OUT OF IT! You have to learn what “privacy” means. What “trust” is. What “secrets” are. I knew this would happen. You go away with two women—who, let’s face it, you hardly know—and you tell them everything! You do it all the time! I’ve warned and warned you. Can you be trusted with anything? Now turn your phone off and keep your big mouth shut. I don’t want to talk to you anymore. I’ll fix it—like I’ve always fixed everything, while you’ve just been sitting on your arse, gossiping with your mother and making pancakes.’
‘Brad—’
The line went dead. Nina’s heart went dead too.
Nina couldn’t face the evening meal, and that hadn’t happened for a long while. Even in the depths of her misery she thought that this was probably a good thing—the only good thing to come out of this whole disaster. She was supposed to be losing weight on this trip but, judging by the tightness of her waistband, she hadn’t shed any. Her life—her body—were beyond her control.
This day (was it Thursday?) felt like the longest of her life. The journey north was beginning to take on the epic proportions of Frodo’s journey with the ring. Right now Nina was on the bleak and freezing summit of Weathertop—the place where Frodo’s heart was frozen solid by a stab from a Morgul-blade. She wished her boys were by her side to carry her away to the paradise of Rivendell, where she could be bathed and nursed and healed. Nina decided that sweeping the floor and repacking the cupboards in the van might soothe her ragged nerves.
‘Pass me those dishes and I’ll wash them,’ she said as she struggled from her chair by the camp fire Annie had set blazing.
‘Aw, come on, Nina, stay. Sit. Let’s talk,’ Annie pleaded.
‘Annie’s right. You need to debrief.’ Meredith couldn’t bring herself to say the word ‘share’. The term had a fake, tinny ring to it coming out of her mouth. Nina slumped back into her chair.
‘Don’t,’ said Annie. ‘Don’t torture yourself. It’ll come right. Didn’t Brad say he’d fix it?’
‘How?’ Nina replied miserably. The damage was done—she couldn’t see any way out of it. The uninterrupted sound of the surf relentlessly pounding the beach beyond the dune told her that Annie and Meredith couldn’t think of anything either.
Annie threw another fence post into the blackened iron fireplace. Her sneaky scavenging around the back of one of the permanent cabins at Treachery Beach Camp had turned up enough wood for tonight’s blaze. No self-respecting country girl would ever fork out ten dollars for the measly bags of wood they were selling at the office. The dried-out post caught alight and the three of them stared into the flames as if they might find some answer there.
‘Anyway, it’s only football,’ said Meredith.
Only football? Nina would have laughed if she’d had the energy. Meredith didn’t understand that most of Nina’s adult life had been ruled by goal umpires—the loathed men in white coats who adjudicated between the posts and semaphored success or failure. At any time during those years when he had played first grade, Brad was one whistle-blow away from despair. And when he was down like that, he wouldn’t talk, wouldn’t take any interest . . . in anything. He left the care of their sons, their house and their lives to her. Nina may have been a spectator, but she’d been in the game as much as anyone on the team.
Nina had nursed Brad’s corked thighs, ministered to his bruised shoulders, massaged his knotted muscles—glutei maximi and medii, gastrocnemii, tibiales, deltoids, pectorals, latissimi. She could name every sinew, ligament and joint. She had more knowledge of the intricate workings of the male groin than any woman should ever have been expected to acquire. Nina inhabited the black-and-blue landscape of her husband’s skin. It was more familiar to her than her own body.
Back then Nina had imagined that, when Brad retired, he might ‘settle down’, although she didn’t quite know what that meant. Wasn’t sure what she was wishing for. All she knew was that, every time her small boys heard that Richmond had lost a game, they would run upstairs to their rooms, dreading the slam of the front door that announced their father was home. And every time they did that, it was as if they were trampling Nina’s heart underfoot. Brad didn’t shout at her or the boys—Nina supposed she should be grateful for that—but his brooding, silent presence sucked the