Contemporary fiction
From PenguinWiki
Book One
Part One
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The heat was like a blanket, numbing her senses. Would the rains never come? Even here, high over the river on a rope bridge swaying in the so-called breeze, Natasha was stifled and wished she'd never agreed to this executive training course.It was an utter waste of time. In a Sydney summer with the evidence of the worsening drought all around, the crisp brown grass and the low level of the river, it seemed crazy to be attempting an obstacle course in an area which threatened to burst into a bushfire with every passing parched day.
She pushed back her hair which had come loose from her cap and looked to the beginning of the bridge to see whether the rest of her team had caught up. Harry and Martin were not strong on collaboration and she had finally decided to go it alone preferring to rely on herself. At least this way she avoided the predictable male jibes. The bridge was the last obstacle and once completed they were supposed to return to the seminar room where they had started the course.
Perhaps tomorrow she would be grouped with someone else: Nicola or the new manager in accounts who at least had the advantage of novelty. Just then she heard Harry and Martin and felt the bridge sway as they began to cross. She took the last few steps and was relieved to be on solid ground.
Hurrying back to the conference centre through the bush, she wondered how anyone with an attitude like Harry's could be working in HR: he clearly thought that she had only got her position because of affirmative action. The only good part of his unwary conversation was that she would enjoy reporting it back in her course evaluation and hoping that it would be a black mark against him. Her thought were interrupted by a sharp cry from the track behind her...
What happens now? A) "He's fallen!" It was Martin's voice.
B) Martin sees Natasha and accuses her of sabotaging the rope bridge.
