feeling chilled to the bone. ‘We’re on the Lawrence–Tullymorgan Road, and so I’m thinking this left here is the Tullymorgan–Jacky Bulbin Road.’
Annie slowed and swung the van into the track on the left and headed north again.
‘Hang on!’ Meredith shouted, her face pressed against the foggy window. ‘That sign said Mangrove Creek Road.’
‘Shit! Did it?’
‘You’ve missed the turn-off. The map says it was back a bit.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Well, just let me get a handle on this.’ Meredith peered at the map again. ‘Yes. I’m right. We’re headed the wrong way. You’ll have to stop and turn back.’
‘I’ll find a place to pull over.’
The rain intensified. The wipers were slashing at the water triple-time, but it was making no difference. Annie could barely see the road in front of her. What she could see was that either side was hemmed in by dense vegetation. ‘Jesus! We’re in the mangroves!’
‘That would explain why it’s called Mangrove Creek Road.’
Annie drove another few kilometres. ‘There’s nowhere to turn!’ She was feeling panicky and claustrophobic. The impenetrable dark green walls were as high as the roof. From her perch in the driver’s seat she couldn’t see through them or over them although sometimes, through the driving rain, she could make out tortured black tangled roots emerging from brackish water.
‘The sides of the road are just swamp. I don’t want to put this thing into a ditch. Maybe if I just keep going a bit further, there’ll be a right turn so we can get back onto the other road.’
Meredith bent over the map again. ‘There’re no turn-offs on this road. It looks like it’s a dead end.’
‘What?! Give me that!’ Annie turned to grab at the map.
‘LOOK OUT!’ Meredith yelled as a flash of white skittered past the windscreen.
Annie turned back and wrenched the steering wheel hard right. The RoadMaster did as it was bid and swerved off the road. It faithfully and purposefully dropped its front wheels into the fast-running water channel. The beast tipped, and planted its snub nose deep into the mud.
Annie and Meredith lurched towards the windscreen, saved from smashing through it by their seatbelts. In the rear of the cabin, the toilet door was flung open and Nina fell out onto the floor with her knickers around her ankles. She slid right down the length of the cabin on a slippery slide of raw sewage.
The motor hissed and died. Again, it was hardly what you’d call a Thelma and Louise moment.
Fourteen
It was difficult to know who was most startled by this turn of events. Annie and Meredith up front, with their feet jammed against the windscreen? Nina, in a crumpled heap by the table? Or the bald-headed white ibis, now winging its way back to its nest in the Everlasting Swamp? It was, for all of them, a close call—although, as Meredith, Annie and Nina considered their plight, they couldn’t see how it could have been much worse.
The van was tipped at a thirty-five-degree angle, its back wheels barely on the edge of the road. Black, viscous water was already seeping through the cabin doors and pooling on the rubber matting in the foot wells under the dashboard.
The slick of sewage that had slopped over the rim of the shallow toilet bowl had stopped running, and was now soaking into various squares of carpeting and floor mats. Every loose item on every bench—cameras, sunglasses, books, the chopping board, binoculars, shoes, sunhats and plastic baskets of sunscreen, pens, lip balm and moisturiser—had been dashed to the floor. To add to the carnage, when Annie had last raided the fridge she hadn’t secured its top latch, so that the appliance had spewed its insides through an open, lolling door. Eggs, milk and fruit, split plastic containers of leftover bolognaise sauce, olives and camembert cheese, had all been vomited up and were marinating in a stinking stew. Outside, the rain was steadily drumming on untold millions of mangrove leaves. A biblical multitude of mosquitoes had been disturbed and now smelled an opportunity.
Nina cried first. That was understandable. She had been sitting on the loo, doubled over and clutching her writhing gut; she’d had no warning they were driving pell-mell into disaster. She had been violently upended from her plastic perch, bashed her head on the sink and then been unceremoniously ejected into the cabin, landing on her bare arse. She was wailing with pain and indignity in equal measure.
Meredith was the next one to crack, although it wasn’t outright weeping. Nina thought it