by Kylie Ladd
‘That bastard!’ Morag stormed out of the office, banging the door behind her.
Amira sprang to her feet. ‘Is everything OK? Are the boys alright?’
‘They’re fine,’ Morag spat out. ‘Which is more than I can say for Andrew once I get my hands on him.’ She went down the verandah steps in a single stride, thundering towards the beach. Amira had to jog to keep up.
‘What happened?’ she asked. ‘Why did he call?’
‘To dump Macy on me, that’s why.’ Morag stopped abruptly and spun around to face Amira, eyes blazing. ‘She got into trouble at school, just for a change. She’s a soloist with the choir, and they’re rehearsing over the holidays for some eisteddfod. She wasn’t on stage when she was meant to be, and when the music teacher went looking for her she found her in the boys’ dressing room with the lead guitarist.’
‘That’s not so bad—’ Amira began.
‘I haven’t finished,’ Morag said, holding up her hand. ‘She was already on a warning. Apparently it’s not the first time this has happened, plus she failed most of her mid-year exams—she never studies—and the school had already told her that if she made one false step she was out. Knowing Macy she wouldn’t have believed them, but they stuck to their word and threw her out of the production. So she fumes off home to see if Janice—who’s on the board there—can wangle her back her spot, but Janice has had it with her and all her carry-on, and tells her she deserves it. Macy isn’t used to Janice not taking her side, so she screams at her mother and tells her she hates her and that she’s going to stay with Andrew instead—only of course when she gets to our house, no one’s there.’
‘So?’ Amira asked. She was barely keeping up. ‘She’ll just have to go back to Janice’s, won’t she?’
‘That’s what I’d have thought,’ Morag said grimly. ‘But you don’t know the hold she has on Andrew. She rings him in tears, tells him everyone is against her and they’ve all jumped to conclusions, that she hasn’t done anything wrong. He felt so guilty that he wasn’t there for her that he booked her a flight.’
‘To Tasmania, to join him and the boys?’ Amira said, confused.
‘I wish,’ seethed Morag. ‘No, they’re too far into the hike and she couldn’t catch up to them. Instead my beloved husband had the great idea, without consulting me, of sending her here, on the only break I’ve had by myself in fourteen years.’
‘Here?’ echoed Amira.
‘Macy’s joining us,’ Morag said. ‘She flies into Broome tomorrow.’
Wednesday
The lagoon shimmered in the morning haze, blue and white and beautifully, perfectly deserted. Tess paused at the end of the track leading out of the scrub, drinking it in. It was like a child’s picture of what a beach should be, all broad lines and crayon-bright colours: the crescent of sand, the azure water, a yellow sun unobscured by clouds. She wasn’t religious—her mother hadn’t raised her to believe in anything other than herself—but there was something about this place, about the combination of land, sea and sky that made her want to drop to her knees, to bow her head. She closed her eyes in a moment of pure gratitude, then sprinted towards the shallows, small puffs of silica rising in her wake.
After her swim she headed for the rocks at the northern end of the beach and positioned herself on a large, smooth slab where she could lie down and dry off. Though it was still early, the stone had already been warmed by the sun, and Tess stretched out her limbs, soaking up the heat. This was what it must feel like to be a lizard, she thought, flicking out her tongue as if to catch a fly, imagining the march of scales down her spine and across her back.
‘I’m glad you moved. I was just beginning to wonder if you were dead.’
Tess sat up, shading her eyes. It was Tia. She’d snuck up without Tess hearing her.
‘I was hoping you’d come,’ Tess said. ‘Did you bring the gear?’
Tia held up two handlines in response, already baited. She passed one to Tess and sat down beside her.
‘Quiet here,’ she said. ‘Where are all your mates?’ Her sinker slipped into the water without making a splash.
‘Still asleep, I guess,’ Tess replied. Janey and Bronte had slept in their own rooms last night, with their mothers. Bronte had told her she was jetlagged and needed to go to bed straight after dinner; Janey had simply said that there was no way she was spending another night on somebody’s floor. Tess hadn’t minded. She’d be spending all day with them, and their absence had given her the chance to come to the beach and meet Tia, as she did almost every morning before breakfast. She’d hardly seen her since the others arrived. ‘We’re going to Wajarrgi round eleven for lunch and a tour. Why don’t you join us?’
Tia shook her head, peering over into the water to check her line for snags. ‘Nah. Got other things to do.’
‘What other things?’ Tess grumbled, slightly stung by the rejection. ‘Changing your brothers’ nappies? Sitting under the tree outside the store?’
Tia’s nostrils flared slightly, but her face remained as flat and impassive as the line of the horizon.
‘Jago said he might come up.’
Tess was silent. She wasn’t sure she liked Jago. He’d been nice enough to her on the few occasions when she’d met him at Kalangalla, and he had invited her along on that trip to Middle Lagoon. But there was something about the way he put his arm around Tia, something . . . proprietorial, she thought, trying out the word, which she had recently come across in one of her books. It was a good one. She’d looked it up in the dictionary in her mother’s classroom. There was something, too, about the way Tia closed herself off from Tess when she was with him, how she never told her anything about what went on between them, as if she wanted to keep it to herself. Tess gave herself a mental shake. Maybe she did want to keep it to herself. Not everyone was like Janey, who had absolutely no concept of privacy. A fish jumped out of the water just in front of where their lines bobbed, then disappeared with a splash.
‘Hey!’ shouted Tia. ‘Don’t tease us! Get on my hook or go away!’
Tess giggled. It was easy to be with Tia; easier than with Janey. They could just sit, they didn’t have to endlessly analyse or bitch or compare. Tia was probably smart not to tell her about Jago.
‘Do you think fish know what’s happening when they do that?’ Tia asked. ‘It can’t be as if they plan it. One minute they’re just swimming along, the next it’s all “Whoa, where did the water go? And what’s this dry stuff in my gills?”’ She paused. ‘It must be pretty freaky.’
‘Maybe they think it’s a dream,’ Tess said. ‘Maybe that’s what we do when we dream, we jump out of our habitat.’ Another good word. She wished Amira had heard her use it, so she could see that Tess had actually learned something since they’d been up here.
‘Yeah, maybe,’ said Tia thoughtfully, leaning back with her toes trailing in the sea. ‘Or when we’re imagining something—what do they say? A leap of the imagination. Is that what the fish did, imagined itself into the air?’
‘I just wish it would imagine itself straight onto my line,’ said Tess. As the words left her mouth she felt a sudden downwards tug, saw her red and orange float go under. ‘Tia, I’ve got something!’ she called, but Tia was already leaning forward, holding the bucket out. The nylon between Tess’s fingers went taut, bit into her skin, and for a moment she thought she’d lose whatever was on the other end.
‘Come on, girl,’ Tia said, willing it up. Tess pulled hard, locking hand over hand, and something flashed in the depths, fighting her. She yanked again, and this time Tia got the bucket underneath it.
‘Golden trevally,’ she said, peering in. ‘Nice work!’
Tess relaxed her grip on the line, then shook her hands to get the blood flowing through them again. She put down the reel and reached into the bucket to remove the hook from the fish’s lower jaw, its bottomless eye regarding her mournfully as she did so.
‘Nice,’ Tia said again, watching her technique. ‘God, to
think you could barely bait up without fainting when you first arrived. We’ve made progress, huh?’
Tess laughed, thrilled at herself. She couldn’t wait to show her mother. Maybe they could have it for dinner.
They fished for another forty minutes, the trevally occasionally jerking between them in the bucket. Tia caught two undersized bluebone, but let them go; Tess’s line remained motionless, drifting in the current. She didn’t mind. She’d had her luck; it would be greedy to expect any more. As the sun climbed higher they started to sweat, and without a word both laid down their reels, peeled off their t-shirts and dived into the water. Tess had her bikini on, but Tia, she noticed, was wearing a tight singlet underneath her top, and shorts that she didn’t remove. Normally she swam in her bra and undies, or less. Maybe she had her period.
‘When’s Jago arriving?’ Tess asked, treading water.
Tia pulled herself back onto the rock where they’d been fishing, and sat there, arms wrapped around her stomach, staring out to sea.
‘When he gets here, I s’pose,’ she said.
‘Are you excited?’ Tess asked. The turquoise water beneath her was deep but clear. She could see all the way to the bottom, almost twenty feet down. ‘It’s been a few weeks since he visited, hasn’t it? Bet you’re glad I’m not going to be here to cramp your style.’
The last line had been meant as a tease, a joke, but to her surprise Tia stood up, wrung out one side of her dripping shorts and said, ‘I wish you were.’
Tess opened her mouth to ask what she meant but was interrupted by a shout from the beach. Someone was calling their names.
‘That’s Dad,’ Tia said, grabbing the bucket. ‘Let’s show him your fish.’ She darted off across the rocks towards the shore, bare black feet skimming over mussels, crabs and sharp stones, always instinctively knowing where to land. Tess hauled herself out of the water, the salt drying almost instantly on her skin. She glanced at the sky. It was time she got back, before her mum sent out a search party.
When she caught up to Tia, her friend was bent over the bucket with Mason, who was exclaiming over her fish.
‘It’s a big one!’ he said, running one hand admiringly over the burnished tail. ‘Plenty of good eating in him. Your mob don’t need to go out to lunch now!’
Tess laughed. ‘You try telling Fiona that. I think she’s hoping for something deep-fried.’
‘Ah, he’s beautiful,’ Mason said, then straightened up. ‘He’s a Bardi fish, you know. Raari, in our tongue. You’re one of us if he let you catch him.’ A smile broke across his face. ‘You’re starting to look like one of us, anyway. You and Tia could be sisters.’
Tess glanced down at her toes, brown against the sand, her deeply tanned arms cradling their lines. It was true. She’d always been olive-skinned, courtesy of her mother’s Lebanese heritage, but after nine months in the north she was darker than she’d ever been.
‘Thank you,’ she said, smiling back at him, knowing the words were a compliment, an inclusion. ‘I love it here. I’m not sure I ever want to go home to Melbourne. There’s nothing there I really miss.’ A face flashed into her mind: Callum, at the bubbler, just before he kissed her. You, I’d miss you, she realised. Funny that she hadn’t thought of Janey.
‘It’s pretty good, eh?’ Mason said. Then his tone became serious. ‘See how you feel after a wet, though. Or when you want to go to uni but you’d have to move two thousand miles away and leave everyone and everythin’ you’ve ever known. Or when the people you’ve grown up with get on the grog and never come back.’
‘I know,’ said Tess, though she didn’t, not really. She suddenly felt like the fish they’d seen earlier that morning, momentarily suspended between two worlds. Further up the beach, Morag jogged past, arms pumping, head down. Mason watched as she drove her feet over the unrelenting sand.
‘She’s pretty quick,’ he remarked. ‘What do you think’s chasin’ her?’
Perfume, Amira thought. She’d almost forgotten about perfume, but suddenly it was all she could smell, filling the troop carrier headed to Wajarrgi with its heady promise. She sniffed the air. Caro’s Paris was the top note, of course—it was all she ever wore, her signature scent—but she could detect at least two or three others. Arpège? Did anyone still wear Arpège? There was something spicy too, and another that smelled like baby powder or bubble gum, though that might actually be bubble gum, she realised, catching a glimpse in the rear-view mirror of Janey chewing while she stared out the window.
Amira tried to remember the last time she’d worn perfume. Maybe on one of those miserable dates she’d allowed her friends to set up for her in the years after Davis had left? If she had worn any, it clearly hadn’t worked. Of course, up here no one ever wore perfume. Far stronger chemicals were required to mask the odours of sweat and dirt, and anyway, it reacted with the sun, staining the skin. She’d been happy to give it up, along with ironing and foundation and blow-drying her hair, all of them rendered useless by the climate.
No one had told her friends though, and here they were, painted and primped as if they were about to take tea at The Windsor back home. Caro had clambered aboard wearing heels; Fiona sported a full face of make-up. Amira had complimented her, to show that she’d noticed, and Fiona had batted her curled and mascaraed eyelashes. ‘I’ve got the works,’ she’d said. ‘Eyeliner, lip liner, panty liner.’ Everyone had laughed—everyone except Bronte, who had sunk lower in her seat, gazing at the floor. Fiona had noticed and passed her a tube of lipstick. ‘Here,’ she’d said, thrusting it into her hands. ‘If you can’t find a smile, draw one on.’
Even Morag had made an effort—Morag, who was the most likely of them to turn up to school drop-off in her slightly damp running gear, and to still be wearing it at pick-up six hours later. Today, though, she had put on a dress. Amira hadn’t known that Morag even owned a dress.
‘You look nice,’ she’d said as Morag climbed into the front seat beside her.
‘Huh.’ Morag had exhaled so heavily that her fringe rose in the updraft. ‘It’s my last taste of freedom. Thought I better make the most of it.’ She looked at her watch. ‘What time did you say the mail van gets in—around four? I’ve got five hours left. Step on it.’
Amira had backed carefully out of the community car park, swung the vehicle around, then turned left at the sign pointing to Cape Leveque. As soon as they hit the bitumen she called back to Fiona, ‘Hey, there’s an esky behind the back seat. I thought we could all do with a pre-lunch drink.’
Fiona undid her seatbelt and contorted herself to find it, bottom thrust into the air.
‘Woo hoo!’ she said, coming back up clutching a can of premixed spirits and a bottle of Corona. ‘Gin and tonic—that’s for me. Who else wants one, or a beer? They’re cold too.’
‘There’s some cans of Coke for the girls, and a few bottles of Matso’s,’ Amira called over her shoulder. ‘That’s ginger beer from a little brewery in Broome. It tastes amazing, and it’s alcoholic—it is our day out, after all.’
Fiona yanked back the ring-pull on her can of gin and tonic and took a long first swallow. ‘You’re alright, once we get you away from that place. God, I needed this. Cheers!’
‘Are you going to have anything?’ Morag asked, accepting a bottle of Matso’s passed up by Caro.
‘One of the Cokes, if there’s any left.’ Amira negotiated a cattle grid, then said, ‘So you obviously didn’t change your mind about going to pick Macy up yourself?’
‘No fear,’ replied Morag, twisting off the cap. ‘I s’pose if there hadn’t been any other option I could’ve taken one of the community cars like you suggested, but I didn’t fancy doing that drive by myself.’ She lifted the bottle to her mouth, took a sip and coughed. ‘Wow—that’s spicy. Good, though.’ She swallowed again. ‘But it wasn’t really the drive, anyway. I mean, bugger Macy, and bugger Andrew too. Why should I waste a whole day racing off to fetch her? I’ve only got a few left. The mail van will be perfect�
��and if it arrives at Kalangalla before we get back, well, she can just sit tight and wait. It’s not like I’ve never hung around for her before.’
Amira smiled. ‘Andrew’s lucky to have you.’
Morag snorted. ‘Yeah, well, can you tell him that? He thinks I should try harder with her, talk to her more often. Fat chance. When she’s with us she’s too busy teasing Torran, or she’s locked away listening to music. Besides, she doesn’t want to talk to me. I’m just the housekeeper, the one who nags her to strip her bed at the end of the fortnight, or bloody well tell me when she finishes all the orange juice rather than just leave the container in the bin. She doesn’t even recycle!’
Amira had to stifle a laugh. ‘You’re the wicked stepmother, huh?’
Morag stared out the window, the bottle nestled in her lap. ‘Not wicked. Irrelevant. I’m nothing—or worse, I’m just a nag, that shrew that her father’s married to. She adores Andrew and the boys, but I just serve the meals and buy the washing powder. She’s never once asked me about my life, about my job or my mum or anything I’m interested in.’
‘She’s probably the same with Janice, you know. What you’re describing sounds like pretty typical sixteen-year-old behaviour to me. It’s rarely terminal. She’ll grow out of it.’
‘Maybe. If I don’t kill her first.’ Morag sighed. ‘But anyway, it’s different for Janice. She loves her regardless, like you love Tess and I love Finn and Callum and Torran. It’s so much harder loving somebody you didn’t choose. It’s not impossible—she can be fabulous—but it’s love you have to work at, like practising your French, or keeping up with the weeding, or . . . or . . .’ She cast around for inspiration. ‘Or doing your pelvic floor exercises.’
