with banter and laughing and tuneless whistling, there was a dark silence up there now punctuated by bad-tempered snarling and grumbling. Maybe I was just imagining it, but it felt like nobody really wanted to be there and Nathan said he’d had a few problems with workers not turning up. Two of our best guys who’d been there longest had even got into a row over the milk at the coffee station and started to batter each other until Nathan doused them with a power hose. Everybody knew that Stevie wasn’t making much progress in the hospital and that didn’t help matters.

Despite the atmosphere, or maybe even because of it, we were making reasonable progress. The revised plan that we’d submitted to the council was on track – or at least not too far off track – and we were looking good for the interim inspection that Pete Baxter was due to carry out early the following week. But even still, it wasn’t a very pleasant place to be and I missed the days when I used to go up there for a bit of light relief, when Cara and I would wander round, getting in the way and watching the transformation of the old place.

It hadn’t occurred to me that the crew might have been in any way affected by Cara’s disappearance, but something Robbie said made me realise that they, too, felt her absence. It was the day after I’d gone to see Napier in Perth and I’d gone up there just because it felt like I’d been avoiding the place. I was sitting outside the cottage reading the paper when he came over to ask me if I knew when Nathan was coming out to the site.

“I think he said he’d be out in the afternoon,” I said, “he was doing something up in Bunbury, I think. Anything I can help with?”

He shook his head.

“It’s not important,” he said, “just want to make sure he’s ordered more render.”

He was about to walk away, but he turned back, and hesitated.

“Any news about the little one?” he asked, looking at his feet and avoiding my eyes.

I put the paper down.

“No, Robbie, no news.”

“Sorry to ask, mate,” he said. “You must miss her. We all do.”

He nodded to himself and went slowly back to where he was working.

I’m not superstitious, but I could see how the chain of events on the site might weigh on the workers’ minds. I hadn’t really thought about it until then, but Robbie made me realise that they’d gotten used to Cara, gotten to know her almost. And she knew them too, had grown more comfortable with them and around them, less coy when they spoke to her or joked with her or tousled her hair.

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