with no vocabulary. Zephyr, synergy, tryst, effigy. There you go—there’s a decent Scrabble score. I swear because I like to swear—and I swear the two of you are driving me FUCKING INSANE!’ Twin door slams announced that Nina and Meredith had, like Elvis, left the building.
Alone at last in the humid cocoon of the van’s interior, sunlight slanting through the venetian blind, Annie reached into the fridge for her first bottle of the day. She set out olives, cheeses, sliced ham, crab dip and pita bread on the table and stepped outside. Sitting on a fence rail in the shade of the van, she fired a cigarette and idly watched a young couple stroll up the street. He was wearing a T-shirt and board shorts, his feet were bare and he was carrying a blue cattle dog pup in strong, tanned arms. She was tall and lean with long sun-bleached hair, wearing a pink singlet and paisley peasant skirt. They were greeted by friends who patted the puppy and lingered to chat. Wandering further along, they waved at a car going by and then ambled into the supermarket.
Annie couldn’t take her eyes off their leisurely parade. It was the way her family used to dawdle up the main street of Tongala. She knew everyone back home. And everyone knew her. All the scandals. Who had married who. Everyone’s business. ‘The ins and outs of a duck’s bum,’ as her mum would say. She recalled the time Grandad had warned her to be careful walking across the main street. ‘Remember that terrible business when the youngest MacDonald kiddie got flattened by a milk truck!’ When had that happened? ‘1947,’ he answered, as if it were yesterday.
It was a genuine ‘insert-your-name-here’ moment. It struck Annie that what she needed was a sea change. Of course, she’d thought of it before, but never made any real plans. What was stopping her? She could live by the ocean—not in the flat dry country where there was no future, nor the sharp-edged city that had no past she cared to remember. Neither of them suited her. She could find a small property here. Grow herbs, fruit trees, vegetables. She’d always taken care of the kitchen garden at home on the farm. She would have a chicken run, grow a few fat lambs and maybe find a part-time job at the local real estate agency. She’d have a blue cattle dog pup and a horse, walk on the beach, camp out in the bush and maybe, just maybe, she could find a man to share it all with. And if she did, perhaps there would still be time for children. If that’s what she wanted.
Annie ground out the cigarette under the toe of her boot. Giving them up would be easy when she lived by the ocean. She finally understood why she’d come along on this trip and why she’d drawn the Death card in that tarot reading. Annie had taken it literally at the time and had been keeping one eye out for broken bridges and steep cliffs. Now she saw it could also have been about the beginning of a new life. She could spring the trap and be free.
By the time the others returned from their solitary walks—Nina first, then Meredith—the bottle of wine was almost empty. When they were both sitting at the table, two sullen lumps of self-absorption, with really shitty windblown hair, Annie happily noted, she opened another bottle, poured three glasses and set them on the table. ‘Right. Who’s going first?’
Meredith surveyed the table setting and registered, in a nanosecond, that Annie had done quite well—although her napkin folding left a lot to be desired. ‘I just want to know what Nina thinks she’s achieving with all this ceaseless activity,’ she said stiffly as she began methodically refolding her square of sky-blue cotton.
Across from her, Nina looked down at her rumpled lap and immediately catapulted headlong into a regretful explanation: ‘I’m sorry. I know I’m being hopeless, but I haven’t been able to ring home and . . .’
‘It’s two days, Nina,’ Annie began. ‘You’re barely two days from home. What do you think could possibly have happened to Brad and the boys in that time?’
‘Hah! Obviously you don’t have kids,’ Nina said carelessly. ‘Oh, I’m sorry, Annie. I shouldn’t have said that.’
‘Don’t worry, I’m used to it.’ Annie shrugged off her condolences. Comments like that wouldn’t worry her from now on, because she had a plan for a