Can You Keep a Secret? by Caroline Overington Read Free Book Online Page B

you’re leaving tomorrow now?’ Caitlin asked.
    ‘If that’s okay. I mean, you can stay with me another day, can’t you? Say you can.’
    ‘Well, I suppose I can,’ said Caitlin. ‘But, you know, it’s going to be hard to get a flight to Sydney tomorrow, with New Year’s Eve and everything.’
    ‘Well, that’s okay. Because I can’t see myself leaving you tomorrow either.’ Colby rolled towards her. ‘I actually can’t see myself leaving you this century.’
    It was a joke, or at least it was meant to be, but then Colby did in fact struggle to get a flight down to Sydney, and he missed the fireworks over Sydney Harbour, by which time he was so thoroughly smitten with Caitlin that he very nearly gave consideration to missing his flight home to New York.
    ‘It wasn’t just the sex,’ he told Robert when they finally caught up at Sydney airport for the long flight home. ‘She’s just so different from anyone I’ve met before.’ And that was true: Caitlin was all, and none, of those things that Colby thought he understood. She’d dropped out of school at fifteen, seemed not to care, and yet she was not stupid.
    ‘You must want to go back,’ he’d said.
    ‘But why? I hated school,’ she replied.
    They’d left the motel room to eat fish and chips off butcher’s paper on a bench on the Townsville Pier, in the company of anglers and giant pelicans.
    ‘You don’t have to love school, but you are supposed to finish.’
    ‘But they wanted me to do maths, and I hate maths. And then Mum got sick and she was going to be leaving Magnetic anyway.’
    ‘Your mom’s sick?’
    Caitlin nodded, shyly. ‘She’s got MS – multiple sclerosis.’
    ‘Jesus. That doesn’t sound good.’
    It wasn’t good. Ruby had been just thirty when she became aware of numb patches in her feet and, within a year, she was walking like a drunk. She caught a ferry into Townsville to see a GP who told her flatly that she’d have to leave her little pink timber cottage with its yellow-painted floor, which had been her home since Caitlin was born.
    ‘You’ll get less mobile as time goes by, and you’ll need to be somewhere where they have services. Plus it’s not fair on your daughter – she’ll end up your care-giver if you’re not careful.’ But Caitlin was already Ruby’s care-giver: she’d long done all the shopping, the cooking, the cleaning, and Ruby’s idea was for her to take over the business, too, which was picking heads off the marijuana plants behind the shed, drying them out in her old oven, and selling the buds to Dutch tourists as they got off the ferry from Townsville.
    ‘That’s where I drew the line,’ said Caitlin. ‘I told Mum, I’m not going to be a drug dealer. She’s got this view about marijuana – it’s harmless, that they only make it illegal because they’ve never figured out a way to tax it. Which is fine, whatever, but it’s not what I wanted to do with my life. So I told her, I’m leaving. It was the only way I could think to get her to leave the island.’
    ‘And did she leave?’ asked Colby.
    ‘Not yet. She’s stubborn. I dropped out of school and went to Brisbane and she basically stayed here and sulked. But it’s like the GP said: she’s got worse. She can’t even walk down to the pier anymore, not without a cane. And that’s where she’s got to go, to sell to the tourists. So now she really will have to move. I’ve promised to help her in the New Year.’
    ‘What about your dad?’ asked Colby. ‘Can’t he help?’
    Caitlin picked up a chip, and threw it towards some pelicans, setting off loud squabbling.
    ‘I don’t see him,’ she said, which wasn’t true. Caitlin’s father had dropped into the Merchant not a fortnight earlier, having heard that Caitlin was working skimpy.
    ‘Nice one,’ he’d said, tipping his baseball cap towards her breasts. ‘So, you’re all shy when I come around the house, but here they are, out for everyone.’
    Caitlin had