The Search Read Online Free PDF Page A

the engine was a no-go, wouldn’t it?’
    ‘Yeah. Right. Whatever!’
    Nathan shrugged and went off to make his famous Nathan-dough, which involved a lot of muscling activity with the flour-fat-and-water mixture, and made him feel good. Flick never made him feel good. He thought that she was the Ice Queen at Coolini Beach and the Kayah Cafe with a tongue more abrasive than heavy-grade sandpaper, and she was going to get a big payback for it. He’d been planning and scheming ever since she’d turned him down flat in front of his mates when he’d asked her out on a date. Stuck-up bimbo.
    Nathan pummelled the dough in time to the thump, thump, thump of some ska beat pumping out from the CD player in the corner. He liked music while he worked, not the soft sentimental stuff thatthe girls liked, but the full-on adrenaline pump action of top ska musos. He felt he was giving his muscles a workout as he kneaded the dough into a satisfying pliancy. He twisted one lump quite viciously, at the same time wishing it was Felicity London’s neck.
    ‘London Bridge is falling down,’ he sang to the music, ‘falling down, oh, falling down. London bridge is falling down, my fair lady!’
    Completely unaware that she was being strangled in Nathan’s mind, Flick was madly serving customers. She wondered if she should suggest wearing rollerblades to Kay, because it seemed to take forever to trudge in and out with trays of food plus zoom back behind the counter to serve the impatient customers who wanted magazines and dog food and packets of instant two-minute noodles and chocolate milkshakes and tent pegs and a bag of whitebait and have you got any ice and twenty bucks of super please and one burger with the lot, hold the onions.
    She’d need to talk to Kay about this. It seemed to her that it would be far better to take turns, Liz behind the counter and Flick waiting tables for an hour or so, then they could swap round. Kay had everyone doing everything, and if things got even more hectic Nathan was expected to strip off his chef’s apron and start being a petrol jock at the bowser.
    There were more staff starting at the weekend and if they were all trying to do everything it would be one big mess! They’d be tripping over each other and getting orders muddled. Tempers would be frayed and the customers would cop some real grief, which wasn’t good business practice. Yes, she’d have to try to talk to Kay.
    Kay wasn’t the kind of person you could argue with, however. She had her own, set way of doing things, and rightly so because it was her business. But this was the first year that Cam wasn’t helping out, as he’d got a job driving the Elgas truck doing deliveries round the coast a few months before, and he couldn’t just chuck it in for the summer period. Plus he wasn’t eligible for holidays yet, either. According to Liz, what usually happened as far as she’d known was that Cam had done a lot of the heavy work, lugged crates and served petrol and filled gas bottles, while Kay had run the food and grocery side of things.
    Kay liked to do everything herself, which of course was impossible, and she didn’t seem to have much clue about how to delegate jobs. But she was a fair boss to work for, and as the evening dinner crowd began to roll through the doors, she kicked into an even faster mode, cooking burgers, making chips, heating lasagne in the microwave, slicingmore ham, and generally behaving like a miniature cyclone.
    Nathan was churning out multi-toppinged pizzas like a machine, and Flick felt as though her feet were on fire and her head was going to explode. It seemed like a year since she’d been on the beach, eating her lunch and enjoying the sunshine.
    ‘One regular Kayah Special with extra cheese,’ Nathan yelled, sliding a cardboard pizza container along the counter. ‘One small Vegetarian and one family Marinara.’
    Two more containers followed. Cam was supposed to do the pizza deliveries but he was still