mobile home thing,’ she sighed. ‘When Cameron . . .’ she hesitated at the mention of his name, ‘. . . and I were first married we used to go camping in the Grampians in this crappy little leaky tent and live for days on muesli bars and chicken noodle Cup-A-Soup.’
Meredith was just about to ask after the infamous ex when there was a bloodcurdling cry from inside the van: ‘OH NO! SHIT! SHIT! SHIT!’
Meredith and Annie scrambled to their feet, hurtled across the grass and piled up the stairs to find Nina standing in front of the fridge, her cheeks flushed, on the verge of tears. ‘I forgot to turn the damned thing to gas and now everything in the freezer is thawed out! The lemon sorbet, the ice cream, a homemade passionfruit cheesecake, chicken satays, my bolognaise sauce, duck and orange sausages . . .’ Nina was bent over, poking at soggy lumps of Gladwrap in the freezer compartment. She dumped a pile of plastic containers in the sink. ‘Look at it! It’s all ruined!’
‘Christ, Nina!’ exclaimed Annie. ‘You scared the fuck out of me. I thought you’d been bitten by a snake or something.’
‘Forget it. It’s only food,’ Meredith admonished.
Nina was aghast. ‘Only food? What are we going to eat for the next ten days?’
Meredith grabbed Nina by the upper arms and shook her. ‘For God’s sake, we’re only an hour away from a Woolworths!’
Nina pouted and refused to be consoled. ‘Well, we’re just going to have to eat everything in the next twenty-four hours then . . . and that includes the chicken fillets I had for tonight.’
‘Yes, of course we will.’ Annie started back down the stairs. ‘In fact, why don’t we just stay up all night and eat the whole lot? Give me the chicken and I’ll whack it on the fire now.’ With that pronouncement, she left and slammed the door after her.
Meredith prised two plastic containers from Nina’s grip. ‘Look,’ she soothed, ‘just calm down. I’ll pack this back in the fridge and we’ll have another look at it in the morning. You put the fridge on the gas, or whatever it is you have to do, and let’s have the cheesecake and sorbet now.’
By the flickering light of the fire, Meredith set bowls on the damp grass and scraped portions of gooey dessert into each one. In the shadowy darkness she couldn’t see the quality of the china or the embossed leaves and berries, and it occurred to her that she didn’t much care. She stared into the embers for a moment, then lifted her face to feel the caressing breeze from the lake.
‘What the hell is wrong with that woman?’ Annie huffed as she dragged another branch from the pile to set a blaze going again.
‘It’s just what she does,’ said Meredith. ‘She cooks. She provides food for her family. It’s pretty primal when you think about it.’ Standing barefoot under a vast and starry sky, in crumpled clothes with the smoke of a burning gum tree branch in her eyes, Meredith felt pretty primal herself. ‘I can see why people enjoy roughing it like this.’
Annie almost choked on her wine. There was a $250,000 vehicle parked a bare four metres away stuffed with one thousand and one items. Meredith might have caught and cleaned a fish this afternoon, but without the $300 rod, the good Swiss cook’s knife and Baccarat non-slip chopping board, she would have been up shit creek.
‘I’ve got the gas on.’ Nina appeared out of the darkness, a hand towel flung over one shoulder. ‘So we’ll have hot water for the dishes, and a shower if we want. I worked it out for myself, thank goodness, so I didn’t have to ring Brad because we’re way out of mobile range.’
‘I thought we were leaving the phones off?’ Annie challenged.
‘We are,’ fibbed Nina. ‘I’m just saying, that’s all. I mean, in the case of an emergency or something . . .’
‘How would you have got on in the old days, do you reckon?’ Annie kicked at a flaming log. She’d unearthed a pair of scuffed Blundstone boots from her wardrobe and brought them along. Their familiar, warm contours made her feel solid and earthed, like she’d slipped on her old self and was a straight-talking country girl again. ‘Can you ever imagine yourself as the drover’s wife in the old stringy-bark hut?’
‘What?’ asked Nina, who always seemed to find herself three beats behind any of Annie’s musings.