Page 83 of Lost In Kakadu

“Liar.”

They ate in silence gazing into the fire Mackenzie had loaded with fresh logs. He still insisted they had to keep the fire going, no matter what. They needed to travel a fair distance into the bush now for fire fuel. Scavenging for wood was a daily chore and a good workout. Their days were a steady stream of chores—washing clothes, searching for food, preparing meals, collecting water, making the fire. Abi never thought such mundane duties could be so satisfying. Back home, she hired people to do all the hard work for her. No wonder she had trouble losing weight.

She reached for Mackenzie’s empty plate. “So what contraption are you working on today?”

Mackenzie was constantly planning or making new things. She recognised that keeping busy was his way of dealing with their situation.

“Don’t laugh,” he said solemnly.

Her eyes narrowed as she studied him, trying to read his mind. “You can’t tell me not to laugh. I don’t know how I’ll react until you say what it is. So?”

He cocked his head to the side. “A bath.”

She couldn’t help it and started laughing. “A bath. That would be fabulous.” She paused trying to stop her giggling. “I don’t know why I’m laughing. I’m intrigued and excited. I can’t wait.”

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Mackenzie loved Abi’s new enthusiasm and considered her offer, however he enjoyed surprising her—and himself for that matter—with his finished projects. “No, you can go do … whatever it is you do. Leave me to my masterpiece.”

A long-forgotten memory suddenly flashed into his mind. A time when he was still Malcolm. He was in the kitchen with his Mum, she’d just baked a cake, her own recipe she’d said and announced herself as an artist. He could still smell it now.

“What are you thinking about?”

“What?”

“You had that look. The one you get when you remember something.”

Abi’s intuition had hit overdrive lately. It was scary. “I was just thinking about my mum.”

“You never talk about her. Tell me.”

Mackenzie didn’t want to talk about it. He touched the scar on his chin, but then quickly dropped his hand. He decided to gloss over all the rotten details. “It was one day after school. I’d just gotten home, and Mum was in the kitchen. She’d made this beautiful cake, banana and walnut. It smelled divine.”

“I bet it tasted good too.”

He paused. “Yes.” He lied. He never did get a chance to eat it.

Abi’s eyes searched his face. “You didn’t eat it, did you?”

He glared at her. “Jesus, Abi, what are you … a friggin’ mind reader?” He strode away, furious that she could read him so well.

“Mack, what did I say? Sorry.”

Mackenzie was a man possessed and making the bath suddenly seemed like a test. An obsessive urgency to create a masterpiece overwhelmed him and he desperately needed to build something his mother would be proud of. Failure was unacceptable.

Setting off for the back half of the plane, his dedicated focus blocked out all sound. It was like the eyes of the devil were watching him, waiting for him to fail.

As he approached the back half of the plane, he glanced over at Tom’s final resting place. The grave site was no longer visible. The dirt had settled back into place and several plants were now flourishing upon it. Any sign of Tom’s existence had completely disappeared.

Suddenly making the bath seemed even more important.

The way things were going, he and Abigail might never be found alive but when their campsite was discovered, people would know that, not only did they survive the crash, but they thrived amongst the ruins.

As he entered the plane, he cast the thoughts aside. The idea of making a bath from the moulded toilet cubicle had been rolling around in his mind for a while. He examined the fiberglass walls and was pleased with its potential. The curved sides made it a perfect shape, but the test would be how the roof and floor were secured. The seals would need to be watertight. Using the blunt axe, he painstakingly carved the cubicle from the wreckage, careful not to damage the fiberglass.

He was panting with exhaustion and lathered in sweat when it eventually fell free. He manhandled it over the seats and out of the plane to examine it. The only obvious issue was a hole, about the size of a bread plate, where the toilet pipe once ran through. He mentally itemized every piece of equipment they’d scavenged from the crash, searching for a way to close the hole. It wasn’t until he’d dragged the shell back to within sight of the plane that he had a plan.

He pulled the toolbox out and rummaged through it to find the tube of quick set Araldite glue. When he’d first found it all those months ago, he’d thought it was a worrisome item for the pilot to haveand had wondered which parts of the plane were held together with it. Maybe Dave’s shoddy repairs were the reason the plane crashed.

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