Page 30 of Lawless
“I love Dauntless the way it is too,” Red Joe said with a sigh, “but we’ve done things our way for almost two hundred years now. When Short Clarry got us in the news on the mainland, people in the government noticed, and questions were asked, and change is coming.” He nodded at me. “Dominic’s just the first. The Department of Education is sending someone over too, so we might finally get a school again, at least for the younger kids. And the Health Department might give us our own clinic and a doctor. We can’t avoid change, not altogether, but it’s not all bad. The other night Nipper Will might have died if the air ambulance had been delayed. And that’s not good enough. I know we love our way of life here, but we deserve the same access to services as the mainlanders.”
There was something commanding in the way he spoke, even though he didn’t even raise his voice, or maybe it was in the way people listened. Even Mavis, with a stubborn tilt to her chin, was listening, and a few people were nodding along. Eddie met my gaze, a faint smile on his face, and I remembered what he’d said about the Nesmith name meaning something here.
“Our kids deserve the same opportunities as kids from the mainland, and that’s not up for debate, not even for a second,” Red Joe finished, his gaze on Baby Joe. He raked a hand through his hair. “And now, if that’s everything, I’m going home to shower. I smell like I’ve been rolling around in a chum bucket.”
“You have to say ‘meeting adjourned,’” Eddie said.
The legs of Red Joe’s chair squeaked as he pushed it back and stood. “I’m not saying that.”
“Meeting adjourned!” Eddie said. “See you next month, everyone!”
I hung around after the meeting in case anyone wanted to chat. They didn’t, of course, so I eventually wandered off home. It took all of three minutes to get there. I got a can of tuna out for the cat, and a tin of spaghetti for me, and set them on the counter and checked the time.
It wasn’t even seven. Hell, it wasn’t even dark. I still had a few hours to kill until Natty’s evening show.
Natty Harper—the other thing that was going to kill me.
Holy hell.
I didn’t know exactly how we’d got into the pattern of Natty opening his bedroom window and wanking for me every night, but I wasn’t complaining. Confused and horny, but not complaining. We’d only kissed once, in the kitchen the night of his brother’s accident, and I hadn’t seen him since during daylight hours, but for the last week he’d been opening his window at night, shoving his curtains aside, and flicking his lights to signal that he was about to start.
And I was totally on board.
Okay, so I would have preferred that he came over to my place instead, but he hadn’t, and so this was what we were doing, apparently. And the Natty I watched through his window wasn’t the same Natty as I’d kissed. This one was a total tease, and we both loved it. A part of me wanted to reciprocate by putting on a show of my own, but I’d never been the recipient of a recurring private strip show before, and I had no idea what the etiquette was. Also, I had a feeling that if Nipper Will happened to look out the window, he wouldn’t be a fan. I’d seen Young Harry Barnes drop him off at the jetty midmorning. He’d been wearing a thick bandage and his customary glower. I didn’t envy Natty having to live with him.
I was rattling around in the drawer for my can opener when Frank yowled to be let out. I opened the back door for her.
There was a woman standing in my backyard.
“Hi,” I said, stepping outside with Frank. “I’m Dominic. Can I help you?”
A few steps brought me closer enough to have a decent look at her. She was in her late forties or her early fifties, slender, and she wore her greying hair—it must have been a vibrant gold at some point in her life—loose past her shoulders. There was something frail about her—a first impression that made no sense, because she was slender, but not too thin, but there was something not quite right about her. The way she held herself, maybe, as though she was ready to take flight at any second if only the wind would catch her right.
“Hi,” I said again.
She turned and looked at me, and her gaze slid right past me.
She wasn’t all there.
“I’m Dominic,” I said again. “What’s your name?”
She hummed a little, the only indication she’d heard me at all.
“It’ll be dark soon,” I said. “Is there anyone missing you?”
She crouched down and held out her hand, and Frank ambled over to be quietly adored.
I wondered if she’d drifted in from the front of the street, like a leaf carried on the stiff ocean breeze.
I also wondered who of my neighbours I could ask. Okay, so Eddie would have headed home to the lighthouse with Red Joe, but Amy was probably home above the museum with Baby Joe. Amy was friendly. She ought to know who this woman was. Or, I could yell out for Natty and hope I got his attention and not Will’s....
I looked across the fence just in time to see Natty hurrying out his kitchen door. He looked flustered, the panic in his expression fading when he caught sight of the woman, and then morphing into something else when he met my gaze. It looked as though he was ashamed, and I knew immediately that he knew this woman, and that he was ashamed of her. Or maybe not that he was ashamed of her, but that he was ashamed about me meeting her, as though, I don’t know, he thought I was going to judge him for her somehow?
He ducked his head as he climbed over the sagging fence. “Mum,” he said, his voice hoarse. “Mum, you’re meant to stay inside.”
She stood and turned to him like a flower seeking the sun, a smile brightening her expression. “Natty,” she said. She cupped his face in her hands, as beautiful as he was in that moment. “Look at you! You’re so grown up!”
His gaze flicked to me and then back again. He caught her wrists in his hands and lowered her hands gently from his face. “Mum, come back inside, okay? Dinner’s almost ready.”
