8
Friday, 7 pm
Green River Campground
Dani
Juno was filming Ginger making margaritas.
‘Shake it, sister,’ she was saying, as Ginger duck-faced for the phone, her hair damp and frizzy around her face, dark patches on her denim overalls where her river-wet undies were soaking through.
‘No kids had better turn up on these TikToks,’ Dani said as she passed, carrying a tray of sausages in the direction of the barbecue.
‘Calm down, Grandma.’ Ironic, considering Juno was a few years older than the rest of them.
‘I mean it. Seb would kill me.’
A tut from Juno. ‘As if Seb’s on social.’
‘You never know.’ Dani kept moving, calling over her shoulder. ‘We’re all trying to stay relevant, lady. Anyway, hard rule: none of the kids on your channels.’
‘Channels? You’re so cute.’
First night dinner was barbecue. The roles had been so well-honed over the years that Dani could tell you exactly what everyone would bring. By unspoken courtesy of Liss and Lachy, rib-eye for all. Everyone else offered a plate of polite gesture – supermarket burgers from Sadie, something tofu from Ginger. Dani brought lean chicken skewers. And between them there were enough plain beef sausages to feed the children three times over.
The trestle table was scattered with colourful plastic bowls of gluten-free chips and optimistic carrot sticks. Foil lids were waiting to be peeled back from shallow tubs of hummus, and Sadie and Liss were talking intently as they cut and buttered a bag of bread rolls. Kids ate first, and kids ate sausage sandwiches.
But where were the kids? Dani wasn’t sure she’d seen them since the beach. She had washed off the river in the shower and changed into her evening camp uniform of long linen everything to fend off insects. She would love to be spraying the girls with something repellent right now.
‘You seen Lyra?’ She was handing the sausages to three men who, blissfully unaware of their predictability, were standing around the barbecue with bottles in their hands, waiting for the only catering request that would come their way all weekend – Grill this, please.
‘Can’t keep track of your kids, Dani?’ Lachy Short made pointed eye contact before turning back to the gas.
‘You know where your kids are, do you?’ Dani asked, knowing she shouldn’t rise to Lachy’s bait but still feeling a hot flush of guilt in her chest.
‘Of course not. That’s the whole point of camping these days, isn’t it?’
Aiden’s eyes locked onto Dani’s. Help. He had clearly already run out of conversation topics with the camp’s other males.
‘Go and get a margarita, Aiden,’ Dani said. ‘I’m giving you permission to enter the estrogen zone.’
‘What about me?’ Craig put his arm around Dani’s waist and pulled her in, nuzzled her ear. ‘Do I have permission to enter?’
Dani felt a wave of something like panic. Repulsion.
Watching Lachy watching Craig behave like this was worse than Craig behaving like this.
‘Whoa, you two.’ Lachy’s voice was sly, his eyes narrowed. ‘The fire hasn’t gone out yet, then.’
Dani shook Craig off. ‘Give me a break. I’m going to find the kids. Don’t burn those.’ She nodded at the sausages and stepped out onto the track. She felt Liss’s head lift and turn as she walked away.
Case against Craig: She was still with him. Her crime, of course. But it was a mistake to bring him here again.
Craig was the result of a loose port connection. Her firm had been presenting to his, and she was the lead on the marketing plan she hoped would tip the bid for collaboration their way. Dani’s presentation had been flickering on the giant screen in one of those wireless, open-plan offices that compete with each other for kitchen views and foosball tables. Dani hated off-site presentations. So many things were out of your control.
If a client walked into her space on the marketing floor of her fund, she knew that the boardroom would be ready for anything. Water would be the perfect temperature in the smudge-free glass jug in the centre of the table. She knew that the breakfast muffins had to be small enough to be eaten in one bite, but also that no-one would touch them because having your mouth full in a multimillion-dollar meeting wasn’t it, as Lyra would say. She knew that her assistant had already asked the guests’ assistants for their coffee orders, and hot cups of barista-made would be waiting.
And she knew that the fucking laptop adaptor would fit the fucking black box in the centre of the boardroom table.
‘Let me help you,’ Craig had said, leaning over from the other side of the table, after a flustered young marketing assistant from his firm had dashed off for IT help.
‘It usually just connects through Bluetooth.’ Dani was irritated by finding herself in the exact kind of damsel-in-distress situation she worked hard to avoid. ‘I’m sure I can get it.’
But she noticed Craig’s hands, and then saw how his forearms filled the expensive grey flannel of his suit. This was not the sort of thing she usually noticed. For God’s sake, she thought as she took in his predictably strong shoulders, his close-cropped hair, his kind eyes. Get it together.
She hadn’t dated since Seb. She hadn’t joined any of the apps that Sadie constantly sent her. A little while ago, Liss had brought her a super expensive vibrator with a crystal handle as a joke, and Dani was almost offended. It felt like judgement. ‘Do you think I need this?’ she’d asked.
‘Well, babe,’ Liss had answered lightly, clearly trying to decide how honest to be. ‘Yes.’
Even after fourteen years of Liss’s lightly thoughtless honesty, sometimes it still knocked Dani.
Of course Craig had solved the black box problem. It was his boardroom table, after all. His shitty technology, she’d fumed, quietly, when he’d said, ‘There you go, no need to stress,’ and her deck had sprung onto the screen in full colour.
And so. Maybe still rocked by the crystal vibrator, Dani had let Craig pursue her. It was old-fashioned. Flowers. Text messages with photos of his face, not his penis. Sadie told her this was highly unusual, and scrolled through her own phone, showing Dani dick after dick. ‘This is how it is now,’ her single girlfriends would say, with a sort of amused resignation. Craig must have clocked early that wasn’t going to be Dani’s thing.
And he’d had to be patient, because she had the girls and an ex-husband who was out of the country more than he was in it. She was rarely alone and rarely available. Generally, she loved that she wasn’t juggling a complicated custody schedule and missing the smell of her girls’ hair on a Sunday morning. But after she finally agreed to a coffee and a walk with Craig around Centennial Park, she found herself thinking, for the first time, that the odd free night would be okay.
As it turned out, the time limitations were a feature, not a flaw. She found him physically attractive but mentally exhausting. When Seb was finally in town and the girls were having a night with him at a hotel in the city, Craig planned a dinner. He’d booked them a private room. A tasting menu. A bottle of something vintage she knew she wouldn’t drink.
When he started to look disappointed that she wasn’t more impressed, Dani had decided to be honest.
‘This is very generous but I have to get up early. Could we just go to your place?’
Always his place. Always her timetable. Dani had no idea if he was seeing other women during this time, and she didn’t care, as long as there was nothing awkward, no mess involved. They had sex when they could, they ran together two mornings a week, they were occasionally each other’s date to a Thing.
Liss didn’t even meet him for the first year. ‘Please bring the boyfriend,’ she’d say, at the mention of drinks, a birthday, a picnic.
‘Not a boyfriend,’ Dani would say. ‘Sex friend.’ Not words she would say to anyone but Liss, and only if neither the children nor Lachy were in earshot. Bridge and Lyra had only learned of Craig’s existence weeks before last year’s camping trip. Another stupid mistake. They had not been impressed.
Now Dani was walking away from camp, around the kitchen, following the path towards the forest edge.
‘Lyra! Bridge!’
Dani did not love this side of the Green River campground. Especially at dusk.
These were the trees that you drove through when you left the triple-lane highway heading north from Sydney. As you took the turn-off and the road narrowed and twisted and just kept on going, it felt like you were abandoning order to head into something wild. These endless trees and rocks and mossy caves were the world between the calm expanse of the river and the rushing, tarmacked motorway with its headlights, Maccas stops and Wrong Way Go Back signs. The bush yawned away on all sides, vast, dense, ancient. Travelling through the trees in an air-conditioned car made Dani feel a little uneasy, never mind heading off into them on foot.
‘Lyra! Bridge!’
How could eleven children have disappeared?
Dani took a deep breath, heavy with drifting barbecue smoke and the evening sweetness of all this lush green sighing out the heat. She skirted the edge of the rocks, checking the caves.
‘Kids!’
They were probably at camp by now. She would likely hear them if she headed back. Dani turned, and as she did, she sensed a slight movement in the trees between the rocks. She felt it before she saw it, as if someone’s eyes were on her. ‘Kids!’ she called again and took a few steps towards the boundary.
It was getting to the time of day when it’s still light, but the brightness is being turned down every second. When it feels urgent, suddenly, to get everything and everyone you need together before darkness comes. It was the part of camping that freaked Dani out every time. They could hang all the lanterns they wanted, drape all the fairy lights – but they would only ever form a puddle of light, and everything beyond it would be blackness until the sun came up.
Dani swiped on her phone torch and ran it, twice, over the trees. ‘Lyra!’
She shivered and started walking back to camp. The feeling that someone was watching her walk away was just her anxiety spiking. She was annoyed about Craig. Irritated that they hadn’t given the kids a curfew. She was being silly.
Craig and Lachy were still standing over the sausages. Craig looked up and smiled as she passed.
‘The kids were here, right?’ she said, loudly, to everyone. Ginger and Aiden were drinking their margaritas and watching Juno film a slice of lime sprinkled with salt on a pleasing wooden board. Liss was tossing a salad at the table. Sadie and Emily were puzzling over a phone and a portable speaker in the shape of a poo.
Liss looked up. ‘I haven’t seen them since we went swimming, but Lachy said they were here. Lachy?’
‘They were here,’ he said, breaking from his bro-talk. ‘They all got drinks and chip packets and headed off again. They’ll be back.’
‘Well, it’s shower time,’ said Dani, feeling her foot tap. ‘Dinner and disco time. We need them back.’
‘You need to stop helicoptering,’ said Sadie, looking up from the poo. ‘They’re not babies anymore.’
‘They’re not all teenagers. Gracie’s only seven. Bridge is only nine.’ And I don’t take parenting advice from you, she added silently.
‘But the big kids are fourteen.’ Liss was using her peace-keeping voice. ‘They’ll be fine. And they’ll smell the sausages soon and find their way back.’
‘Who cares if they’ve had a shower?’ Ginger licked the salt from the edge of her plastic wineglass and Juno turned to film her. ‘Dancing makes you sweaty again.’
‘I care.’ Dani knew her voice had changed, that she sounded panicked. ‘We don’t just get to give up on being parents because they’re old enough to walk and talk and not go with strangers.’
Lachy held up a sausage on an oversized fork. ‘I thought that’s exactly what it meant. These are ready, by the way.’
Craig was beside her now and took her hand. ‘I’ll come with you, Dan,’ he said. ‘We’ll find them. It’s okay.’
Dani saw Sadie’s eyes flick left and right and lower her chin. Was she smothering a giggle? Don’t, she thought. Don’t.
She shook off Craig’s hand, walked over to Liss who took her hands out of the rocket and parmesan and wiped them on the towel still wrapped around her waist from her swim. ‘It’s okay, Dan. When we get the kids back, we’ll draw some rules up about where they can and can’t go and when they have to come back. Check-in points, like when they were younger.’
Liss got it. She always did.
‘Come on,’ said Craig, ‘let’s walk. We’ll stumble over them.’
Juno held her phone up and spoke into its screen, ‘Different parenting styles can lead to tension on a group holiday.’
‘Stop it,’ Emily called. ‘Not cool.’
‘Let’s call it the Karen clash.’ Juno laughed before she lowered the phone.
Dani tried to look amused.
Just beyond the tarpaulin roof of HQ and its circle of foldable camp chairs, the cicadas started to sing.
‘Golden hour,’ said Craig. ‘Let’s do a loop, find the girls. I’ll pour you a drink.’
Liss was looking up at Dani, nodding approvingly. Lachy had loaded up all the sausages on a foil tray. Emily must have finally got the poo speaker to work because some angry rap song suddenly blasted through the quiet. ‘Sorry, Bob’s choice!’ she yelled, flicking it off.
Craig was holding Dani’s hand again, pushing a faux champagne flute into the other. ‘Let’s go.’
In the darkening gold gloom, they headed to the beach path and out onto the sand. Craig chattered away as he kept his hand closed on hers, telling her how Lachy had tried to tell him the car was a bad investment, and how clearly it was only jealousy talking. Telling her how nice it was to have a conversation with someone like Aiden, because in ‘real life’ he never met ‘ordinary people’.
‘He’s refreshing, you know. He’s not trying to fuck with you, he’s just talking.’
Dani scanned the beach. No kids. Her stomach knots tightened.
‘Baby,’ Craig said, squeezing her hand. ‘None of the others seem too worried about the kids. Maybe don’t stress it. They’re probably all just messing about.’
‘It’s not that.’
‘Then . . .’
‘Do you ever feel extra pressure.’ Dani pulled her hand away and shaded her eyes from the sinking sun. ‘Because it’s just you? Like, if something happened to Anders on your watch, that it would be extra terrible because Gen would blame you?’
Gen, Craig’s ex-wife, barely let Anders out of her sight, but Dani had a hunch Craig had probably never thought about this, whereas in Dani’s mind, a pursed-lipped, disapproving Seb followed her parenting choices around like a ghost.
As expected, Craig sounded confused. ‘She would believe I was doing my best, just like I believe she’s doing her best, right now, wherever the fuck they are, probably at Mountain Man’s chalet in the woods, dodging bushfires. Not my concern. Do you really worry about what Seb thinks of your . . . what? Parenting?’ He said the word like it was made up.
Dani sighed. ‘They’re not here. Let’s go back.’
‘Dani, look.’
‘I’m looking.’
‘No, really look.’
Craig wanted her eyes on the horizon, where the sun was about to fall behind the endless forest on the other side of the river, and the skyline was lighting up purply pink and bluey red. She could see its beauty, but she couldn’t feel it, not right now.
‘You have to relax,’ he said, clearly a touch irritated at her distraction from his romantic moment. ‘The kids will be fine. Seb’s not here. But you’re tense, and you’re snapping at people. Lachy, which, obviously, I can’t blame you for, the guy’s a joke, but also Sadie, and she’s just trying to get back in everyone’s good books after last year.’
Dani looked at Craig, the outsider. ‘Bullshit. You don’t need to worry about Sadie. That woman will survive the apocalypse.’
‘That’s what I mean. Harsh.’
‘Oh, come on, Craig. You’ve got this wrong. Worry more about Liss, who was too soft not to invite her back after last year. Anyway,’ Dani started walking up the beach, towards the other entrance, ‘I’m not worrying about any of them right now. I just want my daughters where I can see them.’
She was moving fast but he was following, she could feel him, hear his sandals slapping softly on the wet sand.
‘Go back,’ she said. ‘All afternoon I’ve been feeling like someone’s watching me. You’re making it true.’
‘You’ve been feeling what?’ He caught up in a few long strides.
‘Like someone’s watching. It’s probably the kids.’
‘So, that would mean there’s nothing to worry about.’
‘But it’s still not okay.’
‘No.’ Dani could feel Craig reaching around for something to say as they walked, quicker than a couple taking a romantic sunset stroll, towards the southern beach entry.
‘Lachy’s so protective of you and the girls, you know,’ he said finally, in lockstep with her on the soggy sand. ‘He talks about you like you’re family but I can’t say I’ve ever heard you say anything particularly nice about him.’
‘He’s my best friend’s husband. What’s there to say? You don’t choose those.’
‘You choose to be here every year with him. I’ve got mates whose wives I’ve never even met.’
That unsettled feeling wasn’t fading. Dani realised the plastic Prosecco flute was still in her hand, and took a big swig. ‘We’ve all been through a lot together.’
‘So you keep saying.’
They’d reached the other end of the beach and the other path back into the campground. Dani looked into the archway of trees bending over it, and the gathering gloom.
‘Let’s go back to the caves, see if they’re there,’ she said. ‘And please God, stop talking about Lachy Short.’