Gift of the Gab Read Online Free

coming towards me.
    My brain twitched with fear but it didn’t switch off.
    Who was it?
    One of the TV people?
    Dermot Figgis in a hire car?
    Luckily our driveways really long because it goes right through the orchard, so I had time to duck behind a tree before the car got close.
    As it bumped past I had a look inside. There was only one person, a bloke a bit older than Dad with black curly hair and a suit.
    Dermot Figgis’s lawyer?
    A TV producer who’d been to see Dad about the screen rights to my life of crime?
    I hurried up to the house, my chest tight and not just because the watermelon juice in my T-shirt was drying all stiff.
    Claire was in the kitchen washing up and keeping baby Erin amused with the timer on the oven.
    â€˜G’day, Ro,’ she said. ‘What’s that in your hair?’
    I looked at my reflection in the oven door.
    â€˜Lettuce,’ I said. ‘Don’t worry, I’m planning to hose it off.’
    Claire grinned. She’s got really good at understanding sign language since she married Dad. Less than a year and she knows ‘planning’. Not bad.
    Erin gave a big chortle and pointed to my head. Two-month-old babies think soggy lettuce on the scalp is the funniest thing they’ve ever seen.
    â€˜Who was that who just left?’ I asked, trying to keep my hands steady.
    Claire hesitated, but only for a sec.
    â€˜Bloke Dad used to know,’ she said. ‘He’s passing through town. Dropped in for a cuppa.’
    I concentrated on tickling Erin under the chin so Claire wouldn’t see how relieved I felt.
    â€˜Dad’s outside,’ said Claire. ‘Spraying the back paddock.’
    I wasn’t surprised to hear that. Dad always has a spray on Mum’s anniversary. Spraying perks him up when he’s feeling down. He sprays on the day his mum died, too, and every time a big bill arrives. When Erin peed on his Carla Tamworth records, he sprayed for about six hours.
    I took a deep breath and hoped there hadn’t been any other visitors before the one I’d seen. TV journalists, for example, or motor-vehicle insurance investigators.
    I went out to the back paddock. Dad was on the tractor. He must have fixed it because it was hauling the big blower up and down the rows of trees as good as new.
    Dad looked at me through the misty clouds of spray.
    I looked back anxiously, trying to tell whether he was angry or upset. I couldn’t see his face. When Dad sprays he pulls his cowboy hat down over his eyebrows and ties a scarf round his nose and mouth. He reckons it’s just as good as a spray suit and doesn’t make him feel like a Martian.
    I could tell from the way he was sitting that everything was OK. Dad’s one of those people who, when they’ve heard something that makes them angry or depressed, their shoulders sort of hunch up and they hardly ever steer a tractor with their feet like Dad was doing now.
    I felt wobbly with relief.
    Dad waved and told me to stand back while he finished spraying.
    â€˜OK,’ I said. ‘Then we’ll get the album out and look at photos of Mum.’
    That’s another good thing about having a dad who can speak with his hands. You can have a conversation even when he’s got a scarf over his mouth and you’ve got a two hundred horsepower blower roaring away next to your ear.
    I stood back and watched Dad blasting the root weevil, plus any blue mould, codling moths and apple scab that happened to be in the area.
    They wouldn’t have known what hit them.
    Just like I didn’t know what hit me a few minutes later.
    Dad finished the last row, switched everything off and strolled towards me, tipping his hat back and pulling his scarf down.
    â€˜G’day, Tonto,’ he said. ‘I was worried about you. Thought Dermot Figgis might have clogged up the car wash and flooded the town.’
    My insides dropped, but only a little way because Dad was hugging me so