as she turned the key in the door of the van, they were travelling away from all they knew. What was appearing just over the crest of the road? The Big Nina, the Big Annie and the Big Meredith.
The breeze chilled the places where Bill’s tongue had licked at Meredith’s bare breasts. The planks of the bleachers under her naked back were still warm with the absorbed heat of the day. She couldn’t believe she was doing this—in a place that must have been the scene of a thousand teenage trysts. No doubt they would have laughed to see two middle-aged lovers desperately clawing at each other under the stars.
The moon was low and heavy in the sky, and over Bill’s head Meredith could see a restless, endless sea of silver. She was entirely naked now and so was he. He lay over her, covering her body with a fleshy warmth that stopped the shivering. The heat from his body infused her limbs and she relaxed. Her fingers trawled across his hard, muscled back and found crusts of dried salty foam.
The waves were breaking on the rocks below and, as Meredith slipped out of her skin, they seemed to be breathing for her. A long, slow intense pulse of energy roared and peaked and crashed. Meredith was swept away into the depths. She was a mermaid swimming away from all she knew.
‘You had sex with that bloke last night, didn’t you?’ Annie was revelling in the exquisite pleasure of having her tormentor in the spotlight. There was no need for Meredith to reply—she was smiling like the cat that got the cream.
‘Meredith, you only just met him!’ Nina was aghast.
Meredith refused to surrender any information. She stood beside the flimsy camp table and stretched languorously. ‘It’s a divine morning. Who’s coming for a walk?’
‘It’s past midday. We’ve been up for hours,’ said Annie, making the point that she wasn’t the only one capable of sleeping in and wasting the day.
‘Just hang on a tick,’ said Nina. ‘I want to see what the weather’s doing at home before I ring the boys. They’re playing football this afternoon.’ She collected the breakfast things and the remains of the fruit salad and ducked into the van. When she switched on the television to see the Saturday afternoon sports show, the panel discussion immediately caught her attention.
‘It’s probably a day Corinne Jacobsen would like to forget,’ the young female ex-hockey champion in the red blazer was saying.
‘Well, she hasn’t commented yet so . . .’ began the telegenic male host sitting next to her behind the desk.
‘But, you have to say she’s got a lot of fast talking to do if any of these reports are true,’ the salt-and-pepper-haired elder statesman of the panel interrupted and stubbed his finger on the pile of newspapers in front of him.
‘If you’ve just tuned in,’ said the host, ‘Logie-winning actress Tasha Bowen has this morning made sensational allegations that her husband—tennis ace, Mitchell Haddon—has abandoned her and their nine-month-old twins for the veteran former Channel 5 TV hostess.’
‘She’s almost twenty years his senior,’ the hockey champ chick chimed in.
‘Well, this one’s definitely not “love-all”,’ punned the chirpy host. ‘We’ll be back with more—an exclusive interview with Tasha Bowen, and a look at the career highlights of Mitchell Haddon—right after the break.’
Time had stood still for Nina as she watched all this on the van’s small television. Now she wrung her tea towel nervously. This was obviously Brad’s handiwork. Tasha was the famous younger sister of Travis Bowen—one of Richmond’s star wingers. By the time Nina had screeched for Meredith and Annie to join her at the table in front of the TV, and furnished them both with cups of tea, the sports show was back.
The three hosts efficiently summed up the allegation made in that morning’s Sydney Telegraph, Melbourne Herald Sun, Brisbane Courier-Mail, Adelaide Advertiser, Hobart Mercury, Perth’s West Australian and the Cooktown Courier. Corinne’s affair with the twenty-seven-year-old tennis star had (allegedly) begun when he was the number two seed at the Australian Open that January. He had recently moved out of the marital home, citing a need for ‘more space’. The space he had found was in Corinne’s bed while the billionaire (with a special emphasis on the ‘b’) packaging tycoon Malcolm Pearson (her second husband, it was noted) was in New York working on a company takeover.
The evidence? That had been kindly supplied by the nation’s sweetheart, Tasha Bowen herself. A blurry black-and-white nude