driven two hundred miles. If we’d been in Europe, we would have driven through France, Spain and Portugal, and seen something worth seeing!’
The van rounded a bend and there at last was the sign to Mimosa Rocks National Park. A grey blur bounded across the road in front of the van.
‘Look, a kangaroo!’ shouted Nina.
‘I can see it.’ Meredith pointed. ‘I can see it.’ She was starting to think that, on this particular drive, she was seeing a whole lot of things she’d never seen before.
After a short walk from the Mimosa Rocks campsite through the banksia trees, the wild beauty of Gillard’s Beach unfolded like a pop-up picture in a child’s book of fairytales. The pulsing surf had given birth to a luminous pearly moon suspended in endless twilight. Meredith couldn’t quite locate the shade of the sky on her personal paint chart. It was a curious mix of velvet cape, admiralty and prelude. She gave up and named it ‘beautiful’.
For Annie—sitting beside her on the dune and joining the peaceful communion—the years of viewing the sunset over vast, flat inland plains had in no way prepared her for the dynamic restlessness of the darkening sea. She was astonished every time she saw it. She was intrigued by the notion that she might be able to watch it every evening for the rest of her life.
Nina slammed the flywire door on the RoadMaster and flicked on the fluoro over the cook top. She paced the galley from bed to bed and scanned the iridescent screen of her mobile phone. When it finally showed she had coverage, she dialled.
‘Jordan?’
‘Hi, Mum.’
‘Darling! I’ve missed you so much. How are you?’
‘Good.’
‘How was school today?’
‘Gay.’
‘Did you hand in your assignment?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Where are Anton and Marko?’
‘Upstairs having a shower. They have to get up early tomorrow, if you haven’t forgotten.’
‘Have they packed everything?’
Silence.
‘Have they?’
‘Nah. They’re goin’ to the nation’s capital in the nude.’
‘Don’t be a smart alec, Jordan, it doesn’t suit you. Is someone there with you? I can hear voices.’
‘It’s the TV . . . oh, and a home invader in a balaclava who says if I don’t get off the phone he’s gunna waste me with a semi-automatic.’
Silence.
‘Is your father there?’
‘Nuh. He went out.’
‘YOU MEAN YOU ARE AT HOME BY YOURSELVES? WHERE DID HE GO?’
‘Dunno.’
‘Jordan James Brown, this is your mother speaking. I will find your father and he will be back home soon. There’s no need to be thinking about home invasions. Stay calm. Do you understand?’
‘Not really.’
‘What don’t you understand, darling?’
‘How you reckon you can still nag us from over the phone.’
Silence.
‘What time did your father go out? Did he tell you why?’
‘Dunno.’
‘Did he say when he’d be back?’
‘Nuh.’
‘You just hold tight, Jordy.’
‘Whatever.’
‘I’ll call back. I love you.’
Nina leaned against the cupboards as she felt her knees give way. Her face was instantaneously hot and her scalp was tingling with perspiration. She stabbed at the phone with rubbery fingers. Brad’s number rang and rang, and was finally picked up. She heard a brief muffled greeting, and the phone went dead. She gasped—a short intake of breath so intense that surely the walls of the van would crumple and implode. Before she could exhale, she was dialling again.
‘The mobile phone you are ringing is either out of range or switched off.’
‘Oh my God. Oh my . . .’ Nina dialled Jordan’s number.
‘Jordy, it’s Mum.’
‘Who?’
‘THIS ISN’T FUNNY, JORDAN! Have you got Grandma Brown’s phone number? And Baba Kostiuk’s?’
‘Why? What’s wrong?’
‘Nothing. Everything’s fine. But if you need them, you know they are always there and . . .’
Nina could hear the line breaking up. Jordan’s voice washed in and out on a gravelly tide.
‘Mum? Mu—’
‘Jordy? Jordy?’
The phone line spluttered, expired and that was the end of it. For the next half-hour Nina stood outside in the wind—under the banksia tree to the south, knee-deep in bracken to the north, east and west—holding the phone high and low. All was silent. There was no reception. She was six hundred kilometres from home—supposedly beyond all care and responsibility—but now reduced to a simple and terrifying helplessness.
She managed to at least get the van’s lights and hot water going. Maybe she would be doing all these things without Brad from now on . . . now that he’d abandoned his family. When Meredith and Annie returned from the beach, they found her curled in a ball on the bed, bawling like a baby.
‘So Brad’s gone out—’ Annie tried to make sense of it one more time—‘and left the