Roadside Sisters (25 page)

‘I don’t know,’ she said finally. ‘I really don’t know. Maybe, when we get to Byron, I’ll find out.’

‘OI! THAT’S BLOODY DANGEROUS UP THERE!’ The shout echoed across the Treachery Beach campground.

From all over, heads were popping out from tents and caravans to see what the fuss was about. A procession of holiday-makers in floral print shirts, damp bathers and rubber thongs strolled towards the RoadMaster. Men were nursing beers, women were wiping hands on tea towels, kids had frisbees tucked under their arms. They took up positions at a variety of vantage points to watch the show in the setting sun. The gyrating form of Elvis the Pelvis was an entertaining support act. What was the crazy woman doing up there anyway?

From her perch on the branch of a paperbark tree, Nina could see the site manager had driven down the dirt road on his trail bike. ‘YOU SHOULD COME DOWN NOW!’ He cupped his hands and called again.

‘For God’s sake, Nina, you’re not a teenager! You’ll kill yourself!’ Meredith watched, horrified, as Nina, a good four
metres up, inched her way forward on the high branch. Just a little way to go and she would be able to step on top of the van.

‘Is she on the roof yet?’ Annie called from inside. Meredith couldn’t believe anyone could ask such a stupid question.

‘Of course she’s not! You’ll hear her walking, like Santa . . .’ Meredith saw Nina open her mouth to protest. ‘Only a lot, lot thinner,’ she added hastily.

‘Bugger off,’ Nina muttered under her breath to the assembled multitude as she shimmied further along the branch. That’s all she needed—a whole crowd looking up the legs of her shorts to her ninety-kilo arse! Nina then surprised every onlooker with a graceful dismount from the branch onto the roof of the van. There was a smattering of applause.

‘I’m fine!’ She waved away their congratulations. This was child’s play for Nina. She’d braved flying foxes, tree huts, rope swings and climbing frames with her sons when they were little. She was surprisingly agile for someone her size, and not in the least afraid of heights. She paused for a moment to take in a last view of the giant sunlit snowy dune behind Treachery Beach before it turned to grey in the gathering darkness.

Nina was determined to fix the TV aerial so she could catch the evening news to see if there was anything about Brad and Tabby. She was also keen to watch her favourite weekly quiz show, especially now she had the inside dope that the chatty host with the fake teeth was a pill popper. She’d always thought him unnaturally enthusiastic about the cookware in the festoon-lit prize palace.

Nina knelt down, peeled back a square of flywire and called through the open vent: ‘Now pass me up that roll of wire and the electrical tape.’

‘OK.’ Annie duly passed the equipment through.

After some minutes of fiddling, calling for two clothes pegs, and fiddling some more, Nina had the aerial standing tall. ‘Now turn on the TV and let me know when you get any reception.’

‘It’s still a bit fuzzy . . . That’s better . . . No, it’s gone snowy again . . . Oh, that’s clearer . . . What’d you do then? . . . Leave it there!’

‘How’s that?’

‘That’s about as good as we’ll get it, I reckon.’

‘OK. Fine. I’m coming down.’ Nina stood to see that she still had an audience. She couldn’t resist a flourish and a bow, and laughed as she was rewarded with a few more claps and ‘woo-hoos’ of admiration.

‘Careful coming down—it’s getting dark,’ called Meredith.

‘No shit, Sherlock,’ Nina grunted. She grabbed the branch and swung her legs across to the tree trunk. It was an impressive move. Only she slid down the trunk a lot faster than she’d intended, bare flesh scraping on rough bark.

‘Ooooh,’ exclaimed the crowd in a spontaneous, collective wince. It hurt like hell, but Nina was not about to give anyone the satisfaction of watching her limp in pain. She gave another jaunty wave when she hit the ground, and it wasn’t until she was inside the van that she grimaced and clutched her inner thighs. ‘Owww! Owww! That really stings!’ On closer inspection
the tender white skin looked as if someone had taken to it with a cheese grater.

‘Honestly, I told you to be careful,’ Meredith scolded.

‘That was a really dumb thing to do,’ said Annie.

Nina groaned. Who in their right mind would go away with a bunch of women? At least if she had been with the boys they would have laughed and kissed her better. Soon enough, however, her two nurses had her sitting up on the bed against a pile of pillows with a gin and tonic in hand and a bag of frozen peas between her legs. She wouldn’t have had that expert nursing from her boys.

The television reception wasn’t perfect, but it was good enough for Nina to see a female in a neat black jacket saying: ‘And next on
Six Evening News
—insiders dish the dirt on Tabby Hutchinson. Cocaine and ecstasy found in his locker and how his girlfriend Emma Pang’s breast implants put the Richmond Football Club over the salary cap.’

Then a young blonde in a low-cut black top saying: ‘Emma and I used to laugh about it. She always reckoned that if the Tigers won the Premiership she was getting a “Double D”, but if they were wooden spooners she’d probably have to settle for a “C”.’

‘Turn it off! Turn it off!’ Nina screeched. ‘Oh—my—God! Did I . . . ?’ she appealed to umpires Annie and Meredith, who were sitting at the table, not moving an inch.

‘I’m afraid so,’ said Meredith.

‘And did she . . . ?’

‘Looks like it,’ said Annie.

‘The bitch!’ declared Nina. ‘The absolute lying . . . Oh hell! Brad will have a heart attack!’

‘We should keep watching to see if she comes on,’ said Annie.

‘Of course she won’t,’ scoffed Meredith. ‘Not the esteemed Miss Corinne Jacobsen. She’ll have traded that juicy information, and I wouldn’t mind betting she turns up on Channel 6 some time soon. She’s handed them the scoop of the year.’

After advertisements for carpets, air conditioners and spa baths, the news resumed. The three women watched, wide-eyed, as Emma Pang’s former best friend, Cheyenne Neck, appeared. She was overjoyed to be on the telly. Nina identified her from her diamanté heart-shaped nose-stud. Miss Neck had been a regular attendee at the wives’ and girlfriends’ lounge all last season. No doubt station management had thrown enough money at Cheyenne to compensate for the loss of her friendship with Emma. She was a good little performer. It was easy to imagine Cheyenne and Emma trading fluoro-wrapped tampons, nose candy and filthy secrets in the ladies’ at the MCG.

There was the further promise that more of the grubby saga would be aired on
In Depth
, in its no-holds-barred entirety.
The whole, complete story. The full, total, absolute, uncensored truth—coming up, right after the weather.

Nina had seen enough. She scrambled for the off-switch. The bag of frozen peas fell to the floor. With the heat coming from her body, Nina wouldn’t have been surprised to find that she’d cooked an entrée of pea soup.

‘Brad will have seen it,’ she moaned, head in hands. ‘He’ll already be on the warpath, trying to find the idiot who leaked the story. Someone will get sacked. I’ll have to ring him. Oh my God, he’ll go ballistic!’

Annie and Meredith couldn’t bring themselves to offer any sympathy for her predicament. It was Nina’s well-documented lack of discretion—helped on by a bottle and a half of champagne—that had got her into trouble. It was a cruel way for her to learn the lesson.

‘You can get phone reception up near the office,’ was Annie’s only offer of help.

Nina trudged up the grassy hill in the dark. She was shivering—whether from the chill wind blowing in from the South Pacific Ocean, or at the thought of what Brad would say, she couldn’t tell. She huddled against the cold weatherboards of the wooden shack, the only light coming from the illuminated face of her mobile phone. As it rang, she prayed she would be put through to message bank. No such luck.

‘Brad Brown speaking.’

‘Hi, honey, it’s Nina . . . it’s me,’ she stuttered.

‘Babe! How’s the trip going? I’ve been trying to call you. I can’t talk long, I’ve got a crap situation happening here.’

‘I know. That’s why I’m ringing.’

‘I’m on the Gold Coast. You’ve probably read—I’m in the middle of a total shit-fight. It’s just hit national television in the worst way.’

‘I know. It was me.’

‘Sorry?’

‘The story on the TV tonight about Tabby. It was my fault.’

‘What?’

‘I don’t know how it happened, Brad, honestly. It just came out, and I didn’t mean—’

‘What
the fuck
are you talking about?’

‘I told Corinne Jacobsen.’

‘You did WHAT?! What did you tell her?’

‘You know—about what you found in his locker and everything.’

‘YOU ARE KIDDING ME! YOU ARE FUCKING KIDDING ME . . .’

‘Like I said, I didn’t mean to, it . . . just . . .’ Nina’s tears fell like hailstones on a corrugated-iron roof.

‘Stop it! Stop crying! I can’t stand it when you cry. Corinne Jacobsen?! You cannot be serious! What did you tell her . . . exactly?’

‘That you found coke and ecstasy in his locker. That he wanted the money for Emma’s implants.’

‘Did you tell her about the gambling?’

‘What?’

‘Or the greyhound race-fixing stuff?’

‘No, I didn’t know about . . .’

‘So, it was just the drug stuff then?’

‘I don’t know why I even said it.’

‘YOU ARE AN IDIOT, NINA! YOU KNOW THAT? I can’t believe that even you could be so stupid. This could cost me
my job. You realise that, don’t you? How’ll we afford the boys’ school fees if I haven’t got a job?’

Nina couldn’t form a single word. The thought that the boys might have to be taken out of school was just—

‘So, you spilled your guts to Corinne Jacobsen. Anyone else?’

‘No . . . apart from Annie and Meredith.’

‘JESUS CHRIST, NINA, SNAP 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.