sister,’ agreed Annie.
‘Ging gang gooley, gooley, gooley whatcha . . .’ sang Meredith.
‘No, no! Stop!’ shrieked Annie and Nina.
‘I need to wee,’ said Meredith.
‘So do I,’ said Nina.
‘Let’s all go together and that way we can watch out for feral pigs . . . and crocodiles,’ said Annie.
The three friends joined hands and tiptoed into what remained of the night.
Fifteen
By mid-morning the next day, around a café table in the small town of Maclean, the ‘Long Night of the Mangroves’ was already being shaped into a legendary tale that would be told and retold whenever the three of them were together—although each was desperately trying to edit out the parts that did them no credit.
‘You can’t tell anyone about the bit where I skidded down the floor on my bum,’ pleaded Nina.
‘Only if you leave out the stuff about the crocodiles.’ Meredith eyed them both.
‘Or tell anyone that I missed the turn-off,’ Annie bargained.
‘But you did miss it!’ Meredith and Nina accused.
A pot of tea for three was delivered to the table along with a plate of Danish pastries. They fell on it like scavenging ibis.
‘How long until the van will be ready, did they say again?’ asked Meredith through a mouthful of apricot jam and pastry. They had all watched the paralysed RoadMaster being slowly winched onto the back of a massive truck early that morning. They somehow felt they’d let it down and clucked in unison to see it so helpless, its nose caked with mud. Perhaps Nina’s father-in-law was right, it did have a ‘personality’. Even Meredith felt they’d somehow sullied the good name of The King.
Annie checked her watch. ‘It’s the “electrics”, so they reckon it could take a good few hours. We probably won’t get away till mid-afternoon, and then we’ve got to get the ferry. And it’s about one hundred and sixty k’s to drive after that, so that will get us into Byron . . .’
‘At sunset,’ calculated Nina, who had already devoured her apple Danish and was reaching for something with custard. ‘And the wedding will be twenty-four hours later.’
‘Well, let’s just get there and not tell anyone we’ve arrived till tomorrow morning.’ Meredith reached for the teapot.
‘Don’t you want Jarvis and Sigrid to meet us at the caravan park tonight?’ Nina was astonished. Monday morning had come into view as she watched the children waiting in school uniform at the local bus stops—she was missing her boys. However, by the time she had reception on her phone, they were at school. Brad was at work—in the Melbourne Magistrates Court with Tabby Hutchinson, she had remembered—and she couldn’t raise any of them.
‘No, no! We need time to get ourselves looking presentable,’ Meredith pleaded. ‘For God’s sake, look at us!’
They turned to study their reflection in the café window, and a more sorry trio would have been hard to find on the entire eastern seaboard. Meredith was a ragbag of stained and crumpled linen. She’d washed her feet by the side of the road, but fancied she still had traces of dried feral pig’s blood between her toes. The thought of it made her feel ill.
Nina looked equally hellish. She was wearing a blonde haystack on her head which would have happily made do for a waterbird’s nest in the swamp. Her leggings and T-shirt were filthy and she imagined she still smelled of sewage, despite repeatedly dousing herself in disinfectant. She needed a hot shower in the worst way. Mercifully her ankle was moving freely, the injury not as bad as she’d first thought.
‘Photo!’ declared Annie, jumping up from the table and pressing her BlackBerry on a passing waitress.
Meredith and Nina recoiled in horror. Annie jumped behind them, tugging her stained singlet and muddy-edged sarong into place and grinning for the snap. The resulting image had both Meredith and Nina begging Annie to wipe it from existence, but she merely laughed and hid the device behind her back. The thought occurred to her that she might just keep the picture for blackmail purposes.
If this was Annie being a friend—Meredith and Nina looked at each other and frowned—they could not imagine having her as an enemy.
‘So we’ve got about five hours to kill, girls. What’ll we do?’ asked Annie.
A midday screening of Spiderman 3 at the Maclean cinema helped to pass the time until the van was ready. They were the only patrons in the place.
‘I quite fancy Toby Maguire, especially in that lycra suit.’ Annie leaned to whisper in Nina’s ear. ‘Although