Read Online Smoke in the Room by Emily Maguire - Free Book Online

nose and long, tangled blonde hair. ‘Can you help me?’ she said. ‘I need to buy a train ticket to Wollongong. I’ve got family there. Just need to get the money together for the ticket. If you had a couple of dollars . . .’
    Graeme opened his wallet and counted his cash. He slipped three dollars – enough for a latte – into his pocket, then handed the other forty-four dollars and fifty-five cents to the woman. He walked away as quickly as he could and arrived at work panting.
    When he entered the work kitchen, he was surprised to see Jenny, Mike and Sherry huddled around the kettle. He had not heard anybody speaking when he paused to the left of the doorway and listened just a moment ago. He had thought it safe to enter.
    None of them was speaking now, either, just standing in a tight circle, Jenny looking at Mike, Mike looking at the floor, Sherry looking at the doorway and at Graeme standing in it.
    â€˜Good morning,’ he said.
    Mike nodded, then turned and began fussing with the tea canisters. The sight of his soft, pale hands lifting first one canister then the next, holding them up and pretending to read labels he must have read thirty times before, made Graeme’s jaw clench.
    â€˜Just the man we need,’ Jenny said, walking towards him. ‘We were talking about Jaswinda.’
    â€˜Oh?’
    â€˜We think you should give her some time off,’ said Mike, still worrying over the tea canisters as though his ostentatiously healthy body would be affected differently by black, green, white or bloody chai.
    â€˜What? Why?’
    Jenny blinked. ‘Why?’
    â€˜Yes.’
    â€˜Graeme, her mother died on the weekend. You didn’t know?’
    â€˜No.’ Half a week of interactions with Jaswinda ran through his head. ‘What happened? Was she ill?’
    â€˜She’s been dying for six months,’ Sherry said and gave him a weird, twisted smile. ‘You know her father is sick, too? That she’s spent the last year caring for them both in between work and the kids and everything else?’
    â€˜I had no idea,’ Graeme said. ‘She never told me.’
    â€˜She talks about her parents all the time,’ Mike said.
    Jenny gave Graeme an apologetic smile. ‘Well. Anyway. She’s an absolute mess, but she won’t ask for time off because she thinks we can’t do without her.’
    â€˜We can’t.’
    â€˜I told you,’ Mike said.
    â€˜Well, can we?’ Graeme said.
    Sherry shook her head at nobody in particular and went to fill the kettle. Mike opened his palms to Jenny who gave him a look Graeme could not interpret.
    â€˜The thing is, Graeme,’ Jenny said, ‘you’ll have to do without her for an awfully long time while she’s recovering from the stroke she’s due to have any day.’
    â€˜She’s attending a visa hearing this morning. I’ll talk to her when she gets back.’ Graeme turned and left the room, wondering if he should go up the road for a coffee or wait a few minutes and try the break room again.
    Just after noon, Sherry buzzed Graeme to tell him Jaswinda was in the kitchen. ‘And Graeme,’ she said, ‘try and remember that her mother just died.’
    â€˜Isn’t that the reason behind this whole thing?’
    â€˜Yeah, I just meant, try and be . . .
you
know.’
    She meant he should be warmer. He knew this because it was what people always meant when they told him how to
be
. And he knew – because gossip always got back to the person concerned, even when the person was as out of the social loop as Graeme – that he had a reputation as a
cold fish
. It had always perplexed him. The ability to keep his cool had served him well over thirty-plus years in the field, but being calm in a crisis did not make one cold and so there must be something else about him. Something which, despite his lifelong dedication to