Roadside Sisters (29 page)

She was relieved to see Nina push her way through the double glass doors. ‘I think I’ll wander back to the van. I feel a tad overdressed.’

‘I’ll come with you,’ Nina said, shivering in the wind. ‘I’m really tired. I think I must have got a touch of sun today. Will I get Meredith?’

‘Nah, leave her. That big bloke is all over her. She might get lucky.’

‘She wouldn’t. Would she?’

‘I certainly hope so. She’ll find her way back. Let’s go.’

Annie and Nina walked the cyclone wire covered path alongside the greens, and back to the adjoining caravan park. They threaded their way through the dark—past open fires, hissing gas lamps, shadows on canvas—carefully stepping over tent pegs and guy ropes.

‘I was thinking about a sea change to the country or the coast,’ said Annie. ‘But God, I can’t imagine myself fitting in in a place like this! Look at me. I’m dressed like a freak. I reckon I’d hyperventilate if I couldn’t buy new shoes once a fortnight. No barista, good bread or organic market! One restaurant. One bowls club. Two conversations—football and fish. What the hell was I thinking?’

Nina could see her point, but it wasn’t the whole story. ‘This town’s tiny, but there’re lots of other places on the coast that—’

‘Forget it. It’s all too far away from Mum and Dad.’ Annie shook her head. ‘I can’t see myself going anywhere much until they’re both gone.’

‘But that could be another twenty years!’

‘Yeah. I s’pose it would have been different if Lizzie was alive—we could have shared the load. It’s weird when you think about it. All that feminist stuff we got into years ago, the independence and individuality we all banged on about, and how does it end up? Nursing your parents—making soup and beds, and rinsing undies. It mostly ends up being women’s work. And it lands on you just when you start thinking of escape.’

Nina nodded. She dreamed of escape too, although over the past few days she had come to believe that the entire concept might be overrated. Wherever you escaped to, you were still there. On this trip, she reflected 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 photograph of Corinne in the shower, with the various rude bits blacked out, flashed up on the screen.

‘Oh my God!’ exclaimed Nina.

‘Holy shit!’ muttered Annie.

‘Shoosh!’ commanded Meredith.

‘This is just one of the many photographs found by Tasha Bowen, and supplied to the nation’s media,’ intoned the host. ‘And Tasha has agreed to speak with us from her hotel. Good afternoon, Tasha. Can you tell us about this photograph?’

‘It’s one of the ones I found on his computer,’ said Tasha, her eyes brimming in a damning close-up. ‘And I took his phone. He thought he’d lost it. I know I did the wrong thing, but I had to know for sure. There were lots of text messages on it from her. Nothing that, you know, you could say on television ’cos there might be kids watching.’

The panel members all nodded sympathetically, even though they had an urgent requirement for more information before the next break.

‘Tasha, we know this is a very hard time for you,’ crooned the host. ‘Especially when your twins Violet and Daisy are so young . . .’

‘Six months old! Hard to comprehend this sort of behaviour.’ The crusty old ex-footy player crammed into his red blazer shook his head with genuine wonder. ‘Tasha, do you think that this
alleged
affair had anything to do with Mitchell’s much-criticised performance at the Australian Open this year, when he was bundled out in the first round by the unranked Russian?’

‘Well,’ Tasha sniffed, ‘Corinne . . . Miss Jacobsen . . .
she
was there. She was there the whole time in the same hotel. Mitchell said that he couldn’t sleep in our suite ’cos of me breastfeeding the twins and everything. So he took another room up the hall. I couldn’t understand why he still looked so tired. Now . . . I reckon I know why.’ The camera zoomed in to catch her tears.

‘He should of won.’ She sobbed. ‘If he didn’t want to do it for me and the girls, he could of done it for Australia.’ She dropped her head, unable to continue.

This was possibly the worst news of all for Corinne. She’d already been branded a husband stealer, home wrecker and cradle snatcher. Now she’d done something far more reprehensible—robbed the nation of international sporting success. Her reputation was rubble.

In the van, Meredith was slapping her hands on the table in merriment, Nina was open-mouthed and speechless, while Annie cringed in the corner, chewing on a cushion.

The piece wrapped with an invitation to viewers to take part in an exclusive
Sportsdesk
poll:
Which Woman Would YOU
Rather Be With?
The choice was between a blurry image of the naked forty-six-year-old Corinne Jacobsen, taken with a mobile phone, or a glossy portrait of Tasha Bowen in a leopard-print bikini on the beachside set of her soapie series for the cover of
TV Week
. It was a no-brainer.

‘I have to find my mobile and vote.’ Meredith jumped from her seat and began rummaging through cupboards.

‘Don’t! You’re being a total bitch!’ admonished Annie. ‘Poor Corinne.’

‘
Poor Corinne
?’ Meredith was scandalised. ‘Shane Warne went down for less!’ She stabbed her finger at the television. Annie could find nothing to say. Meredith had a point.

The weather report was halfway through when Nina’s phone trilled. She fell downstairs and took the call.

‘Did you see it?’ Brad’s tone was triumphant.

‘Bloody hell! How did you pull that off?’ Nina was genuinely in awe of her husband’s powers.

‘Bit of inside info from young Travis . . . Apparently the kid sister and the in-laws were waiting for hubby to come home. I talked her out of it. Convinced her that she was far better off financially if she nailed the prick.’

‘She did that alright! And Corinne . . .’

‘I told you I’d fix her too. Didn’t win Best and Fairest over so many years for nothing!’

Nina smiled. It was an in-joke between her and Brad that the Best and Fairest title was won by rat cunning more than anything else.

‘I’ve just gotta get Tabby through this court thing in Melbourne on Monday and I’ll be back to my usual shit-fight. Jeez, I’m knackered with all this! I wish you were here. I just checked and the boys are off to footy with Dad, so it’s all good at home. I’ll see you soon then. Miss you, babe.’

‘Bye, honey, see you soon. I miss you too. I love you.’

‘Love you too.’

Annie was strolling to the beach under the shade of the paperbark trees for an afternoon dip when she was stopped in her sandy tracks by a sight she’d long given up on seeing again. There, on the boat ramp, was a LandCruiser with Victorian plates. Behind it two men were uncoupling a tinnie on a trailer—Matty and Zoran.