what you wanted to do. And while you weren’t looking, your whole family buggered off. You don’t even know who your own daughter is marrying. Fuck you!’
Meredith crossed her arms and marched furiously into the darkness just beyond the torchlight. Fear of snapping crocodiles propelled her back towards the side of the van.
Nina, sitting in a camp chair, concentrated hard on the throbbing pain in her leg to take her away from the hideous reality she was facing. ‘C’mon now,’ she pleaded, ‘we’re all tired. Let’s just—’
‘And look at Nina!’ continued Annie. ‘Trapped at the kitchen sink for years. You think I want a life like that?’
Nina opened her mouth to defend herself, and then decided she was in too much pain to go on with it.
‘It seems to me, Meredith,’ Annie spat, ‘that the whole bullshit about women “having it all”—all that feminist crap you and Briony spouted back then—was just a way to get you out of the sheer boredom of motherhood. You’ve got no right to judge me and how my life’s ended up. I’m the one who’s independent.’
‘Independent my backside,’ snarled Meredith. ‘Half your waking hours are spent looking through an empty bottle, your mouth like an ashtray, trying to remember who you slept with last night.’
It was Annie’s turn to stomp into the safe anonymity of darkness. Meredith shouted at her retreating back: ‘YOU’VE MADE A MESS OF YOUR LIFE JUST AS MUCH AS WE HAVE!’
That pronouncement hung limply in the air while they each paused to consider it. The noise of nameless life roiling in the mud, and a distant rumble of thunder, stopped any thought of going on with the argument for now.
‘Let’s just get this tent up. I really need to lie down.’ Nina sighed. She was too weary to bother with her usual ‘look over there’ routine. There was, after all, no ‘over there’ to look at. Beyond the small pool of light coming from her torch, the night was utterly black. The moon was obscured by a scarf of stray cloud, and seemed reluctant to show its face in this company.
Nina hung her head. She had thought they’d come to some understanding over the past few days, that the three of them were beginning to find a true connection—and at the first test the whole elaborate construction had shattered. If this was the touchstone of female friendship she had longed for all these years, Nina had no use for it.
It must have been about 9 pm, although it felt much later. They were bundled, fully clothed, in their beds on the side of the road. Annie was wrapped in a doona and lying on a random collection of cushions assembled from the seats around the van’s table. She had angled her head so that she was looking out from under the plastic sheet and into the heavens. She sought the constellation of the Southern Cross in the night sky. There it was! Ever since she was small, Annie had felt comforted by the sight of those four stars and the tiny pointer and it was the same tonight. She wasn’t so far from home as long as the Southern Cross was in view. The air was cool and damp. Under her feathery cover, Annie was as safe as a baby white ibis under its mother’s wings.
She considered what Meredith had said—that if she weren’t so selfish she would have a partner by now. This trip was showing her just how singular she had become. For years now she had only had herself to please in her one-bedroom flat and she called that ‘independence’, but now she could see the years of solitude stretching before her and couldn’t find much joy in the prospect. But then again, the challenge of ‘sharing’—if this trip was anything to go by—seemed equally daunting. Maybe she was already too old to change.
Meredith and Nina were lying side by side on a double mattress. They were both comfortable enough, despite the stifling closeness under the sagging plastic cover. Nina was nibbling at a block of chocolate and crunching hazelnuts in Meredith’s ear. Nina’s shin and ankle were still throbbing, but she liked to imagine that the sugar was going some way to ease the pain.
Meredith was appalled at her harsh words to Annie and had been stung by her equally barbed response. It was true, she had always had an excuse for not being at home—store inventory, trade fairs, trips overseas to locate new stock—and she