Flashpoint by Felicity Young Page B

what would Mum have thought of you? she asked herself. She decided to put that thought to the back of her mind. Angelo took her hand and gave it a squeeze, looking at her with earnest brown eyes. ‘Are you glad you’re here now?’ he asked. He leaned towards her then, and brushed her lips with a soft kiss before reaching to cup her breast. She deepened the kiss, enjoying the unfamiliar sensation that tingled from her centre to her toes. Finally she drew back, blinking away the tears.
    â€˜Yes, but I’m not going to tell him that.’
    â€˜Did you manage to get rid of that geek Cindy?’
    â€˜Yup,’ she said, smiling now. ‘I annoyed her so much she ended up wanting to bash me even more than that bible she was always carrying on about.’
    Angelo laughed. ‘Do you think he’d ever let you come to Toorrup with me? I have a mate who lives there and a key to his house. He’s hardly ever at home.’ Angelo grinned and continued to massage her breast through her thin T-shirt.
    â€˜Not likely; he hardly even lets me out of the house. He’s not going to let me go to Toorrup with someone who’s still on P-plates.’
    In her mind she could hear him. ‘I’m not letting you out with someone who has spiked hair and a ring through his eyebrow!’ The imagined scene made her smile. She wondered if Angelo had any tatts under those overalls. The shock value of tatts would be even better than the eyebrow ring.
    â€˜Hey, Angelo, have you ever tried drugs?’
    His hand dropped from her breast. ‘Is this truth or dare or something?’
    She shrugged. ‘I’m just curious. I figure that whenpeople have a relationship, start to go out and everything, they should tell each other stuff like that. I used to smoke cones in Sydney,’ she said, hoping to impress him, to seem older than she was. ‘I was wondering if you knew how to go about getting them over here?’
    He shook his head. ‘Nah, that’s not how I operate, Rubes. I never buy them. Besides …’ He waggled his eyebrows. ‘There’s better things than drugs, I reckon.’
    â€˜But you’ve had mull, right?’
    â€˜Sure, hasn’t everyone?’
    â€˜And if you were given some, you’d like it, right?’
    â€˜Well yeah, but I wouldn’t waste my money buying it.’ He gave her a puzzled look, then smiled and tapped on the side of her head. ‘What’s going on in that pretty little head of yours?’
    Ruby smiled.
    ***
    Cam left the station when his phone calls home remained unanswered. Ruby wasn’t in the house and the dog was gone. He guessed the park, but why hadn’t she rung? Was it because she was meeting that boy?
    She could still have rung. Something must have happened to her.
    From his house he jogged down the rough path to the park and by the time he got there he’d worked himself up into a panic; paperwork and Vince were forgotten, the Bell case might never have existed. He came to a halt alongside the wobbly Lion’s Club sign that dedicated the park to the citizens of Glenroyd. As he leaned against its wooden post to catch his breath he gasped in the muddy river smells that wafted up the embankment.
    The park sloped down to the drying riverbed, connected to the stunted scrubland on the other sideby a metal bridge he always used to think looked like a dinosaur’s backbone. Now it was just an ugly metal bridge. Knotted ropes and swings with tyre seats hung limply in the afternoon air, and squiggles of heat slithered up from the tarmac wicket, making the ground quiver. He squinted through the heat haze. The park was deserted. Except for Ruby and a boy sitting on a bench overlooking the river.
    Fleur raced over to jump at his legs. He picked her up and headed towards the bench. Ruby’s hair shone in the sun like corn silk. The head of her male companion was no more than a spiky silhouette.
    Cam