by Ali Ahearn
‘Farkin’ hell, Nick. Why are you being like this?’
‘We’re divorced, Chez. It’s over.’
‘But you know I only came on this farkin’ show to get you back,’ Cheryl hissed.
‘And you know I’m only here to save the farm, darl. I’ve been totally upfront.’
Frances shrank back further, guilty to be privy to such intimate secrets, such ugly hurts. Even if the woman did insist on wearing those godawful koala bikinis, she didn’t deserve to have her heart broken. If Frances had Nick she wouldn’t want to let him go either.
‘But just imagine if we reconciled on the show. It wouldn’t have to be real. We could pretend. The viewers’d love it.’ Cheryl flung her arms around Nick’s neck and mashed her mouth into his.
Nick pulled back, dragging Cheryl’s arms away. ‘I wouldn’t do that to you. That wouldn’t be fair. And I don’t want to win the show that way.’
‘Farkin’ hell, Nick, no wonder you’ve nearly lost the farm,’ Cheryl hissed. ‘You’ve got no balls.’
Frances blinked at Cheryl’s last vicious insult and watched her stalk off. She got the impression that any man who hooked up with her would need to have cast-iron bollocks. Nick stood in the same spot, unmoving, not even sucking on his contraband cigarette, whose red tip was mesmerising her.
Until something unseen ran over her foot and she leaped back in surprise, outing herself in the process. Nick spun to face her.
‘Hi,’ she said nervously. ‘Sorry, I was walking along … trying to find a stream. I heard you and Cheryl and I didn’t want to intrude.’
Nick shrugged. ‘It’s okay.’ He walked towards her and took a deep drag of his nearly spent cigarette.
Frances practically whimpered. ‘I don’t know how you got them on the island and I don’t care,’ she said, pointing at the coveted item. ‘Please tell me you have a spare.’
Nick chuckled and theatrically pulled out a pack from his shorts. ‘Ta da.’
She’d reached for one – even the smooth length of it was satisfying – and he’d lit it before either of them had a chance to draw their next breath. And when they did, it was filled with the delicious toxic plume of nicotine.
‘Oh God,’ Frances groaned. ‘That. Is. Soooo. Good.’
Nick smiled as he sat on a felled tree behind them. ‘I didn’t pick you as a smoker.’
Frances sat too. ‘Reformed,’ she grimaced.
‘Ah,’ Nick teased. ‘The worst type. So, how’d you manage it?’
Frances shrugged. ‘It was years ago, in university. My then-boyfriend didn’t like it, so I gave up. And, anyway,’ she flicked ash slowly, ‘it was the sensible thing to do.’
‘Do you always do the sensible thing?’
Frances half snorted. ‘Pretty much. I leave the rebellion to Joni.’
‘I like Joni.’
Frances rolled her eyes. Everyone liked Joni. ‘There’s a surprise.’
Nick laughed. ‘Maybe you should have ditched the bloke instead of the fags.’
Frances inhaled, letting the nicotine and his delightful accent reach into forgotten places. ‘Sadly, I went on to marry him.’
‘Ah.’
Ah, indeed.
They sat in silence for a minute, dragging on their cigarettes, enjoying the moment. ‘Aren’t you worried a tree camera, or wherever the hell they hide those things, will catch you smoking?’
‘Nah.’ Nick shook his head. ‘No way can they cover all this territory. I reckon we’re safe on these little side tracks.’
Frances watched as his lips clamped lightly around the cigarette. What did it feel like to flagrantly disregard the rules? If it felt anywhere near as good as the heady mix of nicotine and oestrogen, Frances was sold. They sat side by side, smoking, and Frances was grateful to Nick for his silence.
‘That was very good of you,’ Frances finally said into the stillness.
Nick frowned as he stubbed out his cigarette. ‘What was?’
‘Being honest with your wife.’
Nick lit another cigarette and shrugged. ‘Ex-wife.’
Frances was intrigued. ‘Was she always … like that?’
‘Oh no. She’s much more mellow these days,’ he chuckled.
Frances felt Nick’s laugh settle around her. ‘Er … okay.’
He hesitated a moment. ‘She’s a fourth-generation farmer, so she’s tough as nails. But she’s also really sweet when you get to know her. She just … wants this really badly.’
Frances snorted. Join the queue.
He laughed again. ‘She was an Olympic equestrian. When she retired, she turned part of the farm into a riding school for the disabled. She loved it. We both loved it. But sometimes, no matter how much you want things to work out … market prices, global conditions, rainfall … there are just some things you can’t predict: life is just a big crap shoot.’
Frances nodded mutely. Now that she could understand.
‘I should have been honest with her years ago. Things wouldn’t be so bad now.’
Frances nodded. ‘My husband lied to me.’
‘About work, money or a woman?’
Frances laughed. ‘All three, actually.’
Nick tsked. ‘What the hell’s wrong with Pommy men? Don’t they know a bloody good catch when they have one in their hands?’
Frances blushed as Nick’s compliment went straight to her head, adding to the nicotine high. ‘Apparently not.’ She paused for a moment. ‘I found condoms in his briefcase.’
‘Ah.’
‘Again.’
‘Oh dear.’
‘He admitted it.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘He thinks I’m being silly.’
Nick looked at her through a plume of smoke. ‘The man’s a dickhead. Obviously has a roo or two loose in the top paddock. You deserve better.’
Frances was captured by the sincerity in his intense blue eyes. ‘Bet that’s what you say to all the screwed-up girls on sadistic reality television shows.’
‘Nup.’
Frances wasn’t sure if she said anything, or just made a kind of embarrassing gurgly noise, as he looked at her mouth meaningfully. But her pelvic floor shuddered. She looked away. ‘Don’t suppose you’ve happened upon some fresh water nearby?’
Nick grinned, dropped his cigarette and ground it into the leafy forest floor. ‘Follow me.’
Within five minutes he’d led her to a crystal-clear running stream. She threw herself down beside it, scooping up handfuls of the cool liquid and sluicing it over her face and neck, washing away the grime and the sweat and the horrors of withdrawal.
Wishing it were as easy to wash away her remorse at having let Joni go through it alone.
Her fingers shook and she grabbed hold of her left hand with her right to steady the trembling. This was not the time to fall apart. Not in front of Nick. Not at all. They had a challenge to ace and Banishment to avoid.
And even if the four of them were more like the Marx Brothers than the A-team, they could still do it. She had to believe they could.
Pulling herself together, Frances submerged one of the four empty bottles in the stream. She raised it in the early morning light and admired its diamond-like clarity before taking a cautious sip.
She knew diamonds well, water … not so much.
Washing her face with it was one thing, drinking it another. The last bloody thing any of them needed was to be poisoned by her hand. The Stapler’s assurances the island had hundreds of fresh water streams rang in her ears, but Frances wouldn’t put it past the ambitious assistant director to lace every single one with something toxic just so she could film their deaths.
But she did trust Nick who was kneeling beside her, cupping his hands into the water and raising them to his mouth, swallowing deeply. He was calm and competent, cheery and pleasant. With all of them. He pitched in and helped out, despite the competition. And he was gracious about Cheryl. She doubted Edward would be so generous. The water was s
weet and slid down her throat like nectar.
‘Oh God,’ she said aloud. ‘That is good.’
Frances doubted she’d ever tasted water so pure. Not even that summer – one of many when their father was working – their mother had dragged them to Greenham Common. She’d made them drink water from an earthenware vase that a wizened old lady had brought back from the foothills of some mystical mountain sacred to women. It was supposed to hold the secrets to wisdom and beauty. The good women of Greenham might have considered the beauty part secondary but, at fourteen and sixteen respectively, Joni and Frances had thought it the Holy Grail.
Even so, Joni had gaped at the woman with one tooth, three large moles and toenails that would have done Howard Hughes proud, and given Frances a you first look. Frances had stared at the smiling, nodding woman and then at her mother, who was also smiling and nodding.
Not for the first time she’d found herself wishing for a normal mother. One who baked biscuits. And knitted. And protected her daughters from crazy old women bearing metaphorical apples.
Frances had reached for the urn and prepared to die. Beauty was pain, right?
And the mountain water had tasted incredible. But it was no match for this.
‘Good, so good,’ she muttered as she guzzled more of the sweet drop.
A waft of cigarette smoke sent her nicotine receptors into a frenzy and she sat back on her haunches. Nick was grinning down at her, cigarette drooping from the corner of his mouth, like he was James Dean and the Marlboro Man rolled into one.
Frances didn’t know if it was the tropical heat or her ovaries jettisoning a mega dose of oestrogen as she succumbed to the hypnotic pull of the smoke. But she was pretty sure she licked her lips.
‘Would you like another?’
‘You have no idea what I’d do for one right at this moment.’
‘Hmm. Intriguing,’ he murmured, as he passed it over and lit it. Nick lowered himself all the way to the ground and they sat in silence for a few moments, savouring another hit of nicotine. A kingfisher took flight from a nearby branch and the jingle of bellbirds added to the ambience. The air was thick, and slow. Waiting.
He glanced down at her. ‘So … what would you do?’
Frances started. She could feel the intensity of his gaze right down to her toes. She looked at him, his eyes the exact blue of the feathers on the kingfisher’s breast. ‘Trade my soul?’
‘What if it wasn’t your soul I was after?’
Frances’s breath stuck in her throat. Nick’s face and shoulders filled her vision. He was big and solid and male, and right now he was looking at her mouth like it was his own personal playground. And he was the devil.
Revenge sex slithered into her mind like the proverbial serpent.
‘Frances?’
And he called her Frances. She swallowed. Not Frannie or Frankie. But Frances. She imagined him saying, ‘Take your clothes off, Frances,’ and she blushed. Nothing she had thought about since all this fantasy madness had begun had made her blush so quickly.
Not the cabbie.
Not the delivery boy.
Not even Darryl.
Joni’s You should fuck him taunted her. Joni would have jumped him by now, for sure. Had him lying down, standing up, upside down and right way round. Fast, slow and five ways in between. And here she was, staring at him like a nervous virgin rather than a sex-starved woman facing down thirty and the end of a useless marriage.
She opened her mouth to say, Well, then, I guess you could have my body.
But the words wouldn’t come. Who the hell was she kidding? She was just too bloody English to pull it off. Besides, she must look an absolute wreck. Scratched face, strips of hair plastered un-sexily to her grimy forehead. Not to mention chipped nails.
She shoved her cigarette between her lips and took a deep drag. ‘Well, then, I guess I’d have to kill you and bury the evidence.’
Nick tossed back his head and laughed, and Frances imagined running her tongue up the hard ridge of his throat, feeling his stubble prick her nose, her chin. She blinked as a buzz settled inside her, down low. ‘You think I can’t do it? You’d be surprised what I know about shallow graves.’
Nick shook his head, sobering. ‘I think there’s probably not much you can’t do when you set your mind to it.’
Frances grinned, heartened by the he-man’s compliment. ‘Just you remember it then.’
Nick touched his hand to his forehead in a mock salute. ‘Yes, ma’am,’ he said as he flicked ash off the end of his cigarette.
The buzz intensified. Frances swallowed. Was it possible to orgasm just because a man saluted you? Maybe she should have followed her father into the army …
She scrabbled through her foggy brain for something to say. Anything to neutralise the buzz. ‘So … how’s your team faring? Thought you’d be long gone by now.’
He shrugged. ‘We figured we were far enough ahead to take a bit of a breather. And the girls were tired. And they …’
Women. Not girls. Women. The urge to correct him, born from the blood, sweat and tears of Greenham Common, was on the tip of her tongue. But she let it slide.
‘They what?’ she challenged. ‘Looked so pretty all curled up together?’
He laughed broadly. ‘No, actually. I was going to say they earned their keep last night. They learned a lot about teamwork from all that cheerleading. And then there’s Kandy …’
Frances felt unaccountably grumpy and very aware of her B cups in her sun-sensible shirt. ‘Kandy what?’
Nick smiled in a way that made Frances giddy. ‘Kandy happens to have a photographic memory. A very useful thing on a blind choppa drop.’
Frances didn’t even register the surprising piece of information about Kandy as relief flooded her system. At the end of the day she was still a woman. ‘So, you’re not a breast man, huh?’
Nick shook his head. ‘Nah. I’m a grateful-for-whatever-naked-bits-I-can-get kind of guy. I’m … whaddya call it?’
Frances quirked an eyebrow that had seen better days. ‘Easy?’
Nick grinned. ‘A connoisseur.’
Frances smiled too. ‘Smart man.’
Nick tapped his forehead two times. ‘Smart men get laid.’
His grin was so casual that Frances couldn’t get offended. ‘Even in the jungle?’
Nick stubbed his cigarette on the ground and looked at her. ‘I don’t know yet.’
Frances’s breath froze in her lungs. He was looking at her like that again.
Like a smart man. A really smart man.
With X-ray vision.
Revenge sex.
Frances panicked. How the hell did she go from faithful wife to adulterous woman? She’d never contemplated taking her fantasies further. Until now. Was she even capable?
Nick looked away and the conundrum was moot.
Her hand shook as she took a last drag of her cigarette. ‘I guess I’d better get back,’ she said, stubbing it out and pushing herself to her feet. Nick joined her, towering over her in seconds. He pulled his compass out of his pocket and glanced into the rapidly lightening sky. ‘Good idea.’
Frances stared at him, fascinated. Now he really looked like he knew what he was doing. It made sense that someone who knew the stars would be handy with a compass. ‘Do you know how to read that, then?’
Nick nodded. ‘Course. Doesn’t everyone?’
Frances rolled her eyes at him. ‘No, Mister bloody Crocodile Dundee, not everyone.’
Nick grinned. ‘You wanna crash course?’
She eyed him warily. There was a sincerity about Nick that was seductive. But he was the opposition – even if she did want to dip him in chocolate sauce, roll him in sprinkles and lick him all over. ‘What’s to stop you having a lend?’
Nick’s gaze dropped to her mouth. ‘That wouldn’t be smart of me, would it?’
Frances blushed again and, before she knew it, he was standing behind her like he had on the beach, his arms out in
front, enveloping her as he talked her through the salient points, twisting the dial and rotating them both around as he spoke.
She could smell Nick’s earthy male aroma and feel the light press of his lips on her hair as he spoke. The buzz returned with a vengeance and Frances shut her eyes as it rippled everywhere.
‘And that’s pretty much it,’ Nick said. ‘Simple, isn’t it?’
Frances opened her eyes. ‘Clear as mud. Right up there with reverse parking and reading maps,’ she murmured.
Nick thought for a minute. ‘Okay, try this.’ He turned Frances back towards the stream and told her to look up. ‘See the sun?’
‘Yes, Nick. I’m directionally challenged, not blind.’
‘Except when it comes to men.’
Frances paused. ‘I think I’m seeing the light.’
‘Hallelujah,’ he murmured.
‘Of course, it could just be the sun,’ Frances quipped as his lips created havoc near her ear.
Nick chuckled. ‘And what do you know about the sun?’
That it had kissed his skin to perfection? She cleared her throat. ‘It rises in the east?’
‘And?’ he asked patiently.
‘Sets in the west?’
‘Bingo.’
Frances waited for him to elaborate. ‘Is this some kind of Australian riddle?’
Nick sighed. ‘The camp is on the western tip of the island.’ He pointed to the sky. ‘Follow the sun. It’ll take you straight there.’
Frances looked at him skeptically. ‘Really? Just like that?’
‘Really.’
Frances felt twenty years younger as the simplicity of Nick’s advice filtered slowly into her mind.
She beamed. ‘Thank you, Nick. Thank you, thank you, thank you,’ she said, grinning like an idiot, shifting from foot to foot, and then, finally, succumbing to the urge to hug him.
Nick grinned back. ‘It’s not rocket surgery.’
Frances pulled away slightly. ‘Maybe not, but you’re a lifesaver anyway.’
She could feel the heat coming off him as his hands tightened around her waist. Their bodies were pressed together from the hips down and she was mesmerised by the blue of his eyes.
‘So, are you going to leave that husband of yours?’ he asked, his gaze again falling to her mouth.
