24
2018, Camp Four
Green River Campground
Dani
It was the year of the storm. The year the heat sat in the campsite basin like a sodden, heavy cloth, stinking and hissing out a low warning that something had to give.
By Saturday afternoon they were all exhausted, sapped by the relentless downward pressure of the humidity.
There was no hint of a breeze, and the tide was so far out the relief of a swim had shrunk to a possible muddy roll in ankle-deep, coffee-brown water.
There had been an exodus to Arcadia, where the blissfully air-conditioned old art deco cinema was showing the second Paddington. The double-draw of Hugh Grant and choc-tops had left only a handful of stoics breathing through the afternoon at Green River with mozzie spray and iced water at hand.
By 4 pm, the storm was approaching. Even Dani could feel the edge of electricity cutting the solid weight of the air. Finally, the leaves on the palms were beginning to flutter with the slightest breath of wind.
She’d stayed behind because Lyra was feeling particularly bad in the suffocating heat, and was currently sitting with her feet in the paddling pool and a flannel on her head, being granted the very rare permission of connecting to Dani’s wi-fi to watch toys being unwrapped on YouTube.
Liss had stayed because she was a hostess who didn’t leave her post.
Emily because Bob had already seen the animated bear making marmalade in prison, and she wanted the peace to just read a book, even in a furnace.
Lachy because he hated children’s movies.
‘Come and watch the storm roll in.’
It was the sort of thing Liss said on camping weekends. Determined that even the world’s worst weather wouldn’t dent the wonder of Green River, she jigged in front of Dani with a bottle of bubbly wine, eyes as shiny as the sweat slick on her bare shoulders.
‘Day-drinking?’ Dani asked, nodding towards Lyra. ‘Is that responsible behaviour for the single parent of a sick child?’
‘She’s going to be fine.’ Liss smiled. ‘Emily’s here and happy to keep an eye out. This weather’s breaking any minute now. Come on!’
Liss was giddy and Dani was happy to let the silliness infect her.
She had just put her signature to two significant life moments and she was allowing herself, just maybe, to breathe out this summer.
She had the plans for a Bronte apartment, her very own home.
And a new job.
Leaving the bank behind and stepping into the role of chief marketing officer at a small but prestigious fund with big ambitions.
It felt right, and it also felt like the result of many hours standing around Liss and Lachy’s kitchen island, swapping industry gossip and gaming out strategy with Liss as cheerleader, lightening the mood, flitting about filling glasses with pinot gris and tipping pasta into bowls for the children.
Sometimes Dani thought, This must be what it’s like to have a wife.
Now she thanked Emily and trailed Liss down to the beach, picnic blanket under her arm, plastic wine flutes in hand.
Lachy was already there, the legs of his camp chair pushed down into the sand like he was the only customer at an epic movie theatre.
Beyond the far bank of Green River, the distant sky was billowing black.
The light was an electric silvery-grey.
Dani had never seen a sky like it.
‘We should call the kids to see this!’
‘Or we shouldn’t.’ Liss grabbed the rug and shook it out next to Lachy’s seat. ‘And just enjoy the show. It’s going to be the sweetest relief when it hits.’
‘If it doesn’t blow us all away in the process.’ Lachy took a slug of his beer and rolled his eyes for Dani. ‘Only Liss could love the worst weather in the world.’
The champagne was opened, the plastic glasses clunked together and as the little cold pops of alcohol trickled down Dani’s throat she tipped her head back and closed her eyes and let herself feel what Liss was feeling, what she imagined Liss often felt.
Three years since Seb had left and it finally felt like life was where she’d hoped it would be when she’d dragged him back from New York.
And these people, Liss and Lachy, with their generosity and support, eccentricities and in-jokes, well, they felt like how family was meant to feel.
As the bubbles went down and the dark clouds inched forward, Dani felt the need to say so.
‘Liss, what if you’d walked into a different mothers’ group, back when you were crazy?’
‘Unimaginable,’ Liss said, reaching for Dani’s hand across the rug. ‘I’d be locked away somewhere. Tia would be in care. Or, you know, living with Lachy and his second wife.’
‘I’ve always wanted two wives,’ Lachy said, throwing them a sly smile.
‘Of course you have, Lachy Short, you’re a greedy man.’ Dani squeezed Liss’s hand. ‘I’m glad I didn’t cut you loose when Anne lost her shit.’
The distant horizon lit up momentarily and rumbled at them. Liss let go of Dani’s hand and jumped up, spinning around on the sand, glass in the air.
‘Feel that, family? We’re alive! The weather’s changing!’
‘My wife is insane,’ Lachy said, but he was beaming.
Dani laughed, watching her friend twirl like one of the little girls, bare legs splattered with mud, her skin glistening, her hair two shades darker, stuck to her scalp.
‘She’s completely troppo.’ Dani’s eyes met Lachy’s for a moment, their smiles matching.
‘Why are you like this, Liss?’ Lachy called over the gathering breeze. ‘Why aren’t we at a five-star resort in Byron? Or a beach house with air con? I know a lovely one, not that far away.’
‘Because you didn’t marry someone boring.’ Liss ran over to him, put her hands on his knees and leaned in to kiss him. ‘You married a wild woman.’
Dani rolled her eyes, pulled off the shirt she was wearing over her swimmers. ‘You married a woman who likes to pretend she’s wild. The Land Rover can take you to your beach house in twenty minutes, you know.’
‘Pah! Your other wife is so sensible.’ Liss spun away from Lachy and sank down next to Dani on the rug, grabbing her hand again.
Later, Dani would try to recreate a picture of what Lachy saw then that changed everything between them.
She and Liss, lying side by side on the beach blanket that billowed with dark pink roses.
She was wearing a bikini top and shorts, a combination she’d worn in his presence a hundred times before.
Liss, beside her, in her strapless one-piece, the old 1970s number with the toucan she lived in when they were at Green River.
Her curves and dimples and freckles as familiar to Dani as her own.
Both women damp, laughing, breathing hard from the mood and the heat.
Their fingers intertwined.
When Dani had opened her eyes, Lachy was kneeling between them.
Like she’d woken up and was still in the slightly hazy reality of a dream.
He was looking at her in a way she either hadn’t seen or hadn’t noticed before.
She couldn’t think of a better word for it than hungry.
It made her uncomfortable, but it also made her stomach flutter, and that made her uncomfortable, too.
Liss, Dani saw, had propped herself up on her elbow and was staring at Lachy, saying nothing, her lips pushed together in a way that Dani couldn’t read.
Disapproval, or encouragement? Lachy had redirected his hungry look from Dani to his wife, but as his eyes locked with Liss’s, his hand hovered over Dani’s thigh.
‘May I?’ He was asking Dani, but he was looking right at Liss.
He was asking them both.
He was beautiful.
There was no question about it.
Lachy Short ticked the boxes of tall, dark and handsome, the stereotypical romantic lead, but it was his confidence that either attracted or repelled you.
In this moment, Dani felt his certainty as something she wanted for herself, something she could pull towards her and take a bite of.
As she looked at Liss for the answer to his question, what flashed through Dani’s mind was whether she had ever imagined Lachy’s hand on her.
She had to admit that yes, sometimes she had.
There had been fuzzy evenings, when she and Liss and Lachy had been laughing together, playing music from their separate past lives, sharing stories, and he’d be spinning his wife around the kitchen, his hand on the small of her back, the place that only a lover puts a hand, and Dani had felt pangs.
A longing, maybe, for a man like that? Or for this man? No.
Not this man.
Dani knew too much about him to ever be unguarded in his presence.
To give too much of herself away.
But right now, the way he was looking between Liss and Dani, and the way his fingers were just centimetres from the bare skin of her leg, she allowed herself, for a moment, to imagine being possessed by him, like Liss was.
Liss nodded her head.
Just the smallest movement, and Lachy’s hand was resting on Dani’s thigh.
She sucked in hot air as she considered its presence, what it meant to have her best friend’s husband’s hand on her skin.
She was still lying down, eyes on her friend. ‘Liss,’ she whispered. ‘What are you . . .?’
‘Can I kiss you?’
Lachy’s hand moved from her thigh. His body shifted and he was above her, holding himself up, his body over hers, his face so close to her own.
‘Dani,’ Liss asked. ‘Do you want to?’
She was, Dani realised, still holding hands with Liss.
The sky’s rumbling was louder, nearer. Dani’s eyes were now on Lachy’s, as his face moved closer to hers. Their bodies almost touching, she felt the energy between her bare skin and his flickering and bouncing like the static in the air. He was so close. She had never noticed that dark freckle just on his top lip before, how full his mouth was, and how neat and sharp his teeth. Like an animal.
His lips brushed hers. His chest brushed hers. His thighs reached hers. Just a tiny bit more pressure and she would feel the weight of him on her. She wanted to, just for a second. To know how it felt. To remember.
Big, ugly drops of water began to pelt the ground beside Dani’s head. She realised she had closed her eyes, anticipating Lachy’s lips, and she snapped them open.
‘Stop!’ It was her voice, and it was Liss’s voice, and they’d said exactly the same thing at exactly the same time. Liss’s arms pushed at her husband in the moment Dani also shoved him with her hands and tried to pull herself to sitting as he rolled, with a loud, theatrical groan, onto his back, onto the wet sand.
The minute the rain hit Dani’s skin, the spell was broken.
‘Mum!’ Lyra was standing just a few steps away, the flannel that had been pressed to her head dangling from her hand like a wet rag. ‘Mum, I’m scared. Thunder’s coming.’
Her daughter’s hair was beginning to shine with raindrops. The trees were moving behind her as if there were others there, too. Lyra didn’t look troubled, just irritated that her mother wasn’t exactly where she wanted her.
What had Lyra seen?
‘It’s all fine, darling, storm’s not here yet, run back to camp, we’re just bringing everything in!’ Dani was up, gathering the blanket, the plastic glasses; the cloud of Prosecco bubbles completely popped.
It was just her, and her best friend, and their middle-aged bodies, and a dangerous man she had almost kissed, laughing hysterically on the sand.
‘To be continued!’ he called, from the ground, across the wind, as the girls turned and ran back to the tree line, the palms and ferns bending and waving with the weather.
‘No!’ was all Dani could manage, as she, arms full of blanket and clothes, followed Lyra back to camp.
The storm was short, intense, unforgiving, ripping tents from their pegs, flinging tree branches across paths and palm fronds across cars.
Sadie and her kids had left the movie early, and the storm had chased them all the way back to camp, where mud and sand left a fine film of muck over absolutely everything.
By the time the rest of the movie contingent made it back, Dani and Liss were two respectable friends dressed for the cool change, putting things back where they should have been, righting the mess.
‘Where does it go?’ asked Lyra, happily reunited with Tia, ineffectually sweeping to a Katy Perry soundtrack.
‘Where does what go?’ Dani asked, distracted, trying to keep herself moving, trying to stop herself from settling on a particular feeling that accompanied a particular image in her mind, the sensation of her lips being only centimetres from Lachy Short’s, his body about to push into hers.
Also, was it her imagination, or was Sadie looking at her strangely? Stop.
‘The storm.
Where did it go?’
‘It just kept moving,’ said Dani. ‘And it will keep moving until it blows itself out.’
She was pulling the hot flesh from one of the supermarket chickens the others had brought back for dinner, piling it up on a plastic platter alongside bread rolls and packet gravy.
Liss passed behind her and squeezed her hand. ‘You okay?’
No, Dani wanted to say. I am not okay. I don’t do that kind of thing. And she wanted to ask her friend, Do you?
Did she? Did they? She rifled through all the conversations she and Liss had had about relationships, sex, fidelity, Lachy.
Liss’s mother’s advice about always being in the mood to fuck.
The casual way Liss would say her husband was always, always hard.
Dani had assumed that their relationship was intense, sexual, monogamous.
But why would she assume that when she knew the world of opportunity men like Lachy Short moved through every day? You never knew, not really, what deals couples struck between themselves.
What they were prepared to do, to go along with, to tolerate.
What they might learn they enjoy.
Dani’s fingers hit the chicken’s breastbone. She wiped her hands.
‘Dinner’s up!’
‘Yes! Peasant food!’ Lachy was acting exactly the same as always, leaning in across the table from her to build his dinner. ‘Delicious!’ He looked directly at Dani, who immediately felt a nauseous lurch.
‘I’m just going to clean up,’ she excused herself and, checking the girls were where they should be, under Emily and Juno’s eye, shovelling in plain bread with tomato sauce, she headed to the toilet block.
She shut herself in the cleanest cubicle she could find, rested her head in her hands and began to give herself a pep talk. Idiot, it went. What now?
‘Day-drinking,’ Liss’s voice was at the toilet door, ‘isn’t always the safest pursuit.’
Dani smiled into her hands, a bubble of relief rising. Liss thought it was a mistake, too. ‘Hi, friend.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Liss said, her voice thick, serious. ‘I’m really sorry. About Lachy, about me, about all of it. You should never have been put in that position.’
Dani stood up, smoothed down her top, looked at her mud-flecked toes in her campsite sandals. Traces of the storm, traces of a very strange day. She couldn’t feel the pressure of Lachy’s body over hers anymore; it hadn’t left a mark.
‘It’s like a very weird dream,’ she told the door. ‘I’m not quite sure what we do with it.’
‘We keep moving,’ Liss said. Dani could tell, from her stifled voice, that Liss was resting her head against the peeling chipboard door. ‘You mean too much to me for this to come between us. Lachy and his dick.’
A breath.
‘Is that all it was?’
‘It was the storm,’ said Liss. ‘Weird magic. It won’t happen again.’
Dani put her hand on the cubicle’s sliding lock. ‘Has it . . . happened before?’
Liss didn’t say anything. Dani thought she could feel her friend’s breathing as the cicadas started to sing outside, this day almost over.
‘Liss!’ Lachy’s voice now, joining the insects in chorus. ‘Liss! Are you in there?’
Dani unlocked the door and Liss almost fell on her. Dani folded her friend into a hug. ‘It’s all good,’ she said. ‘Let’s just chalk it up to a strange day, like you said.’
The two women walked out of the bathroom block and into the darkening day. Lachy Short was standing a few steps away, looking at his feet, hands in the pockets of his board shorts. He looked around, clocking any approaching campers coming to wash off the storm.
‘The kids want you, Liss,’ he said. ‘Something about puppy slippers and dry pyjamas.’
‘You okay?’ Liss asked Dani, squeezing her hand. Dani nodded. She was. But for this not to define or destroy them, she knew she had to say something to Lachy Short.
Liss nodded, started back towards HQ, not looking back.
Dani looked up at Lachy, and he at her. What she’d felt this afternoon, that magnetic drag to feel him against her, was gone. He was just back to being that guy, her best friend’s charming, obnoxious husband, the one who thrived on chaos and told a good story, the one who had never liked Seb, the one who wanted her to owe him something, anything.
‘We could still do that, you know,’ were the first words out of his mouth. ‘The door isn’t closed. Liss would be –’
‘The door is closed.’
‘Didn’t feel closed this afternoon.’ The smirk around Lachy Short’s mouth made her stomach do that nauseous flip again.
‘Lachy, it’s closed. I need you to respect that.’
‘I don’t think Liss would mind, or, you know, even really want to know. You’re very special to us both. There’s no need to deny yourself anything.’ His voice was deep and steady but Dani could feel a simmer of frustration building underneath it.
‘Liss is a sister to me,’ she said, firmly. ‘And the girls, all this,’ she gestured around to the campsite, the others, the mob of children, the beach, ‘is special to me. What happened today was a mistake.’ She knew that for a man like Lachy Short, she was going to have to be plain, to not leave a glimmer of possibility, because he would see it there anyway. ‘I don’t want that. I didn’t even want it in that moment. I was just confused.’
Lachy laughed. A short, sharp bark, throwing his head back and exposing those teeth. And then he stepped towards her, two steps, three. Closer than your friend’s husband would stand to you, outside the toilet block of a bush campground, after chicken rolls and beer. Closer than men stand to women they are not intimate with.
Dani knew she should step back, recreate the distance between them, but she didn’t want to give an inch to Lachy Short. If he thought his physical proximity would unsettle her, she would prove him wrong.
‘Step back,’ she said.
He didn’t. The cicadas were deafening now. The clear, rain-washed air was beginning to gather and build again, the darkness closing in by the minute.
‘Step back,’ she said again. ‘It’s not happening, Lachy. It’s not what I want.’
A noise, a footfall, a cough. And Lachy did step back, quickly, as Sadie came out of the gloom, holding a pink wash bag in one hand and a wineglass in the other, little Lucky by her side. ‘Don’t mind me!’ she said, brightly. ‘This one wants to go to bed. Imagine!’ And she stepped through them, eyes down, and into the bathroom.
‘That’s it,’ Dani whispered. ‘Nothing happened. Nothing’s happening.’
‘Keep telling yourself that, Dani,’ Lachy said from his respectable distance. ‘I think you know that’s not true.’
And he turned and walked back into the gathering darkness, with a cheerful little whistle.