Gone Fishing Read Online Free PDF Page A

murmurs.
    How her mother adored hats. It didn’t matter what style she placed on her head, it always looked fabulous. I’ve got the right bones, Kate, very few women do.
    She opens a hatbox and, against her will, finds herself impossibly seduced by a gauzy emerald-green fascinator with a jaunty little feather (no doubt from an endangered species – survival of the fittest, Emily would poo-poo) propped on top in a swirl of silk. It must have cost a bomb, she thinks. And suddenly she can’t bear the thought that her mother’s great passion for outrageously glorious hats will end up on Vinnie’s crowded and shabby shelves. She puts them aside to take home in what she hopes isn’t a bout of grotesque sentimentality. The Island Players, she tells herself, might be able to use them for their next theatrical production.
    After a while, Kate stumbles on a plastic supermarket bag stuffed with old photos of the blurry, bleached-colour kind, and her heart leaps. Unable to bring herself to sit in one of Emily’s frilly floral armchairs, she sinks to the floor again and sifts through the shots. Her journalist’s eye is tuned to pick up odd emotional nuances among groups of wedgie-wearing, frizzy-haired 1960s diehards in washed-out psychedelic shirts and skirts who smile mechanically into the lens. Were they all saying cheese back then? Or had that free-love generation invoked sex to loosen lips? She has no idea. Nothing leaps out at her. There’s not a baby in sight. She finds two pictures of her father and puts them aside with the hatboxes.
    Late afternoon. Hot. Sunlight corkscrews off the water but not for much longer. Soon shadows will lengthen, casting a gentling haze over sea, sky and landscape. Back onshore in the Square, Sam and the rest of the Cook’s Basin community is gathering in groups of growling dissent . News of a luxury resort planned for Garrawi Park has rocketed around the Island. Even isolated bay residents, usually the last to hear the gossip, have been alerted to a travesty that everyone agrees will scar an already ecologically vulnerable coast beyond redemption. No bridge. No resort. Agreement is universal.
    Sam licks his lips, tasting the last of the beer on them, sticky and yeasty, leaving a gluey film on his tongue. He vows never to leave an emergency stash of the amber ale on board again. His head feels woozy. Thick and slow. He wanders over to the tap, turns it on full bore and shoves his head under the water, hoping the cold will shake off the booze. What kind of a warrior gets pissed before the battle even begins? The cold feels like a sharp blade cutting through his scalp. It’s all he can do not to yelp.
    â€˜You OK, Sam? You forget to wash your hair after work?’
    â€˜I’m good, Jimmy,’ he fibs. ‘Just clearing my head for business, mate. How’d you go this afternoon? Did you do a good job for Frankie?’
    â€˜Yeah, Sam. I was the best.’ Before Sam can inform him that self-praise is no recommendation, the kid goes on. Bouncing up and down in his mucky sandshoes, his iridescent clothes subdued by grime, spiky red hair gluey with the gel he applies in an almost religious ritual every morning, he points across the sun-struck water. ‘See her, Sam. She’s a beauty now. Better than a facelift, me mum says.’
    Sam squints into the distance. The Seagull is riding higher than usual after a three-day overhaul that knocked about a tonne of hitchhiking crustaceans off her underbelly.
    Sam turns back to the kid. ‘She looks good for another century, mate. Does Frankie need you again tomorrow or are you back on board the Mary Kay full-time as first mate?’
    Jimmy’s beams. ‘I’m with ya, Sam. Me and Longfellow. Reportin’ for duty. What time, Sam? What’s on?’
    Sam looks at the pup tucked in the crook of the kid’s arm. ‘Give your mum a hand in the morning and then report on the