He would never, p.25
He Would Never, page 25
‘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.’
27
Sunday, 11 am
Green River Campground
Dani
Aiden’s face was still tomato red from his run with Lachy, sandy-blond hair still plastered to his freckly forehead. The threadbare John Butler Trio T-shirt he’d pulled on over his board shorts this morning had dark patches under the arms and around the collar, his stomach pushed a little at the fabric around his waist.
‘Dani!’ Ginger was calling, dragging her sweaty husband across the beach. ‘We have to talk to you!’
‘Ginger,’ Dani could hear Aiden protesting. ‘Ginger, can we just –’
‘No, we can’t.’
Dani stood up in the water. This morning, after Liss’s plea for unity, for one more night in her beloved Green River, Dani’s instinct had been to get the hell away from everyone and try to wash off her irritation and confusion. Her anger at Sadie, even after all Dani’s effort with her yesterday, yet again showing herself incapable of shutting up. Her anger at Craig, for not understanding her at all. And her anger about Liss. How was she going to tell Liss, delusional, determined Liss, that the reason she might be right about this being the last trip to her magical soul haven was not because of ‘greenies’, or evil developers, but because of her husband.
Lachy Short. Who just couldn’t help himself to meddle and mess and push, but also, perhaps, to destroy?
Peace. Wasn’t that what Dani had said she was wishing for, on that first afternoon, standing right here, in this water, with Liss and the other women, blindly optimistic about the weekend ahead?
The tide was up now, high and clear, cool and light green on a day that was already hotter than the day before. And Dani had snuck away, asking Brigitte if she wanted to come and being roundly rebuffed by her tween, leaving the others packing beach bags, reading under trees, rearranging tents and taking stock of what supplies needed to be eaten up in the trip’s last supper. As if everything was completely normal. They were good at that, after all these weekends. Pushing aside big and small tensions, pretending things weren’t happening that clearly were. Liss and Lachy set that tone, Dani knew. Rich people were very good at pretending. Maybe it was in the DNA of how they got rich in the first place.
‘Dani!’
She’d known it would only be a matter of time before the others came down to the water, but she’d hoped by then she would have reset, calmed to a place where she was happy to resume usual service – smiling, nodding, small talk.
Ginger and Aiden did not look like small talk. She raised her hand and waved.
Ginger didn’t stop walking, she just let go of Aiden’s arm, pulled off her T-shirt and walked straight into the water in her lopsided bra. Dani blinked.
‘You okay?’
‘We need to talk to you.’
‘Clearly.’ Dani dropped back down into the water and swam a few strokes towards Ginger, who was impatiently motioning to Aiden to come in, too.
‘I’ve got to take my shoes off, for fuck’s sake!’ he shouted, wobbling on one leg before sitting down and huffing away at the laces of his trainers.
Dani and Ginger swam to each other, meeting in the shallows, down on their bellies, hands pushing along the sticky, muddy bottom.
‘What is it?’
Ginger shook her head, took a gulp of air and sank under the water for a disconcerting second. Then she shot back up and bobbed, their faces inches from each other’s now, glittering with river drops.
‘Ginger, what is it?’
‘Lachy and Aiden just came back from a run.’
‘I can see that.’
‘He needs to tell you something.’ Ginger looked over her shoulder impatiently at where Aiden was pushing his rolled-up socks into his tired running shoes. ‘Come on!’
You usually knew, Dani thought, in that moment between being told someone needs to tell you something and someone actually doing the telling, which scenarios were most likely. You calculated as many of them as your brain could manage in the allotted time.
Was Aiden sick? Were they divorcing? Was it James? Had their overconfident teenage son done something the other parents would need to know about? Sexting? Revenge porn? Drugs?
Aiden and Lachy just came back from a run. Oh. Of course. They knew about the sale.
Aiden reached them and said, with a slight breathlessness, ‘It’s about Lachy.’
‘Of course it is.’
Dani loved Aiden, all the women did. It couldn’t be easy being one of the two regular males in this intense group of longtime female friends. Especially when the other one was Lachy Short.
Aiden was steady and kind. He didn’t patronise. He was attentive and adoring to Ginger, without being obsequious or coddling. He had stood with all the women in the shade of a spreading oak at Juno and Emily’s wedding and, like them, had cried when Juno spoke her vows. When Dani and the girls had visited them out on the farm, she had felt a considerable pang of envy. She admired how they had built this life around their steady union, and how much genuine joy it seemed to bring them, despite its difficulties, inconveniences and dramas. Dani envied it even as she would rather eat a box of hair than live where they had chosen.
So they all loved Aiden, who was not given to drama, and here he was, being rushed into telling her something urgent about Lachy. Dani instantly felt sick.
‘We were running,’ started Aiden. ‘And you know he likes to talk when he runs.’
‘I did not, but go on.’
‘I think he likes to prove that he can talk when he runs. And that I can’t. But that might be in my head.’
‘Aiden, come on.’ Ginger hustled her husband along, tapping his bare arm with her hand.
‘Okay, okay. My point is, I don’t say much.’ He pushed his wet hair back on his head. ‘Which actually is my general strategy around Lachy Short, but running is particularly annoying.’
‘I think I know what you’re going to tell me,’ Dani interrupted. ‘It’s about the campsites.’
‘What?’
Oh. Okay.
‘What about the campsites?’ Ginger asked.
‘Never mind.’ Dani folded her mouth tight and looked at the water. ‘God, the river’s so clear at this time of day.’
‘This isn’t easy to tell you,’ Aiden said, shifting on his muddy feet again. ‘I’m struggling.’
‘Just do it!’
‘Okay. So he’s talking, and he talks a bit about Sadie. Standard issue. She’s crazy, driven by revenge . . .’
‘You guys talk about that stuff?’ Dani was surprised.
‘Of course they do!’ Ginger was not.
‘Okay . . .’
‘And then Lachy brings up Friday night, and the disco, and what Sadie said had happened.’
Dani felt sick again. In fact, her stomach flipped, an expression she suddenly understood with great clarity.
‘Lachy said – and I just really need you to know that I do not agree in any way with this, it’s why I’m telling you –’
‘For fuck’s sake, Aiden.’ Ginger grabbed his arm and shook it, sending him a little off balance.
Aiden’s face, textured with ridges and freckles, creased at the forehead and around his mouth with concern, or revulsion. He started to speak in a tumble.
‘He said that I was lucky I worked in a boys’ school. He said that teenage girls are the most infuriating creatures on earth. He said that they want attention from adult men, but when they get it they complain. He said, is it any wonder that sometimes grown men get confused around them, because they act like whiny little children but look exactly like the women men have been chasing their whole lives . . . Well, he said, since our balls dropped.’
Dani was losing her breath. She put a hand to her chest, hoping to hold in what she could feel building there.
‘He said that, in the old world, we knew when a girl turned into a woman, but now we’re trying to rewrite biology, deny nature.’ Aiden looked confused. ‘I have no idea what the fuck he was talking about.’
‘I know what he’s talking about,’ Ginger said, her hands raking through her hair at a furious rate. ‘He’s trying to justify himself.’
‘He said,’ another big gulp of air for both Aiden and Dani, ‘that sometimes a man forgets all the modern rules that have been forced upon him. That sometimes men just act how they were designed to, rather than how they’ve been conditioned to, and that always, when that happens, women freak out. Because they think they’ve domesticated us. And they’re reminded that really, we’re wild.’
Dani was picking through Aiden’s words even as they fell out of his mouth. ‘Did he say what he did to Lyra?’
‘Dani, he never mentioned Lyra’s name.’
‘And what, what did you say?’
‘I said . . .’ It was like Aiden exhaled; he knew the answer to this question, a man certain of that, at least. ‘That there was nothing confusing about knowing you have to act like an adult around a child. I said that I didn’t relate because I found that line pretty clear. And I said that he should stop talking.’
Dani felt dizzy, like she might just fall into the water and never come up again. She also felt an almost unbearably urgent need to get to her girls on the other side of the trees, and to wrap them in her arms, and to never let them go.
‘And what did he say to that?’
‘Oh you know what he’s like, he sort of punched me on the arm as if we were both in on a joke, or as if maybe he was only joking, and then he said I didn’t understand yet because my daughters were still young and hadn’t started bringing all their friends home in their bikinis.’
‘Oh my God.’ All Dani could see, suddenly, was Lyra at Liss’s pool. The bright white-gold light of a hot afternoon blasting the deck. Little bare feet hopping across it. Dropped towels. Shrieks and jumps and wrestles. One-pieces, two-pieces, Marco Polo and handstands. One hundred afternoons like that. Ones Dani was there for. Ones she was not.
‘I told Aiden he had to tell you,’ Ginger said, her voice steady, her face concerned. ‘It’s insane.’
‘I would have told you,’ Aiden added, solemnly.
‘I can’t believe Lachy said all that to you,’ Ginger replied. ‘Like you wouldn’t tell us.’
‘I don’t think he considers me much of a person at all.’ Aiden didn’t look sad when he said it. ‘I also think he believes any real man would agree with him.’
Dani turned to look out at the far bank of Green River. She thought of Lyra’s insistence on ‘nothing’ happening. She thought of the way her beautiful girl had learned to hunch her shoulders and fold her arms across her stomach when she was out in the world in clothes she’d felt powerful in, before men’s eyes singed and curdled it for her. She thought of Lachy Short’s body above her own on this beach years ago. And she thought of Liss telling her she knew exactly who she’d married. Her friend, Dani now blisteringly saw, in a wave of rage as strong as the sun she was shielding her eyes from, was an idiot. Or worse.
She spun back around to Aiden. ‘Why didn’t you ask him what he did to Lyra?’ Dani hadn’t meant the words to come out so angrily, and she immediately saw the forceful effect they had as her friends rocked back on their heels. ‘Why didn’t you ask that?’
‘Dani.’ Ginger put her hand on Dani’s arm. ‘Come on.’
‘Seriously,’ Dani spat. She couldn’t help herself. ‘What good is your bromance chat if we have no evidence?!’
‘Dani, I don’t know if he did do –’
‘Please. After all that?’
‘Men . . . talk.’ Aiden shrugged, and he looked pathetic doing it. ‘He wasn’t actually saying –’
‘You know what he was saying,’ said Dani. ‘That’s why you came straight down here to tell me.’
‘I know you’re upset,’ Ginger said, cautiously. ‘I think we should talk to Liss.’
‘So the fuck do I,’ said Dani. And she stood up from the water with a force that sent streams of river drops in every direction, and headed for the beach.
28
2020, Camp Six
Green River Campground
Lyra
‘What does a virus even look like?’ Tia was asking through a mouthful of jelly snakes, contraband lifted from the esky by Trick.
‘Like a big spiky ball of snot. I saw it on the news,’ Lyra told her. It was true. Her mum was trying to keep her away from it, she said that between the American orange man and spreading sickness, the news was just anxiety.
‘They seem worried, the grown-ups,’ Tia said. ‘My mum says that there’s a place in China where people aren’t allowed to leave their houses.’
‘Well, that would be okay in your house,’ Lyra said, thinking about all the rooms at Auntie Liss’s house they didn’t even really use, and the swimming pool, and the big lawn. ‘If we ever have to stay in our houses, I’ll just come to yours. We could get a dog.’
Lyra and Bridge and their mum were in Bronte now. It was cool, because everything in it was new and her mum got this dreamy, smiley look every time they walked in and she looked around. It wasn’t far from Auntie Liss’s either. It was annoying that Lyra wasn’t allowed to walk to Tia’s on her own yet. Lyra walking places on her own seemed to be high on her mum’s worry list. Also, they weren’t allowed a dog, because they were upstairs. They had a balcony, but a dog couldn’t poo on a balcony, her mum said.
The other thing her mum seemed worried about was her dad. He was supposed to be coming for a month, but everyone was talking about travel maybe becoming a problem, because of the spiky ball of snot. She’d heard her mum telling Liss that Seb was worried about getting ‘stuck’ here. Maybe that meant her dad would come and never go home. Which would be weird, but fine with Lyra. When Dad was home he treated her and Brigitte like it was the weekend every day – imagine months and months of ice creams and iPad time and presents just because.
‘My mum thinks everyone is overreacting,’ said Trick, who was poking about under a log with a stick. ‘Worrying about nothing.’
‘What are you doing?’
‘James said there was a snake here.’ Trick was on his belly, skinny little legs sticking out of the bottom of his black shorts, his chin on the scrubby ground. ‘I want to see a snake.’
‘No you don’t,’ said Tia, jumping up from where she’d been sitting cross-legged on a mossy rock and looking around with suspicion. ‘Snakes bite, you idiot.’
‘And James is a liar.’ That was true. James was a liar. Especially this year. It seemed like James and Bob were more into teasing and playing tricks and running away than they were interested in hanging out and building secret dens. And Trick didn’t seem to be invited when they ran off.
The five of them were the OG Kids. That’s what their mums called them. The babies who had brought the mothers’ group together. There were more kids now, but they were still all little and annoying, and the OGs were all ten now, so Liss said they could play in the forest as long as they didn’t go far, and stamped their feet, and didn’t make fires. The little ones still had to stay with the parents all the time.
Lyra knew that if her mum didn’t like Lyra walking round the block to Tia’s house in the city, she probably didn’t like her disappearing into a forest either, but Auntie Liss could sometimes get her mum to agree to things she wouldn’t usually. Sometimes it was like she was the boss of Lyra’s mum.
‘Do you want to go see if there’s any chocolate in the esky?’ asked Tia, her jelly snakes now just sticky memories on her gappy teeth. She was going through a mad lolly phase. Now they were ten they’d worked out where treat things were kept, how to get to them, that you could help yourself or maybe even buy stuff from the convenience store with your pocket money if the parents weren’t paying attention. It was mind-blowing, really, because you realised why your mums were keeping this stuff from you. It was the only thing worth eating.
‘Not until I’ve found the snake.’ Trick gave his stick a big shove and it snapped on the craggy edge of the rock. ‘James lied to me.’
