The Search by Margaret Clark Read Free Book Online Page A

she looked positively grotesque with black mascara running in sad rivulets down her cheeks.
    ‘I hate peeling onions,’ she snuffled, her eyes all red and puffy.
    ‘It’s not so bad if you run them under the cold water tap before you start chopping them,’ Liz offered helpfully.
    ‘Do you want to do this and I’ll do your job?’ asked Angela quickly, always the opportunist ready to slide out of the grotty work. She liked being out front at the counter where she could flirt with the cute guys,or do some waitressing and wiggle seductively along the verandah carrying food.
    ‘Liz, I need you out front,’ said Kay, poking her head round the corner from the office where she was on the phone giving an order for more chocolate bars.
    ‘I don’t mind doing the onions, and…’
    ‘Shop, please!’
    When Kay spoke in that tone there was no argument. Liz scuttled back behind the counter again and started serving the customers.
    ‘Here comes the first bus,’ said Flick, bustling past with a tray full of dirty dishes from the tables outside.
    It was the morning tea stop, and the twenty-two seater was full. The travellers piled out, yawning and stretching. It was a long drive from Melbourne, at least two and a half hours, and they were glad to stretch their legs after their brief stop in Geelong to buy coffee and go to the rest rooms.
    Liz and Flick took the orders and whipped them into the kitchen where Kay was now ready to start churning out sandwiches, drinks and Devonshire teas at the speed of light.
    ‘Good timing!’ Kay smiled as Braden walked into the store, ready for his eleven till seven shift.
    Liz grinned at him too. She liked Braden, even if he was a bit of a twerp sometimes. He thrived on gossip,and if there wasn’t any, he created it. He had dark straight hair, pale skin with a smattering of freckles, soulful brown eyes, and a serious demeanour. Sometimes when he got excited he developed a lisp. He didn’t laugh very much, but when he did it sounded like a braying donkey. He was a mate and not boyfriend material. He wasn’t interested in Liz as a love goddess, anyway. He liked brash and brassy girls with blonde hair and big tits who never ever gave him a second glance, unless of course he dropped a cold drink on one of them, which he occasionally did, especially if the girl was sitting outside wearing a brief bikini.
    Kay seemed to think that Braden was overcome with embarrassment at seeing so much bare skin, causing his hands to shake so that he couldn’t help spilling the drinks. He was therefore in some way blameless, but Liz often wondered if these little episodes were accidents, seeing as it had happened a number of times, and he always picked his target, a girl wearing a brief bikini so that the mess could be washed off without too much fuss.
    ‘I reckon he lays in his bed at night reading girlie mags,’ Angela had sneered. She wasn’t interested in Braden. He was just there , someone she had to work with in the store. She thought he was a dweeb, andwhen he’d asked her out once she’d fallen about clutching at the counter for support and doubling up with laughter at the thought of her and Braden actually going on a date together.
    ‘I wouldn’t be seen dead with that little weed,’ she’d said to Liz when they’d worked over Easter Monday. ‘No way. I reckon his mother wipes his nose for him every day. He’s such a creep.’
    The morning teas were hectic, and Kay had only briefly managed to introduce Flick to Angela and Braden before the early lunch bus trundled round the bend, crammed with another twenty or so tourists.
    By now Angela had finished chopping the onions and was bustling about looking sexy despite her large black-and-white checked apron, taking food to the outside tables. That was her favourite job because she could check out the surfers as well. She’d repaired her face in the bathroom and added extra curling mascara so that her eyes looked even bigger in her piquant