12
Friday, 9 pm
Green River Campground
Sadie
The twinkling lights blurred the edges of Sadie’s vision. She was sunk low in her oversized camping chair, cradling a zero beer, open jar of supermarket salsa balanced on her knee, just a few steps from the makeshift dancefloor where there were drinks in every hand. Children under feet. The little ones were chasing each other around the legs of the swaying adults. The big kids were divided – some indulging their parents with a sideways shuffle dance, eye-rolling all the while, others hanging back on the edges, cradling their glowing phones, tapping, filming, scrolling.
Sadie was watching Trick watching Lyra Martin and Tia Short. He was slouched, in the way he was always slouched, against the now-cold barbecue, the angle of his body and the direction of his head suggesting that he would rather be anywhere else. But Sadie could see that his eyes were focused on Lyra. That they moved when she moved, as she and Tia shrugged their shoulders ever so slightly to humour their cajoling parents.
This was new.
Juno was in the camp chair beside her, phone up, filming. But it was difficult to talk above pumping bass and the screaming insects.
‘Look at those great big babies!’ Juno yelled, nodding over at the big kids. ‘They’re too cool for all this now.’
Sadie had always loved the opening night disco, a tradition since the kids were tiny, that very first weekend. Back then the children had lived for it, pulled on tutus and painted their faces in glitter to twirl around the dancefloor holding hands, and she’d joined them to spin and jump and lift them high in the air. There was always a little boy, usually Bob, who would dance unselfconsciously in a way that would make all the adults laugh. Thrusting hips, shaking little bottoms. Sadie had always been the one with her hands in the air like she just didn’t care.
Most of the older kids had grown much too cool for disco night. Certainly her Trick was. There had been an in-between time, when the whole crew would studiously prepare a routine they’d learned in dance class or been served in their algorithms and knew off by heart. But now the hard-earth dancefloor was mostly the adults’ domain, a place to embarrass their children, possibly joined by Ginger’s little Maya, and Liss’s Gracie.
Under Trick’s eye, Lyra and Tia were half-in, half-out, standing on the edge of the circle, swaying lightly, shoulder to shoulder, skin touching, mouthing words to the songs they’d doubtless heard their mothers play a thousand times.
Juno was up and dancing now, phone in the air, spinning around, drink held high. Sadie sank back into her camp chair and closed her eyes.
This was so hard without a drink. Her zero beer tasted like sour water, and time was crawling by at an unbearable plod. When was an acceptable time to go to bed? And could a sober person really pretend that a foam mat was a bed?
Sunset without a glass of something fizzy was just about manageable. Steak and salad without red wine was a challenge. A multi-generational dance party with a flat pretend beer in hand was almost certainly impossible.
‘Hey.’
Sadie opened her eyes. It was Lachy Short. He was bent over at the waist so that his face was near hers. ‘Don’t fall asleep on us,’ he said, close enough that his voice was just under the music.
‘Not sleeping. Relaxing.’
‘You should have a drink.’ He dangled his beer between his thumb and his middle finger, swinging it back and forth in front of her eyes. ‘Loosen up a bit.’
Lachy’s face was slightly sweaty, the fine lines around his eyes gritty with campsite dust. His eyes were open wide, daring her. ‘Go on.’
‘I don’t do that anymore.’
‘Boring.’ He straightened up, looked around at the group. ‘You used to be the most fun.’
‘Fuck off, Lachy.’
‘Rude,’ he said loudly, then he sank into the empty chair beside her. ‘Don’t you think it’s a bit late to pretend you’re the Virgin Mary?’
If she closed her eyes again now, Sadie knew, what she would see was a vision of herself pushed up against this man. Her hands on his chest. Her fingers fumbling at the zip of his pants, her face in his. She would feel his hands on her shoulders, hear his voice, ‘No, Sadie,’ loud enough for others to hear. ‘Stop, Sadie.’
But she wouldn’t close her eyes. She would maintain eye contact with the prick. ‘I’m not pretending anything, Lachy. Please leave me alone.’
‘I wonder why you came this year.’ He leaned sideways, towards her.
Across the dancefloor, Sadie saw Liss’s head turning. She would be over here in a moment, no question.
‘Liss asked me to.’ Sadie felt exhausted. Heavy. ‘And you could be kinder.’
Lachy let out a little laugh. ‘What did I do?’
‘Hi.’ It was Liss. ‘You two okay?’
‘We’re fine, babe. Just offering Sadie a drink.’
‘Sadie doesn’t need a drink, Lachy, you know that.’ Liss lowered the glass in her hand. But like Dani, Liss was that infuriating kind of drinker who could have one, have two, and slow to a stop. Never a wowser, but never a mess. It was a balance that had never been available to Sadie.
‘Who said anything about an alcoholic drink?’ Lachy asked, putting an arm around Liss and squeezing her shoulder. ‘I could fetch the lady a Coke. Or a tea.’
‘Oh, shut up.’ Liss kicked his foot with hers. ‘You’re not fetching any ladies anything. Go and dance with your daughters.’
Lachy shrugged and nodded at Sadie. ‘Enjoy,’ he said and danced away.
‘You okay?’ Liss took the chair. She was breathing fast from her turn on the dancefloor, her bare feet still tapping.
‘I wonder how many times you’re going to ask me that this weekend.’
‘Sorry.’ Liss smiled. ‘I’ll get over it.’
Sadie remembered these words from the final morning, last year. When she’d come to find Liss in the chaos of packing up, her head a heavy mess of ache and regret, her mouth dry, her arms still a little bit tender to touch.
‘Don’t worry,’ Liss had said, even then, in the weak early light, surrounded by deconstructed tents. ‘I’ll get over it.’ And then a sliver of steel. A hand on an arm. ‘You need to look after yourself better. We could help with that.’
Liss was still smiling now, looking out, nodding to the music. Her lips moved lightly to the words. She raised her plastic flute for a sip of cold wine. It looked delicious.
‘It would have been easier if I hadn’t come, wouldn’t it?’ Sadie asked.
Liss swallowed. ‘Easier for who?’
‘Everyone. You. Lachy. Dani, who’s trying very hard to pretend she can tolerate me.’
Liss tilted her head as if she was considering this, toe still tapping. She was still looking straight ahead. ‘Would it have been easier for you if you didn’t come?’
It took Sadie a second to understand the question. ‘Yes.’
The song changed. Lyra and Tia gave out a little shriek as some banging bass filled the space and they bunny-hopped into the circle, as if they were still those little girls in tutus and glitter, only now they looked like women. Or they looked how women are told they should look: slight, lineless, happy.
‘Imagine if you hadn’t,’ said Liss, watching the girls. ‘Imagine if you were at home, doing your yoga, Trick and Lucky wondering why they were excluded. Would that be better?’
Sadie looked at Liss, trying to read her tone. It had a harder edge than she was used to.
‘No,’ she said, finally. ‘I guess not.’
Liss took another sip of her drink and pushed herself up from the chair. ‘We do hard things for our children, don’t we?’ She shimmied away, towards Dani, who she pulled out of the circle.
Sadie’s eyes started to swim. She took a swig of the awful water-beer and swallowed hard. Breathe. Three in. Three hold. Three out. Come on, get it together. Her heart felt like flapping wings.
All she could see now, as she looked around the camp, were glasses and glasses, some still half-full of yellow or purple wine. Open brown and gold bottles. Cans discarded, half-drunk.
Nope. Nope. Nope. Don’t think about that.
The scratching thump of ‘Single Ladies’ started and Juno, Emily and Ginger started pumping their arms in unison.
‘Come on!’ Juno yelled towards her. ‘Sadie, come dance!’
But she couldn’t. She just wanted to be gone. To be lying on her mattress next to her daughter, willing this first damn night to be over.
She scanned for Lucky and Trick. He was still over near the barbecue, pretending to look at his phone but actually transfixed by Lyra Martin, who was turning her hand this way and that in time to the music.
Where was Lucky? It would be a novelty to be one of the parents ushering kids to bed and reminding them to wear thongs to the toilet block when they brushed their teeth, rather than the parent who was the last one on the dancefloor, the one falling through the tent flaps long after the kids had taken themselves off to their inflatable beds.
‘Single Ladies’ morphed into ‘Crazy in Love’.
The bass was almost as loud as the cicadas, the sound of bare feet slapping the plastic-covered floor as dancers bounce-bounced up and down. The smell of beer and popcorn and stale, sunscreen-spiked sweat. The men were dancing. Lachy and Aiden and even Craig, shuffling from foot to foot, behind the women.
‘Mum! Come!’ Lucky’s voice. Sadie raised her eyes across the dancefloor to where her daughter was whirling her arms and shaking her hips, alongside Juno, who was filming Emily. ‘Come!’
Yes. Dancing with her daughter was exactly what she should be doing. Making fucking memories. Come on, Sadie, she told herself. Get up there, show that man he hasn’t completely shamed you to the sidelines.
She bent to put down her drink, move the salsa and chips from her knee. She straightened up, stood, and then she saw them.
It was impossible to tell, honestly, if his bare right hand was touching her bare right thigh.
If that thumb pressed into her waist was circling, ever so slightly, up and down, round and round. Marking her with a fingerprint. It was difficult to see if he really did have his other hand on her waist, stroking the skin of her exposed midriff with his thumb. Or if he was dancing too close, his front pushed into her back, their hips moving together to a beat that throbbed from the tents through the muddy dusk into the thick rainforest and out across the flats of the beach, tipping out into the river.
Did he really bend down in the glow of flickering fairy lights strung between trees, scoop the hair back from her neck and whisper? Words from his thick, stubble-edged lips trickling into her ear with its neat line of tiny, shimmering hoops?
The music was even louder than the cicadas now. Somehow the noise made it harder to see clearly.
The push, the noise, the movement, the whole scene was a glitching blur.
But Sadie was certain of what she was looking at.
And what she was looking at was Lachlan Short with his clumsy big-man paws all over little Lyra Martin.
That was what she was seeing. Surely.
It was a beat, a split second, before Lachy pushed himself back from her, arms in the air, gave out a whoop and turned to grind behind Aiden, thumping his fist in the air.
Sadie wasn’t sure she was moving her own legs as she started to push towards Lyra, who was still jiggling, pulling faces now into Tia Short’s phone. Sadie shoved past the dancers, stepping over the smaller kids.
‘Lyra!’ she shouted over the pounding, feeling like she was calling out through water, in one of those dreams where you’re screaming hoarse but no-one can hear you. ‘Get away from him.’
Inexplicably, the girl was laughing now, tongue out to the camera, waggling her head. She turned to Sadie. ‘What?’
‘Turn it off!’ Sadie yelled in the direction of the music.
Where were Dani and Liss? Nowhere.
It was unusual for those two women not to be in the middle of this, refilling the drinks, gathering up drooping children. Liss was usually in a constant motion of clearing and hosting.
On the far side of the dancefloor, Lachy and Aiden, Emily and Craig were all still dancing, shouting in each other’s ears, swigging from cans.
‘What?’ Lyra was asking her again. Did she look afraid, or annoyed?
‘It’s okay, Lyra, darling. You’re okay.’
The noise in Sadie’s head was louder and louder. The cicadas, the bass, the shouting. The adults beginning to look at her with confusion, their faces blurred. Some of the kids had their phones raised, neon rectangles pointing towards her.
‘Mum!’ It was Lucky, whose arms had stopped whirring, looking at her in horror. ‘You’re being weird.’
‘Sadie!’ It was Juno.
Sadie was pointing at Lachy, her arm straight out, her finger shaking a little. She hadn’t realised her arm was doing that. ‘Stop!’
Lachy had his hands up, in the way you might if someone was pointing a gun, rather than a finger, at you. He was twisting a little this way and that, smirking. ‘What did I do?’
‘Are you okay?’ Sadie asked Lyra, grabbing the girl by the shoulders. Lyra shook her off, stepped away to Tia, who looked terrified.
Someone, finally, stopped the music. And at that moment, when the relentless beat fell silent, Dani and Liss stepped into the circle. Dani had a laugh just fading from her face, and was holding a bunch of ice creams by the corners of their slippery wrappers. Liss was holding a tray of ruby-red watermelon, sliced in rounded quarters, laid out in a pattern of overlapping petals. Or tongues.
‘What?’
‘He –’ Sadie was still pointing at Lachy. ‘He was . . .’
‘He was what?’ Liss’s eyes were flicking from Sadie to her husband.
‘I was nothing.’
Her finger swung to Lyra. ‘He was groping her.’
The words sounded inadequate. He was a predator. A monster. He was what poisoned this group and this place. He was what made her stomach tilt and her mouth fill with sour saliva when she thought of Green River.
And yet, all heads turned to Sadie.
‘What?’ Dani’s eyes fell on Lyra.
Lyra Martin was shaking her head. Lachy Short was actually laughing.
The teens’ phones turned, too. One of them, she knew at some level, was Trick’s, his face obscured by the black mirror he turned on his mother.
‘I saw it,’ she said. ‘I know I saw it.’
Why was Dani so calm? Walking to the table with the quietly sweating ice creams. Why was Liss not tearing at her husband’s infuriating smirking face, but instead holding up the tray of watermelon and saying, ‘There’s so much here.’
‘Are you mad?’ Sadie was properly shouting now. ‘Are you all actually mad?’
Dani walked over to Lyra, held her by the shoulders and looked in her eyes.
Sadie could see Liss’s knuckles were whitening as she said, ‘You need to be quiet, Sadie. I’ve always defended you, but this is too much.’
Sadie took a choking breath. ‘Don’t you want to know who he is?’
Liss actually laughed before she turned away to the table. ‘I know who he is.’
‘Come on, Sadie.’ It was Lachy. ‘Calm down. I know you have a problem with me, but come on. I would never do that.’
It was the firm, seductive voice he’d been using his entire life to get away with things. ‘I would never.’
Sadie felt like the ground was unsteady under her feet. None of this was making sense. ‘Trick, put the phone down,’ she said. ‘We’re going.’ She turned to the other adults. ‘Are you all crazy? Are we just ignoring this? Really?’
But the others, even Juno, began to turn away, to gather their open-mouthed children, to mutter about teeth and pyjamas and bedtime.
Dani had already led Lyra away, with Brigitte dancing along behind. Ginger let out a long, low whistle. ‘Way to ruin a party,’ she said before putting out her arms for Maya to fold into. Aiden just looked confused.
Trick had disappeared. Lucky had run off to the bathroom, probably wishing herself invisible. Liss and Lachy had gone to sit by the trestle table, almost regal in their authority, hands clasped in laps, heads together.
The darkness around the camp felt like it was pushing towards them. Sadie stumbled a little as she bent to pick up her bag. She needed to get away from them.
She passed Dani’s tent and heard the low murmur of mother and daughter. There were some kids up ahead near the bathroom, giggling. Juno’s unmistakable voice telling Emily, ‘Who could be sure of why Sadie sees the things she sees, or says the things she says, these days?’
Fuck. Why did the shame that should belong to that man always stick to her?
Site Eight was silent. You didn’t need to put your head inside the tent to know it was empty. The door hung flapping open, a sign that one of her children had been here, and was angry or embarrassed enough to disobey the only camping rule they usually adhered to: Zip up the damn tent.
Lucky, she knew, would be at the toilet block, talking fast to pretend what just happened hadn’t happened. Trick would be God knew where, alone or with the other teenagers. She wasn’t sure which would be worse for him.
‘Shit,’ she said out loud, dropping her bag through the tent door and straightening to put her hands through her hair, rubbing at her head as if the thoughts and pictures could be massaged out with just the right amount of force.
She didn’t have a torch, and her phone was somewhere deep in her bag. Now the lanterns of the surrounding sites were flicking off, Sadie was almost in darkness, and felt a wave of intense exhaustion. Would she just wait here for the kids to come back? What if they didn’t?
There was a crack and a snap and some rustling fronds in the palms across the path. Sadie’s head spun towards the sound.
Craig stepped into the momentary glow of the toilet block’s flickering fluoro. He just stood there. So she could see him. So he could see her. His face was blank, unreadable.
Then he turned and walked towards where Dani and Lyra and Brigitte were clucking around their tent, feathering their camp beds for the night.
And somewhere over on Site Seven, she heard Lachy Short laughing.
Part Two