‘And you’re obviously both huge Elvis fans. Where’d you meet? At a convention or something?’ asked Zoran. Meredith said nothing. Bugger Nina—it was her turn. Annie was pinching her own thighs, trying not to laugh—this was the best fun she’d had in ages.
Nina almost choked on her half-chewed lump of bread. ‘Um . . . well, we’ve all known each other for about twenty years. We used to sing together in a gospel choir called Sanctified Soul. But Meredith and I only recently . . . got together.’ She looked to Meredith for assistance. And found none. ‘Didn’t we . . . sweetheart?’
This was beyond excruciating. Nina wanted to run away and jump into the sea.
‘That often happens, doesn’t it, Zoran?’ Matty turned to his mate. ‘You’re friends for years and then one day it just turns into . . . something else.’ He reached for Zoran’s hand and gave it an affectionate squeeze. Zoran ostentatiously blew Matty a kiss.
At the sight of Meredith and Nina exchanging looks and then turning back to Annie, their foreheads furrowed with concern and sympathy, Annie couldn’t help herself. Her head pitched forward to her knees and she exploded with laughter. On her cue, Matty and Zoran saw the game was up and both fell about.
‘Very, very amusing.’ Meredith was stony-faced. Nina scowled.
‘You should have seen yourselves!’ snorted Annie. ‘Oh God! That was the funniest thing I have ever . . .’ She collapsed into giggles again.
‘Sorry,’ Matty apologised. ‘Annie made us do it.’
‘And you’re not the ugly sisters at all,’ added Zoran. ‘In fact, if you weren’t gay, I’d ask you to dance.’
He reached behind him for the ghetto-blaster, and soon Cyndi Lauper’s ‘Girls Just Wanna Have Fun’ rocked out through the caravan park.
Three hours later, Zoran and Nina had decided they must be related to each other. Her parents were from the Ukraine, his were from Slovenia. What were the odds of them meeting at the Scotts Head Reserve Trust Caravan Park on a Saturday night in April?
They’d had a true meeting of minds over Zoran’s dry red Spanish mackerel curry and mango salad. Nina pronounced it the best curry she had ever eaten . . . in her entire life. Zoran had flushed with pleasure from the tips of his long skinny toes to the whiskers on his black goatee, and given her the recipe.
After that, they had fallen into a deep discussion about food and Nina’s café plans, about life with immigrant parents, and politics in Eastern Europe. Nina couldn’t recall anyone understanding her as completely as Zoran did. She talked with him for three and a half hours and didn’t feel the need to mention her famous footballer husband once. This was another revelation. That question she had asked at the beginning of the trip—Who was this anonymous woman far from home, listening to the surf pound beyond the dunes?—she now had the answer to: she was Nina Kostiuk. Herself. No-one else.
Annie was some metres away, just beyond the banksias, rolling in the damp sand on the moonlit beach in a passionate embrace with Matty. Sand did get into everything, as her mother had once complained. They paddled, splashed, crawled, built a soggy sandcastle and kissed over its collapsing towers. They kissed and kissed again, lying at the water’s edge with their feet in the foam and their heads tangled in seaweed. Annie was water-logged, sand-logged, lust-logged. Her jersey skirt was wet and heavy, her knickers damp, her hair coarse with grit, tiny shells were pressed into the soft flesh between her toes.
When the moon was at its biggest and brightest, Annie whispered to Matty that she wanted to spend the night with him in his tent.
‘No.’ He put a wet finger to her lips. ‘No. It’s not right tonight. Not with the others here. Not now. Let’s wait.’
By shifting, random scraps of moonlight Annie and Nina peered at the lock of the RoadMaster’s door. Annie jiggled the key and pronounced it locked from the inside. Nina cursed herself for handing over the main key-ring to Meredith earlier in the evening. She must have secured the latch from the inside.
‘Oh no!’ groaned Annie. ‘I’ll bet Meredith and her bowls club fuck buddy are in there!’ She threw herself into a flimsy metal camp chair and checked her watch: 11.30 pm. She was tetchy and frustrated. She lit a cigarette, which she thought was ironic, considering that her libido was stranded at high tide.