26
2019, Camp Five
Green River Campground
Liss
Liss was weeing on her tree.
She was nervous, spending longer than she needed, kicking leaves over the little puddle like a puppy, looking up at the spreading branches of the fig, running her hands over the knotty curves of its trunk, tracing its roots with her toes, killing time before she returned to Site Seven.
Dani hadn’t arrived yet and Liss was jumpy. In the year since the storm weekend, plenty had changed in their cosy little blended family. Dani wasn’t such a regular fixture at the house anymore. If she was there when Lachy arrived home, there was no lingering over wine and pasta, only Dani making polite excuses, gathering bags and keys and children and leaving. Lachy would say nothing, watch Dani disappearing down the front path, and always be just a little sulkier on those evenings.
Liss and Dani had stuck to the agreement made outside the toilet block that night. They would not let that glitch of an afternoon come between them. They would push through Liss’s discomfort and Dani’s embarrassment to talk about it. They would laugh about it. They would rid that afternoon of its power to dismantle their friendship by drenching it in sunlight. Their friendship, and their daughters’ friendship, was too precious to let crumble away.
Generally, their commitment had worked. They still spoke almost daily, still shared their own rituals and rhythms. They were solid. But there was something about being back here, in the steaming, salty cocoon of Green River, that made Liss nervous. Dani, too, clearly, because she had called, last week, and said how busy she was, how there was a campaign launching in March that she was behind with and she couldn’t guarantee that she wouldn’t be tied to her phone, that her sick mum might take a turn and that Seb might be flying in on that Sunday this year for the girls and that it might just be easier if –
‘Dani, stop.’ Liss had been in her study, standing in front of an easel she’d just pinned a lesson plan to. When the school term began she was going to start working three days a week at St Mary’s up the road, as an assistant to the art teacher. She was nervous. She was inspired. She was sure it was Dani’s fault she was doing it.
‘You’re coming. Please. It’s not going to be weird, I promise.’
Liss knew Dani was also genuinely worried about her mum, who was ill and being cared for at home by Dani’s sister and aunt. Dani drove over there twice a week after work to sit in the downstairs bedroom, brush her mum’s hair and be told she should come more often. And then, Dani said, her mum would generally lose patience with any coddling and tell her to leave, to get back to those beautiful girls of hers. Dani and Liss, whose father was drip-feeding dark hints about his health to her through her brothers, shared what could never be shared elsewhere: they were bad daughters from different worlds, clinging together, still.
‘Okay, okay. We’ll come. But if Seb does turn up, I might have to leave early.’
‘He can wait a day. The girls wait for him for months. Your mum would want them to see their friends. Come, relax, stay. You know I won’t enjoy it without you.’
‘Okay, okay.’
Liss didn’t know, as she picked her way out of the forest, if it was true that it wouldn’t be weird. She wasn’t sure she was in complete control of that.
And now she was waiting to hear the tyres of Dani’s sleek white Mazda pull up on the stony path alongside Site Seven. To hear her god-daughter’s voice. To hear Dani complaining about the traffic, saying she had to take a call.
‘Liss!’ A voice through the trees. Lachy would be looking for something. Something that would be right in front of him, but that his eyes couldn’t find. Her whole family was like that, convinced only she had the special sight to locate lost things.
‘Coming!’ She picked her way through the tree roots and dangling vines back to Site Seven. Indeed Lachy was standing in front of the open boot, his eyebrows low, his mouth pursed.
‘I can’t find the fucking poles.’
She rubbed his back, pointed at the poles. ‘You okay? You remember what we talked about?’
‘Of course I do. Give me some credit.’ He was tetchy. On the drive up he’d been listing all the reasons they needed to ditch this camping tradition. It had been cute for a while, he said. A novelty. Now it was too much work at a busy time of year. He didn’t want to have to spend three days talking to Aiden. Ron and Shell were neglecting the place and it was becoming a mosquito-riddled death trap. His leg hurt from that squash thing. Fucking crazy Sadie. It was all too much.
But Liss knew he was still smarting from last year. Unsettled at the idea of having to spend a few days in close proximity to Dani, a woman who’d rejected him.
‘We just have to move past it,’ she had said to him, speaking in code to confuse little ears in the back of the car. ‘It’s behind us.’
They had put it behind them, as a couple. Liss was savvy enough to know that Lachy needed some distraction, and she organised that for him sometimes, on her phone, just like she organised his skin-cancer checks and her yoga classes. He liked her to be involved, even if it was only in the planning and the telling. She liked the control, the knowing. It was a season, she was certain of it, something he would move on from.
That year everyone arrived before Dani. Liss, Ginger and Juno were already cutting up onions to fry for sausage sandwiches when the white car rolled in. Liss knew she was being too eager when she dropped her knife and almost ran to meet it.
‘I thought something had happened to you,’ she said as Dani stepped out and they hugged. The wind was picking up and the gums were waving their highest limbs in celebration.
‘Calm down,’ Dani whispered. ‘People will think I’m sick.’ But she pulled away laughing, and Liss felt a warm thrill spread through her chest as the other women came to embrace Dani, marvel at the kids’ height, and offer to help her set up before dark.
‘I’ll get the tent up for you,’ Lachy said, appearing seemingly from nowhere.
‘No thanks.’ Dani shook her head. ‘I’ll manage.’
Aiden was permitted, eventually, to help Dani set up so the disco could begin. Lachy looked like a kicked puppy over at the barbecue, turning sausages as Ginger talked about the promotion Aiden had got at Lochs. Sadie kept turning the music louder and Juno kept easing it down. Children fought with their siblings over watermelon and grapes and salty chips.
Dani looked tired as she sank into a chair next to Liss and put out a hand. ‘Bubbles me, friend.’ And Liss was delighted to pass her a glass as the kids, still small enough to dance with abandon, or toddle about in circles until they fell on their bums, began to spin around the makeshift dancefloor.
Liss watched her husband cross the space to crouch down in front of them. ‘Dani,’ he said, ‘will you tell my wife it’s time to stop pretending that camping is fun? Will you tell her she’s got it out of her system and it’s time to drop the charade?’ His face was serious, his mouth twitching with a smile, his voice faux stern.
‘I will not,’ Dani said, her voice relaxed, playing along. ‘You both need to mix it with the commoners every now and then, it keeps your guy ropes tethered.’
Maybe it was all going to be fine.
‘I reject the entire premise of that statement.’
‘I’m sure you do, Lachy Short, man of the people.’
‘And I want my beach house.’
‘Of course you do, darling.’ Liss patted her husband on the head. It was like the old times – teasing, flirtatious, calm. ‘Go and dance with your daughters.’ She gestured to Tia and Grace, jumping around to Taylor Swift.
‘Those are not my daughters,’ he said, with mock indignation. ‘What are you suggesting?’ And he was gesturing to Dani’s girls, who were dancing alongside. Liss’s stomach plunged. Dani looked down into her drink.
‘Lachy, don’t be a dick.’
Confusion crossed his face. Maybe he really didn’t know that attempting a joke about questionable parentage at this particular moment, on this particular evening, was a terrible idea. Maybe he thought he was breaking some ice. Either way, Liss wished he’d disappear, and leave her with her friend.
‘Jesus.’ Lachy huffed at the look on Liss’s face and stood.
He crossed the floor again, jigged with the girls for a moment, and then, throwing a look over his shoulder at Liss and Dani, approached Sadie, who was still wrestling with the phone’s playlist.
He tapped her on the shoulder and she turned, responding to his grin and his exaggerated shoulder shake, and followed him with a wiggle as he backed onto the dancefloor, beckoning her to follow.
‘How do you do it?’ Dani said, quietly, after a moment.
Liss could have asked, Do what? But it was Dani. ‘I know what I’m doing.’
‘And what is it?’
‘He would never do anything that would truly risk us.’ Liss took a sip of her drink. It was true. Too much of Lachy was tied up in what they had. In the status of her and the house and the money and the beautiful kids. The whole perfect package of enviable success that he’d wanted since he was just a skinny boy trying to get his dad’s attention.
‘Do you know that, for sure?’
‘Dani, I know him better than he knows himself.’ Liss wanted to move on. This was dangerous friendship territory, even for her and Dani. Maybe especially for her and Dani. They watched Lachy and Sadie dancing, mouthing the lyrics with exaggeration, all big arms and twisting hips. All performance. All fakery. ‘He’s just flirting. There’s a difference between a man who wants everyone to want him and a man who will act on it –’
‘He nearly acted on it last year.’
A spike of anger. Liss looked around. Everyone was busy, everyone was distracted. Everyone was listening to Taylor. ‘Come on, that was different. That was us.’
Even as she said it, she wondered how it made any sense, but to her, it did. She knew he’d always been jealous of the easy intimacy she had with Dani, one that he would really rather she had with no-one other than him. Muscling in on it made perfect sense to Lachy Short.
‘Anyway,’ she said. ‘There’s something to be said for not having any illusions about who you married. That’s all I meant.’
‘Sure.’ Dani shrugged.
Liss rocked her chair so it knocked into Dani’s, puncturing the tension. ‘We should get the little ones to bed, yeah?’
‘Oh, just a moment, I need to sink into being here.’
The insects, the night, the sound of the river at high tide, lapping beyond the trees. Liss knew Dani was coming to love it here too. That she had wanted to come, really. It made her feel warm, safer than she’d felt before Dani arrived.
‘It’s going to be a big year,’ Liss said, raising her glass. ‘I’ve got a fucking job!’
‘Mum!’ Tia exclaimed, hearing her mother at the exact moment the music stopped and before Taylor was followed by ‘Old Town Road’.
Dani tapped her plastic glass on Liss’s. ‘Proud of you, friend. To a life outside your mansion.’
Liss felt her smile tightening.
Then someone barrelled past her chair, bumping her glass, spilling some bubbles.
It was Emily, who Liss hadn’t realised was missing.
She’d seemed distracted today, fussing over Bob’s sunscreen more than usual, spending a long time setting up the inside of their tent, declaring she was going for a walk alone at sundown.
Still, Emily and Juno had a lot going on.
They were planning a wedding.
It made Liss emotional to think about how seeing her friends marry wasn’t even legal when they all first met.
Lachy teased her about her liberal warm and fuzzies when she expressed excitement about going to her first gay wedding.
Dani told her not to say ‘gay wedding’, but she wasn’t sure why.
Emily’s face was a little drawn, her forehead creased in a frown.
Maybe gay weddings were every bit as stressful to plan as straight ones, Liss thought.
‘Hey, Em,’ she called, as Emily passed, ‘did I tell you about my job? Dani’s just congratulating me for not being a super-lame boring housewife anymore.’
Dani’s head turned sharply to Liss, but Emily kept moving.
There was something purposeful about where she was going.
She walked right up to Lachy, and tapped him on the shoulder, in much the same way he had just done to Sadie.
Except she didn’t want to dance.
Emily pushed Lachy – shoved him, more like it – and Liss was out of her chair and stepping over the oblivious children before she’d realised it.
‘You,’ was all she could make out Emily saying, by the time she was close enough to hear. ‘It’s your fucking fault.’
Sadie was standing between Lachy, who looked slack-jawed with shock, and Emily, her face curled in disgust. ‘Hey, guys,’ Sadie was saying. ‘What the fuck?’
‘It’s his fault!’
Juno stepped up and took Emily, mild-mannered, always reasonable Emily, by the arm, pulling her away, out from under the tarp into the lamp-studded gloom.
‘What?’ Liss shouted, over the music. All the kids’ heads were popping up now, eyes on their parents, sensing tension, danger. ‘What?’
‘She said something about him costing them a baby,’ Sadie said, half-giggling, still fizzing with the surprise of it all.
‘Oh Jesus.’
‘Liss, I have no idea what she’s talking about,’ said Lachy. ‘I’m getting blamed for fucking everything today.’
But Liss was already walking, past a stunned Dani, along the path with the little solar lamps she’d carefully pushed into the ground to guide the kids to the bathroom. Over to Site Five, where a silhouette of Juno and Emily was projected on their yellow tent. They were inside, and even from their black shadows, it was clear that Emily was crying, and Juno was soothing.
‘We can’t blame him,’ Juno was saying, through the thin, shiny fabric. ‘Em, seriously, we can’t blame him.’
‘I can fucking blame him,’ gasped Emily through tears and snot. ‘He cost us time.’
The head of Juno’s shadowy outline lifted, as if she could sense Liss on the other side of the wall. ‘Hold on, Em.’
‘What happened?’ Liss asked, straight away, before Juno reached her.
‘She had another miscarriage.’ Juno’s voice was low, with a crack in it.
‘Oh no.’ Liss had a muscle memory of what Emily was feeling. Her stomach ached, her hands tingled, her throat closed just a little tighter thinking about Em speaking through those sobs. ‘I thought you two had stopped trying.’
‘We had,’ Juno said. ‘I had. She wanted one more round.’
‘I’m so sorry.’
‘It’s not Lachy’s fault.’ Juno shrugged, to a new cry from inside the tent. ‘But Em’s got herself stuck on it.’
Baby grief was wild, Liss thought. Unable to be tamed or channelled. If Emily, the most rational and reasonable and reserved among them, could be here, years later, then every day had mattered to her. Every hour.
‘I understand,’ Liss said. And she did. Lachy, she knew, had distracted these women for a time with his hero complex, sending them off to the waiting list of a fancy doctor friend who had ended up being no more successful than Juno and Emily’s clinic. She also understood the part she had played herself, putting her foot down about Lachy being a donor when he kept on pushing it. It was infuriating, his need to insert himself into their lives, to control and help and perform as the golden saviour. It could be seductive, endearing, and completely devastating.
‘She doesn’t want him at the wedding,’ Juno said, dropping her voice another decibel. ‘I’m just telling you that. Maybe she will calm down before then. It was hard to get her here.’
Liss pulled Juno into a hug. ‘Of course,’ she said, a ball of frustration pushing against her ribs. Smoothing over his messes, always.
‘Of course,’ she whispered, her mouth at Juno’s ear. ‘Lachy will have the flu on your wedding day.’