By the time his crew arrived at the job site the next morning, Nathan had already downed half a travel mug of coffee and measured up the next lot of timber ready for cutting once the seven am noise curfew lifted. Hands numb from the cold, he tucked his carpenter’s pencil behind his ear and lifted another stack of wood onto the sawhorses.
He loved the smaller jobs like this kitchen renovation, the bread and butter of his business. They kept the money flowing in between the bigger contracts like new house builds, extensions and the very rare big jobs like the Mindalby Cotton Company expansion. Not that there’d be another one of those now.
Cupping his hands together, he puffed to warm them with his breath and sank onto the pile of timber. He still couldn’t wrap his head around the impact of the closure of Carter’s business. There hadn’t been much in the way of sleep last night. He’d been pumped on adrenaline for hours after he’d arrived home from fighting the fire, so he’d buried his head in his accounting software. That was usually enough to put him to sleep. But pulling up reports of money owed and money owing wasn’t the sedative he’d hoped for.
A kookaburra landed on the metal fence beside him and let loose with its unique cackle. Probably laughing at how we complicate our lives so much. He’d spent hours trying to work out how far up shit creek they were going to be if Mindalby Cotton didn’t pay their bills, which, if he were a betting man, he’d lay money on. With so much of the town affected, many of the smaller jobs would most likely dry up as well. He had some income from the rental properties his accountant had talked him into, as long as people could keep paying their rent. It would have helped if he’d had tenants for the shop in Locker Street and the house in Hills Close, but the chances of that now were slim.
If he didn’t draw a wage for himself, he had enough cash reserve to pay his crew their wages for a couple of months. After that … well, with luck he wouldn’t find out what happened after that. Something had to happen or the whole town was screwed.
Ute doors slammed shut out the front of the property. Time to stop sitting on his arse contemplating his navel. There was work to do.
‘Morning, boss.’ Steve and Thanh, his two full-time employees, rounded the corner of the house, the silver high-visibility stripes on their trousers reflecting in the powerful work light. He stood and reached out to switch it off. The sky had brightened to an orange glow with the rise of the sun.
‘Mischa with you?’ He peered around behind the men looking for his apprentice.
‘Yeah, she stopped to pat the neighbour’s dog.’ Thanh shrugged his broad shoulders and shook his head with a grin. ‘You know what she’s like. Adopts every pup—stray or otherwise—for miles around.’
Nathan laughed. ‘Sure do.’ He’d given her a lift to work a few times. As soon as he’d stopped his ute in the driveway, he’d been surrounded by dogs of all shapes, sizes and colours. He hadn’t been game to set foot outside the cab for fear he’d be licked to death. Mischa—the town’s unofficial RSPCA, adopting every unwanted dog in Mindalby.
Phil O’Brien sauntered out of his house wearing bright red trousers and a checked shirt, a golf bag over his shoulder. ‘Good morning, gentleman.’ He pushed up his garage door and placed his clubs in the boot of the small sports car. ‘The kitchen is free whenever you want to start work in there, chaps. I’m off to golf. Taa-ra.’
‘Thanks, mate. Have a good game.’ Nathan couldn’t think of any more boring way to spend his time than chasing a little white ball around a paddock, but then he liked to dangle a line over the side of his dinghy and feed the fish. Some people had the audacity to say fishing was boring, so who was he to sit in judgement?
They waited until Phil had backed his BMW out of the garage and set off down the road with a cheery toot of his horn. ‘Righto, Steve, can you and Mischa cut the pieces I’ve marked? Thanh, we’ve got some cupboards to dismantle.’
Steve hesitated, opened his mouth as if to say something and then shrugged. He settled his eye and ear protection in place and switched on the power saw. The whine stopped any further conversation, but Nathan had the feeling the guys would be asking him the hard questions first chance they got. If only he had some answers.
A man of few words, Thanh followed him inside in silence. The next few hours were filled with the satisfactorily distracting tasks of moving appliances and knocking out the existing cupboards. Nothing like hard work to take your mind off your troubles.
Just before they stopped for a tea break about ten, Nathan took his phone out onto the back verandah and dialled the number for the accounts department at Mindalby Cotton.
As he’d expected, the phone rang out. Looked like he wasn’t going to get any answers that way.
His crew wandered out onto the back verandah to sit around him with their lunch bags, pulling out their morning tea. Hopefully they wouldn’t ask him about the inevitable.
‘It’s pretty crook about the mill closing. What are we going to do?’ Around a mouth full of sandwich, Thanh voiced what they were no doubt all thinking.
No such luck. ‘Did any of you happen to make it to the town meeting they had about it?’
They all shook their heads.
Mischa took a swig of her juice and screwed the cap back on. ‘Didn’t even hear about it until after. Mum told me when I got home from work.’
‘Well then I probably know much the same as you lot do. I only know what I heard in the pub last night so you can take it with a grain of salt.’ He gestured with his phone. ‘I just tried to ring Mindalby Cotton but got no answer. I’ll give it to you straight. They still owe us for the job we did there and without that … I’ve got a couple of months of wages saved up so if the work keeps coming in we should be okay.’
‘And if it doesn’t?’ Steve stared at his bottle of Coke as if it had all the answers.
Nathan shrugged. ‘I wish I knew, mate.’ He stood and shook sawdust and splinters off his work pants. ‘I’ve got to head in to the hardware shop. You guys right to keep working?’
Thanh stood and folded his arms over his slight gut. ‘What if the work doesn’t keep coming in, boss?’
This was the part of being a boss that sucked—people dependent on him for their wages. It was made even tougher with the future looking so uncertain. There was no way he could let them down. He’d failed at enough in his life—he didn’t want to add that to the list.
Nathan spread his hands. ‘All I can promise is to do everything I can to keep you all employed. So honestly, let’s just hope Don Carter pays up.’
Although the possibility of that looked increasingly unlikely.
***
Seated at her kitchen table, Callie’s deep sigh turned into a half sob as she closed down the job-seeking website and pushed her laptop away. She didn’t have a snowflake’s chance in hell of getting a new job, especially not nearby. Who wanted to hire a middle-aged woman with out of date specialist IT skills?
She’d added her name and resume to the site anyway, and applied for an entry-level admin position and ‘retail team member’ in the department store in Bourke. It wasn’t ideal if she had to travel that far every day, but neither was having no income.
Despite tossing and turning all night, she was no closer to knowing what she was going to do. While she still had programming skills, her knowledge of the current market and techniques were sadly out of date. And anyway, did she really want to do IT work forever? Maybe this was the time for a change. Take control of her destiny rather than hanging around in limbo.
The job-seeking articles she’d been reading suggested building on her hobbies or interests. The only hobby she had was her quilting but was that enough to make a living from? Well, she was also an ace cryptic crossword solver and binger on re-runs of Friends but she hadn’t seen any openings for those skill sets either.
If she were to sell her quilts, how would she go about it? Should she try to sell them online, or at the markets? If she also sold her quilts online she wouldn’t be limited to the local residents as customers when they were struggling too.
She stared into her cup as if she could see the answers there. Grandma Mary would have tried to read her future in the tea leaves, and quite frankly, she’d probably have had better luck than Callie was having in organising her thoughts.
What if she were to take a huge risk and open a store? She sipped at her now-cold coffee and grimaced. What did she know about running a shop? Why open a store when half the people in town looked set to lose their jobs and would have trouble finding money to put food on the table, let alone buy anything frivolous like a quilt?
Well maybe not just to sell her quilts, but quilting supplies in general. There’d be enough customers for that. She’d once been part of the big quilting community in the small town. Five years ago, before she’d shut herself away.
There was nowhere in Mindalby to buy quilting supplies, or anything sewing related, or knitting accessories for that matter. People had to drive an hour and a half into Bourke or order online. Many times she’d wished she could pop into town to pick up new thread rather than wait for a delivery.
And hadn’t she read a study recently how in tough financial times people turned back to the old ‘make and mend’ philosophy? If she diversified, she could make it work.
Abruptly, she stood and poured the coffee down the sink. She knew how to research and plan, knew how to run a department. Could a shop be that much different? But then she’d have to put herself in front of the townspeople of Mindalby. Wouldn’t that stir up the rumour mill once again?
Her phone rang, skittering across the tabletop as it vibrated. Maybe it was someone offering her a job and she could forget the whole crazy idea of a store. Was her luck about to change? Heart racing, she answered. ‘Hello, Callie Ferguson speaking.’
‘Hi, Callie, it’s Mum. How are you getting on? Any news yet?’
Damn. ‘Not yet. I’ve put my name out but haven’t heard anything.’ She carried the phone into the lounge room and sat down in her recliner. Her cat Minerva immediately jumped into her lap and began to knead Callie’s thigh with her claws. Wincing, she shifted her over to the arm of the chair. ‘It’s time to think about Plan B.’
Her mother tutted. ‘I can’t believe Don has done this. His father would be turning over in his grave if he could see what that young man has done to the company he made great.’
She grinned. That ‘young man’ was only two years older than Callie herself. But she appreciated her mother’s sentiments. Things were certainly a lot different almost thirty years ago when Don’s father first offered her the job with her newly minted Bachelor of Computer Science degree.
‘So what are you going to do? Are you right for money? We’ve got a little bit put away if you need it.’
‘I’ll be fine for a while.’ She’d had a lot more saved until she’d loaned Patrick part of the deposit for his house recently. But she didn’t regret that. She could never regret any sacrifice she made for her son. She couldn’t be more proud of him—working and studying and already a home-owner at twenty. He’d always had a sensible head on his shoulders.
‘You could always go out on your own. People always want computer help. And you’re so patient explaining things to your father and me.’
The thought of spending all day helping people with their computer problems made Callie’s stomach churn. Her mother never quite understood what she did in her job as head of IT, which involved mostly people management and infrastructure planning; her least favourite part was sorting out computer and user issues. It was so frustrating.
Quickly she changed the subject. ‘How are you and Dad?’
Her mother groaned. ‘He’s good, but I wish he’d get a hobby. He’s driving me mad hanging around the house. And his memory’s like a sieve.’
Callie could picture her mother shaking her head. Her parents adored each other but her mum did like to complain about her dad. ‘What’s he done now?’
‘He put the kettle on the stove and went out to potter in his shed. Thank goodness I noticed, but not before he burnt the bottom right out of it. Now I have to buy a new kettle.’ Usually so cheery, there was an edge in her mum’s voice that showed the stress she’d been under the past six months.
She shuddered to think what might have happened if her mother hadn’t caught it in time. ‘Oh no! That’s pretty scary, Mum. The house could have burnt down.’ There was no doubt her mother could do with a break. ‘Do you want to meet me in town for lunch?’
‘That sounds nice, love. Are you sure? You don’t spend much time in town these days, not since …’
‘I’m sure.’ If she was going to open a shop, she’d have to start dealing with the community someday. May as well take the leap today.
‘Okay, then. I’ll leave your father at home though. The forty-minute drive is a bit much for him some days. I wish Woodburn wasn’t so far away from Mindalby. Anyway, we could do with a break from each other.’
Callie laughed. ‘Okay then. Tell him I’ll come out and see him soon. How does the bakery around twelve sound?’
‘Lovely. I’ll see you there. Bye, love.’
When her mum hung up, Callie sat frowning at the phone, her own worries momentarily replaced with thoughts of her dad. It wasn’t like him to be forgetful. Usually he was as sharp as a tack. Since his stroke six months earlier though, he’d been growing increasingly vague.
Was his vagueness part of the side-effects from the stroke or was there something more sinister wrong?