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exactly how many amid the bottletops and chocolate wrappers. But
the deal was, if I caught her lighting up before the kids had gone
down, she had to give it away.
Ah, only a minute ago, she lied. Taunting me.
I wasn t up to pursuing or cornering her. What was the point?
And anyway, I was too stirred up about what had happened in
Phil s office. Telling Sheena about Ranger would do me as much
good as chewing her out for being stoned again, but I couldn t help
myself. I had to get it out of me.
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BRIAN WESTLAKE
You ll never guess what happened, I said.
Sheena lay in her daze while I recounted the events of the
meeting, more for myself than for her.
The first thing that shocked Phil and me when Ranger burst
into the office was her attire. Normally Ranger bore out the truth
of what lurks in the back of every parent s mind, which is that our
children will go out of their way to destroy whatever beauty nature
has endowed them with. Ranger s face, normally, was a pincushion
of so many hoops and studs and death s heads that she could set
off a metal detector. Her hair, the same dark blonde as Mick s, was
dyed every shade of the rainbow between black and deep purple,
and looked like it d been cut by a blind shearer having an epileptic
fit. Her clothing, also black, was the type that cost a heavy premium
to have someone stick lit cigarettes into it and drag it under a
tractor. She d kept some Brisbane tattooist in business with a blight
of Japanese and Maori symbols up and down her arms, across her
neck, and who knows where else. Honestly, if that girl could have
given herself pimples and a goatee, she would.
Not this time, but. Ranger came into Phil s office with a manila
folder under her arm and a Kangazoo windjacket on her back. Her
hair was covered up under a Mick Lamington Yow! baseball cap.
She looked like one of the f.ing staff.
Ranger had come to claim her birthright. She d been to see a
probate lawyer, no less, and wanted to assert my rights . She couldn t
fool me and Phil this was nothing but a spoilt brat teenager getting
ahead of herself but at the same time, money does talk. Phil had
assumed he could control things pretty much unfettered, paying lip
service to Julie of course, but he expected the Lamington clan to sit
back as silent partners while he ran the business. Now Ranger was
acting anything but silent, haranguing Phil about this and that and
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The ENDANGERED L I ST
using legal baloney she must only have learnt an hour earlier. Phil
would have liked to beat her around her tea-strainer ears and give
her a kick in the pants to send her on her way, but he couldn t. Ranger
was his partner, his boss even as she let him know. And Ranger
was going to decide here was the pointy end of her monologue
who was taking over the lead role in the series. She and her lawyer
had already met with the Pioneer people and they d fallen into line.
We could check if we liked. So much for the task force.
The penny was kind of dropping for me. As I sat in the office
and watched Ranger take charge of proceedings, in the fancy dress
of her Kangazoo outfit and cap, I caught this amazing vision: the
Daughter Of The Hero takes over his mantle. All the goodwill the
public had shown towards Mick would flow, like an inheritance,
down to Ranger. She d keep the kids in the audience, because they d
identify with her, and she d keep the parents, because the mums
would see her as a daughter tragically left without a dad, risking
her life to keep the dream going, and the dads would perve on her
diving into swamps and waterholes in her wet T-shirt. We d have to
do something about the tatts, but they have procedures these days.
I could see it all happening, but it turned out that it was me,
not Ranger, getting ahead of himself. She got to her punchline:
And here s our new star.
Right on cue, like they d stage-managed it, the door opened and
in stepped Deano Rudd himself, complete with croc-skin vest
and black Akubra, glistening brown in the evening light, looking
like kangaroo hide stretched out on a trellis of p. and wind. He
was a fraud, he was Mick s enemy and nemesis and irritant, he d
drag the show down into the mud, and he had a f.ing newfound
American accent. But he was big in the States. And more impor-
tantly, as Ranger announced with a hand on his leather-clad thigh,
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BRIAN WESTLAKE
he was her new boyfriend. She curled into his side like Doris Day
into Rock Hudson. Phil and I sat there with our chins on our chests.
She was seventeen. Deano was thirty-two. We didn t have to say
it aloud.
Whaddaya mean? Ranger sneered. We got off after the funeral.
We re engaged.
I d needed some time to myself before going home because I was
still in a state of total paralysis. Ranger, who d never shown an iota
of interest in wildlife in general or her dad s great career in partic-
ular, had chosen the aftermath of his death to reinvent herself as
a perky little Miss Wildlife Warrior correction, Mrs Wildlife
Warrior. She had it all worked out. She was going to co-produce the
series with Phil, and Deano would be an even bigger star than Mick.
Eventually she d take some cameos in the show too, as Deano s
damsel in distress You know, sit in a croc s jaws and scream my
head off while he drags me out, she said, while Deano mugged
away behind her. (He said three-fifths of f.all during the whole
affair.) This was a takeover, all right. You ask me, that home-school-
ing wheeze has got a lot to answer for.
After I finished spilling it all, Sheena lit herself a fresh joint.
I couldn t stop her. Whatever you call it her grim hobby, her recre-
ational self-medication it was a f.ing tragedy that a certain event
five years ago had left her like this. She didn t know the way back
to undo it, and neither did I.
But much as I d have loved my wife to return to reality at least
for a couple of nights in a row, right now it was all I could do not to
join her in a choof. I was rocked to my core.
She took some long drags until the thing was half-smoked,
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and drawled, So, poor little Frosty, is there gunna be anything left
for you?
Ranger said, I said, and gulped. Ranger said I could have my
segment for the time being, and also do some rigging and location-
scouting. Behind-the-scenes stuff.
I couldn t force myself to say the rest. It had been humiliat-
ing beyond my wildest nightmares. This brat I d known since the
day she was born squalling and unsatisfied, this spoilt ungrateful
skid mark on her father s proud record, this embarrassment to her
mother and disappointment to all who knew her, this little Goth
freak, had pouted and purred at me: Poor old Frosty, we ll find
something for you to do, don t worry. Like I was some faithful old
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