Free Sunlit Shadow Dance by Graham Wilson Page A

together to share their imaginations.
In that place he felt totally joined to her.
    In Week Two
they had drifted further south still following the coast, more
little villages with holiday accommodation, budget places, each for
a night or two. One day they had treated themselves to the ferry to
Great Keppel Island and had stayed there for three days, swimming
and snorkelling in the clear water and watching their children play
in the shallows. In Week Three they came more inland towards
Brisbane, stopping in towns like Bundaberg and Gympie, but finding
the city, as they approached it, to be too confronting for an
unfamiliar family with two small children. By Week Four they had
come back to the coast, this time to the Sunshine Coast.
    Here they
finally found this place which felt right; a holiday and caravan
park just a short distance from the town of Caloundra. The ocean
beaches were beautiful, there were sheltered inlets on the bay side
which were safe for small children, the people were friendly but
incurious, and they had been given a free demountable to live in
along with a modest wage for Vic, paid in cash in return for him
doing a few hours of caretaker and handyman duties each day. He
also did a bit of casual labouring nearby, the jobs coming by word
of mouth.
    There was
plenty of work and it was easy work for someone with his mechanical
skills; ground maintenance, welding and fabrication, fixing
lawnmowers and other small machines, maintaining the pool complex
and gardens. It was not a job for life but the pay was enough to
cover the daily living expenses and it gave then both a sense of
stability and security.
    He used the
name Vic Bennet, giving an impression of being married to keep life
simple. At the same time he avoided pieces of paper that could be
traced; the cash funded a day to day existence, meeting basic
living costs without the need for a verified identity
    For Janie, in
particular, this was a place to put down new roots. Her best friend
had become Thea, a single parent who lived in the demountable two
doors down. She had two children aged two and four, and supported
herself by making the beds and cleaning the units in the park.
    Now Janie also
had a part time job doing this too, covering days when Thea was
extra busy or not available. When neither was working they would
meet up for a slice of cake and a cup of tea, mostly at Thea’s
unit. During work, when required they could share the child minding
though Thea mostly brought her children from Unit to Unit as the
tidied them and Jane had started to do the same with her children
when Vic was not at home.
    Vic liked
Thea, but he was wary of her becoming too curious about their life.
He tried to skirt around the occasional questions she asked; about
where they were from or had lived and worked before. He just said
he came from Alice Springs and had both been living and working up
in the Cape before they got together. But Thea was a keen magazine
reader and TV watcher. This gave Vic bouts of anxiety, lest she
make the connection to such a well-covered media story.
    Vic found his
mind returning to their trip down the coast. Along the way, as they
had travelled, he had tried to make a weekly phone call to get news
of developments with the legal case in Darwin. At the same time he
would pass on news of Jane for parents and friends. Wherever
possible he used payphones to avoid his mobile lest it be
traced.
    His concern
was about a mole in the NT police or court system. His first
suspicions had been well founded; within a week of them leaving a
vague rumor had been aired about sightings of Susan, still alive,
in a town in north Queensland, fortunately with no location
specified. This story seemed to have more of a ring of truth than
the previous Susan sightings.
    At least there
were no new names and no current photos, his Janie now had her hair
cut in a short bob and her face had plumped out, so the ability to
link her to the Susan released from jail in Darwin