32
Sunday, 8 pm
Green River Campground
Lachy
Thank fuck this is the last time, Lachy Short thought, fastening a flimsy, bright pink button, that he would ever have to put on a loud Hawaiian shirt and pretend to enjoy the company of his wife’s terrible friends.
Thank fuck this place would not exist this time next year.
Thank fuck all that drama with crazy Sadie was forgotten, that tool Craig had been dispatched and Lyra Martin had kept her silly little mouth shut.
Just one more night, a few more hours, and everything was going to be, as his father would have said, roses.
Or was it gravy? Lachy squinted into the misted mirror over this disgusting public-bathroom sink and tried to conjure his father’s voice.
His dad didn’t live long enough to see this iteration of his eldest son.
Which was a real pain, because Lachy had listened to plenty of shitty feedback about the other versions.
The schoolboy who was never quite good enough to be an automatic pick for the first fifteen, the late-developing skinny teen who sometimes still wanted his mum, the student who wasn’t smooth enough with the chat to convince those ‘lady teachers’ to give him top marks, the young man who hoped that finance would be an approved choice, only to be told it was a business for cowards in suits.
All that bullshit.
He heard his father’s voice that time he’d managed to get him to come and see his city apartment.
The one he was living in when he met Liss, all sharp edges and conspicuous consumption.
He had been so proud of that place when he’d moved in.
A visual representation of being better than the average, with their sad little suburban three-beds.
But he’d got that wrong, too.
‘You’re an idiot,’ Dad had boomed, his voice bouncing off the shiny finishes.
‘Invest in bricks and mortar, space, a garden, something you can build on. This is just a poofter’s palace.’
Yeah, thanks, Dad.
This version of Lachy, though. The house, the wife, the family, the money. Answering to no-one, soon enough. Surely his dad would have admitted that this version was doing okay. You know, if you didn’t mention the camping.
Sometimes you’ve got to give to get, Dad. Sometimes. Even you.
Gravy.
Lachy ran a hand over his hair and smiled into the mirror.
He looked good.
Some of his mates the same age – and bloody Aiden, of course – were really losing it around the edges.
Thinning hair, soft bodies.
That wasn’t going to be him, because discipline shows up in everything you do, and your will was all you had.
Lachy told Ollie that all the time, but so far his son just looked at him blankly and went back to sketching, or reading, or playing one of those imaginary building game things.
So much of Liss in that one. Too much, really, for a boy.
It was time for the last hurrah.
Lachy left the toilet block and headed back to HQ to grab another beer and swing his wife around what they all pretended was a dancefloor. She deserved to enjoy this, the final trip to Green River, even if she didn’t know that’s what it was.
There she was.
Liss could have made more of an effort since he was wearing this ridiculous shirt.
She had that long floaty skirt that didn’t show off enough of her legs over the one-piece swimsuit she should have thrown out years ago.
It didn’t do much for her boobs, which were still pretty great, truth be told.
It wasn’t like she couldn’t afford a new bikini, but this entire weekend was an indulgence of Liss’s sentimental side, and the outfit was part of it.
She was smiling at him, though. She had this big, generous pink mouth, his wife, and those lips being happy to see him was one of the absolute pleasures of his life.
‘Come, dance!’ she said, waving her hand over her head. ‘I want to dance with my husband!’
There was a moment earlier today when Lachy thought maybe he’d fucked it.
He sensed something had shifted in the atmosphere when he’d brought the kids up from their afternoon cricket game.
An edge with Aiden and Ginger maybe.
A side-eye from some of those cocky teenagers.
But then Liss and Dani had come back from whatever pow-wow they’d been having off in the rainforest, the latest in a long line of far too many peace talks, in his opinion, and everything had been smiles and rainbows again.
He didn’t know what had to happen between these women for them to finally see that these long weekends had become an empty charade.
Anyway, what he’d been worried about, that maybe he’d been a bit too frank with Aiden on that excuse for a run this morning, turned out not to be true.
Which he should have known, because Aiden didn’t have the balls to talk out of turn.
Because Lachy had got him that promotion at Lochs, of course, and also because men like Aiden knew their place in the pack.
Dinner was done and cleared away.
‘Everything Platters’, what they always ate on the final night.
‘Leftovers’ is what Lachy Short would have called them, the rubbish no-one had wanted all weekend, laid out as if it were a sumptuous banquet.
Interesting how there was never any of the aged wagyu he paid for every year left over for Sunday night.
Hilarious.
He played along for Liss.
Like when she’d asked him to stop bringing the really good wine because it was making the others uncomfortable. Really? They hadn’t looked that uncomfortable drinking it.
That’s what marriage was though, wasn’t it? Working out a way to get what you wanted while convincing your partner they were getting what they wanted.
He had known, since the minute he found Liss at the party he only went to meet her, that it was time for a wife and she was the perfect choice.
He also knew he was going to have to spend a lot of energy making her feel like she was in control, which suited the part of him that liked a challenge.
It was a testament to her that it had taken him this long to finally learn how to outplay her.
He grabbed a cold beer from the nearest open esky and took a swig as he looped an arm around his wife’s waist and kissed her neck.
‘Happy?’ he asked her.
‘Very.’ She swayed into him, pushing her bum against his thigh in a way she knew made him a bit wild. ‘All my people are here.’
She threw an expansive arm out to the crowd.
The teenagers hovering around the perimeter, ordered to be here by their mothers, heads down to the glowing lights of their phones.
Smaller kids jiggling to the music, which appeared to be some sort of hellish girl-pop angst set to a techno beat.
Sadie was leaning against the cold barbecue, talking into Juno’s ever-present phone for whatever pointless video she was making now.
The woman was bold enough to be dressed in head-to-toe flamingo pink for the last night party, jabbering away as if she wasn’t the same person who had tried, more than once, to destroy Lachy’s family.
It was a shame that Sadie was such a mess, because back at that first birthday party in Centennial Park, when he’d met all these people for the first time, blissfully ignorant that they were going to become permanent fixtures in his life, he had thought she was the Hot One.
Tall and loud and confident.
She was like a less cultured version of Liss.
Happier to wear something a bit slutty, drink too much and flash you a little peek.
He’d known then that all that ‘I don’t need a man’ stuff was bullshit.
And he was right.
Because look at her now.
It was one of the things that made these weekends bearable, really, flirting with Sadie, reeling her in, pushing her out, trying to spike a little jealousy in Dani.
It was sport, until she got too messy and then it was just sad.
He wasn’t proud of how he’d handled that, last year.
But he couldn’t believe Covid hadn’t killed this weekend off, and he’d really, really hoped that Sadie trying to fuck him in front of the entire camping party might just do it.
The fact she was back this year, and had made it through to Sunday night, was testament to his wife’s unfathomable capacity for forgiveness.
Also known as doormat disease.
The night was hotter than yesterday.
Every day the heat and stink and godforsaken insect population multiplied.
He knew his wife saw tropical romance where he saw soul-sapping humidity and the potential for Ross River Fever.
Imagine, he thought, when this was a complex of twenty air-conditioned condos, with a hatted restaurant and a riverside cocktail bar.
He might actually want to come back then.
Although, probably not.
He couldn’t quite believe his luck that Liss had dropped the ball so badly after her father’s death.
His old foe.
The man he’d most enjoyed proving wrong.
It was Michael Gresky’s fault that Lachy had no claim on the Bronte house.
It was Michael Gresky’s fault that Liss had a pre-nup when no-one else in Australia did.
And it was Michael Gresky’s fault, Lachy knew deep down, that Green River was even a thing for Liss.
Some kind of siren call to a time before she had lost her mother, when she had the kind of father who got muddy and delighted in your giggles as he threw you up in the air to catch you with safe hands.
Before he was bitter and uptight and status-obsessed.
At least, that was Liss’s version of the story. Lachy suspected that Michael Gresky had always been a cunt.
The kind of cunt who would sell his daughter’s dream from under her to a man he couldn’t stand.
He had asked Lachy what he was going to do with the sites and Lachy had told him – whatever the hell he wanted, once all the legals were out of the way.
Maybe Liss’s defences were down.
After all these years of making sure what was hers was hers and what was Lachy’s was also hers, she had completely trusted him when it came to dealing with her father’s estate.
An uncharacteristic lapse that was going to cost her.
But if Lachy played it right, and he was playing it so right so far, she would likely never know he had anything to do with Green River Dreaming.
And oh, how she was going to hate that name.
That was too bad, but she loved this place too much.
Chose it over him, it felt like.
He wasn’t going to stand for that.
‘Enjoy tonight, Lachy!’ Juno called over to him, holding her phone up.
Lachy performed for the camera, giving a little bicep flex and shoulder shake in his silly flowery shirt. Give the ladies what they want.
‘Might be the last one, hey?’ she yelled, raising a glass. Lachy thought he caught Liss giving her a sharp look as she said it, but Juno just laughed. ‘I mean, YOLO, who knows what tomorrow brings.’
Juno said all kinds of shit. Americans.
Ginger was dancing with some of the kids, spinning around in her full cowgirl gear, standard dress-up for country bumpkins.
She had no idea, of course, that the farm-saving pay rise Aiden had got from that promotion was all down to him.
Don’t say I never do anything for anyone, Lachy thought, as he watched Aiden swinging their youngest in circles, her hair and skirt flying, a grin as big as her head.
I like people to get what they want.
He was feeling nostalgic knowing this was the end of an era.
Or several eras.
There was the era when Emily wasn’t talking to him because of that whole misunderstanding with the baby doctor.
He thought he’d been clear that he wanted to be the donor, not just the fixer.
And although he knew Liss hated the idea, he’d done his best to go around her and make it happen with the girls.
His wife, though, wasn’t always a doormat, and that was one of those times she’d put her foot down.
He was the good husband for taking the fall, although it did get him out of that wedding.
Liss kissed him on the mouth and spun away, leaving him lightly jigging, surveying the scene, finishing his beer.
He’d like to dance with his daughters, he thought.
Like a good dad, rounding out another family weekend.
Where were they?
Well, there was Dani.
She was talking to the teenage girls, to Lyra and Tia, and the three of them, heads leaned in together on the edge of the party, looked almost the same age.
When Lachy had met the women, and decided Sadie was the Hot One, he had not yet understood the extent of Dani.
She, actually, was what kept him up at night.
The grit in his oyster.
Another of his dad’s sayings, he was sure.
Or was it the spit in his beer?
I’m going over there, he thought.
I’m going to dance with my daughter.
He saw Tia raise her eyes to him and quickly look away.
She was a disappointment, really.
He didn’t like to say so, he certainly wouldn’t say so, but he didn’t understand his oldest.
She didn’t have any oomph about her.
Wasn’t as beautiful as her mother, didn’t have Liss’s easy way with people, either.
Liss was the kind of wife you wanted if you were a bit of a prick.
The kind who made people like you, made your home more welcoming, knew how to bring people together, how to talk to a billionaire or a bum.
She liked to think she was wild around the edges, but deep down, Liss was just a northern beaches princess, a trophy as well as a challenge.
Tia wasn’t like that, and she didn’t have his edge, either.
It was like she was scared of him, and Jesus, he knew what it was to be scared of your father and he’d never given her reason to shrink in his presence.
Good dad, he was.
Lachy bent down to scoop up another beer, chipped it on the table’s edge to flip off the top and broke into the gang of three.
‘Hello, ladies,’ he said, with an exaggerated dip of the head. ‘I would love the honour of a dance.’
Tia looked down.
Lyra looked away.
Dani looked right at him.
Chin up, a challenge in her eyes.
‘Looking beautiful tonight, Dani,’ he said.
She was, of course.
Always.
Tiny, tidy little dark thing.
She was in a bright green floaty top and pants, a stripe of taut skin showing at her middle.
Discipline and will.
She was like him. It was part of what drove him completely mad about her. That, of course, and the fact she could see right through him. That his wife loved her too much. And she didn’t want a bar of him.
‘Well, thank you, Lachy,’ she said, her eyes glittering in a way he hadn’t seen for a while.
‘I’m not quite at dancing stage, but I’ll get there.’ She raised her glass to him.
Her smile was as sparkly as her eyes.
It must be because she’d got rid of that drip Craig.
Thank God.
Not quite as painful as the Frenchman, but maybe that was because it was always clear to Lachy that Dani didn’t really give a shit about Craig, in the way she had about Seb.
Maybe all hope was not lost that one day he would get what he wanted, what he deserved, from Dani.
And if not, well, he had Lyra Martin in his pocket.
She would come in useful one day, he just knew it, fatherless little thing that she was.
A perfect pawn for payback.
He just had to be more careful than he was on Friday night, losing himself for a second in the memory of that day in the storm on the beach.
Discipline.
These women.
They had no idea, with their sisterhood, and their boundaries, and their belief that together they were stronger and all that bullshit.
They had no idea that he had them all played.
‘Tia, come dance.’ He put his beer down on the table, grabbed his daughter’s arm, thought he saw Dani flinch a little.
‘We’ll get Gracie and your mum, make it a family thing.’
Lyra Martin turned away and Dani with her, after giving Tia a patronising smile that seemed to him entirely unnecessary.
Were they pitying her for having to dance with her father?
Lachy spotted little Gracie across the floor, raiding a rogue chip packet, hand in almost up to her elbow.
‘Grace, put down the salty fat and come dance with us,’ he bellowed, enjoying this display of expansive fatherhood.
He turned back to his beer, took a big swig.
The three of them stepped into the middle of the dancefloor as Madonna’s ‘Holiday’ pumped out of the little shit speaker.
Where was Liss? To complete the picture, put the finishing touch on the portrait of this nonsense camping era.
Of pretending they were ordinary people, like Ginger, like Aiden, who he could see now, holding his younger daughter in his arms, swaying and watching Lachy with an expression he couldn’t quite read.
‘You alright, mate?’ he called, and Aiden smiled and nodded slowly.
Juno had the camera up, of course, filming each dancer in turn.
‘Show us your best moves!’ she called, and Sadie stepped up, water bottle in hand, and dropped it like it was hot. Embarrassing.
He saw, in the darkness, beyond the edge of HQ, Sadie’s weird son Trick standing back, watching, not even looking at his phone. He was probably hoping Lyra would dance so he could perve, that little creep.
His girls moved alongside him, Tia looking like she was sucking a lemon, Gracie jumping up and down on her tiptoes. ‘I don’t want to go home tomorrow, Daddy,’ she said.
‘Liss!’ he called out, scanning again for his wife. She could bring Ollie in, Juno could capture the perfect family moment.
Lachy Short spun around, feeling like the man his father had always dreamed of being. Rich. Loved. Respected. Feared.
He grabbed his beer from the table, took another thirsty chug.
And everything went black.