The Girl in the Hard Hat Read Online Free PDF Page A

wasn’t his?’
    Her mother looked away. ‘We tried to have more children but couldn’t. When you were around six years old, Parry had himself checked out. He discovered he couldn’t be a father.’
    Wendy’s ears tingled. The timing made complete sense. ‘So that’s when he had me exiled to boarding school. Couldn’t stand the sight of me, could he?’
    ‘Oh, for goodness’ sake.’ Her mother dismissed her with a wave of her hand. ‘You make it all sound so sordid, when it was really nothing like that. It’s just the way of the world, darling. People sometimes do things to survive. You can’t live on love and fresh air, you know. Nobody does anything for nothing. Remember that.’
    How could she forget it?
    It was the first of the many fruitless arguments that had followed. Some with her mother, some with her adoptive father. Her parents seemed to raise more questions than they answered. When she tried to enquire after her biological father’s whereabouts, they said they didn’t know. When she asked about his origins, his personality, his relationship with her mother, they said they had forgotten all that information long ago. After he had disappeared, they’d both allowed him to fade from their memories.
    Yeah right!
    She didn’t trust them. Why should she, when they had lied to her most of her life?
    She didn’t take the job in Port Hedland but instead stayed in Perth to resolve things with her family. It was becoming apparent that all of Parry’s relatives had known of her adoption. Her grandmother, her aunties, even some of her cousins. After all, Parry hadn’t married her mother Helen until after she was born. No one had seen fit to tell her, though – much easier to just keep her in the dark. She was furious.
    Furious and betrayed.
    She had expected her mother to act differently too. After all, she was supposed to love her, right? Surely she would understand how much pain this revelation had caused her daughter and at least try to ease some of it. It seemed inconceivable to her that her mother could just forget someone who had played such a significant role in her life.
    ‘You must be able to tell me something about him. You were his lover. You can’t ask me to believe that you remember nothing.’
    Her mother had blushed deep red but words that seemed torn from her by force finally came out. ‘Your biological father was a free spirit. A drifter, who couldn’t stay in one place. He loved the outback and lived from one mine to the next. He worked in many towns as a welder. Even when he had that terrible accident on the Pilbara, he still wouldn’t give up his career.’
    ‘An accident?’
    Her mother looked uncomfortable, like she’d said too much. But after a moment’s hesitation, she told Wendy the rest of the story anyway. ‘He lost a couple of toes on his right foot while working at a steel mill near Karratha. He dropped an angle grinder on it.’
    Wendy’s eyes widened. ‘Ouch.’
    ‘You don’t see my point,’ her mother chastised her. ‘He was still willing to go back to work. But when it came to love, family and commitment . . .’ She snorted. ‘He didn’t want to be tied to me or, I’m afraid, to a possible son or daughter. You need to let it go. It was better that he left and I married someone else.’
    ‘But who was he? What was his name?’
    Finally her mother gave her a first name and a vague physical description. It wasn’t much, but it was a start.
    The start of a search.
    Her parents were against the endeavour but Wendy couldn’t be satisfied with so vague a history. How many more shocks were there around the corner? She couldn’t relax. All she wanted now was the truth, so that her world could never again be ripped out from under her like it had that day on the phone.
    So she put her whole life on hold.
    For six months she’d searched for the drifter who was her father – driving from town to town in northern Australia. She was now more at home on the road