high branch. Just a little way to go and she would be able to step on top of the van.
‘Is she on the roof yet?’ Annie called from inside. Meredith couldn’t believe anyone could ask such a stupid question.
‘Of course she’s not! You’ll hear her walking, like Santa . . .’ Meredith saw Nina open her mouth to protest. ‘Only a lot, lot thinner,’ she added hastily.
‘Bugger off,’ Nina muttered under her breath to the assembled multitude as she shimmied further along the branch. That’s all she needed—a whole crowd looking up the legs of her shorts to her ninety-kilo arse! Nina then surprised every onlooker with a graceful dismount from the branch onto the roof of the van. There was a smattering of applause.
‘I’m fine!’ She waved away their congratulations. This was child’s play for Nina. She’d braved flying foxes, tree huts, rope swings and climbing frames with her sons when they were little. She was surprisingly agile for someone her size, and not in the least afraid of heights. She paused for a moment to take in a last view of the giant sunlit snowy dune behind Treachery Beach before it turned to grey in the gathering darkness.
Nina was determined to fix the TV aerial so she could catch the evening news to see if there was anything about Brad and Tabby. She was also keen to watch her favourite weekly quiz show, especially now she had the inside dope that the chatty host with the fake teeth was a pill popper. She’d always thought him unnaturally enthusiastic about the cookware in the festoon-lit prize palace.
Nina knelt down, peeled back a square of flywire and called through the open vent: ‘Now pass me up that roll of wire and the electrical tape.’
‘OK.’ Annie duly passed the equipment through.
After some minutes of fiddling, calling for two clothes pegs, and fiddling some more, Nina had the aerial standing tall. ‘Now turn on the TV and let me know when you get any reception.’
‘It’s still a bit fuzzy . . . That’s better . . . No, it’s gone snowy again . . . Oh, that’s clearer . . . What’d you do then? . . . Leave it there!’
‘How’s that?’
‘That’s about as good as we’ll get it, I reckon.’
‘OK. Fine. I’m coming down.’ Nina stood to see that she still had an audience. She couldn’t resist a flourish and a bow, and laughed as she was rewarded with a few more claps and ‘woo-hoos’ of admiration.
‘Careful coming down—it’s getting dark,’ called Meredith.
‘No shit, Sherlock,’ Nina grunted. She grabbed the branch and swung her legs across to the tree trunk. It was an impressive move. Only she slid down the trunk a lot faster than she’d intended, bare flesh scraping on rough bark.
‘Ooooh,’ exclaimed the crowd in a spontaneous, collective wince. It hurt like hell, but Nina was not about to give anyone the satisfaction of watching her limp in pain. She gave another jaunty wave when she hit the ground, and it wasn’t until she was inside the van that she grimaced and clutched her inner thighs. ‘Owww! Owww! That really stings!’ On closer inspection the tender white skin looked as if someone had taken to it with a cheese grater.
‘Honestly, I told you to be careful,’ Meredith scolded.
‘That was a really dumb thing to do,’ said Annie.
Nina groaned. Who in their right mind would go away with a bunch of women? At least if she had been with the boys they would have laughed and kissed her better. Soon enough, however, her two nurses had her sitting up on the bed against a pile of pillows with a gin and tonic in hand and a bag of frozen peas between her legs. She wouldn’t have had that expert nursing from her boys.
The television reception wasn’t perfect, but it was good enough for Nina to see a female in a neat black jacket saying: ‘And next on Six Evening News—insiders dish the dirt on Tabby Hutchinson. Cocaine and ecstasy found in his locker and how his girlfriend Emma Pang’s breast implants put the Richmond Football Club over the salary cap.’
Then a young blonde in a low-cut black top saying: ‘Emma and I used to laugh about it. She always reckoned that if the Tigers won the Premiership she was getting a “Double D”, but if they were wooden spooners she’d probably have to settle for a “C”.’
‘Turn it off! Turn it off!’ Nina screeched. ‘Oh—my—God! Did I . . .