have been blown to the heavens, but the morning’s calm had lasted into the afternoon and all was peaceful and still. The waves traced even, graceful arcs on the surface of the water—as if the gods had dropped a pebble into a pond a thousand miles away.
‘It’s beyond beautiful. I’ll bet most people who come to Byron think about staying forever,’ said Matty.
‘You don’t?’
‘I’m a boy from down south. I couldn’t leave everything behind to live here. I’ll come up for a holiday, but it’s not home. I’ll go back.’
‘Where will you go back to?’
‘Mum and Dad live in Daylesford in Victoria, just near the lake. Mum hasn’t been well and my brother lives in New York, so . . . it’s just me. “You have to cut your coat according to your cloth,” as my grandmother used to say.’
‘My mum says “bloom where you are planted”,’ said Annie.
‘See your aphorism and raise you one: “let the sun shine on your face and the shadows fall behind you”.’
‘Shit happens.’
‘We should stop this now, it’s getting silly,’ said Matty.
‘Que sera, sera.’
‘A mystic hangs a fig leaf on a eunuch.’
‘What does that mean?’ she asked.
‘Fucked if I know.’
Annie laughed and turned to look at him. She searched his eyes for . . . something. Was it clues to a painful past, a needy present or a troubled future? Annie could see nothing. Just a calm, simple kindness there. His eyes were the same soft, dusty brown as the earth she knew so well, and a silent declaration came to her, unbidden, from somewhere she couldn’t name: I’m home, was what Annie Bailey thought.
It was twenty years ago when they had dodged over and under each other in the poky dressing rooms at the Athenaeum Theatre, but Meredith could not remember being as nervous about the performance that night as she was now.
Meeting back at the van to prepare for the wedding was probably a mad idea—especially since Nina had left Brad cooling his heels in an expensive luxury penthouse suite—but they all felt they owed the RoadMaster Royale their presence . . . for reasons they couldn’t quite articulate.
They were on the road again. That’s what it was. Just like in the old days. Although, back then, they weren’t sharing lip gloss and champagne. Instead, they had swigged from Briony’s flask of vile blackberry and echinacea tea (good for the throat), been given a painful reflexology foot massage by Jaslyn and had their hair serially tortured by Corinne armed with tail comb and hair spray.
Annie remembered discovering Genevieve that final night, hiding behind a heavy velvet curtain, puffing on a joint. Annie had crammed into the smoky hidey-hole and shared a few illicit drags.
‘Are you nervous?’ Annie had asked.
‘Nah,’ Genevieve had replied. ‘I just reckon it’s good to be alive. We’re all going round just this once, I reckon. We should suck it all down while we can, sister. One day we’ll look back and know that we were never more brave and beautiful than we are now. So let’s just get out there and show ’em what we got.’
Nina, Annie and Meredith leaned against the railing at the top of the cliff. The afternoon sun was dropping below the mountains behind. The vast ocean, polished to a brilliant pink-orange sheen, heaved and rolled. Waves broke and frothed with apricot-tinged foam. The wedding party was gathering below on the beach.
Nina turned her back on the scene and held her crystal flute of champagne high to capture the last rays of the sun. ‘I’d like to propose a toast . . . to Lizzie Bailey. I think she’s the one who brought us all here.’
‘To Lizzie and her beautiful sister,’ agreed Meredith.
‘To sisters, lost and found!’ Annie held her glass aloft with a steady hand. The sound of tinkling crystal drifted out over the ocean. On the wind’s inward breath came the insistent pounding of pagan drums.
‘Red rose petals for passion, white for purity, yellow for friendship and pink for joy,’ Galantha intoned as she flung the petals from a wicker basket into the ocean. Her tie-dyed skirt washed in and out around her bare, bangled ankles. ‘We call on the winds from the four corners of the earth to bless this union made by the Goddess Aphrodite.’
‘So mote it be,’ the assembled multitude bowed heads and replied in reverent unison.
‘Dear Lord, spare me!’ Meredith groaned in Annie’s ear.