‘Oh.’ He hadn’t known it actually. He hadn’t really taken much notice of Jill, apart from the fact she was a good dancer. ‘Well, so many girls are, aren’t they,’ he said with a rakish grin. ‘I can’t be blamed for that, can I?’

Val wanted to slap his smug face, but she controlled the urge. ‘I’m warning you, Baz,’ she said evenly, ‘if you fuck that girl, then you fuck any business you and I might have. You’ll be out of here like a shot. Do you get my drift?’

‘Yep. Sure do, Boss.’ His smile remained. Val didn’t frighten him. In fact, he rather liked goading her from time to time. ‘And I promise, no bedding the little brown girl, cross my heart and hope to die.’ With his finger, he made the sign of a cross on his shirtfront. ‘Can I go now?’

‘Yeah, piss off.’

Baz gave a cheeky wave and left. He would honour the promise, simply because his deal with Val was too valuable to risk. And it would be no hardship. Jill had never featured as a prospective conquest. He was interested to learn of the girl’s infatuation though. If he’d registered that himself he probably would have bedded her, just for a bit of fun; it was nice to be adored. The warning had been timely.

He couldn’t help wondering why Val was taking such a profound interest in Jill’s sex life. Sure, she was motherly towards her ‘girls’ as she called Betty and Jill, but they were twenty years old, for God’s sake! And they worked in a bar! They’d know the score. And if they didn’t, it was about bloody time they did.

Jeez, you can’t tell me Betty hasn’t been around a bit, he thought. Shit, I wouldn’t half mind bedding her!

Why the interest in Jill, he wondered. What’s the connection?

Val’s connection to Jill was stronger than even Jill herself was aware, despite the fact the two had known each other since she was a child. Val was her mother’s best friend who had seen them through hard times and Jill loved her. Val was like a second mother. To Jill, the connection was that simple. But Jill didn’t know the depth of the bond that existed between Val Callahan and Edie Yiramba.

The two had first met in 1934, six months after Val’s arrival in Townsville and two years after Edie had been released from Palm Island, together with her ten-year-old child. Edie’s daughter had been the result of a rape she’d suffered by a white man during the early days of her twelve-year incarceration, and she’d named the child Jill, after the kind, white nurse who ran the female dormitory. Jill knew nothing of all this. But Val did. Edie had told Val everything.