Chapter 3, Summer 1998

It was the evening before Vicky Smith could speak to Missy's mum about her staying with them.

Temporarily, she had told herself, for she had waited at the end of the day to speak to her boss, but Mr. Ford had been called out to Henderson to look at what the geological survey that had brought up, delaying the fracking site there.

"Are you sure you're OK?" asked Harry McDaid, who was engineering manager at Overton. He leaned against the green transmission pipe. "I mean, it wasn't a pretty sight."

"That'll be my father," she told him, as they walked the sampling site. Tests were run there before the crude was piped to Philadelphia. Quality tests were run hourly. She nodded to the workers who came back, having visually tested the crude.

Now came analysis, that job of the chemists, although Vicky had barely known an assay that had not met specification.

"And you've somewhere to be?" McDaid continued. "Because, I've a spare - "

"Missy Cooper," Vicky told him, as she took the pressure readings from the seals around the crude connection head, "She said I can stay at hers."

"Because, you know," McDaid continued, "Your visa, and eve'y'thaang - Ford would not want to lose you, for the sake of somewhere to live." He leaned towards her, "Not after Eagle have lost a member of the board to their biggest rival." Vicky looked up and nodded.

The member of the board being her father, who was, technically, someone who was offering her a home.

And he knew it.

Because he wanted Vicky to abandon Eagle Star Oil and join him at Barnett, share with him the industrial knowledge and technical expertise she had gleaned from Eagle.

Which she was not prepared to do.

Had he been like this at Shell? Vicky didn't know. What she did know was that her father, whom she had idolised throughout her childhood, because of whom she had taken an apprenticeship in the oil industry, had betrayed her. First, by betraying her mum, second, over the house. Third, over the job out in Texas.

Vicky had been perfectly happy at BP; she had an engineering job lined up in Aberdeen working on the North Sea crude, after Fawley had paid for her degree.

But, she had listened to the man in her life who had had thirty years in the business. Only to be left feeling like an utter fool when she found out what he had done to her mother, and his claim on the house. Vicky felt trapped, owned. And she didn't like it one bit.

Andrew Kearney had got the job at Aberdeen instead, after she withdrew. He had trained with her, at Fawley. She had got on with him, at first. Before he had shown himself to be an utter, arrogant, scheming pig.

Vicky shook her head. The fact was she had listened to her father, all for her to come out to this hot, dry place, the East Texas oilfields, into what was - to be honest - a really good move. More experience, a much bigger scale. And fewer climate protestors threatening to firebomb her home. It came with the territory - if you worked for an oil company you were told very early on that you might be a target. Not in Texas - it was a state that had boomed because of oil.

And, though her father had secured her an interview, Robert Ford, Harry McDaid and the rest of them had seen her work; Vickyhad proved she hadn't been given the job through nepotism; she was no Daddy's girl.

"Will he be here tomorrow?" Vicky asked, walking towards the crude tower. They collected the flow and pressure data from the technicians who monitored the pipeline - these were collected by hand by the two engineer managers, today being Vicky and Harry.

"Pra'bly," Harry drawled, who was now working three miles from where he had been born and brought up. "You know whaat he's laak."

"I do," Vicky conceded. Because she knew that the workers at Eagle Star had company accommodation somewhere.

She had already shared with her boss what she suspected her father's intentions were regarding her following him to Barnett Oil, and had witnessed her humiliating eviction as a result of her father's vengefulness. He would likely be sympathetic to a request for accommodation for her loyalty. Ford, like McDaid, had followed their fathers into Eagle and so valued loyalty.

And Vicky liked being there, and in Texas. It was true that she had taken a little time to settle, and that people had not understood her accent at first. She hadn't realised just how many things had different names, besides the ones she had learned off TV shows and the like. Biscuits were not what she thought they were going to be; shops charged tax on top of the ticket price. Nearly everyone went to a church of one kind or another and didn't have any problem with making their faith known to people around them.

And everyone talked. If they weren't talking about themselves, they were talking about other people, of the football, which, of course, wasn't soccer. Vicky had been caught out by the writing of date: month-day, instead of day-month, even though she was aware of that difference. Cooking and weight and temperatures and pressure were all in imperial measures. It was all different, and interesting and fun.

Or it had been, before her father had betrayed her. Now, she felt alone and vulnerable and a little afraid. But Vicky was determined to get past all of this, to thrive on her own. And, ultimately, this meant avoiding her father and the woman he replaced her mother with.

"I can take the figures," Vicky told Harry, as he collected the last clipboard. "I've got to wait for Missy Cooper as it is."

"Well, if you're sure," Harry told her. "Y'don't have to come all the way out here tomorrow to speak to Ford - just call him."

"I could," agreed Vicky. Because she couldn't live on Missy Cooper's camp bed for the rest of her life and she was damn sure that her father wasn't going to get his hands on her mother's house.

She had a plan, and it involved a favour from a family member back home. And it involved her continuing to work at Eagle Star, mainly because it paid her well, so she could afford her plan.

But also, because Eagle Star was not Barnett - she would work for no company who chose to employ Tom Smith. No, her father had presumed too much and shown what he was really like.

"I'm sure," Vicky told Harry again, and took the clipboards from him.

"Werll, gd'naat," Harry said. "Enjoy Medford. See ya Monday."

"Night, Harry. See you Monday."

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"When would be the best time to talk to your mum about giving her some money?" Missy Cooper looked across from the steering wheel to Vicky and frowned.

"Money?"

"For staying here. Until I can get a place sorted?"

But Missy shook her head. "I like you staying with us," she told Vicky. "Do you have to move out already?"

And it was going to be difficult renting alone in a different country without her father as a guarantor. The debt for the rent had gone down in her name even though she had paid it off after leaving the apartment - Missy had driven her out to Jacksonville to pay the company directly. It meant her wages for the rest of the month were effectively gone, and it would take another month to begin again.

The more often she though about it, the more her anger at her father flared. If she could get company accommodation, that would fix it, and though the Coopers were kind, Vicky would never know how secure the arrangement was.

"I don't have to," Vicky conceded. "I have some money that I think your mother should have."

"Well, Mom will done dinner tonight - you will eat with us, won't you?"

"Yes," Vicky replied. "And I will speak to her."

"Well, alright," Missy replied. "I like that in you, Limey, your determination an' all."

"Limey?" Vicky asked, grinning. "Really, Miss? I thought we were friends!"

"We are!" Missy joked back. "That's why I called yer "Limey". There're plenny of other thangs I could'a called ya!"

If Sheldon had been in the car with them at that particular point, he might have brought up the etymology of the word, "Limey" and explain that it derived from sailors in the 18th Century eating citrus fruits, all of which were called "limes", and that a similar situation occurred with "sauerkraut" to give the slightly disrespectful term, "Krauts".

But he wasn't.

That information wasn't imparted by Missy's twin brother until many months later.