Both boys scrabbled out of the car and the blue heeler exploded out the door to snuffle in the nearby long grass. Carolyn scolded the dog as he christened the verandah with a well-aimed stream of urine.
Romy looked at her son, her socially awkward, struggles-to-make-friends son. ‘Like a sleepover?’
Cameron groaned. ‘Girls sleep over. Boys hang out,’ he said, pointedly.
She laughed. ‘My mistake. Does that make it a hangover?’
The children frowned at each other in confusion but a cackle burst from Carolyn Lawson. ‘No, that’s what I’m likely to have after having two young boys in the house all night!’ she said. ‘Steve and I will both be home to keep things civil and you’re welcome to call if you want to check in.’
Romy was unprepared for this eventuality. Her baby had never been on a sleepover and it hadn’t occurred to her his very first one might be with a family she didn’t know. Her uncertainty must have shown. Carolyn shoved a business card in her hands.
‘This is our address and my mobile’s on the reverse. Does it help to know Cameron’s my fourth? And my husband is Quendanup’s copper?’
Romy looked at her son, at the blind hope and trepidation in a face that was a miniversion of her own. The realisation he was expecting her to say no struck her like a snake. How often had she stared hopefully at her father like that? How often had he let her down? She dropped her voice and her focus to the little boy at her feet.
‘You’d like to go to a sleepover, L?’
‘Hangout, Mum!’
She took that as a yes. Hard to say what was more moving; the fact Leighton had made a hangout friend already or that he was trying so hard to look cool in front of him. And with a policeman in the house…
She turned to Carolyn Lawson. ‘Thank you for the offer. Yes, I’m happy for—’
She got no further. Both boys started whooping it up in the driveway and an excited dog got in on the act, dashing around and barking.
It took ten minutes to get the Lawsons and their mad dog back in the Nissan and her overexcited son into the comparative cool of the house. Romy tried to imagine what kinds of things might happen at a kids’ sleepover. Yet another experience missing from her childhood. She frowned. Had she never been asked to someone else’s house, or had she said no so often the girls in her class simply stopped asking? It went without saying she’d never hosted one. Not only would the Colonel not have tolerated a gaggle of children in the house but she wouldn’t have foisted him on them either.
‘Mum. Can I take the frogs with me to Cameron’s?’ Leighton burst into the room.
Romy laughed. ‘No. They’re happy where they are. They’d hate being dragged to school. If you want Cameron to see them you can invite him here sometime.’
‘Oh, cool!’
The fact it had never occurred to him to ask instantly highlighted the truth that he’d never brought a friend home in his life. Sorrow soaked through her. She added that to her list of things she was convinced she’d robbed him of. Like grandparents and the father-figure he so desperately craved. Only this one she could do something about.
‘Leighton?’ She fixed him a sandwich while he settled from his excitement. ‘Would you feel okay about that? Bringing Cameron here?’
‘Yeah! He can see my room. And I can show him Frog Swamp.’ A muddy pocket at the base of the gully, teeming with life and riddled with wild frogs.
Boy heaven.
Romy’s tension eased. Even now, the ghost of her father still had her doubting herself. Her parenting. She shook her head to clear it and turned to her boy.
‘Okay. So let’s talk science project…’
‘Leighton?’ Romy called into the silence and then listened.
Nothing.
Ugh. It was so not the evening for this. As if she wasn’t already grumpy enough from continuously catching herself looking out for Clint. For a plume of dust approaching. Now Leighton had pulled another disappearing act after dinner, right when they were supposed to be preparing his science project for Friday science class.
Not the first time he’d done a runner. ‘Eight-year-olds,’ she muttered, turning to the house.
Fortunately, she had just the tool for this eventuality. Some mothers gave their kids phones to keep track of them; Romy gave hers a GPS transmitter. Not that he knew it. Telling him it was sewn into the hem of his backpack was the fastest way to ensure he never remembered to take the bag again.
She rustled in her work kit and pulled out her PDA. It was satellite phone, scanner and GPS tracker all in one. Swiss Army knife for the twenty-first century.
Please let him have it with him…
She got a reading almost immediately. It placed him within twenty metres of the kitchen. She frowned and looked at the timber ceiling above her. Damn…
A quick bolt to the top of the stairs confirmed her suspicion. The backpack lay tossed in the corner of his shambolic attic room. So much for technology; she was going to have to do this the old-fashioned way. Romy pocketed the PDA and let herself out the screen door to the rear of the house. She glanced one way, up the long track leading past Clint’s to the park entry, and then the other way, down through the trees leading to the base of the gully.
Frog Swamp. It’s where she’d be if she was an eight-year-old amphibian fanatic trying to avoid homework. And if Leighton didn’t have his pack it meant he’d planned to stay close.
There wasn’t a child alive who knew more about snakes than her reptile-mad son so she didn’t worry on that score, but the Australian bush was full of holes to twist an ankle in, poisonous critters with fangs to sink in their self-defence and baffling thickets of trees that could swallow a young boy’s sense of direction in a heartbeat.
Turning left, she started picking her way along the old trail that led to the bottom of the gully where the wetlands were. It was increasingly beautiful as the earth dropped away at the foot of towering trees stretching to the heavens. Small lizards scurried across her path and butterflies flitted kamikazelike back and forth. She slowed her descent and glanced about, appreciating the beauty of the bush around her at dusk.
As she worked her way quietly to the gully floor she heard a hint of noise off to the left. She was tempted to call out but the utter silence around her restrained her. If Leighton was frog watching he’d scarcely appreciate her dulcet tones echoing through the valley and sending every living creature darting for cover. Besides, she was being calm, cool Mum today, not anxious, clingy Mum.
That mum wouldn’t kick in for at least another five minutes.
A flash of bright red caught her eye. Her shoulders sagged with relief and she started towards her son. Then suddenly a shift of blue right next to him. A sky-blue T-shirt stretched tight over a broad back. She stumbled to a halt.
Clint.
Leighton was smiling. Not a polite, adult-pleasing smile. A bright-eyed, face-splitting, genuine boy grin, as he looked back and forth from where Clint lay next to him in the dirt to the swampy soak in front of them. She stopped and watched. Neither of them spoke but they seemed to be communicating in a kind of sign language. Clint’s efficient hand symbols reeked of the military but Leighton’s overengineered, highly dramatic efforts did somehow manage to communicate.
Her heart gave a little lurch. They were dusk frog watching together. It was postcard perfect. Everything she’d never had with her father.
And her son would never have with his.
Leighton was laid out like a miniature version of Clint. He unconsciously mirrored the exact way the older man lay in