Read Online Thirteen Pearls by Melaina Faranda - Free Book Online Page B

away a prickle of girly envy. I’d never be described as a Danish babe. Obviously because I wasn’t Danish, but also because I simply don’t rate in babe category – that rarified status belongs to people like Tash.
    â€˜So what happened to the Danish . . . um . . . girl?’
    â€˜Visa hassles.’ Leon twisted the spigot in his palm. He had big hands with thick, calloused fingers. ‘She had to go home to start her medicine degree anyway. So that’s why I’m here – saving to go see her.’
    â€˜Couldn’t you have earned more money fitting and turning than being an oyster hand?’
    Leon tilted his head, considering. His strong profile and green eyes made him look more lion-like than ever. He ’d been named well. Not for the first time, I wondered if the names we’re given at birth shape who we are and what we become, or if it’s the other way round. Leon was like a lion. Uncle Red had a red-hot temper on him. Kaito was a smooth mix of sea and stars . . .
    â€˜I like variety,’ Leon said. ‘It’s cool learning new things. I get bored once I know how to do something. And Red promised if I work through until March he ’ll let me choose a few exceptional grade pearls and have them set into earrings and a ring for Kristiana.’
    Kristiana. Sounded like a supermodel name. Unlike Edith – which is the sort of name for someone who wears a body cage and marries a gay Russian painter. I shook myself out of it. Who cared what Leon’s girlfriend looked like? I didn’t even want to think about that sort of stuff. I would be sailing solo (alone, by myself, without others) around the world – remember ?
    â€˜I’d better get on with this,’ I said, gesturing to the filthy dishes and cutting short the conversation. ‘Before Aran wakes up.’
    Leon’s smile evaporated as if disappointed that he wouldn’t get to keep talking about his brilliant supermodel Danish babe girlfriend. He nodded in the direction of Aran’s and my curtained off square. ‘Yeah, you gotta keep a real eye on the boy – he gets into everything. Red isn’t even sure if he can swim. And he had to take a few weeks off to look after him, so we ’re way behind.’

    The washing up took just under three and a half hours, judging by the dinky little clock with the mother-of-pearl Sydney Opera House in its centre.
    I could hardly believe that Aran, bless his filthy little cotton socks, had slept in long enough for me to finish. I flashed one last gloating look around the gleaming kitchen and headed over to the curtained partition.
    What was wrong with this scene?
    Two beds: both in a twist of sheets, one high, the other a trundle, with a wet patch on the higher bed, and . . . no sleeping child.
    Leon’s words, ‘Red’s not even sure if he can swim,’ echoed inside my brain, which had suddenly drained of anything approaching a sensible thought. Instead, I was filled with panic. Damn – how did he get past me?
    Then I realised that, for the last three and a half hours, I’d been singing and dancing with my iPod turned to top volume. Frankly, a herd of elephants with sticky-up or sticky-down trunks could have thundered past me and I wouldn’t have noticed.
    There was no time to peel off my wet clothes, now soaked with suds and nauseating varieties of grease, and I rushed outside. ‘Aran?’
    A kamikaze chook darted across my path, sending me bowling into a hibiscus.
    â€˜Aran!’
    This was the first time I’d seen the island in daylight – not counting the half-asleep trudge through the grainy dawn to the shower hut. Now, I pushed past the frangipani tree and darker, glossier shrubs that grew near the shed.
    It was . . . flat. Not a single discernible rise, or hump or bump, only scatterings of stunted eucalypts scratching a torturous existence out of the dry red soil.
    â€˜Aran!’ I