30
2023, Camp Seven
Green River Campground
Sadie
Somewhere between Lockdown One and Lockdown Two, Sadie’s glass had turned into a bottle.
Now, on the first weekend back at Green River since the pandemic hiatus, she could see that she was refilling her plastic tumbler twice, maybe three times as fast as the other women. She also knew it wasn’t a problem; her tolerance was higher these days, that was all. So sue her. Everyone had indulged a little too much over the last two years. Now that life was almost back to normal, she’d sort it out, cut back. After the long weekend, though. This was her last hurrah.
She’d said as much to Trick, as he’d watched her load a case of her favourite red into the back of the car from under his heavy fringe.
‘How many last hurrahs is that, Mum?’
‘Don’t be a narc, Trick. Life’s hard, don’t know if you’ve noticed. I need some little treats.’
She didn’t tell him that under Lucky’s unicorn squishy and his skateboard were also several bottles of Prosecco and some gin. Although, let’s face it, he probably knew. He seemed to know most things these days.
Now they were sitting on the beach after a low tide sunset, breaking first-night disco tradition with a full-moon campfire Liss had somehow wrangled permission for from Ron and Shell. Sadie was feeling safely warm and blurred around the edges as the kids collected driftwood to add to the small triangle of flames, and she watched them flitting about in the glow of it, like little jumping fleas.
She knew they’d all felt relief that everything was still here after their pandemic skip. The circle path was still rough and wide, the gums were still leaning in, breathing heavily over the campground’s shorn sites. The tide was still seeping out and creeping back, just the other side of that tangled line of figs and palms. The kitchen still stood, with a toaster and kettle whose numbers and settings had worn off years before. The caves were yawning their warning mouths on the edge of the national park. Webs were spinning, mozzies were whining, Sadie’s site across from the toilet block was still just a little too smelly.
For the past two years, every time it looked like the families might be able to escape to Green River, the virus would shift. A new strain. New regulations. Newly drawn borders that could not be crossed. The national park would close. The campground would close, open, shut for good. Someone got sick.
For Sadie, it was the least of her worries, whether and when they’d get back here, but Liss, she knew, had been obsessed by it.
Now Juno was going around their circle, asking everyone how ‘their Covid’ had been and filming the answers, and as far as Sadie could see, everyone’s was better than hers.
Even Ginger, who had cancer, for fuck’s sake, had all that space out there in Woop Woop, so many fewer stupid rules and restrictions on them. Liss had her mansion and her swimming pool and her beach house. Juno had become an influencer, apparently, if Trick was to be believed. And Dani had somehow found a fucking boyfriend.
Sadie wasn’t really impressed, as she looked over at where Dani and Craig were sitting, his arm around her as the flames jumped and danced, her head on his shoulder and her eyes on her girls. He looked boring; he looked arrogant. He looked like Lachy Short.
‘My Covid,’ she’d happily told Juno, ‘was absolutely fucked.’
Her physio practice could barely operate. Tightly controlled masked appointments that were almost always cancelled at the last minute were both impractical and undesirable. She’d had to give up the treatment room she was renting in a shared practice and try to make the box room in her apartment work. That meant ejecting Lucky from her bedroom, so Sadie shared her bed with her ten-year-old daughter for months, which didn’t work out well for either of them. Now Lucky didn’t like to be out of Sadie’s sight, but also couldn’t seem to stand her. It was like the kind of toxic, co-dependent relationships she’d had too many of.
Supervising remote learning was a nightmare. She didn’t know if it was stress or stupidity on her part, but Sadie couldn’t make it through Lucky’s Year Four maths worksheets. Trick spent his entire day in headphones at the laptop his father had bought him and she couldn’t say with any confidence that she knew if he was in class or watching porn. It was too much: too much expectation, too much failure, too much being inside all day with bored, angry children and glitching technology. Wine time crept a little earlier every week.
‘If we ever have another pandemic,’ she told Juno’s phone screen, ‘I’m moving in with the Shorts.’
‘Not likely, Sadie,’ Lachy said, coming to sit beside her. ‘I couldn’t handle the temptation.’ The way he said it, half-joking, half-leering, was typical of the way he always spoke to her, which was different from the way he spoke to any of the other women in the Green River group.
‘How was your Covid, Lachy?’ Juno asked, turning her camera to him.
He smiled, looked down, looked up. ‘My Covid taught me you can still make plenty of money without putting on a suit and going to an office.’
‘Amen,’ called Craig.
‘Ugh,’ said Liss, who’d come to sit beside her husband. ‘That’s your takeaway?’
‘Yes, and that I’m happy we own two homes, both of which have pools. Our successes paid off.’
‘I think you mean,’ Liss said, and Sadie could hear the panic in her voice as she sensed the looks her friends were exchanging in the moon’s glow, ‘that you’re grateful for our privilege.’
‘That’s not what I mean.’ Lachy laughed, sipping his beer. ‘But you can say that if you want to, darling.’
‘I admire your honesty, brother,’ said Craig, the newcomer. ‘There’s too much feeling guilty about success in this world. You shouldn’t have to apologise for your hard work.’
Lachy raised his glass towards Dani’s boyfriend, and Sadie made a little vomiting sound. ‘Oh spare me,’ she said, raising her cup to her lips and realising it was empty. ‘You men make me want another drink. Anyone got the red?’
‘Sadie is grateful,’ Lachy said, steadily, ‘that Covid didn’t close bottle shops.’
Sadie felt a flush of shame hit her cheeks, and burn a little harder as no-one jumped in to defend her. The bottle of red, all the same, made its way back around the circle.
Sadie filled her cup and scanned for Trick, who would doubtless tell her to drink some water if he were close. He’d become such a prude lately.
‘Dani?’ Juno shuffled around the circle, handed Dani the camera.
Dani untangled herself from Craig. ‘Do I have to do this?’
‘We all do. It’s a historical document,’ Juno said, with dramatic flourish.
‘Okay.’ Sadie watched Dani, neat little Dani, purse her lips and decide what to say.
She noticed, as she always did, that Lachy Short was watching her intently.
He never spoke to Dani in the way he spoke to Sadie.
Sometimes, she was flattered by that. Sometimes, she realised flattery wasn’t his intention.
‘Okay. My Covid was hard on my girls,’ Dani said. ‘Their dad lives overseas, they saw him once in two years. That was tough.’
‘But so are you,’ Craig interjected.
‘I learned I am flexible.’
A coughing laugh from Craig, which made Dani, Sadie noticed, visibly cringe.
‘Because at work we changed everything. It made me proud of how resilient my girls are. But most of all . . .’ She raised her glass to Liss. ‘It made me grateful I live in the same postcode as my best friend, so we could bubble.’
Sadie’s head swam with red mist.
She lived one postcode over, and yet, she’d barely heard from Liss or Dani or any of the Green River group during lockdown.
No single-mum care packages appeared on her doorstep.
No invites to socially distanced al-fresco drinks at the beach, the park, someone’s garden.
She’d been surprised, if she was honest with herself, when the old mothers’ group chat fired up again, with talk of when they might finally get back here, to Green River.
She didn’t know if she was part of this circle anymore.
Or if she wanted to be, when it felt she was so secondary, and she felt so second-rate in their presence.
Fuck them.
She pushed herself up off the sand. ‘Going to look at the moon,’ she said to the group. She didn’t think she slurred when she said it, but she noticed a couple of heads turn her way.
The kids were scattered across the beach. Little ones near the fire, poking its base with sticks, scrapping over the few remaining marshmallows, rolling around in the warm evening air.
Some of the teens were gathered near the shoreline, phones up towards the full moon. Where was Trick?
Gosh, it was hard to walk on the soft sand.
Harder than she remembered when they’d walked down here.
Maybe it was deeper near the waterline.
She kept going, needing to put distance between herself and the others.
Fucking Dani, bringing her boyfriend, boasting about her Covid bubble buddies.
What an incestuous mess that was.
One day, she was going to tell someone what she’d seen that day on the beach, however many years ago. Three? Four? She was sick of pretending these people were so perfect . . .
‘Sadie, where are you going?’
It sounded like Lachy’s voice.
She turned around, and it took a moment to focus, further away from the fire and the torches, the only light the moon’s steady spotlight.
It was Lachy, looming in the dark. She often forgot how tall he was. It was rare she needed to look up into someone’s face.
‘To look at the moon,’ she said, careful to round out and finish every word. ‘Bit of peace.’
‘The moon’s everywhere, Sadie,’ Lachy said, and he stepped towards her, reached for her arm and closed his hand around it, as if he was steadying her, but she didn’t need steadying. ‘Don’t go wandering off into the dark.’
He was looking right at her. Into her, somehow.
‘The others sent me to bring you back.’
‘Ha!’ Sadie felt her red mist rolling back in. ‘Worried about me, are they? All the perfect people?’
‘Sadie, come on.’ Lachy took another step.
He was much closer than other men with wives would stand to a single woman.
She was an expert in this, after all, being viewed as a threat or a warning, in a sea of couples.
She had never liked coupledom. She knew men couldn’t be trusted, just look at her father. She knew that the wife-guys at the school gates weren’t what they seemed when they were alone with you. She knew that Lachy Short was just another one of those.
‘Why do you always look at me like that?’ she asked.
‘Like what?’ asked Lachy, while looking at her exactly like that.
‘You don’t look at Dani like that, and you love Dani.’
‘Sadie, you’re drunk, I think you mean Liss.’
‘I know what I mean.’ Sadie dropped her wineglass on the sand. It was too dark to see it, but she knew the dark red stain would be spreading out onto the lighter sand, making a mark like a bloodstain.
‘You’ve always been different,’ Lachy said. He was still too close. She could smell him, even out here with the salt of the river and the dirty edge of the seaweed underneath. She could smell his skin, a sort of clean, gritty smell. And she could look right at his mouth as it moved, those full lips. ‘Not like any of the other women.’
Sadie stepped forward. They were now so close that their arms, their chests, were almost touching. She looked over to where the others were still sitting around the fire, doubtless still swapping stories of their not-so-bad Covids. None of them seemed to be looking this way.
‘Are you okay?’ Lachy Short asked her, but his voice was warm and teasing. He let go of her arm.
‘I know you,’ Sadie said, leaning in a little more. ‘And men like you.’
‘You do, do you?’
‘You want to fuck me. You always have.’
‘I do, do I?’ Again, with the teasing tone.
‘Stop pretending you don’t.’ As she said it, Sadie put a hand on Lachy’s chest, as if to push him backwards but somehow instead of pushing, she grabbed a handful of his polo shirt in her fist, and pulled this big man, with his big, shit-eating grin, even closer to her. He let himself be pulled.
‘You should kiss me,’ she said. Moment to moment, she wasn’t sure what she wanted. She wasn’t sure who she was talking to, even. Or how long they’d been here. But in this moment, she wanted this big, tall man to kiss her. To want to kiss her. Like he wanted to kiss Dani. And Liss. But also Dani. ‘See if it’s like you think it is.’
‘Sadie,’ Lachy said. ‘My wife is over there.’
‘I don’t think that’s stopped you before.’ Sadie was surprised at what she said, and she was surprised to find herself pulling him to her, her hands pulling on his clothes now. She was surprised how easily she could stand just a tiny bit taller and kiss him, getting her lips on his, feeling his beery breath, the slight stubble of his chin. She pulled him in and didn’t want to let go. She wanted to put his hands on her body. She grabbed a hand, pushed it into her breast. ‘It didn’t stop you with Dani,’ she found she was muttering, as she pressed her mouth onto his.
And then she felt his hands on her and she was confused for a moment, in the muddle of the wine sloshing around her mind, on why he wasn’t pulling her in, but pushing her back.
‘Sadie, stop,’ he said, loudly, a moment after he’d shoved her away. ‘Stop!’ It was a shout.
She felt for a moment like she was falling far. The sensation of hitting the sand, so much harder than it looked. Slamming into the ground with her bottom, her lower back. It took a moment for everything to clear, and then she realised the moon’s spotlight would pick her out sprawled on the sand. Her hair everywhere, her shirt yanked up, her mouth red, her eyes wet.
‘Sadie, are you okay?’ a man’s voice asked. It was Aiden, maybe. She didn’t want to open her eyes, the realisation of what she’d just done piercing the fog in her brain.
‘Sadie! Are you alright?’ It was Liss. They were all coming. ‘Lachy, what happened?’
Lachy’s voice, the mocking edge still there. ‘She fell. Just a little overzealous on the wines tonight, right, Sadie?’
Who saw?
‘Mum?’ Trick’s voice. And the tone of it. Shock and shame and worry. She didn’t ever want her son’s voice to sound like that. ‘Mum. Get up.’