Read The Girl in the Hard Hat for Free Online Page B

out personal details to a stranger. It was definitely a long shot at best. But it was why she had come back to Karratha and this part of the Pilbara in particular: to discover any clues she may have missed before.
    Her father’s injury was the one unique and solid fact she had. And if it meant researching the rise and fall of every steel mill in the area, she’d do it.
    Though obviously not today.
    She dragged her feet back to her desk and slumped in her chair, looking at the files with such resentment that a low laugh next to her made her jump.
    It was Chub.
    ‘Do they offend you in some way?’ he enquired and then held out an open jar of jelly beans to her. ‘Here, have one. It’ll take the edge off. Always does for me.’
    She grinned and stuck her hand in the jar.
    ‘Okay, when I said one, I didn’t literally mean one. You can have five or six or fifteen,’ he amended generously. ‘Whatever it takes to lift your mood.’
    ‘Thanks, but one’s fine.’ She popped the purple bean in her mouth and chewed. The intensely sweet blueberry flavour gave her an instant sugar jolt. ‘I just don’t get him. Why does he have such a huge problem with me?’
    ‘It’s not you. It’s him.’
    ‘How do you mean?’
    ‘He doesn’t have a problem with you, he just has a problem period.’ He was about to put the lid back on his jar when he shook his head. ‘Aw, screw it.’ He tipped out a handful, tossed them back and then set the jar down. ‘You should do what I do,’ he said with a mouth full of sugar.
    ‘What’s that?’
    ‘Don’t talk to him.’
    She laughed. ‘I can’t do that, he’s my boss.’
    ‘Well, I didn’t say it was going to be easy.’ He sighed. ‘Nothing here is easy.’
    She smiled sadly. ‘Nothing worth it ever is.’
    ‘Well, aren’t you a philosophical little mate? I just hope they don’t crush your spirit.’
    She lifted her chin. ‘They’ll find that very difficult, cobber.’
    He grinned at her and she grinned back. She could tell he got a real kick out of the word ‘cobber’ springing off her lips. Not just because it was a word usually employed by older men amongst their cronies but because she hadn’t called him Chub.
    Nor would she ever.
    From that day forwards, it was always ‘little mate’ and ‘Cobber’ between them. And in the hard times ahead, it was one of the few comforts she had.
    When work ended at six that evening, it was still light. She had picked up and installed the new light bulb but there was still time to kill. So she decided to go for a jog up Water Tank Hill. It was the lookout point for Wickham. The gym was her other option to burn off frustration but she desperately wanted to be alone. In her experience, gyms on jobs like this also functioned as pick-up joints. Given there were only five women in this camp, her odds of being approached were pretty loaded. Besides, the lookout wasn’t that far from the camp and it would provide an excellent view of the town at sunset.
    Back at her donga, she changed into a pair of black bike pants and a loose pink T-shirt, tied her hair in a ponytail and stuck some earphones in her ears. All she wanted to do was zone out.
    As she jogged through the main car park to get to the road, a man who had been leaning against his ute straightened and she noticed with a flush that he was very good looking. Sandy brown hair, soulful brown eyes and a healthy tan. He brought the same sort of visual pop to her eyeballs that Brad Pitt brought to the big screen. She ignored that familiar zing that had got her into trouble so many times before and kept running. Apart from the fact that she had serious desertion issues and a truckload of emotional baggage she was trying to figure out what to do with, she just didn’t have time for romance.
    Her last boyfriend had certainly made that clear when he’d dumped her for ignoring him. ‘I don’t know, Wendy. For the last two months you’ve been pretty preoccupied with your family.