The situation was not uncommon. Most young Palm Islander women gravitated to Townsville and many were employed as domestics or chambermaids or such. They were discovered to be pleasant and well behaved for the most part, but not particularly reliable as after a while they were prone to go walkabout. Perhaps due to a sense of captivity or claustrophobia, no-one really knew the reason.

It hadn’t taken long for Val and Edie to become the closest of friends. To others they appeared chalk and cheese, a fact that was regularly commented upon, but in actuality they were two of a kind. Bold to the point of brash and utterly candid, they recognised in each other a kindred spirit.

Val was always the boss, certainly, Edie the first to acknowledge her own subordinate position – it had taken Val a degree of persuasion to stop being ‘Missus Val’ – but there were some occasions when Edie stalwartly refused to budge, thus rendering Val powerless. The principal of these was the ‘live-in’ situation. Val simply could not understand why Edie, while retained as a full-time laundress and chambermaid, would not live on the hotel premises, but chose instead to arrive early in the morning and leave late in the afternoon – exactly to and from where, Val had no idea.

‘I always do daily,’ Edie replied upon first being queried, ‘never live-in.’

‘Why?’

‘Don’t like live-in,’ Edie said. ‘Too locked up, like bein’ back on Palm Island.’

Time and again Val would try to insist Edie take one of the upstairs rooms, but the answer was always the same.

‘No, no, need more space. I like space.’

‘So where the hell are you living, then?’ Val demanded. ‘Are you camping out in the bush or what?’

But the more demanding Val became, the more lackadaisical was Edie’s response. She would just offer an unconcerned shrug.

‘For God’s sake, woman,’ Val would insist, exasperated, ‘you have a child! You can’t just live blackfella style when you have a child.’

‘Why not? My Jill, she blackfella, too. And we like our “freedom of lifestyle”, we do.’ Edie eked out the phrase. She’d heard it only recently and she relished the sound of it.

‘Jill needs to go to school, that’s bloody well why not. Christ alive, she’s nearly thirteen years old!’

‘She can read and write.’ Whenever Jill’s name came into the argument, Edie would get defensive. ‘They teach her on Palm Island.’

‘She needs more than that and you bloody know it! If you won’t send her to school, then I’ll teach her myself.’

Edie finally gave in on that one, allowing Val to tutor her daughter several times a week, Jill even staying overnight at the hotel on occasions – Val was already the girl’s second mother, so where was the harm? But Edie steadfastly refused to stay at the hotel herself.