Page 121 of Queenslander
“I’ll talk to her. No promises.”
“Thanks. Congratulations again.”
Ronnie added Nev’s sister to her contacts, then opened a bag of potato crisps. Nev must have given Taylor her number when she went to Auckland for the graduation last month. She was flattered that Taylor thought she could make Nev do anything she didn’t want to do.
Another incoming call. This time it really was Nev.
“If you’re driving, pull over,” Nev said.
“I’m here at work, at your house. Where are you?”
“Down at Johnson’s place. Your luck’s turning. He wants to sell those scrubby hectares he’s been grazing cattle on.”
“Johnson? Don’t joke about that.”
“The place is a dump. It isn’t worth a penny over forty.”
“Hand me over,” she said.
A pause, then a deeper voice. The grouchy neighbor. “Madonna?”
“How much do you want for it?”
“For the lot without the house or barn, fifty. No inspection. As is.”
“I’ll take it. I’ll go to my bank in the morning.”
“Livestock not included. What bank do you use?”
Ronnie told him.
“I’ll meet you there at ten,” he said.
Nev’s voice again. The neighbor had handed the phone back. “He would have given it to you for forty.”
“He still might.”
The next morning, she took Nev with her to the bank for moral support.
It turned out that wasn’t necessary. A man in a tie said she qualified for a loan. She thought she had misheard him. This week kept getting better and better.
A bigger man in overalls arrived in the conference room behind the bank. She recognized him, had seen him riding his tractor down the road. He had short grey hair and a gut, looked like he had been out riding the tractor earlier that morning. Johnson had one of those closed, judgmental faces that she could imagine muttering nasty things.
He shook her hand. “Can you pay?”
She could.
She played hard ball. He cracked, gave it to her for forty, without inspection or ecological review.
In the truck, Nev took the papers from her lap, then read them out loud before starting the engine. “Look at you, adulting.”
Ronnie leaned forward in the passenger’s seat, head in her hands, then burst out laughing. “I feel like I just robbed a bank.”
“More like the other way around.”
Butterflies in her stomach as they drove towards her new property.
Her friend turned off the Gillies onto the unpaved Boar Pocket Road, then stopped in front of a rusty cattle gate beside a boulder that faced the road. Two vertical iron pipes with a third welded across the top flanked the old gate.
