17
Saturday, 12 pm
Green River Campground
Sadie
Sadie hadn’t left the tent all morning, despite the climbing sun and stifling humidity. Despite both Juno and Ginger, at intervals, coming and calling through the flimsy walls. Despite the kids rolling out of there first chance they got when the sun rose.
Now, she found herself standing in the middle of the sweltering tent, having decided she was definitely packing up and leaving this place, but not having any idea where to start.
Everything was scrambled, starting with the vision of last night that was playing like a loop in her head, ending with how she’d ever get this flappy fabric house into two tightly rolled bags in the back of her car. Looking around, at clothes and sleeping bags and mess in every corner, it didn’t seem possible.
‘Trick!’ she shouted, to the tent. To the trees. To the whole damn campground. ‘Trick!’
She didn’t know where he was, if he could hear her, or who else could.
‘Trick!’
Footsteps, fast. A rustle, a zip.
‘Mum! What the fuck?’
She’d given up scolding Trick for swearing in front of her. It had seemed like the least of their worries over the past year or so, but still, it shocked her every time, these harsh words in her sweet boy’s mouth.
‘You have to help me pack.’ Seeing his face, Sadie considered what Trick was looking at. His mother, wearing only a swimming costume, red-faced and sweaty, her hair a frizzy halo of chaos, standing in a mass of billowing sleeping bags, blow-up mattresses, soggy towels and scrunched-up clothes. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I know I’m peak crazy right now but I need your help to sort this out.’
‘Mum.’ Trick spoke slowly to her, like she was the child. ‘We’re not leaving.’
‘Of course we are.’
‘Mum, it’s all fine. I promise. Everyone’s chill. Why don’t you just . . . go and have a shower or something? I can tidy up in here.’
‘We can’t stay here with these people.’ Sadie didn’t understand what Trick was saying to her. ‘We have to go.’
‘These people, Mum?’ Trick looked tired, and irritated. She was a lot, she knew. A lot for him, a lot for Lucky. But if they could just get out of here, things would calm down. She would calm down. ‘These people are our friends.’
‘Not anymore, they’re not.’
‘Mum.’ Trick stepped towards her and took her hands. It shocked Sadie, because, generally, he did almost anything to avoid touching her. Ducking his head when she went in for a kiss on his forehead. Spinning away from an arm across his shoulder. High-fiving her when she wanted a hug. But not now. ‘Let’s just calm down.’
‘Calm down?’ She watched the realisation that this was the wrong thing to say cross his face, but he kept holding on to her hands. ‘You were there last night, Trick. You know what happened.’
‘I know you think you know, Mum. But I just saw people dancing and, look, what you did is kind of fucked for Lyra.’
‘Fucked for Lyra?’ Again, Sadie’s head felt spinny with confusion. ‘How is this fucked for Lyra? I was trying to protect her.’
‘Maybe,’ Trick said, and he was still speaking slowly, ‘maybe Lyra doesn’t need you to protect her.’
‘She’s a child. And a girl child, so of course she does.’
Trick shook his head. ‘Mum, let’s just forget about it. I don’t want to leave. Lucky doesn’t want to leave. We want to stay with our friends. Please, Mum?’
It was confusing, not just the hand-holding, but her son being so interested in staying. Trick liked to be alone, these days. He liked to play video games and draw. He liked to lie on his bed looking at a screen. He liked to avoid the women in his house.
‘Mum,’ he said. ‘Put some pants on. Let’s go and have a swim. What about that?’
Trick suggesting they go swimming was so unlikely she actually laughed. ‘A swim?’ she asked him. ‘What did you see last night? And where have you been this morning?’
‘I’ve just been hanging out. Ginger made bacon. You should eat.’ Her tall son let go of her hands and started looking around. ‘Have you got some clothes here, Mum?’
‘What did you see?’ she pushed.
Trick looked like he was considering this question as he rummaged through the floor’s clothes carpet, found a pair of shorts and handed them to her. ‘I saw people dancing, having a good time.’
‘And?’
‘It was embarrassing, you adults, you know.’
‘I wasn’t dancing,’ Sadie said, indignantly.
‘I know, small mercies. Well done, Mum.’
‘And?’
‘Lyra and Tia were kind of . . . joining in.’
His eyes softened for a moment, and Sadie remembered the way he was looking at Lyra Martin last night. How his eyes stayed on her, wherever she moved.
‘And?’
‘And then Lachy was being even more embarrassing than the other adults, I mean, seriously, that man cannot dance.’
Despite herself, Sadie swallowed a laugh. It was true. But also, coming from Trick, quite ironic. ‘And?’
He looked at her. ‘Then you went nuts.’
‘Trick!’ It felt like a gut punch, seeing herself through her son’s eyes. Maybe through everyone else’s eyes. ‘That’s not what happened.’
‘Mum, it kind of is. And you know, I don’t blame you.’ Trick nodded at the shorts in her hand. ‘Put them on. Lachy Short is a dick and everyone knows it. Even Tia.’
‘What?’
‘She’s like . . . so embarrassed that he’s her dad and everything but still, Mum, it was all okay and, truly, you just kind of lost it.’
Sadie balanced on one leg to put the other through the shorts. This was the longest sentence Trick had said to her in some time. The breathing exercises she’d been trying to do all morning, staring at the tent ceiling, finally felt like they might work now. She tried to breathe in and at the same time say, ‘I didn’t lose it.’
‘Mum. You don’t want to give him the satisfaction of ruining your weekend, do you?’
‘I think,’ she exhaled, pulled the shorts up, ‘that ship has sailed. These people are delusional.’
He shook his head. ‘Don’t pack up. Lucky’s having more fun than she’s had in years, let’s take the high road, Mum.’
Sadie knew she was being managed by her teenage son, but she didn’t hate the sensation. Was this what she’d been teaching him, without even realising it? How to handle her?
These past few years had been tough for Trick. Stuck in lockdown while Sadie engaged in what her therapist called Red Flag Drinking. His dad starting a new family. Moving schools when they had to get out of their house. Being different.
But this was new. Mostly, Trick treated her like an annoying boss or nagging landlord. Other people assured her he’d emerge from this phase, that one day he might more closely resemble that toddler boy who’d climb into her lap to kiss her ears, but teenage Trick was someone who lived in her house half the time, created mess, consumed food, and told her she was doing things wrong. All kinds of things – saying words, wearing clothes, using technology, being a mother. Wrong, wrong, wrong.
When she looked at Trick she still saw that little person who’d turned her into a parent, a baby she’d wanted so badly she put up with all kinds of nonsense to get him, including something she’d always sworn she wouldn’t – living with a man. She wanted to cover his head in kisses. He wanted her to feed him and fuck off. It was a lot. She was a lot.
Now, he was moving around the tent, putting things back into piles, shaking out a sleeping bag over a camp bed, pushing some of Lucky’s errant T-shirts back into bags. ‘Stop, Trick, you don’t have to do this.’
‘I’m just trying to get it a bit more sorted for you,’ he muttered. ‘It’s too hot in here. Come outside. Come swimming.’
He picked up a purple hairbrush from Lucky’s mess and passed it to her. ‘Come on, Mum.’
And right then, Dani’s voice. ‘Knock, knock!’
Trick and Sadie looked at each other, Sadie’s arm halfway to her head, almost comically poised to brush her hair. Sadie shook her head at him.
‘We’ll be right out,’ Trick called, nodding at her, then lowered his voice to a whisper Sadie was sure Dani could still hear. ‘Be cool, it’s Lyra’s mum.’
‘Sadie,’ Dani called. ‘We’re going to the rockpool. Come.’
Sadie didn’t know what to say.
‘Maybe we could drive off,’ Sadie whispered to Trick, ‘just leave the tent, I don’t need a tent anymore.’
‘Mum!’ A hiss, and then Trick did that performance-loud voice again. ‘We’re coming, Dani!’
‘I can wait. You okay, Sadie?’
She tugged the brush through her hair, feeling wildly nervous at the idea of facing Dani. Her breathing was back at a million miles an hour, her mouth as dry as if she’d been up drinking sav blanc all night. And why? All she’d done was tell the truth. ‘All I did was tell the truth,’ she mouthed to Trick, who rolled his eyes and shook his head at her.
‘I can wait,’ Dani said again.
Trick gave Sadie a very pointed look, handed her a towel and held open the tent flap.
Dani was standing on Site Eight with a navy and white towel draped over her arm, oversized sunglasses on, straw hat shielding her skin. ‘Sadie.’ She nodded, almost smiled. ‘I’m glad you’re still here. I thought you might leave.’
Sadie took a deep breath and started to walk towards the beach path, and Dani fell into step beside her. ‘The kids,’ she said, and only that, while she tried to keep her breathing steady and put one foot in front of the other, eyes down.
Trick charged past them, spinning to give his mum a low wave before heading towards the caves. And Dani, as if realising that Sadie was looking at the ground to avoid seeing someone she didn’t want to, said, ‘The men have gone fishing.’
Relief flooded Sadie’s chest, but she kept her voice as steady as she could. ‘Aiden will be loving that.’ He would not. Pushed, again, to spend time with these men he didn’t like.
‘Yeah.’ Dani smiled. ‘Delighted about it.’
‘And Liss?’
‘She’s at the pool. We wanted you to come, I was worried you were going to melt in there.’
We wanted you to come. Sadie realised Dani had been sent to collect her, to bring her before a floating tribunal. Again, Sadie had to remind herself that she had done nothing wrong, that this wasn’t last year. She hadn’t blacked out or forgotten or just not given a shit.
‘Dani, I just said what I saw.’
‘I know.’ Dani kept walking.
The sun was directly above them, bearing down on Sadie’s hatless head. She shook out the towel Trick had handed to her. It had cartoon characters on it, some kind of big-mouthed, big-footed monkeys, and it wasn’t large enough to wrap around her body. She draped it over her shoulders, which were already turning pink.
‘I was trying to protect Lyra.’
‘I know you were.’ Dani was unreadable under the hat and behind the sunnies with her straight answers. Then, suddenly, ‘Thank you.’
It took Sadie by surprise. She knew Dani disapproved of her in general. Where Liss found Sadie entertaining, Dani found her irritating. Liss loved Sadie’s stories – about her childhood, about dating, about Jacob and Charlie and her clients at her physio practice, but Dani always just raised an eyebrow, as if she didn’t quite believe her stories. Sadie had always felt, in the friendship circles inside their friendship circle, that she and Dani had the least amount of overlap. And yet, here was a thank you.
‘It’s fine.’ A few more steps. ‘I think my boy’s got a crush on your girl,’ she said.
Dani just shook her head and smiled. ‘Good luck with that,’ she said quietly. ‘I doubt that’s going to end well for him.’
They broke through the shaded tunnel of trees into the glare of the beach. The rockpool was all sequins and rhinestones in the midday sun and the women looked like seals, lying in the shallows, sitting on the rock ledge, making short splashy swims to suspend themselves in the deep middle.
When the tide was just right, not too high, not too low, this natural hollowed circle filled like a bathtub and Sadie thought it was the only really good place to swim on the river.
Liss, sitting on the rock edge, raised a hand in a wave. Ginger and Juno were swimming. The smaller kids were studded about the place, poking in rockpools or neck-deep in the water. Sadie saw Lucky burying one of Ginger’s kids’ feet in the sand. ‘Hey, baby!’ she called as they got closer and Lucky looked up, raised a tentative hand, looked back down. Even Lucky knew Sadie had not yet been granted entry back in the fold.
‘There you are!’ Liss exclaimed as they got close. ‘I was worried you’d melted.’
‘Welcome, Sadie,’ called Juno, a little too loudly, from the middle of the pool. ‘Come jump into paradise.’
Sadie’s heart was pounding and her breathing had completely escaped her control. The sight of the pool and the women ahead started to splinter in the unblinking sun and her vision began to blur at the edges.
‘I don’t think I can . . .’ she whispered, unsure of her volume. ‘I think I need to . . .’
‘Sadie.’ Dani stopped, and put a hand out to stop her. ‘It’s okay. We are your friends.’
It was unexpected.
‘Hold my hand,’ said Dani.
Sadie could make out Liss raising a hand over her eyes to see what was happening. ‘Everything okay?’ she called, that familiar voice both intimidating and warm at once.
Dani was holding her palm out, and Sadie surprised herself by taking it. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I have no idea what’s going on with me . . . a panic attack, maybe?’
‘Just walk with me, everything’s fine.’
And Dani and Sadie walked the last few steps to the ocean pool together, Sadie getting a little surer with each footfall. ‘Now,’ Dani said, softly. ‘Get in and put your head under.’
Liss just watched as Sadie dropped the ridiculous towel from her shoulders, stepped out of her shorts and slipped into the cool, blue-silver water. Her feet reassuringly found the weedy bottom and she bent her knees to slide her head under, exactly as Dani said to do. As she pushed herself back up, shaking her head, she saw Dani bend to collect her things and place them, neatly, next to Liss.
‘Better?’ she called from the side, standing beside Liss. The other women began to stroke towards her, the kids still leaping around in the rocky shallow end.
‘Better.’
Sadie tipped onto her back, legs gently kicking, and looked up at the impossibly blue sky.
Her thoughts were sorting themselves out, slowly.
Yes, Lachy Short’s hand on Lyra Martin’s waist.
Yes, the outline of Craig watching her as she retreated to her tent last night.
Yes, the sound of Lachy’s laugh echoing from Site Seven, bouncing off the shame she was sick of carrying around.
All that.
But also, Trick’s face, in the tent, his big brown puddles of eyes pleading with her not to make his life harder, again.
The sight of him bending to clean up her mess.
And of Dani doing the same.
She saw Lucky’s face, just now, reluctantly greeting her mother in front of her friends.
All these thoughts slid into order, like files, and she breathed out a big, steady breath, moving her arms and legs up and down, making river angels in the pool.
‘You okay, Sadie?’ asked Juno.
And Sadie found herself rolling over and swimming, her stroke as perfect as she knew it was, over to the side where Liss and Dani were watching. Liss picking at the spiky barnacles on the pool’s edge, Dani following Sadie’s progress, stroke by stroke.
Sadie stopped at the pool’s edge, pulled her elbows up onto the side and rested her chin on her hands on the mossy ledge. ‘So much better,’ she said. Breathe.
‘You know, Liss, I need to apologise. I think I was confused last night, overwhelmed by my sobriety, emotional about a whole lot of things.’ Breathe. ‘I’m sorry that I made that big scene about Lachy. I think I was mistaken and I’m sorry.’ Breathe out.
There was a beat. Dani took off her sunglasses, looked directly at Sadie, something like a question behind her eyes. Cockatoos were having a shrieking match in the trees beyond the beach, and there was a hum of childish play and laughter from where Lucky was building towering dribble piles of sand for Gracie and Maya.
‘Thanks, Sadie,’ said Liss, eventually, reaching out a hand to touch Sadie’s head. ‘I thought that must be it.’
There was a sour taste in Sadie’s mouth suddenly, like she was choking back an unwelcome flavour. She raised her eyes to Dani. ‘Is Lyra okay?’
Dani nodded. ‘Says nothing happened.’ Folded her lips into a line, slid her sunglasses back on. ‘So, there you go.’
Juno sighed and said, of course, what most needed to be said. ‘Thank fuck for that.’ She laughed. ‘I thought we were in for a very awkward weekend.’
Liss laughed. ‘Fucking Lachy. And his terrible dancing.’
‘Yes.’ Sadie went along with it. ‘A lot to answer for.’
‘I’m coming in for a swim,’ Dani announced, taking off her giant hat. ‘Let the weekend recommence.’