glovebox held sunglasses, sunblock and packets of lollies, all tidily arranged on top of the elegant travel diary. It was Meredith herself who was a mess. She was still passed out, fully dressed, on top of the bed down the back.
Soon the van was parked under a Port Jackson fig tree at the edge of Centennial Park. From the front seats Nina and Annie watched a parade of early morning joggers, walkers and cyclists with iPods plugged in to their ears. They groaned in unison and headed back to their beds.
A short taxi ride and Nina was sitting at the open window of a café overlooking Bondi Beach. A low, sodden canopy of cloud hung over the water, threatening to rip and dump rain for the first time since they had left home. She watched a freakish parade saunter past on the footpath in front of her perch—seedy derros swigging from bottles in paper bags; Goths wearing skull pendants and nose-rings; Japanese tourists toting dinky Gucci handbags and photographing everything in sight; half-naked yoga freaks with rolled-up rubber mats tucked under toned arms. It was 11 am on a Thursday, and she was in a foreign land.
In fact, Nina reflected, she could have been sitting in a booth at the Mos Eisley Cantina in a pirate city on the planet of Tatooine (Star Wars IV: A New Hope). She had to smile to herself, thinking of how the boys would have fallen about, laughing to be in on her ‘spot-an-alien-life-form’ game. At this moment she missed her sons—missed their passionate kisses when they knew their brothers weren’t watching, their demands for one last cuddle after the lights were out, and their whispered declarations that she was ‘the best mumma in the world’.
How had she landed at this particular breakfast bar at the end of the universe? Nina thought everyone must be looking at the chunky middle-aged woman in the oversized shirt and leggings, wondering why she was there. Except that no-one was paying her the slightest bit of attention—including the tattooed Maori waitress in the bikini top, shorts, cowboy boots and blue-black Mohawk—a refugee from the planet Aruza, if Nina wasn’t mistaken. Only she remembered that particular race of humanoids shared their memories via cybernetic implants, and Nina seemed to have been long forgotten.
The remains of Nina’s ‘brekkie with the lot’ were slumped on the plate in front of her. She’d ordered refried beans, poached eggs, bacon, hash browns, mushrooms and crusty toast, thinking they might cure her hangover. Instead, she now had a bloated stomach to go with her mighty headache. Two cups of peppermint tea hadn’t helped. There was nothing for it but a reviving shot of vodka in a Bloody Mary.
‘There you go, dollface.’ The drink was dumped on the bench and the plates cleared with a clattering efficiency that made Nina wince. She found a couple of painkillers in her handbag, gulped at the spicy, alcoholic tomato juice, crunched the celery and imagined it was all doing her good. Only it wasn’t.
She watched the surfers in the distance. In their wetsuits on the flanks of the rolling grey surf, they reminded her of buzzing flies on the hide of an elephant. Nina thought of the morning when she had ducked under the aquamarine waves at Mimosa Rocks. It was a moment of exquisite freedom on this trip that she would never forget. But, in truth, the journey had mostly been exhausting.
For so long Nina had imagined being away from her ‘boys’ own’ life of football, electric guitars and computer games. She would commune with treasured women friends and come to a deeper understanding of the feminine. Women friends help us define who we are and who we want to be. But now, when she saw Meredith and Annie close up, she saw they had no idea of who she was. As for who she wanted to be, Nina wasn’t quite sure she knew herself, so how could they help?
Nina rolled the cool tumbler of juice between her palms. She had to admit that all the behaviour she had indulged in over the past few days—the crying and doubting and questioning—had been ridiculous theatrics. She should have known Brad had an important reason for leaving town while she was away. That was the thing about her husband, she thought, as she fished for the ice in the bottom of the glass—he was a simple, loyal soul. Could the same be said of her?
Nina sucked the chunk of