CHAPTER 22
‘Ding-dong!’ James’s silhouette filled the doorframe again. ‘We’re here.’
‘Hi,’ said Poppy, standing up from the floor, where she’d been lying next to Maeve scrolling through her #FoodBaby-filled Instagram feed. For lack of making a decision, it seemed she had—by default—decided to go to the dam. She’d also, for lack of active decision-making, not texted Patrick. All things considered though, this was progress.
‘You guys match!’ exclaimed Harper. Poppy had changed into a pair of leggings and a baggy old Canterbury rugby jumper. James was wearing an old rugby jumper too, similarly faded and ratty around the cuffs.
‘Lucky I didn’t wear my leggings,’ said James with a smile, and Poppy felt a rush of fondness, as though she’d known he was going to say that. She hurriedly pushed the thought away.
Poppy showed Harper around the cabin—somewhat pointlessly, given they all had the same floorplan. ‘Here are the bottles and the dummies. I’ve sterilised everything, so you don’t have to worry about that, and her toys are here if she gets a bit grumbly, and her nappies are here, and I’ve written a list of what calms her down. And here’s my phone number. You won’t need to bath her, but all her moisturisers and things are in the cabinet in the bathroom. I don’t think you’ll need them, but it’s probably good to know …’
Harper smiled. ‘I’m sure we’ll be fine.’
‘Okay …’ said Poppy. She had nothing else to say. She picked up Maeve, held her tightly and kissed the crown of her head. ‘Bye, my precious girl. I’ll miss you.’
‘I’ll take good care of her,’ said Harper, prising her gently from Poppy’s arms. ‘You just relax.’
Poppy’s insides were a tightly coiled spring. She was leaving her only child with a teenager in a cabin with paper-thin walls. It would probably blow over in a strong wind! It could burn down! There could be a snake in here somewhere (the oven?!). There could be murderers in this campground. Come to think of it, this was the perfect setting for a true-crime documentary.
‘Ready to go?’ asked James, placing a light hand on her shoulder.
His touch startled her, yanking her back to the present. Harper was cooing at Maeve, whose eyes were flickering delightedly over the teenager’s dangling earrings.
Poppy picked up her phone from the bench and nodded. ‘I’m only a phone call away,’ she reminded Harper, who bobbed her head, smiling.
Outside, the cool sunset air tickled the skin between her ankle socks and leggings. The gum trees were black etchings on a neon sky. They trudged down the gravel path in silence and Poppy pulled the cuffs of her jumper over her fingers. She hoped Maeve wouldn’t do a poo—she hadn’t reminded Harper that the nappies had to be put on with the picture of the monkey on the front, not the back. That could be confusing. She looked behind them to check how far they’d walked. Should she quickly run back and tell her? She checked her phone. No reception to text her. Damn.
‘Just over there,’ James said, pointing to a cluster of chairs and utes around a campfire by the water’s edge. Legs dangled from the open ute trays and the tune of Keith Urban’s ‘Somebody Like You’ floated across the breeze. The surface of the dam reflected the pink and gold of the sky.
Poppy looked back at the cabin. She could say hi to everyone and then jog back and tell Harper. That would be the polite thing to do, right? She couldn’t make James wait here-but-not-quite-there while she faffed about.
‘Hey guys!’ called Kate, swinging down from the tray of a Ford Ranger. ‘Drinks?’ She opened an esky and pulled out a Carlton for James and something pink and bottled for Poppy.
‘Guava Cruisers?’ exclaimed Poppy, taking the bottle and turning it over in her hands. ‘Is this the 2000s?’
‘They still sell them!’ quipped Kate gleefully. ‘You have to admit, they are delicious—and super convenient in removing the burden of drinking wine from plastic cups.’
James snorted. ‘Because that is such a burden, sis.’
‘Shut up, Jimmy boy, I know you love a guava Cruiser. You’d be drinking them too if you weren’t trying to impress.’
‘I’m fine for anyone to see me drinking Cruisers. I just don’t want to deal with the pink teeth and bad dancing that seem to follow.’
‘Dancing?’ asked Poppy. She had the distinct impression that Kate and James were having a whole conversation beyond their actual words.
‘I can confirm dancing is inevitable,’ said Kate. ‘You should see these young kids once the sun goes down. Everyone’s an Usher. Or a Bieber. Or whoever’s dancing for the kids these days. Don’t ask me, I still have the 2009 So Fresh album in the car. Let’s sit down and chat before we get interrupted. I want the uncensored labour story.’
Kate steered Poppy to a tartan blanket covering the back of a ute and they sat down. Poppy glanced back towards the cabin. When would be a good time to jog back? Maybe in the dark, so her neurotic mothering wouldn’t be so obvious? She probably had forty minutes until Maeve’s bowels kicked in. She checked her watch.
‘Cheers,’ sang Kate. ‘To sunsets and teenage babysitters.’
‘… Cheers,’ Poppy agreed after a pause, willing herself not to look back at the cabin.
‘You don’t need to worry about Maeve,’ Kate assured her. ‘Harper is a pro. Nothing phases her.’
‘I was thinking I might pop back …’
‘Noooo! That would be a waste of energy and important socialising time. What are you worried about? Harper not knowing Maeve needs to sleep on her back? Or which way the nappy goes on? Or how long the bottle needs in the microwave? I promise you, she knows it all.’
Far out , thought Poppy. I didn’t tell Harper half that stuff. I already failed and I didn’t even realise!
‘Don’t worry,’ Kate repeated. ‘Being a new mum is the best experience you’ll ever have—but also kind of the crappest, so when you have access to a free babysitter and deliciously fizzy bottled cocktails, you need to seize those opportunities.’
The music was slowly cranked louder, and as dusk settled into night the ute’s headlights were turned on, casting a hazy glow across the campfire. Poppy curled her toes in her sneakers and angled her face towards the warmth of the flames.
The dust, the fire, the flannelette, the hands scrunched into rugby jumpers warding off the cold, everyone drinking cans of beer and pre-mixed rum—Poppy hadn’t seen this world in forever. It made her feel young again and, simultaneously, ridiculously old.
‘What’s this boom-boom-tap-tap crap we’re dancing to?’ asked James, appearing at the ute. In the light of the fire he was all jawline and cheekbones and glittering eyes. Poppy wished half-heartedly he was a tad less attractive; it kept causing embarrassing sensations under her skin. Then again, under the cover of almost-darkness and with a pleasantly tipsy buzz, it was prime time for a perve.
‘Who kidnapped you from the retirement village?!’ shrieked Kate. ‘You sound senile, Jimmy!’
‘I can’t keep dancing, sis. This music is making my ears bleed. It doesn’t have any lyrics, for god’s sake. You can’t just replace words with synthesisers and think that’ll make a song.’
‘I think the youth of today would beg to differ,’ said Kate, pointing at her cousins breakdancing in TikTok-style shuffles on the other side of the campfire.
‘Give me some Lynyrd Skynyrd or Garth Brooks over this crap any day,’ muttered James.
Poppy smiled. When she was in year ten she’d paid thirty dollars for the latest Garth Brooks CD and had studiously learned all the lyrics by heart.
‘Oi!’ yelled Kate to the dancing teenagers. ‘Can we get some music for the oldies over here?’ She turned back to James. ‘As thanks for taking control, I will expect a full dancefloor contribution from you.’ She strode over to the teenage aux cord controllers, and within seconds a familiar twang of guitar chords sounded across the melee.
‘Ah, good choice, kids.’ James eased himself up onto the ute tray next to Poppy. ‘“Sweet Home Alabama” was my theme song in high school.’
‘God, you are a loser,’ Kate teased as she rejoined them. ‘You’ve never even been to Alabama. How could it have been your theme song?’
‘It was in my cowboy phase.’
Kate cackled. ‘That’s right! The John Deere and belt buckle phase. How did you ever pick up?’
‘She has no idea what she’s talking about,’ James said to Poppy. ‘I was a stud.’
‘ Was being the operative word,’ Kate retorted.
James shrugged good-naturedly. ‘I peaked too early.’
Poppy chuckled, trying to ignore the flare of intrigue in her chest. Was that a confession that he’d been a massive player—and was he still? Was that what ‘happily single’ meant? He definitely had player potential, in that he was over thirty and still had a full set of teeth. The fact he was here, though, with his family, was somehow comforting.
Poppy tipped more guava deliciousness down her throat as the stamping boots stirred clouds of dust around the campfire. The last notes of ‘Sweet Home Alabama’ rang out and James cheered and clapped his hand against his beer. Poppy grinned. Who cared if he was a player? Definitely not her—especially when she was drinking stuff that tasted like sherbet and listening to embarrassingly sentimental music with people who loved it as much as she did. This was so fun . She hadn’t done anything like this in … well, years.
With Patrick, she had bounced around the same suburbs and workplaces and bougie travel destinations as their friends. Anyone new they met was already a friend of a friend—a PLU, as Patrick called them: People Like Us. They were people who drank craft beer and twenty-five-dollar cocktails, who holidayed in Aspen and Santorini, and drove Teslas to offset their air travel. Ugh, and Patrick drove the biggest Tesla of all. If there was a more ostentatious way of virtue-signalling, Poppy didn’t know it. But she’d stayed with him for nine years . She was the mother of his baby. It all seemed a blur now. He’d convinced her so easily that every day was an excuse for more fun, but that more fun required more money, and more money required more work, and more work required more opportunities to let off steam, and so the cycle continued. There wasn’t time to breathe or think because there was always another flashy event to attend, another gift to be opened. It was a dizzying whirlwind which she’d let herself be caught up in—for nine years .
‘What’s your dancefloor song of choice, Poppy?’ asked Kate, breaking her train of thought. ‘What am I requesting next from the teenyboppers?’
‘Well,’ said Poppy slowly, dimly aware through the Cruiser buzz that no matter the crowd, her taste in music was generally considered embarrassing. But what the hell. ‘I do love “Wagon Wheel”.’
‘Yes!’ exclaimed Kate. ‘That is exactly what we need right now.’ She hoisted herself off the tray again.
‘“Wagon Wheel”, hey?’ asked James, looking at her sideways. His eyes danced with amusement.
Poppy shrugged. ‘I may be recently relocated from Sydney, but I am born and raised Central West—Central Best ,’ she clarified with a salute of her bottle.
‘You forget I’m born and raised Central West too,’ said James, a mischievous glint flashing across his eyes.
‘So?’
‘“Wagon Wheel” is my jam. And’—he paused dramatically—‘I’ve got some moves.’ He plonked his beer on the edge of the ute tray and grabbed her hand. ‘Come on, McKellar. Let’s show these young ones a thing or two.’
Poppy felt herself being dragged off the ute and pulled towards the makeshift dancefloor. Her body had no choice but to follow her hand. Her foot tripped over the uneven ground and her cheek bumped against the cotton of his jumper. She could smell his aftershave through the smoke.
‘Follow my lead,’ yelled James over the music as he tugged her wrist, propelling her towards him. She landed against his chest with an ungraceful head knock and he grabbed her other hand to spin her around.
With every beat of the music, James pulled her close then pushed her away, twirling her outwards then yanking her back. His hands guided her as their bodies moved in a chaotic rhythm, both of them shaking with laughter. Around them, boots swirled in the dust and everyone—Poppy included—roared the lyrics from the bottom of their lungs.
They twirled and dipped and swung and spun and it was exhilarating and exhausting and frankly surreal. It was like a time machine had pulled up and offered free rides to the noughties—pimples and alcohol poisoning not included. Poppy could hardly breathe she was laughing so hard.
At the final chorus, James spun Poppy to his chest, one hand on her back, the other clasping her hand and Poppy was suddenly aware of their closeness. She could see the fibres of his shirt, the creases around his eyes. Her singing dropped in volume as she realised their eyes were locked. James had gone quiet too. They were still dancing, swaying awkwardly together in the campfire glow, but singing seemed too frivolous now. She wanted to blink but she couldn’t. The song was going to end in less than thirty seconds. This would all be over in an instant. She felt James’s fingers tighten on hers. His eyes were glittering more than she’d ever seen. She looked at his lips. Fuck! She hadn’t meant to do that, but it had already happened! And the intensity in his eyes hadn’t wavered. Was his hand slipping towards her lower back? Shit! This nanosecond had become too intense. What was happening?!
James suddenly jerked his head back as though he had whiplash and dropped her hand like it had burned him. The song faded to the finish and a Taylor Swift crowd-pleaser began to blare through the ute speakers. ‘Er, right … thanks,’ James stuttered. He tipped his head and gave an awkward bow, stepping backwards.
Poppy’s head was spinning. The Cruisers and the twirling and that … moment —what the hell had happened? ‘No problem,’ she said, putting her hand to her temple. ‘I think I’m getting too old for that kind of cardio. Or Cruisers. Or both.’
James didn’t laugh—or even smile—as she’d expected him to. He just turned abruptly and stalked back to the ute as if he couldn’t stand to be in her company for a moment longer.
The campfire smoke suddenly tasted bitter in Poppy’s throat. Around her, teenagers stamped their feet in the dust, bellowing an unapologetically tuneless rendition of ‘Shake It Off.’