The Hiding Place
Author: Kate Mildenhall
Date: 2025-10-28 00:00:00+00:00
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Australia

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For my beloved camping crew who make every summer golden and who, as far as I know, have never hidden a body.

I love you. It’s not about us x

Grown-ups always say they protect their children, but they’re really protecting themselves. Besides, you can’t protect children. They know everything.

Maurice Sendak

All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players

William Shakespeare, As You Like It

After

The clay gives up the bones so easily, in the end.

Far beneath the whispering swamp gum, somewhere below the dense, dark bush that stretches up over the mountains and through the valley and down to the river, it is as if the bones have been waiting to be found.

All it takes is the shifting of a boot, moving out of the shadow, fingernails scratching away at the orange earth. Small clumps of gravel shift and roll and then – the startling white of the first fragment is revealed.

After the first bone, the rest unearth themselves like gifts.

The General Store

The news travels quick. Charlie Eggers (‘Eggie’ to everyone in town, where he’s the sole real estate agent) tells Wendy at the store (who dishes out the local gossip with papers and bread) that Willow Creek has been sold.

Wendy is chatty with both the old-timers and the blow-ins, and everyone has an opinion about the news. The property hasn’t gone to the poor buggers who’ve been camping down there for decades and don’t have two brass razoos to rub together, nor has it gone to the owner of the neighbouring property, Jacob Pallas, as some anticipated it would if he could only convince a bank to give him a loan. It hasn’t been sold to the shire, either – who had a plan to co-manage it with the local Aboriginal Land Council – because no-one could agree on the terms. Not even the bikie gang (who sometimes frequented this particular neck of the woods and had plans for a country clubhouse) had managed to get their hands on it. No. It had sold to a bunch of city folk who are going to use it as their out-of-towner.

‘Could be worse,’ says Sal, who has farmed goats out on MacDonnell’s Road for forty years, as she reaches down to scratch the head of her bitsa terrier, Harry, sitting patiently at her feet.

‘Could be,’ Wendy agrees, tossing down one of the bikkies she keeps for Harry.

Sal pushes her five-dollar note over the counter. Same order every week: vanilla milkshake, only ever drinks a third, stays for a quarter of an hour. It suits them both.

Wendy pulls the cheap ice cream from the freezer. She knows exactly who these people will be. The kind of people who want to ‘get away from the rat race’ and ‘be close to nature’ and ‘have somewhere for the kids to run wild’, want to stand in her store and buy her out of icy poles and ask if she has The Saturday Paper (no she does bloody not) and get in the way of the locals while they look at Polly Fry’s jam and ask if it’s pesticide-free. They will look at Julie’s tea towels and say, ‘Oh my god, cute!’ and take pictures for Instagram but never ever buy them. And no – except for icy poles and a paper every now and then, they won’t bring in any income because they’ll have their own bloody coffee machines with them, will stock up on all their stinky cheeses and biscuits from their own inner-city stores because they just don’t trust regional centres to have that brand little Hugo prefers, you know?

‘Any idea what it sold for?’

Wendy shakes her head, pours the milky froth and slides the metal cup over to Sal. Eggie didn’t say, pretended like it was some special real estate oath not to divulge. ‘But he looked like the cat who got the cream, so I’d say he did alright out of it.’

Sal nods.

It’s a nice piece of land – four hectares with river frontage – a big open space down near the river, cleared for the original mining town. Back in the day, they came for copper and gold, built a town, a post office, a little school, and a pub of course. That old pub’s the only thing left standing now. And the mine shafts – pockmarking the whole damn mountain.

The Davidsons let the property go a bit these last ten years, got old, their kids didn’t want a bar of it – apparently inheriting property can be a liability, or so they say. Big tangles of blackberries everywhere, choking out the natives, and deer wreaking havoc all along the river. Hard work’ll bring Willow Creek back. Colin, the local ranger, is also a member of the CFA crew and he said the city folk had got themselves a permit for burning off, so that was a good sign, long as they knew what they were doing. Of course, Colin’s mob knew more about what the place needed than these newcomers ever would. Went a bloody long way further back with that bit of land and the whole valley, all the way up to alpine country and way out to the coast. But that’s their story.

Sal puts a copy of The Sun on the counter and nods at the bikkie jar. ‘Just hope they’re careful, that bit of the river…’

Wendy shakes her head, taking out a melting moment and placing it in the white paper bag. Never found that little girl who went missing fifteen years back. It was as if the valley had swallowed her up.

‘Better push off,’ Sal says.

‘You take care,’ Wendy says.

Sal wiggles her fingers behind her head as she leaves the bell ringing, holding open the door so Harry can trot out after her.

Wendy wipes down a bench that is already clean. As long as they don’t set the mountain on fire or drown in the river or end up getting themselves killed down there any which way, well, good luck to them.

Friday

Lou

It is fitting, Lou supposes, that the weekend begins with a problem.

She is, after all, a professional problem-solver. It says as much in the ‘skills’ section of her LinkedIn profile. It’s just that in her professional capacity she is always solving other people’s problems – a touch of misconduct, a little carbuncle of corruption, a series of avalanching misjudgements – and she can square them off in the compartment of her brain that first identifies and then solves the issue.

‘A small snag with the boundary line,’ the real estate agent told her over the phone. ‘Nothing to worry about.’ Ah, those words – nothing to worry about – the phrase that sparks fear in even the most junior pen-pushers in her department. He’d said they’d discuss it in person at the property when they arrived that evening, ‘to get the lay of the land, literally’. He’d chuckled at his own wit.

The plan was to leave the city by 1 pm and meet the bloke at three, but then Stella texted, saying she’d missed the train and Marnie was running overtime with a thousand last-minute work things despite the fact that Lou had called Ginny – Marnie’s campaign manager – to implore her not to put anything else across her wife’s desk. And then what Benji had assured her was a fully packed bag turned out to be, she should have known, woefully inadequate, so they’d hit the Friday arvo traffic on the M1 and were only now turning onto the backroads.

It’s not like Lou didn’t also have a mountain of work herself. A couple of overdue reports – not her fault – the infuriating pace of bureaucracy and email chains and committees on committees. The relentless, looping ironies of working in oversight and integrity. But unlike Marnie, whose work has no start or end time, Lou is at least still governed by secure servers and email lockouts and, having worked her way nearly to the top, the expectation that she will put her money where her mouth is on work–life balance.

‘Did you text the agent?’ she asks Marnie.

Marnie does not look up from her phone, but her voice is placating, gentle, even. ‘I did,’ she says.

‘Did he respond?’

Marnie sighs. ‘He said “no worries”,’ she says, looking up now and resting her hand on Lou’s thigh. ‘Breathe, huh?’

Lou smiles tightly. She has spiralled – she’s the first to admit it. There’s a lot riding on this. Is it the contract? Some regulation they’d missed? Has the fencer fucked something up? She’d covered the cost of the new fence along the eastern boundary – she’s got a running tally in the logistics doc of what the others owe her. Apparently, there hadn’t been a fence on the hill for years, but she figured they’d need it with all the kids and the work they planned to do. Eye-watering costs. But worth it, she’d told herself. She just wants to sort whatever it is out, preferably before anyone else arrives, and get on with enjoying the weekend they’d been planning for so long.

Because Willow Creek is the dream. A place for connection and rejuvenation and, to be honest, a reminder to Marnie that there is something on the other side of the election, whatever the outcome may be.

Lou reaches for a mint in the cup holder, gets hair ties, a slippery apple core, one of those supermarket trolley coins.

‘Here,’ Marnie says, holding out the little blue tin of mints.

Lou waits as Marnie taps two into her palm, then she smiles, thanks her wife, wonders if she remembered to pack the toothpaste. Normally they’re pretty good at equitable distribution of life admin – have both done the strange recalibration of mat leave and the swamp of primary care-giving – but Marnie’s campaign has called for a new system. Lou doesn’t resent it – it’s not that, she wants this for Marnie – it’s just hard to see the value of the shitty tasks. Who cares if she managed to get the bags packed, sort the food, leave the house in a way that feels good to get home to, who even notices?

She does two rounds of the box-breathing exercise the Pilates teacher insists on, hopes it’s not obvious.

Around the car, the forest is finally closing in. On one side, tree ferns arch their enormous fronds down the high bank of the road; on the other, a dense canopy reaches up from the cliff. Her therapist talks about getting grounded, literally putting her feet in the earth. It’s why this place had appealed, got under her skin. She needs to get her hands dirty again, wants to feel earth and river rocks, sniff pungent leaves, put her back against an ancient eucalypt and feel it effortlessly take her weight. Yes, she gets out and about on her longer weekend runs, sometimes takes one of the bay tracks, or heads up into the hills to do the Thousand Steps, but those places don’t even get close to the wildness of this, the full immersion. You could disappear into this. Become part of the decomposing earth.

‘Ten minutes,’ Lou says, tapping her fingers impatiently on the wheel. ‘Put your windows down, you should be able to hear the river.’

Beside her, Marnie flips her phone over and holds it on her thigh as if that might stop the onslaught of messages.

‘You know you’ve got to hand that over to me when we get there, right?’ Lou says gently. She’s been very clear in the WhatsApp chat about the weekend being phone free. Even got Benji to help her decorate an old shoebox with cut-out pictures of phones that he carefully drew big crosses over with a red marker. There’d been some good-humoured grumbling but mostly everyone was on board, pretending it was ‘better for the kids’, not wanting to acknowledge that they were all just as addicted – if not more so.

Marnie closes her eyes for a moment, smiles. ‘Yes, love.’ She breathes out audibly, looks out at the green. ‘It’s just gonna take me a minute to, like… arrive.’

Lou nods, taking her left hand from the wheel and placing it on her wife’s neck, pressing the knots there, feeling the heat of her skin. Marnie’s haircut is new and it is still disarming, not feeling the weight of the tangle of curls. It’s what she’d first noticed at that house party all those years back – those wild black curls, the red lippy, the loud of her incongruous when she seemed so small, dancing in her heeled boots while the rest of the party towered over her. Apparently this short, chic bob ‘works better’. Better for who, Lou wanted to ask, the cameras? The electorate? Her wife’s ability to sell good policy? Lou sees it as her role to keep Marnie grounded from some of the bullshit, but she also has to toe the line of validating her wife’s choices, or at least that’s what she took out of the campaign strategy meeting she’d been invited along to.

It is, objectively, not a good time for Marnie to be going away for a weekend – a month out from the election. Everyone knows that this is exactly the time a new candidate needs to be digging deep, giving viral sound bites, attending every school fete, basketball club, rotary AGM, taking meetings with whoever their campaign manager has got on the hit list. When the sale went through, they’d started throwing around dates for the first weekend to get everyone to Willow Creek: Easter was too far away, plus there were basketball tournaments for Phil and Flick and their kids, February too hot and dry to burn off. They’d settled on mid-March – she hadn’t even pushed for the long weekend. Two nights was all she was asking. Marnie had begged off, said it was impossible, that Lou should take the kids, do her thing, that they’d get back to some kind of normal after the election Marnie was so certain she would lose.

But Lou was certain she was in with a chance of actually winning the thing. Comparatively young, female, and a progressive lesbian mum to top it off – an independent distancing herself just enough from all the majors, with the deep pockets of the climate-aligned business and activist worlds at her disposal. So she’d put her foot down, sensing that there may very well be a new normal after the election, that this might be her only chance of getting Marnie to the property for some time. She hopes Marnie wins, of course she does, but it’s also her job to remind Marnie of what’s really important. Their shared values, the things that they want, have always wanted.

And so the weekend away has been approved; an agenda to switch off and rest but also, importantly, to appear to switch off and rest on this magnificent property in a way that might be advantageous to Marnie’s image. Ginny’s proven to be a very cluey campaign manager, telling them that as long as they promised to provide ‘good content’ (a task delegated to Stella), then she hoped they had a great weekend.

And Lou is prepared to do everything within her power to make it exactly that: a great weekend for her and Marnie and the kids, yes, but also for the others. Lou and Marnie aren’t the only ones with a lot going on – this is a chance to reset for the lot of them. Her sister especially. Since the split, Ness has been even more Ness than she usually is; which is to say, chaos personified.

‘Check it out, kids!’ Marnie says, sticking her head out the window and sniffing the air as Lou slows the big car.

‘Seriously,’ Lou says, in the rear-view, ‘devices down!’

‘Yeah, cool, it’s beautiful,’ Stella mumbles, glancing up.

Stella is sixteen – moody and magnificent. It’s been hard on them, allowing space for this teen life that is now hers alone. A life that they are not privy to, not allowed to be privy to. Lou thought, wrongly it seems, that their daughter would be the oversharing type, made in their own image. But she is more often in her own head. Meets their expectations academically, gave the hockey team a good crack even though she is a self-confessed ‘creative’ with her photography and now this obsession with all things theatre. She makes them proud. It’s just that, recently, Stella doesn’t seem to need them. Or want them.

Benji, on the other hand, is eleven and still inclined for cuddles, needy in all the ways Stella is not. Between the two of them, Lou reckons, they made the perfect kid. Not that she and Marnie buy into the idea of perfection. But they want Willow Creek to be somewhere the kids can get back some of the wildness of childhood, a place the whole family can reconnect. They are not alone in this. All the others, in their various ways, have said the same thing.

A sprawling oak tree stands just inside the gate to the right of the driveway, overhanging the fence. It reminds Lou of a different landscape altogether – sheep and long, sweeping views of paddocks – and it seems incongruous here, amid the mountain ash and the tree ferns and the dense, dark undergrowth.

‘Bags climbing that first!’ Benji says, sticking his head out the window. Her heart clenches at his excitement. Benji’s their odd kid: thoughtful, tending towards introspection – a bit more like her – whereas Stella has Marnie’s impulsive energy. She wants him to feel safe here, at home.

She grins and heads up the driveway, out from the shadow of the oak so that the property spreads out before them. A wide, grassy field, as big as a couple of footy ovals, split through the centre by the gash of Willow Creek itself, and bordered on three sides by sloping bushland. The Thompson River forms the western boundary, and the old pub – nestled at the top of the slope to the east – is the perfect spot for watching the sunset; the water glistening between the gaps in the blue-grey gums that line the river.

‘Someone’s beaten us here!’ Marnie says, pointing down towards the river, where the colours of an old white and beige caravan and blue four-wheel drive flash through the trees.

Lou frowns. She’d checked the WhatsApp before they left the highway. They are in front of everyone else.

Marnie squints into the afternoon sun. ‘Not one of us. Don’t recognise the car.’

Lou idles the car, leaning across her wife to peer through the passenger window. ‘Might be someone trying to get to the national park,’ she says. It was easy to get lost on some of these winding roads.

Parked outside the old pub is a newish-looking white ute. She wonders wryly if the agent’s commission paid for that. She sighs. Drives on.

‘You didn’t say we had a bridge!’ Benji yelps. She smiles at the idea that the bridge might be the thing that captivates her youngest. As if rickety old infrastructure is what makes the place truly special. He has an engineer’s delight in finding out how things work, loves watching Rube Goldberg machines on YouTube. He’s been into them ever since a school project during lockdown, when all the kids in his class were asked to create one of the convoluted contraptions to pop a balloon. For weeks, they would wake up to find objects lining the stairs – books and dinosaurs, a soccer ball – and have to wait at the bottom as Benji tipped the first one and held his breath. Sometimes the components didn’t align and the sequence broke in the middle, and Benji would frown and sigh and start again. He has grand plans to build a bigger one, outdoors, that will culminate in a basketball shooting through a hoop like he’s seen online.

The car rumbles slowly across the wooden bridge, only as long as the car itself, with low timber stoppers on either side.

‘Reckon the creek floods?’ Marnie asks.

‘Guess we’ll see? Rain due tomorrow night.’ They need it, but she hopes the deluge will hold off till they’re back home – give them clear skies for this first visit. ‘Be a shitty thing to get the cars stuck on the other side.’

Lou thinks back on how many times they’ve wished for just such an intervention: huddled under tarps, comforting themselves with the thought that they might just have to stay on another week. Extend the out-of-office with a pithy, Apologies, will be back at the desk after this force majeure.

‘I’ve got an exam Monday,’ Stella says from the back, not glancing up from her phone.

Lou looks at Marnie and they both roll their eyes. The days of letting a force majeure stop their lives have long gone.

‘Get ready to hand that in, Stell, my love,’ Lou says. ‘You know the deal.’

Stella’s turn to roll her eyes.

‘Guess we should think about fencing it, though,’ Lou says as she noses the car along slowly.

‘The creek? What for?’ Marnie says.

‘The kids. Eden’s still so little.’ Lou imagines the shallow creek breaking its banks, a drowned child headline as part of Marnie’s campaign. Shakes her head, shocked at her own shift to spin.

‘It’s not a suburban pool, love. It’s a creek. On a bush block. The kids can deal.’

Her wife does this well; kneading out the knots of anxiety where they build up. Lou tries to do the same in return, though Marnie’s knots are different ones. Perhaps, in the end, this is what a marriage is – the back and forth of we’ve got this.

The car climbs the steep dirt path up to the pub. The place needs some work, but it’s doable, especially with Tom on board. They got him to draw up some possible renos for when there’s some money, but the best they can do now is make sure it’s watertight and the floors are safe. It’s hooked up to a generator, a source of mild shame for Lou, given the way they usually mock other campers for having noisy generators to keep their bloody fridges and music systems going in otherwise peaceful campsites. But this is their own place now. They can be as noisy as they want. At least until they put in a full solar grid and get properly self-sufficient. The priority this weekend is to get the composting toilet block done – that, and to make sure the water tanks and pump from the river are working properly. The rest can come later. They’ve got all the time in the world.

Lou pulls in next to the white ute, puts the Prado into park, turns off the engine. The kids scramble out of the car as Marnie turns to her, touches her face.

‘Thank you. For all of this. You always know what I need,’ she says, ‘before I do.’

Lou takes Marnie’s hand, kisses her knuckles. ‘That’s what I’m here for.’

‘Gross!’ Benji yells from the end of the driveway as Stella swears loudly.

Lou cranes her neck backwards to see what the problem is and starts to laugh.

Stella holds one white sneaker up behind her, the bottom of it caked in sticky black-green shit.

‘Welcome to our bush paradise,’ she says before turning, dropping the smile and walking briskly towards the waiting real estate agent, holding her hand out, ready to shake and solve.

Josie

Josie puts one bare foot up on the dash and tells Tom to turn the music up. Graceland. The perfect road-trip album. Her toes are starting to look like her grandmother’s. Knobbly and tough and a little skewwhiff. She wonders if her mum’s have gone the same way. Not that she’s curious enough to visit – she’s done enough therapy over the years to know that it’s for the best, really. Josie keeps picking at her toenail until Tom tuts.

‘You are disgusting.’

‘And yet, you still adore me.’

He shakes his head, smiles. ‘Apparently.’

She drops her foot, looks out the window. Dry paddocks interspersed with the green of irrigation. Islands of tall eucalypts dotted about, but not enough. With some time and money she could regenerate whole swathes of it, create some proper corridors. At least now she’s got her own little plot to make a start.

‘Need a quick refresher on the kids’ names?’ she asks.

He laughs. ‘It won’t help,’ he says. ‘Why did they have so many?’

‘God knows,’ she says. ‘Love them all dearly, glad they’re not mine.’

Josie had always known she never wanted kids of her own. Lou’s and Ness’s kids are her family now and she loves them fiercely, mostly because she loves the people who made them. And she has loved Lou the longest.

Since they were fourteen years old, Josie and Lou have taken turns at going first, being the best. Josie got the first boyfriend, Lou got sports captain. Lou got caught with a fake ID, Josie got caught shoplifting. Josie got the highest exam results, Lou got the first ‘grown-up’ job. Lou has always been taller, broader-shouldered, put together in an I-don’t-give-a-fuck kind of way. Josie never gave a fuck either, but on her that looks ratty, unkempt, while Lou has always looked like she’s only a moment away from taking on the world. They considered themselves smart bitches who knew how to have fun. Thelma and Louise, one of their mates said, except too in love with life to go over the cliff. And they’ve stuck together, even though the roads they took went in pretty different directions, in the end. But they were both dreamers, and this – Willow Creek – or something like it, has always featured in the dream.

Tom indicates and pulls out to pass a truck that’s spitting sheep shit out from the full load it’s carrying. She holds her breath. Not that she doesn’t trust her partner – Tom is infuriatingly capable – but because the act of overtaking always sends a shivery thrill through her.

He pulls back in smoothly.

‘So, how you gonna convince the others about your little project?’ he asks.

Her love affair with acacia has been a slow burn: the psychoactive properties of the species had come up in her peripheral vision during some of her mycology research, but it wasn’t until Tom introduced her to a bunch of old mates who were into psychedelics that she fell properly down the rabbit hole of DMT – affectionately called The God Molecule. She knew all the stories about ayahuasca experiences, but after she eventually wangled her way into a local retreat she found it was too woo-woo, too sketchy, the trip not worth the vomiting – although enough to make her curious.

When she finally linked her endophytic fungi research with tryptamine and the DMT compound, she was excited. Published a paper on co-cultivation of acacia species for the exploration of novel enzymatic pathways. There wasn’t much response. In fact, her head of department pulled her in line for time away from her mycelial signal modulation research, so despite what she thought were promising findings, she’d put the whole acacia thing on the backburner.

Then, a couple of months later, she’d got the email, followed by a phone call. It turned out someone had read her paper. A start up, Entheon Therapeutics, looking for a head of research to explore next-gen biosynthetic compounds. Ancient plant wisdom plus modern biotech plus the endless possibilities of therapeutic psychedelics. Attractive remuneration, flexible location – would she be interested? Josie’s job at the university was as tenuous as ever and this would be double or even triple her current wage, but on the other hand, could she countenance working for Big Pharma? Even if she ignored the ethical quandaries, she had heard the stories of these hot-headed young entrepreneurs and had watched senior academics lose both their jobs and reputations when a risky venture fell in a hole. She declined, wished them luck, got back to her weird fungi.

But maybe it wasn’t called The God Molecule for nothing; at times she had felt like the long fingers of some greater being had been moving her about like a piece in a puzzle. After a shitty period of failures in the lab she’d retreated into her acacia rabbit hole again, stumbling across some new research on DMT compounds found in wet sclerophyll forests in Australia. Engrossed, she’d hardly looked at the Camping Gang WhatsApp thread until the notifications had piled up. She’d done a double take when she looked at the map: incredibly, the property overlapped some of the habitats she’d just been reading about.

Josie and Tom had discussed the idea as things got serious in the chat, but they always came up short in the money department. And then came another call from Entheon. Short-term research position, an eye-watering amount of money. Enough to buy in to Willow Creek and then some. Josie found that cash really could smooth the edges of her ethical reservations. But she wasn’t yet ready to broach the idea of farming Class A experimental DMT at Willow Creek with the others.

‘There’ll be enough going on this weekend,’ Josie says. ‘Reckon I’ll hold off till I know if it’s viable.’

Lou has recently made it very clear she has no time for Josie’s dabbling in hallucinogens. At Christmas last year they’d had a house party with some of Tom’s mates, a couple of Josie’s colleagues. ‘C’mon, Lou, you used to love shit like this!’ Josie had teased, holding out the handful of desiccated mushrooms.

‘Yeah, nah, not for me.’ Lou had fobbed her off and tried to make an excuse to leave.

It had turned into a bit of an argument.

Lou had tried to laugh Josie off. ‘It’s not for me anymore,’ she repeated. ‘Don’t like fucking with my brain.’

Josie had raised her eyebrows at the wine glass in Lou’s hand.

‘Yes, whatever,’ Lou had said, ‘we’re not fucking nineteen anymore.’

Josie had taken the mushrooms alone, but it hadn’t been a good trip, and that’d made her cross at Lou for killing the vibe. Yes, she knew they were no longer nineteen, didn’t Lou realise all the parents these days were microdosing at school council, chewing down gummies at the fete. Lou was in danger of turning into a bore. God. Even thinking it felt traitorous.

She can feel Tom take his eyes off the road, look at her.

She’ll tell the others, eventually. But right now, there’s nothing to tell. When she and Tom came up a month ago to poison the blackberries ahead of burning, and to sink the posts for the toilet system, she’d planted her little crop – Acacia obtusifolia in amongst the golden wattle, some hopwood, lomandra and corkwood – and then seeded the fungi at the base of her saplings. She’d mapped, photographed, recorded the data in her systems – then wished the little plants well. She’s done nothing wrong, certainly nothing illegal – yet. Might as well be habitat planting, for all anyone else would know. She can worry about what happens next with this little patch once she’s tested the levels of DMT in the new acacia saplings.

‘Lou’ll sniff your secret out in a second,’ Tom says, clearly unable to bite his tongue any longer. ‘The others too. They’re your oldest mates, Jo. It won’t be easy, lying to them.’

Josie turns her head to the window so he knows that she’s pissed. ‘Easier for you then, is it?’

Tom lets out a little oof as a gentle admonishment. ‘Well, you’ve known them a lot longer than I have, for sure. I’m the new fella.’

‘Five years is hardly new.’

Tom puts his hand on her knee. ‘This is your work – for the greater good. They’ll get that, eventually.’

She nods but doesn’t turn back.

‘Okay,’ he says, ‘go over the kids’ names, then.’

‘Like you’ll remember.’

‘Doesn’t hurt to try. Lou and Marnie have Benji and Stella.’

‘You’re a defacto godfather, that doesn’t count.’

‘And Ness and Flick and Phil have a whole tribe of the little shits between them.’

She guffaws. ‘Remember, Jax was a little shit once, too.’

‘Well, he’s perfectly behaved as a thirty-year-old.’

Josie wants to ask him how the hell he knows. Tom’s son, Ajax, lives in Berlin. Moved away with his mum before he was ten. Tom’s only really seen him every few years since then. She’s only met Ajax once, when she and Tom were still new, all nerve-endings and European adventures. It had been disquieting to see the angles of her new lover’s face in his son’s. Tom looks good for fifty-five – his tousled grey curls, the lines on his long face, his body kept taut by his days on the tools. She sometimes wonders how things might have been if she’d met him when he was thirty and she was twenty. How things might have worked out. But then she lets the thoughts slide – she’s done alright. She’s happy. ‘You’ll work it out,’ she says. ‘Kai, Winter, Eden. That’s Ness’s bunch. Reuben and Leo are Flick and Phil’s – but they all bloody adore you, even when you call them all “mate”.’

Tom grins, grabs Josie’s hand and places it high on his thigh. ‘What’s not to adore?’

‘Leave off, you dirtbag,’ she says, but she laughs, gives his thigh a squeeze and points to the sign up ahead. ‘Here we go, then!’

The bush on either side of the road down the mountain is breathtaking, just as she remembers it. Yellow box, black wattle, cherry ballart, the understorey of prickly heath and kangaroo grass, the ever-present curls of bracken. Lou is right in thinking they’ll have to get a good fire-management plan. This place is ripe for a big burn. It’s only a matter of time. She recognises the strange thrill of anticipation: of course she doesn’t want it to burn, but she wants the others to know, to really understand this forest – what it is capable of, how much respect it demands. How important her knowledge is.

‘Hold up!’ She puts her hand on Tom’s shoulder. ‘Can you pull over for a tick?’

He slides the car in gently to the side of the road without saying anything.

Josie jumps out with her phone while he leaves the car idling and jogs back along the road fifty metres or so to clamber up the edge of the mossy bank, using a kunzea root to get purchase. The smell of it – the wet earth, the tang of the leaf mulch, the low hum of the native bees – and the rest of the big quiet. A few steps upright and there it is, a leopard hyacinth-orchid, Dipodium pardalinum. It’s late for it to still be flowering. But, these days, the seasons are being rewritten. She takes a couple of photos with her phone. The pink tubes of the multiple flowers, their tiny little spots. Another species which relies on symbiosis with fungi. ‘Good to see you, little one,’ she says, taking a last look.

She jumps back in the car, grinning, and Tom pulls out again. ‘That float your boat?’

‘It did,’ she says, resting her head back and trailing her hand out the open window. This is exactly where she wants to be.

Ness

Ness spots the turn-off ahead and groans loudly in relief.

‘This is it! Willow Creek Road!’ Her sister has given blow-by-blow directions, of course, and this is the last turn down five k’s of winding mountain road before they reach the property.

She checks the time. Five o’clock. They’re only an hour or so late, not bad, really. The sun is still blazing – daylight savings – and the glare is bright in her eyes as they descend into the valley and she pulls down the visor, sitting back in the driver’s seat to see better.

‘Kids! Nearly there!’ Ness says. She checks in the rear-view, Kai has his head down and eyes locked on his screen. ‘Winnie, tell Kai, hun.’

Winter pokes Kai hard in the ribs. ‘Whadidyadothatfor!’ he yells, pulling his headphones off.

Winter shrugs, flips a plait over her shoulder and looks out the window again.

‘C’mon, darling, time to put your thingamajig away – we’re nearly there,’ Avril says, twisting around in the passenger seat to smile at her grandkids. ‘How’s your little sister going there? Hey, Eden? You okay?’

‘She’s asleep,’ Winter says.

‘That’ll be fun later,’ Ness mutters.

From the passenger seat, Avril strokes one hand over Ness’s hair. ‘Don’t worry so much, love. There’ll be so many laps for her to curl up in. This is exactly what you need.’

Ness pushes her head back gently into her mother’s hand, like a cat preening. This is exactly what she needs. Forest and campfire and river and her friends, her sister, her mum. She could do without the pity looks, the hands on her upper arms, the questions (how are you really?) but she’ll deal. This will be their first time away without Mike. Her ex-husband, she supposes, although the prefix still catches in her throat like a burnt crust.

Ness shakes her head to dispel the image of Mike. You are not welcome, she intones inwardly at the thought of him, just like the therapist told her. She could have done with more sessions, but her mental health plan only covered her for six and she can’t afford it. In the blinding glare, she concentrates hard on the road ahead of her. Mike was always the driver. Mike, the one who knew how to hitch the camper trailer, plug in the solar, clear the gas line for the stove. He’d come around to fix a couple of things last week, asked her if she really thought she could manage the trip on her own, seemed to know everything about the property – the fact that there was an old pub. Wouldn’t it be easier for her and the kids to sleep in there? The trailer really was a bit of work, maybe she should give it a miss?

She hadn’t responded well. And when he’d flung down the spanner and thrown his arms up, calling over his shoulder that this, her flying off the handle at him, was exactly why he’d left, shame had curdled with the blistering rage. Of course she could handle the fucking trailer; she could birth humans, negotiate with a two-year-old, build a thriving online business, put up with him and his man-baby angst and his midlife-crisis cock!

She probably shouldn’t have mentioned his cock.

‘I’m looking forward to seeing Flick and the kids. It’s been too long,’ Avril says.

‘And Phil – right, Mum?’ Ness says, side-eying her mother.

‘Of course,’ Avril says, pulling a face.

Ness laughs. Her mother has developed a healthy disregard for men since Dad died. Not helped by Mike’s seemingly sudden decision to upend their lives. And Ness has always felt like she somehow disappointed her mother by falling in love, getting married, popping out kids; like she should have made more of all the options that Avril herself didn’t feel like she’d had. Her mother will never say, I told you so, but that doesn’t stop her oozing the feeling from her very pores. She’s never really understood the GreenDreem.com model and what Ness is working towards, the financial independence she’ll have, along with so much more time for the kids once she hits Silver level, and Jesus, once she’s Platinum she’s basically retired.

She’s not stupid. She understands what a pyramid scheme is, but GreenDreem isn’t that. It’s savvy women creating excellent, ethical products and supporting each other to be financially independent. And it is hers. Something Mike can’t take away from her. She’s got to do some posts this weekend to meet her target, hopes there’ll be enough reception down there. Lou’s floated the idea of a complete blackout on phones for the weekend – Ness imagines she’ll have made some kind of decorated box for them to stash all their devices in – but she can get around that. One thing her new marital status gives her at least – everyone’s bottomless empathy, a blind eye.

Well, not completely bottomless. Even Flick has tired of Ness’s need for debriefing over the past couple of months. And there wasn’t much bloody empathy in the WhatsApp chat when she’d proposed bringing Bingo.

Even a small well-behaved dog leaves its scent behind, Josie had parroted while Ness scrunched her fingers to resist replying with eye-roll emojis.

We don’t camp with dogs, Lou wrote, backing her friend over her sister, no surprises there.

She’d just thought they might give her some grace this time. Kennels are out of the question money-wise right now, and as for asking Mike, she’d rather die – fighting for custody of the dog, then shuffling back with her own tail between her legs? Absolutely not. Also, wasn’t this one of the perks of fucking owning the place? They could make the rules. Not the national park or some over-reaching anal retentive caravan park owners. This was their kingdom.

Adding to rules and logistics shared doc, Lou had concluded, sending a link to a doc that Ness was sure no-one else had even opened.

All good, Ness had written, leaving off a kiss or a love heart to signal just how much she was not good with it.

They could bully her of out bringing Bingo, but on other things she’s going to stand her ground. She wants bees; she’s watched enough Flow Hive reels that the algorithm now keeps her steeped in the lazy hum and the dripping of golden honey. She wants a compost system with at least three large bays. A series of wicking beds to grow veggies in. Everything that she cannot fit in her new townhouse reality of pots on the patio. Though GreenDreem is running a promotion at the moment with an aquaponics herb kit she reckons she could fit in her ensuite, and if she hits Silver next month it will be hers. Mine, she thinks. And smiles.

‘Remember when Lou and I used to make you practise ball ups with us?’ she asks her mother.

Over and over again on a Saturday morning before the games. Mine! They’d both shout. Whipping it away, the process less about getting your hands on the ball first, and more about how fast you could rip it out of the hands of your opponent. The taking of it. It’s MINE. Avril patiently throwing up the ball till she’d had enough, both of her daughters red faced and bristling with aggression. God, Ness had wanted to beat her big sister so much. Lou was taller, stronger, faster but, oh, the satisfaction when Ness exploded her hands out, tore the ball from her sister’s hands.

‘Hmmm?’ Avril says, and Ness can see she’s half-dozing again.

What has she got left that is hers and hers alone? Even the kids feel like something she can no longer claim; half their time with Mike, and then even when they are with her they seem to be reaching out into the world, the terrifying, dangerous world, in ways that she cannot protect them from. They do not want her or need her like they did when they’d nuzzled at her boob, when she’d kept them alive for fuck’s sake. What is mine, anymore? The other women at GreenDreem – it’s all women, divorcees and single mums – talk about ‘holding space for the self’, but—

‘Mum!’ Winter’s voice is shrill.

On the left-hand side of the road – Winter’s side, where the hill climbs up sharply from the cutting – there is a quick dark shadow. Ness slams her foot on the brake, then pulls back quickly when she feels the weight of the trailer start to fishtail behind her.

Avril’s hand flies out to grab Ness’s shoulder as she tries to wrestle the car back onto the road, and an enormous shape darts out in front of them and stops, blocking out Ness’s vision of the way ahead, of anything else.

‘Slow it down,’ Avril says sharply, gritted teeth.

‘I’m trying!’ Ness says, and the steering wheel judders as she aims for the left-hand embankment and away from the sharp drop. A gravelly skid and a loud clunking sound as the car jerks and the engine cuts out.

The shape looms still and gigantic. Silhouetted horns, the shining whites of eyes. Nobody speaks. Then it is away, flying out to the right-hand side and down the steep embankment into the forest.

‘What WAS that?’ asks Kai.

Ness feels her heart splattering against her ribs, the white-cold assault of adrenaline already starting to ebb. ‘Shit, you okay, Mum? Kids? Is everyone okay?’ Ness is frantic, pulls on the handbrake as she twists in her seat, looking at each kid in turn, touching their knees, reassuring herself they are all okay.

‘It had so many HORNS!’ says Kai.

‘They’re called antlers, you idiot,’ sneers Winter. At ten she already seems impossibly worldly, so quick to laser in on her little brother’s flaws.

Eden laughs at her siblings, their raised voices, their thrill.

‘Okay, that’s enough,’ says Avril. Her curt voice shuts the kids up quickly. Grandma rarely growls.

‘Mum,’ Ness says, ‘are you hurt?’

Avril shakes her head, but Ness sees her wince slightly. ‘I’m fine. Let’s just sort this out.’

Ness nods firmly; she’s got this. She tells the kids to wait in the car and clambers out to check the camper trailer. Immediately, she can see it’s a monumental fuck-up. The trailer’s jack-knifed into the deep ditch on the side of the road and unhitched itself from the car in the process. It’s balanced precariously on a sharp angle, the chain still attached – the only thing stopping it from toppling onto its side. Mike will lose it if he finds out.

‘Shhhhiiiiit,’ says Winter, suddenly next to her.

‘Language!’ Ness yells. ‘I told you to stay in the car.’

‘I wanted to help.’

Ness pushes the panic down. Pulls Winnie into a cuddle. She’s a good kid and she’s been trying so hard to be a grown-up, to cushion Ness in her own little way. But Ness needs her daughter to know that her only job is to be a kid.

‘Mum! Hear that?’ Winter says, turning back to look up the road. ‘Is that a car?’

Ness cocks her head and then she hears it, the rumble of an engine, the splatter of gravel. She looks at the narrow road, the stony verge on the other side that drops away steeply down the mountain.

‘Shit,’ she mutters and runs forward with her hands waving madly to try and slow down the oncoming car.

Phil

Phil eases the brakes on, holding the car steady and bringing it to a stop. Beside him, Flick throws her hands up onto the dash to brace herself, which is typical and, frankly, overkill.

He’s towing a big rig, the biggest of anyone in the group, and it’s heavy. But he prides himself on his driving – loose and fast when he wants, defensive and impressive when it’s needed. Like now. In front of them, the brake lights of a jack-knifed trailer and a four-wheel drive. Either it’s just happened, or Ness has no idea how to use her hazard lights. He recognises their rig immediately.

‘What’s happened? Why did we stop?’ says Reuben from the back. Reuben is eight, anxious, always needs to know exactly what’s happening, while his eleven-year-old brother, Leo, is generally uninterested in the world outside his computer games.

‘Accident – hold tight,’ Phil says, pulling in and putting his own hazard lights on. Bloody lucky he saw them; he could’ve ploughed right into the trailer. He had been, truth be told, more focused on composing the email he needs to send to the contractors to express exactly how much they’ve fucked his timeline with their blowout on the Western Bridge project. There’s a fine line between assertiveness and aggression, or so he’s been told. Fine to lose it in person, as long as no one is filming it, but for the love of God, don’t put it in a company email. He’ll have to choose his words carefully. But really, why can’t people just say what they mean anymore? How is anyone meant to grasp the magnitude of their fuck-ups if no one’s allowed to tell them off?

He shades his eyes with one hand.

‘Ness!’ he says as he steps down from the driver’s seat. He’s not used to seeing Ness in charge. Looks like she’s not used to it either. He hurries towards her. ‘You guys all okay?’

‘Think I’ve stuffed the trailer,’ Ness says. ‘Bloody deer ran out. Huge.’

Phil reaches out and puts his hands on Ness’s shoulders. ‘But you’re all okay, yeah? Trailer’s easy to fix; you lot, not so much, huh?’ He pulls Ness into a hug. Normal. But also, not normal. Like Mike is a three-dimensional wad of awkward between them.

It’s strange, seeing Ness and the kids without his best mate. Or whatever it is you call one of your oldest friends, with whom you communicate mostly in the form of memes, analysis of draft picks and reminiscing about wild times had together when you were sixteen and on your first footy trip. Mike is the reason he is with Flick. That old chestnut of ‘My friend would be good for your friend’. Mike and Ness had cooked up the plan in the throes of their new romance, more than two decades back. Flick has been very clear with him since the divorce. ‘You do you with Mike, but I’ve only got space for Ness now,’ she’d said. Which he gets, of course he does, but also, what a shitshow.

‘God, Ness!’ Flick says, pushing past Phil and throwing her arms around her best friend. ‘You okay?’

Ness curls into the hug and Phil recognises his wife moving into Fix-it Teacher Mode. Good. She’ll sort this lot, and he can sort the trailer. It’s what makes them a good team.

‘The kids? Your mum?’ Flick is saying and then – ‘Oh, Av, my love!’

He leaves the women and checks out the trailer. It’s hanging on a bit of an angle off the back of the car, attached only by the chain. How on earth did she manage that? Mike’d be livid. Maybe if they could get a jack under it? He knows he’s got one in the back of the car but it’s going to be a pain in the arse to get it out. Maybe he should drive all the kids down and come back with one of the blokes?

‘Is it stuffed?’ Ness says beside him.

‘Nah, she’s right,’ Phil says, because even though he’s not sure how yet, he knows he’s going to fix this and get a point on the board before they even arrive. Helpful, affable, Fix-it Phil. Maybe if he puts her car in four-wheel drive, gets her to go low and slow while he pushes from the back, they can drag it up and clunk it into place – worth a shot.

But once they’ve unlocked the front hubs and got everyone out of the car, Ness’s elderly mum and her three kids, along with his own boys, all of them waiting on the other side of the road – safety first, but also a hell of a lot of pressure, all those eyes on him – Ness can’t get the timing right. The back wheels spin and Phil is sprayed with gravel.

‘Fuck,’ he says, rubbing his right eye and opening it wide, trying to dislodge the bit of grit caught there.

‘You right, babe?’ Flick calls.

‘Yep, yeah,’ he says, raising his hand and turning.

‘Sorry!’ Ness says, stepping out of the car. ‘I’m so sorry!’

This isn’t going to work, Phil thinks. ‘Let’s get everyone down to the property and I’ll come back and sort this out with one of the fellas.’

Ness folds her arms.

Phil backtracks. ‘Or you and I come back, Ness. Just might as well get your mum and the kids down there, start getting set up, you know.’ It usually takes him an hour to get the caravan parked and set up, and he’s itching to get that done. He knows how sensitive Ness can be, doesn’t mind pushing on that bruise every now and then, but even he can concede this is not the time.

‘Let’s do that, Ness,’ Flick says. ‘Let’s just get Av and the kids to camp and then we’ll all come back with you later, even in the morning. You can set up in the house or in with us or whatever.’

Just like Flick to make a point of ‘we’. Bullshit he’s gonna have Ness’s snotty, unvaccinated three in with them.

Phil goes to start his car but realises quickly how fucked they really are. He can fit his car past Ness’s mess but there’s no way he’ll squeeze the caravan through. He sighs loudly.

‘Dad! Someone’s coming!’ Phil looks up to see Leo pointing down the track towards Willow Creek.

The sun flares as he looks down the road and he shields his eyes, trying to get a sense of how big the car is, how fast it’s coming. He shepherds the women and kids further off the road as the vehicle approaches. Maybe one of the others has come out to check on why they haven’t arrived as expected? Not how he wanted it to play out, but something’s gonna have to give.

The vehicle stops a little way back and Phil sees it’s a tractor.

‘Stay here,’ he says. Phil walks towards the tractor, sees a bloke sitting up front.

‘Got yourselves stuck, eh?’ He’s older, maybe sixty or seventy, hard to tell because his face has that craggy, weathered look to it. His grey hair is longish but neat, tucked behind his ears. He moves well, swinging down out of the seat.

‘Name’s Jacob – I’m just up the way. You the new lot from Willow Creek?’

‘Phil,’ he says, gripping Jacob’s outstretched hand. ‘Yeah, just had a bit of an incident here, not me, our friend’s run her trailer off, having a bit of trouble getting it hitched properly again.’

‘Need help?’

‘Yeah, look, could do. I’ve had a go but I’m a little stuck with my own rig—’

‘No worries, I’ll take a look,’ Jacob says, interrupting Phil and walking straight past him. Phil smarts. His dad used to do that. Sigh and walk past and leave Phil standing there, useless.

‘You got a jack?’ he says.

‘Yeah.’ Phil waves at the back of his car. ‘In under there.’

‘Bit of a bugger to get to?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Could pull the tractor round, hoist it up? Just gotta get your rig backed up a bit,’ Jacob says and makes to move off.

‘What’s happening, babe?’ Flick calls out. ‘Kids getting a bit restless, yeah?’

Phil is keen to wrestle the situation back on to his terms, doesn’t need some old farmer fixing things up for him before he’s even had a proper crack. Except, he thinks, looking at the lopsided trailer, he can’t do this one alone.

‘Thanks for that, mate,’ he says gruffly. ‘Appreciate it.’

While the women get the kids out of the way, Jacob brings the tractor up, ignoring Phil’s hand directions and taking what seems like a circuitous route to get the tractor bucket in position behind the trailer. Phil rolls his eyes; this bloke is clearly enjoying putting on his own little show. He bristles as Jacob shouts at him to get in near the bucket and tell him how much lower he’s got to get to connect with the trailer, feels a twinge of annoyance when Jacob manages to manoeuvre it deftly into place with a little clunk as the metal connects.

‘Righto,’ Jacob yells, ‘see if you can help guide her back onto the tow ball.’

Phil’s barely scrambled out of the ditch to the back of the car when Jacob starts lifting the bucket with a deep grumble from the tractor. He reaches for the metal drawbar, pushing hard with all his weight as the trailer begins to right itself and move towards the tow ball.

‘Little more!’ Phil yells over his shoulder and the trailer jolts forward, almost tripping him with its momentum. ‘Watch it!’ he shouts, angry now, but he can see the last jolt has done the job and the trailer hitch is resting on the edge of the tow ball.

‘Hold it there!’ Phil yells, hurrying round to the front of the car and jumping in the driver’s seat. He starts up and makes the engine growl as he slowly inches forward. There is a loud thunk as the hitch fits onto the ball and Phil revs the engine, feeling the trailer pop up and out of the culvert with a final splutter of gravel. Phil feels, despite the presence of the old fella, like he’s got the last word.

Ness grabs him by the shoulders as he steps from the car and gives him a theatrical kiss on the cheek. ‘What heroes!’ she says in a way Phil knows is both taking the piss and genuinely grateful. Old friends get away with that.

‘Right, let’s carry on then, shall we?’ Phil says as he busies himself switching her hubs back off four-wheel drive, knowing she won’t have thought about it.

He walks back to Jacob, who has jumped out of his tractor and is circling Phil’s trailer, clearly waiting to be properly thanked.

‘’Preciate it,’ Phil says. ‘Thanks again.’

‘Cooking up a feast, then?’ Jacob ignores him and points to the rotisserie box strapped on to the back of Phil’s caravan.

‘Ha, yeah, getting a local lamb delivered tomorrow.’ Phil stands a little straighter. Wishes the box wasn’t so clearly brand new. ‘Had to upgrade to a bigger spit,’ he adds. And it had cost him. But it’ll be worth it. He hasn’t mentioned the lamb to the others yet, just said he’d take care of a big final Sunday lunch. He’s looking forward to the long, slow process, sitting by the fire and basting, enjoying the lip-licking anticipation from everyone.

‘Nice. Would that be from Paddy up on the ridge – the lamb?’ Jacob says.

‘Yeah,’ Phil says, ‘that’s the one. Eat local now that we’re here. Connect with nature and all that.’

‘You slaughtering yourself, then?’ Jacob asks, impressed.

Phil guffaws. ‘Nah, mate,’ he says, then sees that Jacob isn’t laughing.

‘Nothing to it,’ says Jacob. ‘Paddock to plate or whatever you lot call it. Me and Paddy’ll show you how. Otherwise you might as well get it from the shop.’

‘Well,’ Phil says, a bit miffed. ‘Wouldn’t want to give these kids too much of a fright just yet. Might take you up on that next time, though.’

Jacob nods, rubbing the grey bristles on his chin. Phil can see suspicions being confirmed. ‘Have it your way. If you change your mind, give Paddy a bell. He knows where to find me.’

‘Righto, will let you know.’

Jacob nods again and walks back to the tractor where the kids are hovering, touching and poking.

‘Go on,’ Jacob says. ‘You can climb up if you want.’

Reuben and Kai grin and start to clamber onto the high step.

‘Woah, hang on, boys, I don’t know about—’ Flick steps forward, tossing her blonde ponytail over her shoulder. Classic teacher move, Phil recognises. His wife holding her body straight and tall, looking down at the boys, her eyebrows slightly furrowed.

Jacob is eyeing the boys, poised on the edge of the big wheel. ‘Kids want a ride? Less than a k from here, go nice and slow.’

Ness smiles. It’s a killer smile, hers – perfect orthodontic work somewhat undermining the earth-mother vibe she goes for, with her layers of colourful clothes and messy un-dyed topknot. ‘Oh, that’s kind, but it’s probably just easier—’

‘It’s no trouble, can come back and give the rest of the kids a go tomorrow if they like.’

Phil can see Flick and Ness looking at each other. Why do they have to make a big deal of everything? Just let the kids go, it’s the country for goodness’ sake. The man is obviously harmless.

‘That’d be great, mate,’ Phil says. Fun start for the kids after a bit of drama. ‘You go first and me and Ness’ll follow?’

He’s asking but he isn’t asking. Sometimes that’s just how you get stuff done.

Lou

Lou had attempted to keep level-headed as Charlie Eggers outlined the issue, but by the time he’d pissed around the edges of the boundary-line problem and explained their neighbour’s stance on it, she had lost her patience.

‘Correct me if I’m wrong,’ she’d said, ‘but you’re telling me that not only was the Section 32 wrong, not only have we purchased less land than we thought we had, but also that the fence I just forked out twenty grand for is in the wrong spot, according to this Jacob Pallas bloke?’

‘Mr Pallas—’

‘You are shitting me, right?’

The relationship with Charlie had been going so well. When she’d first called him last year, he’d clocked her straight away.

‘It’s a rare opportunity. Boundless potential. A whole new start – don’t we all need a new start about halfway through?’

She’d played it cool but, Yes, yes, she was thinking, how do you fuckers do it so well, selling the dream, selling a brand-new you for a mortgage and a signature?

The post in her feed – BUY A WHOLE TOWN – had caught her eye, and she’d sent it to the WhatsApp group as a gag – Our own Schitt’s Creek? Then, with Marnie out so many nights at fundraiser events and the kids lost to their phones after dinner, she’d found herself returning to it, doing the deep dive. Lou had driven up one arvo for a tour and fallen completely under the spell of the place: the lush pockets of rainforest, the secret mossy corners, the babble of the crystal-clear river over the stones, the wrens darting about in the grasses as if to say, Follow me, here, look at what could be yours!

When she began to really sell it to the gang, she had a slightly different approach for each of them, seeding nuance into the exclamation points and jokes of the WhatsApp group. It was a strategy she wielded in work meetings – using the language and syntax of stakeholders back at them – plumming out her vowels for the old-school businessmen, leaning into the intimacy of ‘I get you’ empathy with female CEOs, cutting back to an informal banter with those lower down the pecking order. It served her well.

It’s a place to protect, she told Josie. We’ll be caretakers, stewards.

Somewhere for the family as they grow together, a legacy, she told her mum.

To Flick and Phil, she led with the potential. The quite frankly astonishing bargain. She gently volleyed Phil’s scepticism about return for investment by dropping breadcrumbs of opportunity – the heritage pub, the vast swathes of the year when they might rent it out, the corporate retreats. Not that she had any intention of anything like that.

And for Ness she went with what she knew would work: It’s a safe place, a second home, we’ll do it together. She meant what she said, but felt a twinge of guilt, knowing how desperately Ness was seeking solid ground. Here, here is the solid ground, she was saying.

But it wasn’t an even split, financially – she’d only just managed to convince the bank. Between Lou and Marnie and Phil and Flick they own fifty per cent. Avril and Ness together are in for another fifteen – in the end Avril stepped in to cover Ness’s share while she found her feet with this bloody MLM guff (the gentrification of the suburb they grew up in working in her favour when she moved to the unit). Josie and Tom had gone in for twenty per cent – but half of that was sweat equity, to be paid off with the work they were planning: renovating the pub, weed reduction and switching over the old pit dunny to a composting toilet. Lou has covered half their share, knows they are good for the work. That left them with a leftover fifteen per cent stake, which they offered to Marnie’s little brother, Jimmy. He had said yes before they’d even asked the question, though he claimed he was ‘cash poor’ and needed them to cover him just for the time being. Used to dealing with venture capitalists, he wanted front row to whatever scheme anyone cooked up. Also, FOMO.

But Jimmy isn’t here. And Lou suspects that the reason he’s pulled out at the last minute is because he hasn’t got the money together. On top of this nonsense about the fence and the neighbour, that’s another thing that needs to be sorted out by the end of the weekend. In the hour since the agent drove off, Lou has been trying to calm down, telling herself that she’ll handle the boundary debacle back in town, will lawyer up if it comes to it.

When Ness arrives, tooting her horn, a couple of car lengths ahead of Phil and Flick, there is a bloody tractor between them, kids hanging off willy-nilly. As they all converge on the cars, Phil and Ness and the kids talk over each other, something about an accident, and some bloke called Jacob with a tractor. Lou grinds her teeth.

So, this must be the man with the fence issue himself, turning up like the conquering hero, and she cannot believe this is how their first precious night here is turning out. She wants to be pouring drinks and setting off on a tour of this glorious place and enjoying everyone’s first impressions, and instead this feels like work. Only way for it is to tackle it head on, she thinks as she strides towards the bloke and his tractor.

‘G’day,’ she says, putting out her hand. ‘Lou.’

‘Jacob Pallas,’ he says, taking it firmly. ‘We share a boundary.’ He goes on before she can say anything. ‘Good to meet you anyway. Chance to let you in on some local knowledge.’

‘Yeah, righto,’ she says slowly, preparing to be mansplained to. ‘Anything in particular we should know about?’ she asks with one eyebrow raised.

‘Hunters. After the deer,’ he says. ‘Just keep an eye on the kiddies.’ Lou bristles at the way he says the last word, his lips pulling back from his yellow teeth.

Marnie comes over and stands next to her. She has a knack of sensing her wife’s disquiet at a distance.

‘My wife, Marnie,’ Lou says as Marnie stretches a hand forward to Jacob. Lou watches the interaction carefully, waiting for the jolt, the double take of casual country homophobia. He squints and cocks his head and she braces.

‘Haven’t I seen you on the telly?’

Ha. Not what she expected.

‘You might’ve,’ Marnie says, dazzling with her candidate smile. ‘Running for the seat of Angus. Wouldn’t have thought I’d made the news round here.’

‘That thing about the trucks and the ring road.’

‘You got me,’ she says, laughing and looping her arm through Lou’s. ‘Proposed new road goes right through my electorate. Not in working mode now, though.’

‘This is Jacob,’ Lou says. ‘He owns the property next door. Just been telling me to mind the kids. Apparently hunters around trying to get the deer.’

‘Surely they can’t come onto private property?’

‘Deer don’t pay attention to boundaries, love.’

‘The hunters,’ Lou says wryly, ‘not the deer.’ She’s beyond playing jokey games with overfamiliar old men but he seems unperturbed by her tone.

‘Meant to get the landowner’s permission,’ he says. ‘But don’t reckon anyone’s bothered to do that around here for a while. People used to it being empty.’

‘They a problem on your property?’

‘The deer? Or the hunters?’

‘Either/or?’

‘I keep ’em under control. Got good fences, motion cameras.’

Lou raises her eyebrows. ‘Cameras?’

‘Don’t worry, love. Won’t be spying if youse all decide to swim in the nud, just trained on my place,’ he says and laughs, a little murmury thing.

Lou and Marnie glance at each other.

‘Best keep an eye out for the river, too, with the little ones.’

‘Always,’ Lou says, properly annoyed now.

‘You’d’ve seen you got company down there?’

He points and Lou follows his finger to where, through the trees, she sees the trailer, the old Land Rover, smoke rising.

‘You know who they are?’ Lou asks.

‘Been camping here awhile,’ he says, rolling his eyes shiftily. They have the filmy glaze of a long-time drinker.

Great, Lou thinks, now squatters to contend with. She’s the one who needs a bloody drink. ‘We’ll sort it out,’ she says. ‘Thanks again.’ She raises her hand with finality.

‘While I’ve got youse,’ he says, ‘your new fence up on the hill. Someone’s got their wires crossed.’

Lou grits her teeth. ‘I’ve had the agent here this afternoon, I’ll need to get our lawyers to have a look at the documents.’

Jacob laughs. ‘Wouldn’t think you need lawyers, love, sure we can work it out the neighbourly way.’

Marnie senses her tension, speaks firmly: ‘Let’s come back to this next week, once we’ve had a chance to look at the paperwork.’

Jacob tenses. ‘I don’t need paperwork to know that’s my land up there, love. I need those fences moved.’

Marnie uses her politician voice, laced with both smile and threat. ‘Jacob, we will work this out, trust me. It’s in all of our best interests to work together and solve this as efficiently as we can.’

Jacob continues to stand there and Lou feels an urge to turn him around and march him right off their property.

‘Thanks again for dropping by,’ Lou says instead and turns away from him, gently taking Marnie’s hand as she falls in beside her. She hears the tractor start up behind them, but her relief is threaded with anxiety. There’s a bullish confidence in their new neighbour and she suspects this won’t be the last they see of him.

Stella

As soon as her swag is up, Stella checks that her mums are occupied, then slips back to the car. She will not be complying with this phone ban of Lou’s. Watched everyone else dutifully place their phones in the stupid box. But she has work to do – for Ginny and Mum’s campaign. And besides, she’s only just got her access back after the bullshit with the girls from hockey.

She opens the back door of the car quietly, slides in and shuts it. Only a couple of bars; enough. She flicks her thumb across the screen.

Niko’s posted a video of the curtain call, and Stella can hear his laughter over the applause, see the black heads of the audience standing up and putting their arms in the air, cheering. She can just make herself out, second row, near the wings, holding hands with Beau and Katie to take a bow. She checks Beau’s profile. They’ve made a slick reel, black and white, lipstick kisses in the change room and shh faces in the wings and big hugs and selfies – #backstage. She catches her own face in the background, looking in the direction of the camera. Beau did ask her to pose for a selfie, but it didn’t made the reel. She’s not actual cast – doesn’t have the make-up and the flushed backstage face – only assistant to the director. (‘Not only,’ Marnie had said to her, but it felt like an only). Still, like the rest of the crew, she’d been invited to the party this weekend. Katie had turned to her – You’ll come, Stella, won’t you? – and she’d nodded and smiled.

Her plan was to ask if she could stay with Cin, but Lou didn’t even for one minute entertain the idea.

This is a really important family weekend, Stell. I’m sorry; it’s not negotiable.

Stella had bit back, said negotiation wasn’t in her mum’s vocabulary, and watched Lou roll her eyes.

It’s a no, Stell. Make sure your bag’s packed.

Cin was empathetic but also, Stella guessed, quietly relieved that Stella wasn’t going to make her sneak out to a party where there would likely be alcohol and vaping and sex. Stella herself isn’t interested in all that stuff, but that doesn’t mean she wants to miss out.

She’d joined the drama group before all the shit went down with the hockey girls, but now that she’s been outcast by her team, she’s realised that these self-described weirdos and freaks are her people. Nerds who are more at home in the cool, dark theatre space and under the lights and layers of make-up than out in the real world. And while they love drama, they couldn’t care less about the dramas of year 10 girls and their online takedowns. Alannah – key midfielder and general cool girl – had posted what she no doubt thought was a sweet little video of the team at practice. Cut together so they were all smiles and sweat and arms over each other’s shoulders. Keeping it real with the realest bunch of girlies I know, she’d put in the text overlay, #realgirlssweat #real-girlsplayhard #wegotyourback. Stella watched the comments and likes roll in – Best captain ever! Stay real, we love you captain! That’s so sweet. Love how you’re never afraid to show it how it is. Alannah could share her performative authenticity all she wanted but that didn’t undo the small, snide cruelties she dished out regularly in the change rooms and on the sidelines. Forget your deodorant? Heard of waxing? So Stella had called her out in the comments. Although that wasn’t the phrase they used – Alannah’s parents and the welfare team and the year level coordinator and the coach. They had cited the Zero Tolerance to Bullying Policy. But Alannah was the real bully, and someone had to be honest. What about Zero Tolerance for Smug Bitches? Whatever, she didn’t really like hockey anyway.

Stella hears her name being called, switches her phone to aeroplane mode and slips out of the car. She circles around to the fire via the back of the grotty old pub, kicking her feet in the dirt, taking her time. She is in limbo here. Not a child, not one of the grown-ups.

The toe of her boot connects with something. She looks down and then kneels to examine what she’s unearthed, using her fingernails to scratch back the dirt. What is that? Old china? A bald doll’s head? She keeps digging until she reveals the treasure.

It is a small bird skeleton. The knobbled S of the tiny spine, the delicate curve of rib and wing, the perfect skull. She takes the skull in her hand, checking for gross feathers and stickiness, but it has been picked clean. The beak is hooked at the end and very sharp. She likes the feel of it pressing into the pad of her index finger.

Stella unzips her shoulder bag, takes out her notebook and rips out a page, carefully folds the tiny skull into the paper and nestles it back in her bag amongst her belongings. She’ll photograph it later for her feed. Place it on some moss or rock or in the river, somewhere that bone-white will really pop.

Flick

Flick finishes setting up the trestle on the deck of the old pub – enough shelter if the rain does come tomorrow but still outdoors enough to meet camping expectations. She grabs the tomatoes from deep within the sea of green bags and plonks a handful down on the table but one of them rolls off, hitting the deck and spurting wet seeds all over her new Blundstones. She grits her teeth and wipes them down with a tea towel. Someone’s got to get dinner on – it’s six o’clock already and the kids will be manic if they don’t eat before seven.

It’s been a chaotic arrival, but then she should really have expected that. Always an element of chaos with this crew. She’s annoyed that her first impressions of the place have been so coloured by the drama. She just wanted to soak a bit in the moment of arrival, the clean-slate total possibility of it all. Flick had been fantasising all week about driving through the gate to a sun-soaked valley, stepping onto the grass in her Blundstones and feeling instantly at home, instantly right. Feeling, she’s willing to admit it to herself, the little tingle of anticipation over the fact that he would be here. Instead, she’d been peering anxiously through the windscreen at her boys hanging off a bloody tractor, Phil all puff-chested next to her, and feeling like this was not the portentous start to the weekend she’d been after.

In the beginning, Flick had been wary of the idea. Of the bush block, of buying in with friends, of the work of it. But Phil had been keen. And Lou was persuasive. In the end, it was the idea of them as a community more than anything else that sold her. It’s not like they hadn’t talked about a holiday house before. It’s natural for a family with their mortgage in order to start dreaming of a second property. Something to make their hard-earned dollars work harder, a little negative gearing, a savvy investment. Not just financial, Phil had said; this would be an investment in our kids’ futures, even though he’d made it clear that nothing would ever be handed to them on a plate.

There was a moment, a few years back, when he’d floated the idea of buying a second place to rent out. The bank was literally throwing the opportunity at them, back then when interest rates were okay and they’d inherited a little money from Phil’s dad. But she’d baulked at that: she had no desire to be a landlord. What would people think? We’re not those people, she’d insisted. She knew, of course, that they were exactly the type of people who did things like that, but she liked to at least pretend she could still stand arm in arm with the proletariat. We don’t want to buy another property because we want to make money, she’d told him, No, we want to do it for lifestyle: to be closer to the beach, the forest, to get out of the rat race with the kids, an investment in family and long boozy dinners with dear friends and the sound of the ocean in our ears (although they found pretty quickly that ocean proximity was way out of their budget).

The good life, because they were good people and that’s what they deserved. They’d worked hard, they’d done what they were supposed to. They donate to the right causes, put their hands up for the school working bees and the sports club fundraisers or to turn a sausage down at Bunnings every now and then for a good cause. Flick changes her Facebook profile picture to support any movement or initiative neutral enough not to cause problems with potential school clients (climate change stuff is okay, American politics is too divisive). She and Phil have a sponsor child in Ghana and regularly donate to refugees and food banks and whatever godawful war is happening somewhere else. She runs, does Pilates, has regular check-ups at the doctor and dentist but doesn’t take it for granted and is never sanctimonious about health because she also never says no to wine and lines with the other mums on the odd cheeky Friday night.

What Flick had come to realise she wanted – what was feasible and desirable for her – was in fact a little slice of nature to call her own. This place isn’t a holiday house like the rich folk have in their tightly held parcels of city-adjacent coastline – this is something else, this is #regeneration, this is #sustainable, this is #backtonature. Where the kids can be kids. Where adults don’t have to worry about finding an Airbnb that sleeps seventeen and then stress about noise complaints after eleven – this is paradise, this is giving back to nature, this is being climate heroes, this is stewardship.

She cracks the iceberg lettuces with her thumbs. Should she wash these? Will that little tank off the side of the pub really have clean water? Their caravan has full tanks, of course, but she doesn’t have time to trek down there. Stuff it, it’s camping rules, right? She remembers to breathe deeply. The wet green river smell in the air. Generator whirring in the background and the clatter of set-up. The kids already forming a little swarm as they explore. And this is good, this is what she wanted.

Ness and Avril were meant to be on first-night dinner, but with the crash and ensuing shemozzle Flick has put her hand up to sort it out. Or maybe she didn’t put her hand up – it’s always hard in retrospect to know if she offered or it was just expected of her. She is the teacher after all, even if she has tried to explain that she’s an education consultant these days, has nothing to do with kids anymore, not really. Consultancy is just glorified personal development – not that the others would know about that. Maybe it goes with the territory of old friends, to never actually know what it is each other does in anything more than a vague, general sense. They prefer to imagine each other forever as fifteen-year-olds, with fifteen-year-old wants and desires and dreams. Comforting, sure, you never have friends like you did when you were fifteen, right? But also stifling. Very little room for reinvention, for deciding you might want to be someone different after all.

She’s doing the hamburger lunch Lou and Marnie had planned for tomorrow because it’s quickest. The rolls are fresh; all she has to do is chop some onions and hope that Lou deigned to pack pre-sliced cheese. Flick notes that the burgers look store-bought, even if they’ve put them in Tupperware. The veggo burgers for Ness are obviously homemade, though – good for them, finding time in their busy schedules. Flick would once have baked sugar-free banana bread, enough for everyone. But she can no longer find the energy to keep up the pretence of super-mum. Food is a battleground on these trips.

Flick leans over the boxes lined up in the front room of the pub. She can tell who packed what from the contents: Lou and Marnie’s groceries are quietly luxe and wholesome, lots of small paper bags of nuts, loaves of seeded sourdough and hamburger buns from the bakery, not the squishy twelve-packs in a plastic bag that would have been a winner with the kids. With no little mouths of their own to feed, Tom and Josie have long been excused from the duty of big meals, and instead they do condiments, coffee, dark chocolate, odd jars of chutney and marmalade and chilli, the cheese platters. It’s a bullshit move, really. They’d be forking out heaps more for all of that than what the rest of them spend on their cheap bulk meals. But Flick knows these things are rarely fair, and are more about the performance of fairness.

There are three white polystyrene tubs filled with ice that Jimmy’s sent along with Marnie after he pulled out last minute. Flick can safely assume they hold expensive ethical seafood (only ethical because it makes him look like he gives a shit, not because he actually does) waiting for tomorrow night’s feast. Typical Jimmy – grandiose but ultimately flaky.

Flick gathers the rolls in her arms and takes them back out to the other long trestle Lou has set up next to the fire. It’s picture perfect – the fire pit, the loose circle of chairs, the red and white tablecloth, the bottles of booze and bowl of homegrown lemons – a still life with the sloping green of the hill and the river as a backdrop. If the rain comes tomorrow, there’ll be chaos as they race to move to the communal area under cover in the pub. But, she supposes, it’s not about that with this gang; they want to sit smugly under the stars in the knowledge that they are the kind of people who value this wholesome outdoor life above convenience. The gas barbecue set up next to the trestle is, at least, a nod to the fact that sometimes you just need the billy boiled quick without the atmospheric fire vibes. She imagines that as soon as Phil’s finished squaring up the caravan he’ll be wielding the tongs and everyone’ll be lining up for burgers and onions, clapping him on the back while she fusses around in the background somewhere, making sure a kid has got the right roll, no tomato and This mayo, not that mayo! and her jaw will tighten because of course Phil is the good bloke who’s jumped in to give Ness a break, but it’s Flick who has chopped a bag of bloody onions and dropped tomato on her new boots.

He is a good bloke. She does love him. He puts the kids first, always has, and that’s more than can be said of some of the men she knows. And he loves her, too. For nineteen bloody years now. They rolled through the heady early days and the big plans and the travel and her endless study and her insistence on getting a proper job before they got pregnant, and then they had the boys and managed to keep it together during the slow and insidious speeding up of their life. He stood by her when she decided to return to work even when Reuben’s attachment issues made it extra hard, paid for the extra child care when her part-time job wasn’t even covering the cost of it, and she’s always felt they were in it together.

Except, something’s crept in. A gap? A boredom? An is-this-everything question mark that appears on the ceiling as she waits for sleep to reclaim her at 3 am. And when she tries to put the feeling into words, to somehow express the anxiety that something has changed, that maybe she is changing, Phil shrugs it off, tells her she thinks too much. ‘Loosen up,’ he says. ‘You’re all tension.’

No, you are the tension, she wants to say. She knows he’s been reprimanded, stood down from his coaching position. Doesn’t he realise that the mums find ways of knowing everything? She keeps waiting for him to say something. Wonders if he’s ashamed or if he’s so self-absorbed he thinks it hasn’t got anything to do with her. Or the boys.

Flick watches him now, coming up the hill from the caravan, ruffling the hair of one of the kids, going in for a fake tackle with another, putting his water bottle down to kick a ball. She should be happy. She should be grateful. She should not – on one rainy post-lunch-break-WFH Wednesday in the midst of the renovations – have stood so close to the builder, and for fuck’s sake not that particular builder, with the sawdust in his hair, should not have put out her hand, should not have closed her eyes, should not have said, fuck it fuck it fuck it and followed her instinct, her gut.

She coughs, goes to the camping fridge and grabs the closest can, cracks it, takes a long slug of the beer.

One time. It’s nothing. You’re both grown-ups, she says to herself. Just be chill.

‘Marnie, which esky is the cheese in?’ she calls out.

Marnie smashes a camp chair into standing with one hand, grabs the next to do the same.

‘Blue lid! I think? Cheesy, meaty things in blue, veggies in the white lid, the fridge has the booze.’

Flick raises her can in thanks, reaching in to pull out the unsliced block of aged cheddar. She sighs.

‘Hey, you.’ A hand on her back as she stands and turns and it is Josie. Her short hair permanently dishevelled, her face happily lined and glowing with her outdoors-ness, the kind of glow Flick can only manage with monthly laser.

‘Hey, you!’ Flick says, leaning into the hug one-handed while she picks up the cheese and pushes down the sick feeling in her guts. Josie and Lou were like the big sisters she never had growing up. Flick was brought into the fold through Ness, back when Ness was Vanessa and she was Felicity and they were inseparable, and Flick would move in and out of Lou and Ness’s house as if it were her own home. Avril was a second mum to her; extra seats and plates at the big table in the kitchen, door always open, light left on. Everything that was quiet and sensible at Flick’s own house was loud and wild at theirs. It was addictive, being part of it. Still is.

‘This is a bit bloody lovely, isn’t it?’ Josie says, pulling back and looking down towards the river, the shadows of the tall trees lengthening now across the grass as the evening cools around them.

Flick laughs. ‘I still can’t believe it.’

‘Heard about the crash, what a start! Chuck me in, what can I chop?’ Josie says, looking at the chopping board before turning back down the slope. ‘Tom, come give us a hand.’

And there he is. That particular builder. Tom, with his dirty boots and dark jeans, soft old shirt fitting close to his body. No sawdust in his hair today.

‘G’day, Flick,’ Tom says and goes to hug her as Flick tries to decide whether to lean into it or just put an arm out. And it’s awkward and they laugh as she says hello and thinks her skin might shrivel or burn as she realises that she’s touched the bare skin under those buttons.

‘Onions,’ she says. ‘Make my mascara run. Take those burgers to Phil when he’s ready?’

‘On it,’ says Tom.

‘I’ll do the bread rolls?’ Josie points at the bag.

‘Yes,’ she says, ‘please!’ And then, to herself, Be normal, be normal, be normal.

Ness

Willow Creek is everything she could’ve dreamed. The blue-green forest hugging the grassy clearing, the chitter of the creek as it meanders through. Creek and river! So much water energy – she could feel it connect with her watery self as soon as she stepped out of the car. She’d taken her shoes off immediately. Run onto the grass and sucked in a huge yoga breath, stretching her arms over her head, saluting the late-afternoon sun, then rolled her spine down to touch her hands next to her bare feet in the earth. Wow – the power of that energetic synergy coming up through the earth and vibrating with her own body. She’d encouraged Avril to join her in Tadasana pose, but her mother had just nodded and said her old bones were too tired for that sort of thing. It was exactly what her mother needed, though, to gather strength from this place, let it heal her, stop those cancer cells from ever returning.

Ness wonders now whether she could organise a GreenDreem gathering here. A women’s circle. She could get a local Elder to come. God, wouldn’t that be incredible? She imagines them all down there on the hill, saluting the sun at dawn. The spiritual healing.

She hoists Avril’s bags over her shoulders and opens the screen door of the old pub. It’s musty. Still got that whiff of old booze, damp and sour. They need to open everything up in here. So much potential. Ness imagines her women’s circle, working in little groups at the tables in here – art therapy, maybe, or some kind of craft, a memoir-writing workshop.

The walls in the pub are dotted with old framed photographs. Ness leans forward, looking at an image in black and white – a group of men in shirts and pants, their cuffs rolled back on their forearms, some in hats, some squinting at the camera. They stand close, one man in the back has his arm sloped over the shoulder of the man next to him, while another kneels on one knee at the front. Some of them look like they could be brothers, cousins maybe. The same restless dark hair, same cut of jaw. Behind them the white rock of the lime quarry – it says it there in the tiny text: Willow Creek Mine, workers on smoko – 1933.

A mutilated landscape. Thank goodness it has rewilded itself over their extractions. Apparently, there are still holes out there, shafts down into the earth, but she imagines them as gentle reminders of the past, hidden under a forest that has repaired itself with time.

She tries to imagine how it might have been when this place was bustling with punters, spilling beer over the rims of their glasses, talking about a hard day in the mine. She has no idea what that actually involved, but she figures mining’s always hard and they would’ve earned a drink. Probably left the kids back at home with a wife who was pushing it to get dinner on the table and the kids washed and into bed and there would’ve been no lights, no hot water. Jesus. She looks down at the eskies lined up along the wall. They’ve all been kidding themselves, thinking they’re tough for camping. They’re as soft as the next family jetting off to the theme parks in Queensland. The only difference is that this lot like to grandstand about how pared back and simple their holidays are.

She runs her hand along the old bar, her index finger catching in the grooves and divots left by eight decades of glasses. The previous owners got themselves a licence and ran it for a few summers, kept the locals and the campers along the river in drinks when the weather warmed up. But the cops from up the mountain eventually closed them down. Too many drunk out-of-towners driving back to their campsites loaded, too many punch-ons with the locals. Cops got jack of it, Lou said.

Behind the bar, a door leads through to an old kitchen. Too small to be of much use, although they could knock a wall out and redo it. The oven’s already been ripped out and the rats have been through the place, not even worth storing anything out there until they clean it all up. The front section is divided up into a small lounge – the ladies’ lounge back in the day, according to a sign hung above the door – where Avril will be sleeping on a blow-up mattress, and the large dining room, divided by a tall grey stone fireplace, open to both sides.

‘Mum!’ she hears Kai yell. ‘Where’s my soccer ball?’

Ness dumps Avril’s bags, cracks the window on the back wall, and pushes hard to open it out a little, before she heads out to the madness.

‘Where’s my bag, Mum?’ Winter says, grabbing her and shaking her arm as soon as she walks onto the verandah. ‘Mum! It’s not in the boot!’

Ness breathes deeply in frustration. She just wants to sit by the fire and slip straight back into the easy glow of old mates, the shared labour of it all, the knowing someone else is always watching the kids, to be honest – the way it’s always been. But no – that’s not her lot anymore.

‘Barbecue’s hot!’ Phil calls out, tongs aloft. ‘Tom, can you make a start on the burgers while I help Ness get this trailer up?’

‘I can help Ness,’ Tom calls.

‘Don’t need saving, fellas,’ she says, marvelling at the ways men orbit around each other’s status, like dogs circling as they find a place to piss.

But Phil, of course, cannot be put off, and it’s just as well because there’s no way she could put the bloody trailer up on her own. Mike used to pride himself on doing it all himself while she wrangled the kids and it smarts to realise how much she never bothered to learn.

‘You know you just gotta ask and I’ll be there to help?’ Phil says as he hammers a peg in and checks the tautness of the rope holding the awning in place.

Ness nods, smiles. Hands him the next pole. It’s the asking, though, isn’t it, she wants to say, that’s the bloody hard bit. And the knowing that the next time Phil and Mike have a beer there’ll be some comment about what a mess she is, how Phil’s stepped in, Mike shaking his head and saying, Thanks, mate. I know she’s hard work. And the risk that Phil mistakes her need for incompetence, or something worse. And then, the worry that if Mike does what he’s threatening to do and takes her to court over the custody arrangements, he’ll use whatever Phil sees, knows. Kitchen chaos. Cross words at Kai. Her screaming at the three of them when they won’t just go to bloody bed.

‘How’s all your basketball with the boys?’ she says, as he reaches for the next pole and rope and she hands them over, feeling useless.

‘Yeah, good, yeah,’ he says, wiping a palm over his brow and shaved head before leaning down to hammer the next peg home.

He’s a good man, Phil. That’s why she and Mike had done the original set-up with Flick. He had that same easy confidence as Mike. Less earnest than the weedy musos they’d both fallen for in the past. And to be honest, she admires that he doesn’t just go with the status quo all the time, riles them up with some of his comments, isn’t afraid to speak his mind. She doesn’t always agree with him, not at all, but she thinks maybe she gets where he’s coming from.

‘Flick says you love that team more than you love her,’ Ness says, only half joking. She’s never been keen on the competitive macho of team sports, but she appreciates that it means Phil spends a hell of a lot more time with his kids than Mike ever did. Until now. The fucking irony.

Phil grunts. Hammers once, twice. Then stands and looks at her.

‘Dunno about that. Basketball might be good for Kai, actually?’ he says, like he’s thinking aloud.

She raises her eyebrows. ‘How so?’ she says, guessing that he’s going to come at her with the same line about sport being good for boys with Kai’s ‘energy’. Like ADHD is a word you shouldn’t really say out loud, at least not to a mum.

‘Oh, you know,’ Phil says and Ness senses him backtracking. ‘Just good to let it all out on the court, the oval, whatever.’

Ness nods. ‘Maybe.’

‘I can do some stuff with him maybe, a night after school? Just some drills or whatever, if you want.’

So, this is how it will be, Ness thinks. Other men wanting to parent her kids.

‘Thanks, yeah, maybe,’ she says. ‘That it?’

Phil wipes his hands on his far-too-new jeans, hands the hammer to her. ‘You’re all set,’ he says.

‘Thanks for helping.’

‘Don’t mention it,’ he says.

And she wonders if he means that in more ways than one. That he’s here for her, of course, in the practical matters of cars and awnings and heavy lifting, yes, but also that she needs to remember where things stand. That he’s Mike’s mate, still. That there is stuff – the messy mechanics of marriage and divorce – that he wants no part in. She wonders if he worries that it’s contagious, like a run of gastro after a kid’s birthday party. That if she and Mike broke then they all might go down, a domino effect.

6.55 pm

Fading sun on the grass and rocky earth, the leaf litter and twigs and fallen logs. Deep shadow of the tall bush at the rear of the clearing. Movement in the frame. Back right. Something dark, moving out of the shadow, pausing, forward again. A deer. Big one. Front legs, broad chest now in the light, snarl of antlers dipping to the earth, back up again.

Something not right about the head, the shape of it.

Pausing, still.

It startles. Quick back into the shadow. Gone.

Josie

After they’ve eaten and the leftovers have been chucked in the fire or bundled up into the eskies, they settle around the fire. It’s dusk now, only an hour left of the light at most, that time when all seems to soften, to nestle in for the approaching night. Josie decides it’s time. Despite the fact she’s not one for formal ceremonies, she enjoys a ritual. Not in the woo-woo-burning-sage kind of a way that Ness might go for; more a practical marking of a moment. Josie had steadfastly avoided any attempt to formalise her relationship with Tom, not that he’d asked her to, but she had bought them a good bottle of shiraz to cellar when they’d signed the lease on the place in Ballard Street, and she’d got a tattoo of a purple cut leaf daisy – Brachyscome multifida – when she’d finally handed in the PhD. She can’t tattoo Willow Creek on any of them, but she feels it’s important to formalise the weekend.

‘Hold on, kids,’ she says, standing up. ‘Before you race off, let’s do a toast, huh? To Lou, for making this weekend, this whole thing’ – she opens her arms wide as though she can encompass the pub, their little camps, the grassy hill, the river and forest lit up in the gloaming – ‘all of it possible.’

Everyone cheers. Lou grins and blushes and shakes her head.

‘Seriously, though, dear Lou, you brought us all together, and we are so lucky, should all count ourselves lucky not only to have been friends, and family, for so long, but to have this opportunity to care for, to enjoy, this spectacular piece of land.’

‘Hear, hear!’ Avril says joyfully.

‘Perfectly put,’ Phil says.

Lou looks at her, mouths, Thank you, love you, as she places her palm over her heart.

‘To all of us,’ Josie says, holding up her glass. The kids go wild, whooping and squealing as they make to scatter.

Josie holds up her hands. ‘Just wait, kids! Lou’s gonna say a few words,’ Josie says, motioning for Lou to get up.

Lou shakes her head and waves Josie off.

‘No, come on now – you have to, it’s our first night,’ Avril says. ‘Josie’s right.’

‘Gee, thanks, Mum,’ Lou says, looking at Marnie, who smiles and nods encouragement.

‘Fine,’ Lou says, putting her drink down in the dirt and standing.

From the other side of the fire, Stella groans loudly and rolls her eyes.

Josie remembers Lou at the same age. Doing the same thing with her eyes. The same performed embarrassment. She longs to go and sit beside Stella and tell her how truly magnificent her mother was. Is, of course. But she knows, even though she’s not a mum (yes, yes, she can’t possibly understand what it’s like) that the youth cannot be told.

Lou clears her throat. ‘Sorry, Stell, I’ll only mortify you for one minute. I just wanna say thank you, all, for making this happen. For all the time bending, the effort, the giving up of sports games – thank you, Leo and Reuben – and parties, thank you, Stella – and all the other commitments that I know has gone on for everyone to be here this weekend. This place is spectacular and we are very lucky to own it, but the best thing about it is that we’re all here together.’

‘You running for politics, too?’ Ness calls out, winking.

‘Pipe down, Ness, it’s lovely,’ Phil says.

Lou raises her glass. ‘There’s so much to talk about, but for tonight let’s just say here’s to us, and here’s to our very own Willow Creek – a piece of land we will care for, protect and make many, many memories on.’

Around the fire they raise their glasses. ‘To Willow Creek!’

The younger kids stomp and clap, but Josie can tell they’re itching to get away from the adults.

‘Are we gonna keep calling it Willow Creek?’ Ness asks when the hubbub dies down a little.

Josie looks over at Ness and tries to ascertain whether the question is provocative or just good old Ness wanting to stir the possum.

‘Well, that’s what this weekend is for, I guess, all those kinda questions,’ Lou says, sitting down.

‘Oh, I thought it was about wines by the river?’ Avril says, winking.

‘Me too, Mum,’ Ness says, snorting.

‘God, no, there’s a schedule!’ Marnie laughs.

Lou puts her hands up. ‘It’s not a schedule, it’s an overview!’

‘It’s a very scheduled overview, my love,’ Marnie says, touching Lou on the knee.

‘If we don’t get everything done, can we stay here forever?’ Josie asks, sensing Lou’s annoyance.

Lou grins quickly but isn’t appeased.

‘Tell us the plan, Lou,’ Josie says.

‘So, tonight our only job is to settle in and enjoy—’

Phil cuts in, his voice loud. ‘Enjoy yourselves while you still can, because tomorrow—’

Lou raises an eyebrow. ‘Tomorrow – yes – we’ve got to smash through some tasks,’ she says.

‘The blackberries,’ Josie says.

‘The toilet,’ Tom says.

Lou looks at them gratefully. ‘Yes, and checking the roof of the pub, clearing some of the junk to burn.’

‘I wanted to plot out the spot for the veggie patches and compost,’ Ness interrupts.

‘Sure,’ says Lou. ‘And Sunday is all play – we’ve got Phil’s big lunch and the inaugural Willow Creek Talent Show.’

‘Oh my god, remember when we used to do them at that dodgy share house you had in Rae Street?’ Josie says, her brain shifting to a montage of dress-ups and too much cheap wine and drawn-on moustaches.

‘Right?’ Lou says. ‘I thought it was time to bring it back – get the kids involved in our shenanigans. Maybe slightly less of the debauchery this time around.’ She smiles at Josie and it’s one of those smiles that holds the whole of their long friendship within it.

‘Is it compulsory?’ Flick asks, her face screwed up in faux-anxiety.

‘Obviously!’ Avril says at the same time as Marnie says, ‘No, it is definitely not.’

‘You got something, Av?’ Phil asks.

Josie yells delightedly, ‘Tom brought his guitar!’

‘And we’ve got a little reprise of our famous Monty Python skit planned,’ Lou says, reaching out to touch Marnie’s shoulder.

Marnie laughs. ‘Oooh, you were lucky,’ she says in a terrible English accent.

‘Hasn’t John Cleese been cancelled?’ Phil says archly.

‘The artist is cancelled, not the art,’ Avril cries. ‘Phil, have a thought for the art!’

‘But don’t we have to hate the art that the problematic old white man made?’ Phil says, holding his hands up.

‘Usually, yes, but can’t we just have some relaxed nostalgia?’ Marnie says.

‘Stop being a shit-stirrer, you let the boys watch Life of Brian last month,’ Flick snaps at Phil.

Josie can see how much frustration Flick is holding in. The way she looks at him sometimes, the edge of her lips turned up in – what? A sneer? Maybe she and Phil aren’t built to last. Maybe Ness and Mike’s divorce was a sign of things to come. They literally can’t afford for that to happen. This whole place would get sucked down into the vortex of divorce, the financial wreckage.

‘You can hand in your feminist critique on Sunday night, Phil, and I’ll distribute,’ Marnie says, grinning.

‘Adults are BORING!’ yells Kai from the slope.

‘Yeah, good point, Kai,’ Lou says. ‘You lot have a last run around, huh?’

‘Thirty more minutes, then bed!’ Flick yells.

‘No way! We’re not going to bed that early,’ Leo calls back.

‘Let ’em do their thing, babe,’ Phil says, and Josie watches as Flick tightens her mouth.

‘Hey, Stell,’ Ness says, ‘you reckon you could take the kids on a bit of a wander before bed? Just around the clearing, nowhere out of sight.’

Josie watches Stella as she widens her eyes in protest at her mums, but Ness’s already too pissed to notice.

Marnie makes a please face. Stella scowls.

‘Up the hill’ll be nice for the last of the sunset, Stell,’ Lou says. ‘There’s a tiny old cemetery just off the track behind the pub, might be good for photos?’

‘A cemetery!’ Kai squeals. ‘Why?’

Josie chimes in. ‘When this was a mining town there would have been hundreds of people living here. And dying too. They would have needed a cemetery.’

‘Spooky,’ Kai says.

Josie laughs at the voice he puts on. She enjoys Kai. Got a good sense of humour.

Stella sighs dramatically. ‘Fine,’ she says. ‘Whatever. All you do is talk crap anyway.’

‘Don’t go off the tracks, kids, huh?’ Phil calls out. ‘Mines mean mineshafts. Stick together.’

Stella stomps away after the kids, who gather around her as though she’s the Pied Piper.

‘Sorry about our vicious teenager,’ Marnie says, eyeing Lou.

‘She’s great,’ says Tom, chuckling.

Josie pulls in her chair, looks over at Tom, who is sitting back, somewhat bemused, stroking the side of his wine glass with his thumb.

‘Who called it Willow Creek?’ Tom asks.

‘Don’t know,’ Lou says.

‘Clearly not the original name. What’s the Indigenous name?’ Ness says.

‘The land is Gurnaikurnai – I don’t know the original name for the river,’ Lou replies.

‘It’s the Thompson, yeah?’ Ness says. ‘Probably some white guy who did a number of shit things.’

‘Not all white men,’ says Phil.

‘Okay, boomer,’ Ness says.

Laughter.

‘Could replace “Willow” with an indigenous plant,’ Josie says, settling back with her wine. She enjoys when the banter has an actual point. When they are away together, they so often spend this fire time reminiscing about the good old days, which she knows bores Tom, makes him feel left out, not that he’d say. That, or they descend into the one-upmanship and tedium of how hard the kids and their schedules are. It feels good to trade back and forth in conversation that has actual meat.

‘They’re so invasive,’ Ness says. ‘Willows wreak havoc on the riverbanks. Maybe we need to think about getting rid of them altogether?’

‘They do look so beautiful, though, down there,’ Flick says. ‘All very Wind in the Willows and English Romantics.’

‘Romantic or not,’ Phil says, ‘they’re a massive issue. Australia’s worst weed, aren’t they, Josie?’

‘Not quite,’ she says, enjoying the thought of putting him in his place. ‘There’s new research that shows in some cases it’s better to keep them, for fish habitat and stream temperature control.’

Phil humphs and leans back in his chair. ‘Lucky we have an in-house expert.’

It’s an unspoken game between them all: they let each other have their own little areas of expertise. Money (Marnie for sensible, Jimmy for crypto), broken things (Tom), broken bodies (Avril), sports scores (Phil), crossword clues (Flick), logistics (Lou), social media (Ness) and what’s that plant – that’s Josie’s contribution. Not as useful, she concedes, as some of the others, but it’s her lane and hers only.

‘Obviously not my call,’ Josie says, laughing. ‘Shared space, shared responsibility, shared decision-making, right?’

‘Well said, Jo,’ Tom says, raising his glass, and she notes his pointed look. This would be the perfect time to mention the acacia – the possibilities, the idea of a financial return, which she knows is high on some people’s agenda. And yet, she finds that she’s still not ready to share.

‘Does it need a name?’ Flick asks.

‘Yes, it needs a bloody name,’ says Phil.

Josie catches the glance between them. That’s another game: whose relationship is going great guns – a hand on the back, a kiss when no-one is looking – and whose is on the rocks this trip. Flick and Phil are a classic sporty couple; every interaction is as if they are running or swimming in lanes next to each other – one gets a little ahead, then the other. It’s not aggressive, not like that, just keyed up. She couldn’t do it, feels like she and Tom are more a lazy paddle, side by side.

‘We should go back to the traditional name… that would be the right thing to do,’ Ness says.

Here we go, thinks Josie. Ness’s already flagged the idea of giving back a portion of the property to the local land council. Admirable, yes, but also pie in the sky, as Ness so often is. ‘For now, though,’ Josie says, squashing the inevitable argument to come, ‘let’s just celebrate the fact that we all made it here in one piece!’ The ritual is done.

They fall back into quiet chatter and Lou comes up behind her and kisses her on the shoulder. ‘Thank you,’ she says.

‘No, thank you,’ Josie says and turns to hug her. ‘Drink?’ she asks, nodding to Lou’s empty glass.

‘Nah, just going to see about those campers down by the river,’ she says, a frown flickering across her face, the smoothing as Josie matches it.

‘I’ll come with you?’

‘Nah,’ Lou says, and smiles. ‘You hold the fort, be back in a tick.’

Josie watches her leave, wishes her best friend wasn’t so on all the time, that she could sink into the moment a bit more, not be constantly on the look-out for threats and solutions. But, she guesses, that’s why she loves her – they balance out each other’s various failings. She moves towards Tom and wraps her arms around his neck, brings her head close to his. ‘Love you,’ she says in his ear.

He puts his hand on her arm, squeezes.

Lazy paddlers, she thinks, and she’ll take that any day. The thing is that sometimes our friends make us want to be more like them and sometimes they make us want to be even more smugly ourselves.

Stella

She leads them up the track behind the old pub. The sun has slipped now behind the hill beyond, and the sky is all sticky pink and orange with its setting. She takes her phone from her pocket, tries to capture the light golding in the trees. She needs her SLR, should have gone back to get it, but now behind her there’s all the kids. Children she’s meant to look after while the adults get pissed. Although – she calls out to Winnie to step away from the others. ‘Look that way for a sec,’ she says.

Winnie doesn’t question her, and Stella rolls this power like a jube in her mouth. The light is in the girl’s messy blonde braids and it’s catching and glowing, her pink hoodie seems to be soaking in the sun and her sticky-outy skirt and her muddy boots – it’s a great shot, nostalgic. Lou scoffed when Stella told her that was one of the themes for her photography folio. ‘How does nostalgia apply to fifteen-year-olds?’ she’d said, rolling her eyes at Marnie. Stella let the puncture of hot shame turn to a rage she lodged deep inside her.

‘Why are you taking pictures of me?’ Winnie says, squinting back at her as she picks up Eden, who is whingeing about the walk and demanding to be carried.

Stella shrugs. ‘The light.’ She will not humour these children; she is not here to be their friend. She is in charge, can demand they follow the rules.

No troll left behind.

No going in the water.

Look after each other.

Be kind.

They are the rules they’ve always had. They know them off by heart. She also knows, but doesn’t say, that there’s lots of gaps in those rules.

‘Reckon this is the way to the cemetery?’ Kai asks. He has stepped off the dirt four-wheel-drive track onto what looks like a smaller path, an animal track maybe. ‘Can we go down here?’

Stella looks down the path. ‘Yes.’

‘Ooooh! SPOOKY!’ he shouts as they all follow him off the track and into the first layer of forest. Kai races ahead, Reuben calling out for him to wait up. Leo is deliberately slow, feigning boredom at the whole thing. Having missed out on running ahead with the other boys, Benji is hanging back closer to Stella. The bush is closer here, prickling their arms and legs, and Benji holds out the branches that threaten to thwack back into Winnie and Eden.

Stella hears shouting up ahead.

Holy shit! Graves! There’s another one! Oh my god!

The small clearing is overgrown, but she can make out five or six headstones, an iron fence and some scattered stones that could have been grave markers. She looks down and can just see the roof of the pub through the tall eucalypts and the underbrush, and beyond that, the clearing and the river, the steep valley of its far bank all doused in the fading golden light. She’ll give Lou this, it is a perfect setting. The children running around the graves in the last light, the way the bush has done its best to swallow the headstones. The white quartz in the earth glowing like bones unearthing themselves.

She touches her bag.

‘Come here,’ she calls. ‘I have something to show you.’

The children all gather around, talking over each other.

What is it? I can’t see! Let me in!

‘I shouldn’t show you this,’ Stella says.

The children are very quiet.

She crouches down and gestures with one outstretched hand for them to do the same.

‘It’s a talisman,’ Stella says as she pats the dirt in front of her, smoothing the space with both flat hands, gentling away the leaves and twigs and small rocks. Then she reveals the bundle of paper.

‘What’s a talisman?’ Benji asks quietly.

‘A talisman is like a charm, it can protect and it can curse.’

The children all lean forward.

She stills her hands, looks up at each of them in turn.

‘If you are scared,’ Stella says, frowning, ‘you should go back now.’ But she knows they won’t. Kids are pack animals.

I’m not scared!

Then, the whisper and hush as they all lean in.

Slowly, her long fingers unpick the folds of the paper and she reveals what’s inside.

Someone gasps. The children thrust their heads and bodies so far forward she worries they will topple over.

What is it?

Inside the ruffle of paper is the small white skull, long and pointed to a beak at one end, rounded at the back, wide hollows on each side where the eyes should be.

‘You can touch it,’ Stella says.

‘It’s a bird skull,’ Winter says breathlessly, leaning right in.

‘Birdie!’ says Eden, reaching out her filthy little fingers, and then Kai and Winter and Benji and Reuben too, all in a rush to touch their flesh to this strange magic.

‘Careful,’ Stella says, and she sounds like she is one of the grown-ups now. She notices Leo bristle a bit, but the other children keep reaching, desperate to touch the thing.

‘STOP!’ Stella says loudly, scooping up the skull and holding it to her chest. ‘See! See how powerful it is?’

‘This is stupid,’ Leo says quietly, stepping back from the others and pulling his basketball cap down further over his face. He is such a wannabe jock. Just like his dad.

‘Then go home, Leo.’ Stella says.

‘You’re just making stuff up to scare the kids.’

Stella smiles. ‘Or are you just a little bit scared, Leo?’

‘As if,’ he says under his breath.

Stella ignores him.

‘It’s our secret,’ she says. ‘We must not tell the grown-ups. Say it.’

We must not tell the grown-ups! The children chant.

‘Now we have to seal the promise.’

‘How?’ Leo asks, his arms folded.

Stella is triumphant. She has conjured this moment out of nothing more than words and a filthy little bird skull. She kneels and scoops a little hole in the dirt with her fingers, placing the skull down carefully. Then she tilts forward and spits, the fluid hanging from her bottom lip for a moment before it drops in the hole.

‘You next,’ she says, pointing to Kai, who is starting to jiggle the way he does.

Around the circle, each of the children leans forward and spits in the small hole. Benji screws up his face when he does it. Eden dribbles and giggles and Winter shushes her, leaning forward at the same time to show her how.

When it’s Leo’s turn, they all look at him. ‘I’m not doing it,’ he says, trying to laugh at them.

Stella shakes her head. ‘Then you can’t be one of us.’ She knows he thinks he’s too old for this. Knows, too, how much he wants not to be outside the circle.

‘Whatever, I don’t care.’

Reuben stands and grabs his big brother by the arm. ‘C’mon, Leo.’ His voice is a little shaky. Stella can see she has creeped him out.

‘Please, Leo,’ Winter says, pulling Eden into her lap and looking at the older boy with fearful eyes.

Leo rolls his eyes. ‘Fine, whatever,’ he says, stepping forward and quickly spitting into the hole, wiping his mouth. He makes a face and then crouches down behind his brother.

When everyone has finished, Stella dips two fingers in the hole and mixes up the spit with the dirt.

Someone coughs. Someone gags.

She gets up from where she is kneeling, taking her two fingers slick with mud and swiping them over Kai’s forehead. She repeats the action for each one of them.

‘Face paint!’ Eden says, laughing.

‘Now you have promised,’ Stella says, looking at each of them in turn, noticing their wide eyes and quiet awe – as though she has cast a spell.

‘Stell,’ Benji says, brushing up against her, ‘we don’t have our torches.’ His voice is small and needy and while she’s a little thrilled she’s managed to scare her brother – to scare all of them – so much, she doesn’t want to push it. Not yet. She looks up. The light has been sucked from the sky.

‘Let’s go,’ she says, standing up. ‘And remember, no telling the grown-ups or else the magic won’t work.’

The children scatter to the path, quicker and quieter than they were before. Stella smiles. She has spooked them. Benji falls in next to her.

Stella tells them to keep going and suddenly, to her right, there is an explosion of noise and movement in the trees.

Shit! What was that?!

They are frozen in place for a second, two, then there is more crashing, the flash of something big and heavy passing between trunks and racing away from them.

They run, even Stella, her heart racing, the adrenaline like Coca-Cola frothing through her body as she grabs Benji’s hand and they hurtle along the narrow path, following their feet, squealing and pushing until they reach the dirt track and keep running down towards the lights and the grown-ups, away from whatever it is she has summoned.

Lou

Hands in her pockets, she walks down the driveway, over the bridge and through the grass towards the squatters.

The light this time of year is something else. Like it’s relishing the last weeks of daylight savings, showing off with what it’s got left. The willows sway over the river – Flick is right, they are rather picturesque. Not so the old Jayco nestled in along the riverbank. She feels a surge of anger. This is what they have sacrificed for, a place to call their own. If anyone can just stake a claim here, they might as well be slumming it with all the other campers in the site down the road. No – all of this, every blade of grass she treads on, it is theirs.

Parked beside the old Jayco is a somewhat battered blue Land Rover with roof racks, a snorkel and a winch. The side window of the camper is plastered with stickers – country pubs and hunting and fishing slogans.

‘Hello?’ she calls out. ‘Anyone around?’

She can hear sounds from behind the closed door of the camper, but no-one comes out. Three chairs set up and facing the river around a fire bucket. A neat table with a red and white plastic tablecloth, one of those wooden condiment holders with cutlery and tomato sauce and paper napkins.

Stepping forward, she raps again, three times. ‘Hello?’

Scraping and shuffling sounds before the door opens. An older bloke, face that’s seen some sun, cropped grey hair, jutting chin, one of those blue fisher and hunter shirts she despises.

‘Yerright?’ he says.

‘Yeah, hi,’ Lou says, pitching her voice deeper, standing tall. ‘How’s it going?’ She sticks out her hand. ‘Lou Blake, I’m one of the new owners.’

The bloke inclines his head, holds out his hand slowly, grips back when she shakes. ‘Was wondering when you mob might show up.’

Lou knows this kind of man. Encounters them daily. The ones who raise their eyebrows when she is introduced to them at work, who smirk, who use delaying their responses as a weapon. They no longer perturb her, instead they fuel her.

‘And you are?’ she says, pulling her hand away and mirroring the man’s inclined head.

‘Dave Saunders.’

She waits. He waits.

‘Right, sorry – Dave – are you a friend of the old owners?’

‘Something like that.’

Okay, mate, she thinks, I’ll play your fucking game. She smiles with her mouth only. ‘I guess what I’m asking, Dave, is what you’re doing here?’

He returns the smile, shakes his head. There’s another shuffle and scrape and a woman appears behind him. Shorter, bobbed blonde hair, old woollen jumper. ‘Hello, love,’ she says, smiling at Lou.

‘This is the new owner,’ Dave says, without looking back at her.

The woman smiles. ‘G’day, I’m Libby.’

Change of tack required, Lou thinks. ‘Nice to meet you, I’m Lou. We just arrived. Not the only owner, actually. There’s four of us, families.’

‘Four?’ Dave says, raising his eyebrows. ‘How’d you manage that, then?’

‘Pitched in,’ Lou says, determined not to elaborate. ‘Gotta say, was a bit surprised to find you here.’

‘Oh, don’t mind us, love. Got a long connection to the place.’

‘Aha,’ Lou says, nodding her head and crossing her arms.

‘Been camping in this exact spot for more than twenty years.’

‘You knew the previous owners?’ Lou asks.

Dave nods. ‘Kevin and Lucy were old mates of ours. That’s who you bought it off?’

‘Never met them,’ says Lou. ‘Did it all through the agent.’

Dave and Libby exchange a glance that Lou fails to interpret in the dusk light.

‘Our boy, he’s inside, been coming here since before he was born,’ Dave says.

‘Yes,’ says Libby, quickly, ‘and nearly every year since then.’

‘The boy’s twenty-one now,’ Dave says.

‘Nearly twenty-two,’ Libby corrects and laughs again.

Lou continues to nod, trying to work out if these people are calculated or just fucking stupid.

‘Mum, pot’s boiling!’ A head sticks out from the door briefly, dark hair, round face, the shadow of growth along his chin. He frowns at Lou and disappears.

‘Oh dear, sorry, love, that’s our tea ready. Lovely to meet you,’ Libby says. ‘You won’t even know we’re here.’

Dave nods. ‘Night, then,’ he says, and he steps back and closes the door.

Lou stands, arms folded, lost for words. She’s got an arsehole on one boundary and now this lot on another. Jesus, how hard can it be to buy yourselves a bit of uninterrupted space you can consider your own? She shakes her head, turns away from the caravan and heads back up the hill to the twinkling lights, to her tribe.

She’ll consider this a work in progress, but she is certain of one thing: they won’t be staying.

Flick

She is almost ready to take off up the hill herself to check on the kids when she hears them galloping down, squealing and yahooing. The dark has come in quick and, typically, no-one else seems especially bothered by it, cracking cans and popping bottles and settling in around the fire. It’s not her boys she worries about – they’re old enough to navigate new places in the dark – it’s more that the whole gang seems to feed off each other’s energy and she never quite trusts that things won’t get completely unhinged – Lord of the Flies style.

Flick headcounts them, eyes on each one as they flap into the fire circle, all yelling at once, high as kites, fat chance they’ll get them to bed soon, although the drinks are loosening her boundaries and she doesn’t care quite as much as she did an hour ago.

‘What you got on your face?’ she says to Reuben, trying to bring him in for a cuddle and swiping at his forehead.

‘Nothing! Leave it!’ he says, twisting his head away.

She stands up, irked by his dismissal of her, and hurries to get the green bag she’d kept for tomorrow night from the verandah. She’s not only good for food prep, she can be the fun mum, too. She calls the kids over. When most of them are there, hopping from foot to foot, she pulls the packets from the bag and holds them out.

‘We’re not allowed to have glowsticks,’ Winnie says immediately.

Flick lowers her hands. ‘Oh.’

‘They’re cheap and nasty and toxic.’

Flick winces.

‘Did you get them from Temu?’ Winnie asks, her lips pursed.

‘No,’ Flick lies, ‘of course not.’

The girl looks at her sceptically. Cheap and nasty and toxic.

‘Oh well,’ Flick says, ‘maybe you and Kai and Eden can bring out your solar lamps instead?’

Winnie shrugs, taking a fistful of Cheezels and running off to Ness. Flick watches them as Ness bends her head down, listening to her daughter with a frown.

‘They’re toxic too,’ Flick says under her breath, looking at the fluoro-yellow residue on Winnie’s lips as the other children grab and tear at the packets and crack the glowsticks into neon bright. Kai, she notes, takes the most; a kid made gluttonous by deprivation.

The kids whirl around the fire, making shapes in the dark, and Flick bends to crunch up the plastic they’ve left behind.

‘I’ve set up separated waste up here,’ Ness calls out as she comes towards her, holding out her hands. ‘That’ll be the red bin.’

‘I’ve got it,’ says Flick. She fucking knows it’s landfill. Guesses Ness will be giving her a black mark for that.

Ness clearly senses her shortness. ‘Sorry if Winter gave you a hard time,’ Ness says, rolling her eyes. ‘She takes everything I say as gospel.’

‘All good,’ Flick says, the universal passive-aggressive response when all is not good.

‘She told you Temu is built on child labour, right?’ Ness says, half-laughing, half-serious, her MO.

‘Do you ever think that maybe your ethics make you less fun?’ Flicks bites back. She thinks she’s nailed the same jocular tone, but Ness’s face tells her maybe the serious outweighed the joke.

‘You do you, babe,’ Ness says, taking a Cheezel on her index finger and putting it in her O-shaped lips, both fuck you and filthy, but clearly aiming to lighten the mood.

‘Love you,’ Flick says.

‘You more,’ Ness calls back over her shoulder as she walks away.

It smarts, though. Cheap, nasty, toxic.

‘Can I get one of those, too?’ Tom says, coming up next to her and holding out his hand.

She smiles, feeling the heat off him. ‘Of course,’ she says, bending two sticks into a circle and joining it. He dips his head forward and she gently places the ring like a crown over his hair.

He inclines his head, raises his eyebrows. ‘Suit me?’ he asks.

‘For sure,’ Flick says, feeling like she is radiating pink neon right back at him.

Phil

Phil tries not to be sanctimonious about the drinking thing but, honestly, it’s nights like this when it’s hardest. Close circle around the fire, the clinking, popping, crack of drinks being opened. Laughter getting louder, jokes getting cruder after the kids are packed up and put away.

Hardest, and easiest. He’s sharpened his eyes now, eighteen months in, and likes to keep an internal tally of people sloshing their drinks, beginning to slur their words, leaning in and openmouthed laughing, too close, too loud.

Across the circle, Flick stands up and wiggles, flicking the lurid glowsticks in circles with one hand, her glass in the other tipping a little as she gets to the punchline of her story and Ness and Avril laugh.

Flick gets annoyed if he mentions it, so he keeps his mouth closed. She can drink, he doesn’t care. She says he’s judging her silently. Maybe. Phil counters that he feels better in himself and isn’t that good for both of them? She can’t argue with that.

Getting off the booze wasn’t exactly to do with Mike and Ness breaking up, but it wasn’t not to do with that either. His own marriage was a counterweight to theirs – babies, new jobs, good times and bad, falling and rising against each other as if to balance the scales. And when their marriage suddenly, spectacularly went to shit, Phil felt strong, even smug if he’s being honest. Yes, of course he was sad for them, sad and also annoyed about the immediate impact it would have on Friday-night catch-ups, the spiky way Flick started interacting with him as if he were the one who nicked off with a woman from mixed netball and not Mike. And it made him reassess. Especially when Mike started putting in more sessions at the gym, knocking off the kilos. Phil didn’t want to be seen to be copying his mate, so he took another angle, got off the booze for a month, then made it to six. Felt good, looked about five years younger, or so the guys at work said. He’d had the odd night off – Flick’s cousin’s wedding, a Christmas thing – but he’d ended up just feeling like shit afterwards. Decided it wasn’t worth it. Besides, Phil isn’t a man to back down from a challenge. Especially one he sets himself.

He notices Marnie walking back from the eskies, bottle in hand, twisting slightly away from the firelight, the telltale glow of her phone in her hand.

‘Busted!’ Phil calls across the fire and the conversations stop for a moment.

Marnie looks up at Phil.

‘Who didn’t put their phone in the box, then?’

Marnie throws up her hands and laughs when she realises everyone is looking.

‘Caught red-handed!’ she says.

Phil sees Lou look into the fire and shake her head.

‘Surely we give the incumbent some grace – who knows what deals can be struck on a Friday night, hey?’ Tom, ever the diplomat, goes for gentle humour to smooth the tension.

‘And what deals are being made, Marnie?’ Phil says, enjoying poking the bear.

‘Work-free weekend!’ Lou interrupts.

‘Oh, come on, Lou,’ Phil says, grinning, ‘what are old friends for? We’re nothing if not the perfect focus group for new policy direction.’

‘It’s a weekend off, babe,’ Flick says. ‘For Marnie too.’

‘In fact,’ Marnie says smoothly, taking a sip of her wine, ‘that’s one of our key platforms – the right to disconnect, the protection of downtime.’

‘That’s all well and good for people like us, huh?’ Phil says, getting into the swing of it. ‘What about those poor fuckers working two or three jobs to make ends meet? When do they get to disconnect?’

Flick laughs once, but it’s a pity laugh and it makes Phil grind his back teeth.

‘Didn’t realise you were such a champion of the working class, Phil,’ Ness says drily.

‘Now, now,’ says Lou, and Phil catches the warning look she gives her sister

‘Yeah, Ness, I guess I am,’ he says. ‘That’s where I come from, after all. And let’s be honest, I trade in labour, how much more working class can you get?’

Josie barks in laughter. ‘Don’t bite, Ness, you know this! He knows he earns more than any of us in construction. Like my fella.’

Tom holds up his hands. ‘Don’t bring me into this!’ he says, laughing. ‘You know I tap out when you lot start talking money, politics or god.’

‘What else is there, Tom?’ Ness says, laughing and gesticulating wildly. ‘What can we talk about?’

‘Plants?’ he says, winking and taking a sip of his wine. ‘Sex?’

Josie reaches out and punches Tom on the arm.

‘Seriously, though, and I’m taking my work hat off for this, promise,’ Marnie says, putting her hand on Lou’s knee, ‘this is what we need more of, what old friends can do together – open dialogue, where people can put forward their ideas without just being shouted down, or told they are ignorant.’

Phil is interested in this conversation, is keen to hear what Marnie has to say, would like to throw in some of the things he’s been reading, the op-eds out of the US, the couple of podcasts he listens to, but he knows he won’t get any purchase on a night like this. When things are boozy and people are already taking the piss. They are so rarely real with each other. To be honest, they all say, in that passive-aggressive way, but they so rarely are – honest, that is. Not lying, but layering their truths with so many caveats and loopholes and Ts & Cs that there’s nothing left of it.

‘But you think you can make a difference, right, Marnie, that’s why you’re doing this?’ Ness is saying.

Marnie holds her glass in both hands and shrugs. ‘Okay, no more work talk!’ she says, laughing.

Phil is disappointed. He changes tack. ‘So, you gave the squatters notice, Lou? They shipping out?’ he says.

The others turn to look at Lou, who leans forward, tense.

‘Yeah, nah,’ she says. ‘Working on it. They’ve been camping there for a long time.’

Ness raises her voice. ‘Just let them stay. What harm are they doing?’

Flick gets there before Phil. ‘I’m not super comfortable about it. I mean, who are they? We’ve got a bunch of kids here. You said they had an older boy? Why can’t they just move up the river to the campground?’ She’s got her loud on, and it surprises him that she’s willing to push back at Ness, though it doesn’t surprise him at all that she’d be the one to go hardline on child safety. Consultancy can’t take the teacher out of her.

‘Totally agree,’ Lou says. ‘It was just—’ She stops, seems to second-guess herself. ‘I mean, I dunno, maybe they’ll get the message and clear out, but it just felt like they didn’t even hear me?’

‘Well, then, I guess we tell them it’s not an option to stay,’ Flick says.

‘And what?’ Ness says, ‘Escort them off? Sharpen our pitchforks?’

‘We could call the cops?’ Marnie says, and there is a general sound of discord from around the fire. It amuses Phil that this lot still think they are so anti-police when they are the most line-toeing lot he knows.

‘You’ve given them notice,’ Tom says. ‘See what tomorrow turns up, yeah? Who knows, maybe they’ll end up being lovely and useful and we’ll all be one big idyllic community?’

Flick shakes her head. ‘Or get murdered in our sleep,’ she says, and picks up the bottle.

Phil disengages as the others return to their nattering. All their grand plans and posturing. He sits back, delighted with himself, imagining the looks on their faces when the very real lamb turns up tomorrow. He’d pulled Jacob aside before he headed off and given him the green light for the real-deal lamb. ‘Consider it done,’ the old bloke had said, tapping his nose. ‘I’ll come down and give you a hand in the morning.’ He’s only annoyed it hadn’t been part of the arrangement in the first place – Paddy the lamb guy probably didn’t think he had it in him. He looks forward to proving him wrong.

Stella

She’s never been afraid of the dark. Benji can’t handle it – he wants a night light, the hallway light on, one of those glowy solar things in his swag. Lou’s set him up under the awning of the little camper trailer – it’s basically inside the door, what is even the point? He wanted Stella to stay right next to him, so he could look through his flyscreen and see her in the night, she guesses. But she needs her space. She’s put at least twenty metres between herself and the trailer, on a flat spot at the top of the grass where she’s got a good vantage point.

There’s a half moon. It lights up the landscape enough to see each of the little camps: Tom and Josie’s little dome tent next to their ute down near the creek crossing, Flick and Phil’s stupid-big caravan on the flat ground to the left, and that flicker of fire and light through the trees by the river. Lou said they were an older couple and their son: bogan four-wheel-drive fishing types, she says they’ve been camping here forever. Lou, and the others, want them gone, but Stella can’t see why. That family would have more of a connection to this place than they all do, and they’re not doing any harm. Stella bets that if they were First Nations or refugees or someone else ‘deserving’, the adults would be falling over themselves for them to stay.

She wriggles further into her sleeping bag, wishes she’d brought her book. She’s managed to hang on to her phone but charging will be a shit, so she’s switched it to aeroplane and slipped it into the back pocket of her swag. She pulls the sleeping bag further up around her ears, leaving only her eyes and nose poking out, scanning the moonlit landscape and hoping it will send her to sleep. She’s still wired from the thrill of scaring the shit out of all the kids. That made them feel something, made them react. Even Leo.

She pictures the cemetery again in her head. Pulls out her phone again and scrolls back through the pictures.

Gabrielle Sanderson

21st January 1875 – 3rd July 1907

Eternal Rest.

Stella feels something roiling in her belly. Who was Gabrielle Sanderson? What happened to her?

She quite likes a tragic death. Thinks of Satine and her coughing, the blood-spattered handkerchief. Apparently not a lot of schools put on Moulin Rouge, but Miss Ellison was a HUGE fan. So, it turned out, was Stella. The best part was how Christian writes Bohemian Rhapsody so he has an excuse to be with Satine, the courtesan, so there’s like a play inside the play – or a play inside the movie – as Miss Ellison pointed out when they all sat down to watch it with popcorn as a team-building exercise the first week of rehearsals. The technical term is ‘mise en abyme’ – placing into the abyss. Miss Ellison says it’s the same in Hamlet. They’ll study that next year. Hamlet commissions actors to stage a play to reflect the murder of his father and unfaithful treachery of his mother. The Mousetrap, he calls it. She prefers The Abyss.

There’s movement down by the river, a headlamp beaming white in the darkness by the old Land Rover at the stranger’s camp. Stella pulls down the sleeping bag a little. It must be eleven, later, even. She can hear the adults laughing and carrying on around the fire. Down there, by the river camp, someone slim and tall opening up the back of the car so the interior light goes on, rummaging around in there, then stepping back and slinging something over their shoulder. Closing the door. Adjusting the headlamp until it switches off. In the moonlight she can see the dark figure walking along the edge of the tree line and into the bush past Josie’s tent.

She turns on her back, a little bubble of elation in her chest.

Lou

Things are getting loose. As they tend to do by eleven when they’re all together. The kids have been sent to bed and Flick is now dancing with the ridiculous glowsticks. Phil and Ness and Marnie are deep in conversation, though it’s Ness’s voice singing out over the top. Josie has made herself and Avril a cup of tea and they sit, slightly outside the circle, heads leaned back on the backrests of their fold-out chairs so they can look at the stars.

Ness’s voice cuts through the dark and Avril sits up.

‘You’re not seriously suggesting that boys need a male influence in the house, are you, Phil? Cos I’d say that Benji, not to mention the millions of kids brought up by single mothers out there, prove that women can raise boys without help from a man,’ Ness says loudly.

‘That’s not what he’s saying, Ness,’ Marnie says gently. She’s good like that, tough skin, tougher now with the campaign, doesn’t take the casual barbs to heart.

Lou sees her mother stand up slowly. ‘Think I’ll take my leave, then,’ she says.

Ah, my little sister, Lou thinks, always good for bringing the night to an abrupt end. She kisses her mum, asks her what she needs, is brushed away.

Marnie is still attempting to calm things. ‘Let’s leave it, huh? Wine doesn’t help.’

But Ness is having none of it. ‘Oh, right, sorry, so not only am I incapable but now I’m a pisshead and you are of course so fucking good and perfect because now you hate booze. Is that it, Phil?’

Phil stands up. ‘Alright, I’m out,’ he says, holding his hands up. ‘Love you, Ness, see you all in the morning.’ He raises his eyebrows at Flick, but she holds up a half-full glass and tells him she’ll follow in a minute. He walks away.

Ness stands up too, the anger radiating off her as she runs her hands through her hair, then turns away from them and starts walking into the dark.

‘Trailer’s the other way, darl!’ Flick calls out.

‘I know that,’ Ness shouts back without turning around. ‘I’m taking a walk.’

Flick shakes her head and looks at Lou. ‘Should I go after her?’ Flick asks, non-committal.

‘Nah, all good, I’ve got this,’ Lou says, standing up. ‘Don’t wait up,’ she says to Marnie.

She has done this enough to know that Ness doesn’t need talking, not yet. She keeps a couple of metres behind her sister, brings out her head torch and shines it ahead of them both on the path as they leave the light of the pub. Ness is walking fast, part-stomp, part-stride, the odd pissed hiccup as she stumbles slightly every few metres.

‘You don’t have to come after me, you know, I’m fine,’ Ness calls over her shoulder. ‘I’m not fourteen anymore.’

‘I know that,’ Lou says, keeping pace, ‘but you don’t have a light.’ She taps her head torch.

‘It’s just – fuck – I didn’t think about how fucking hard it would be, being here with everybody, without him…’

Lou speeds forward to catch up and take her sister’s hand. ‘I know,’ she says again, because what else is there to say?

‘Just to the top of the hill,’ Ness says, letting go of Lou’s hand to swing her arms high.

‘Whatever you need.’

The night is close in around them and the single bobbing flash of the head torch.

‘I’m glad Mum’s here,’ Ness says.

‘Me too.’

‘It’s kind of her dream too.’

‘Yep.’

‘Reckon Dad would’ve been pretty chuffed about it?’

Lou hmmms in reply. The two years she has on her sister doesn’t feel like much now, but when everything was going on with Dad, it was an enormous gulf. Lou felt like she bore all of it and Ness got away with just being a kid. He’s remained golden in her eyes. But she’s right about this much: he would’ve liked it here. An endless canvas for his grand ideas. Maybe it could’ve even healed him. Not that Mum didn’t give it her all in trying.

He didn’t hurt them, or Mum, not in that way. Just with his absence. The lump of him in the bed, unmoving. So much so that she remembers, at ten, eleven maybe, creeping in and leaning her head right down, ponytail flipping over her eyes, to listen to his chest, reassure herself with the faint rise and fall of his breath. And then when he left for days at a time – a new job, a wild plan, late nights – she would listen at her open door to the quiet murmur of her mum on the phone, see her tired eyes in the morning, hear her assertions that he would be home soon, that everything would be fine. And he did come home. With gifts – a telescope, once – while Mum watched on with her face thin and closed. Gosh, Dad, it looks expensive, where’d you get it? they’d said over each other, breathless with glee.

What price a glimpse of the heavens? What cost the knowledge of the universe?

Falling asleep in the nest of blankets he made them in the backyard, watching Ness through half-closed eyes as she almost vibrated with his attention – See that, through there?

The telescope disappeared the next week. The same way the new bike did, the trampoline that was never unpacked, just waiting there for days while he said they’d do it after school, and Mum insisted they not split open the tape on the box – and then on a Thursday after netball training it was gone again.

That must have been hard, Lou’s therapist liked to say. Asked all the questions about family history. Bipolar. Mania. Tugged at Lou’s tendril of worry; Ness and her chaos, is this it, is this when it will show itself?

They rarely talk about him now. Sometimes one of them will bring up the worst days. Their dad on the roof. She’s thirteen. Ness is ten, still doesn’t get it. It’s dark, it’s raining, and he’s up there with wires and poles, trying to attach an extension to the TV antenna. He is trying to make contact. With who he’s not sure, but he is adamant whoever it is will respond. He will not come down. Mum’s tried. Asking, yelling, pleading. Lou has tried. Dad, we’re worried you’re gonna hurt yourself. Her mum calls a crisis line. They tell her they’ll send someone to help. Who, Mum? Who can help? The worry creasing her mother’s youthful brow. A doctor, darling. He needs a doctor. But they don’t send a doctor. They send the police. And the policeman who turns up at the door is thin, disappointed looking. Lou observes her mother, her incredulous face when she sees the copper, wonders how the hell this bloke is going to get their six-foot, built-like-a-brick-shithouse father down from the roof in the dark and the rain. And he’s not only useless, he’s dangerous. Ends up sectioning their father, who’s taken by force to the local psych ward, and he’s in and out of there for a few more years before, god, the sweet relief, a heart attack takes him out and they all exhale.

‘Let’s just sit for a minute?’ Ness says, stopping at the top of the hill near a big oak, sister to the one at the gate. No light here from the pub and the camp, just the star-stuffed sky. ‘It’s bloody magnificent.’

They sit on a patch of grass, feel it crunch beneath them. It’s drier up here. The fire threat is real. If they get burning the blackberries early tomorrow, hopefully they’ll be done before the rain hits in the evening. If it hits. Trying to pin down the weather these days is impossible. She’d prefer it to stay dry because rain on canvas is a fucking pain in the arse, but she knows they need it. Would be run out of a town of farmers and landowners if they voiced any preference to keep themselves dry just for convenience’s sake.

‘Hear that?’

‘What?’ says Lou.

‘Shhh.’ Ness puts her hand on Lou’s arm and they sit in the quiet.

And now, yes, she can hear something, a car? A motorbike, maybe? Is this the hunters Jacob was so worried about? For fuck’s sake, what was even the point of the bloody fences?

Lou stands up. It’s coming from behind them and now, turning around, she can see the beam of lights coming up the opposite side of the hill.

Ness rises next to her, grabs the head torch out of Lou’s hands and switches it off.

‘What are you doing?’ Lou says.

‘Don’t let them see us, we can suss it out.’

‘Jesus, Ness, not if it’s fucking deer hunters with high beams and rifles. They need to see us!’ She goes to grab the head torch back but Ness holds firm.

‘Just wait a second,’ her sister says.

Lou can hear the excitement in her voice, a magnet pulling in chaos and adventure.

‘At least get behind the tree. Quick!’ She grabs Ness’s hands and they hurry to stand behind the enormous trunk of the oak. Breathing hard and poking their heads out. Ness giggles.

‘You’re mad,’ Lou whispers, but she smiles. It’s hard to resist being swept into Ness’s orbit.

‘Is it a tractor?’ Ness whispers back. ‘Is it the neighbour?’

Lou feels blinded by the headlights, which are definitely coming closer up towards the hill, towards the fence. The noise is getting louder.

‘What the…’ Lou says as the noise hits a deafening pitch followed by a crunching, squealing sound – and in the headlights they see a section of the fence smash down beneath the enormous wheels.

‘FUCK!’ Lou yells, running out from behind the tree, waving her arms and yelling. ‘STOP! What the fuck are you doing?’

The tractor does not stop.

Behind her, Ness flicks on the head torch, swinging it out towards the tractor, and Lou sees Jacob in the cabin, eyes set ahead, starting to turn the tractor as though he is going back for more.

‘HEY!’ Lou calls out. ‘STOP!’

Jacob notices her. Yells out but doesn’t stop. ‘This is my land!’

‘This is destruction of property! You can’t do this! Stop!’

He’s mad, she thinks. ‘Mate – if you don’t stop what you’re doing and get off the property, I’m gonna call the police,’ Lou yells.

‘Ha! Call Kev, will ya? You do that, love. See what he says,’ Jacob says and laughs.

He revs the engine again.

‘STOP IT!’ Ness screams and Lou grabs at her sister as she surges forward, running at the cabin, and tries to leap up on the step.

Jacob throws an arm out, yells back, ‘Fuck off, ya dumb bitch!’

Ness

Later, again and again and again, she will think about what those words did to her body. The spurt of hot shame. The ridicule. She will see Mike’s face, other men’s faces, all the fucking arseholes who ever called her that.

Dumb bitch.

Lou is yelling behind her, has tried to hold her back, but Ness is demonic with rage.

‘STOP IT!’ Ness screams, running at the cabin again, grabbing at the side bar, hurling herself up. ‘Fucking STOP!’

Lou screaming. The foul ogre of a man before her, sneering and pushing her back, the sound of the engine roaring. She will stop him.

She is so fast, scrambling into the cabin, trying to wrestle the steering wheel.

‘Get off!’ Jacob shouts.

Ness wrenches the steering wheel to the side as the tractor lurches and skids. He is trying to push her out with one hand, she can feel his foul fingers on her upper arm. She flings herself towards him, feels her own fingers connect with his face, scratches hard.

‘Faaarrkkk!’ he bellows, taking his hands off the wheel to bat her off him.

Then it happens in slow motion.

The tractor jolts precariously to one side, she grasps at the door frame, bracing herself as her feet lift from the cab floor. The man shrieks as he is violently jolted from his seat, is suddenly airborne. In the washed-out light of the tractor’s spots, she watches as he is flung out, out through the door as the vehicle hits the fence again and tips back to right itself. Then the engine cuts out, and she is alone in the cabin.

A terrible sound – wet and gurgling.

From somewhere very far away, Ness can hear her sister shouting her name. But it does not make sense to her. What she is seeing does not make sense to her.

Slowly, she climbs down from the cab of the tractor. The spotlights are still drilling into the darkness ahead, spilling light on the scene at the fence.

‘Ness, thank fuck, are you hurt?’ Lou says next to her, and Ness allows herself to be hugged but continues to stare straight ahead, because how can she look away?

The fence is divided into panels, wire strings running along and star pickets standing tall every five metres or so. Some of the star pickets have yellow rubber tops. Some don’t, leaving the metal spike exposed.

It is horrific. Mesmerising.

Jacob is impaled on a star picket, his body face down, draped across the fence, torso and head in his property, arse and legs in theirs. The top of the metal picket is protruding from somewhere under his right shoulder blade, it’s gone all the way through his shirt. It shines a little with stickiness.

‘Holy fuck,’ Lou says beside her.

Because worse than all of that, more horrific than the image she is trying to understand in her brain, is the fact that his feet are shuffling in the dirt as he tries to get purchase, tries to stand a little to take the weight off, as though he might be able to unimpale himself.

‘Help,’ he gasps.

Lou’s hands fly to her mouth.

Ness turns her head away from Lou and vomits, sour, acidic, wine and beetroot and chunks of bread. Once, twice, three times before she wipes her mouth with the back of her hand and stands up straight again.

‘We have to help him,’ Lou says.

But neither of them moves. They just stand there until his feet slow and finally stop. A last throaty gurgle, and then no more sound.

‘Jesus,’ Lou says.

Ness feels as though she is floating above the scene. The three figures in the spotlight at the broken fence.

‘Did I just kill him?’ she asks her sister.

Lou

If they just stand there in the freakish white glare of the spotlights and don’t move and don’t say another word, maybe the nightmare will undo itself.

Maybe their neighbour will not be folded over the picket, his hands and feet crumpled in the earth with the sticky fence post protruding from the torn shirt and flesh of his back.

Maybe her sister will not be hyperventilating next to her.

Maybe the fence will not be there, two metres from where he said it should be.

Lou closes her eyes, squeezes them tight and then opens them again.

No. He is still there. Ness still gasps next to her. This is real.

Slowly, tentatively, she steps towards him. Leans down close. His eyes are open and there is a long bloodied scratch on his cheek. She rears back. But no. He is not breathing. Cannot be, now. The flesh. The blood. Fuck.

‘What are we gonna do, Lou? Oh god, oh god, what have we done?’

Lou wants to shake her. Not me, she wants to say. What have YOU done, racing in, raining chaos, jumping to act before you think?

‘I tried to stop you,’ Lou says quietly.

Ness turns on her. ‘He was destroying it!’

‘It’s just a fence.’

Ness wails, puts her head in her hands. ‘Oh my god, you think this is my fault?’ She drops to her knees, sobbing.

Yes, thinks Lou. ‘No,’ she says. Crouching to hold her sister. ‘No, it’s not your fault. It’s a terrible accident, we’ll sort it out.’

She thinks of her flowcharts. Damage Control. Deontological Ethics. Stakeholder Theory. The Golden Hour Rule of Crisis Management.

First: Determine facts.

Facts: Jacob is dead. Jacob’s body is impaled on a new fence she has had installed. In the wrong spot. Jacob is dead because there was a tractor accident. The tractor accident occurred during or after her own sister got in the cabin and wrestled with the driver. Her sister was drunk.

Lou keeps rubbing Ness’s back. Like she used to do with the kids when they were babies. Up and down, firm and regular, to sleep, to soothe.

Second: Assess legal and ethical risks.

Jesus, where does she even start?

A call from down the hill.

She stands quickly, turning to the sound. Torchlight sweeping the hill.

‘Lou, Ness – you here?’

‘Fuck,’ Lou says, ‘that’s Tom.’

Ness grabs her arm. ‘What do we do?’ she says frantically. ‘Jesus, what do we do?’

But in the seconds it takes for Tom to reach them, they can do nothing but watch on helplessly.

Tom, to his credit, doesn’t freak out. He doesn’t vomit like Ness, he doesn’t fall to his knees. He brings his hand to his chin, rubbing once, then running it up and over the side of his face to his hair, smoothing it back.

‘He’s dead?’ he says.

Lou feels her body about to explode. ‘Yes, he’s fucking dead, he’s got a fucking fence post through his fucking chest.’

Tom nods slowly. ‘What happened?’

‘It was an accident,’ Lou says.

Tom nods again, considering. ‘How so?’ he says.

Ness steps forward. ‘He was mowing down the fucking fence with his tractor. I tried to stop him. I hit him, scratched him. He wouldn’t listen…’ It appears she has no words for what happened next.

‘There was a slight…’ Lou pauses, thinks of her flowchart: Be transparent but control the narrative. ‘Tussle,’ Lou says.

‘In the tractor?’

‘Yes. And then the wheels slipped and he was thrown out.’

‘Landed on the picket?’

‘Yes.’ Avoid misinformation, she thinks.

Tom nods, stepping closer to the body, ranging his head torch over the point where the steel post enters the side of Jacob’s rib cage.

‘I mean we have to call the cops, right?’ Tom says carefully.

‘Yes,’ Lou says. Yes, of course. Third: Notify, follow legal protocols. For a moment, just one moment, she’d thought that maybe they didn’t have to. That maybe they could make this go away, not have to explain anything, not have a bunch of people asking questions and checking boundaries and looking into all of their lives and—Jesus fuck.

‘Do you have your phone?’ Tom says. ‘I don’t.’

‘No,’ Lou says, ‘all our phones are in the box.’ Oh, the relief of a little more time.

Ness growls and spins away, pacing into the dark, clasping her hands behind her head and then buckling in on herself. She rushes back to them. ‘What if they think I did it on purpose? Even not on purpose? Like, whatever that thing is, manslaughter? Jesus, reckless fucking tractor tussling – this is not going to be okay for me if we call the cops.’

‘It’s okay,’ Lou says, but she knows it’s not okay.

‘Lou!’ Ness wails. ‘They’ll fucking take the kids from me!’ She sits heavily at Lou’s feet.

‘What if you’d never come up here?’ Tom says, and Lou flashes her light back towards him. Ness has her hand clamped on Lou’s leg. ‘You said he was acting crazy, yeah? I mean, it’s a crazy thing to do – to push down a fence in the middle of the night with a tractor. What if he just fell out of the cab, the tyres slipped or whatever, nothing to do with you, Ness? Just a really unfortunate accident?’

Lou nods slowly. Yes. Jacob was crazy. Totally unhinged. They come up in the morning and they find him and then they call the cops…

Do not attempt to cover up details.

‘But the cops will still have to come,’ Lou says, and Ness makes a guttural noise.

‘And then we still have the same problem,’ Tom says quietly, as if he is thinking aloud. ‘They’ll take their photos and check the tractor and her fingerprints will—’

‘Jesus fuck! They’ll take my kids. Mike will get the kids,’ Ness says and then she begins to heave and gasp.

Lou crouches down. ‘No-one is going to take your kids.’ She flashes the torch up at Tom. His face is grim. Control the narrative.

‘The kids,’ says Ness, ‘the kids can’t know. They’ll be traumatised and there will be coppers and ambos and this whole place – the whole dream we had…’ She stops.

Somewhere out in the dark a bird calls and they all startle. Breathe, Lou tells herself, there is a solution, this is what you do, just think your way to a solution.

She looks at Tom, doesn’t even want to say it out loud.

‘What?’ he says.

Lou lowers her voice. ‘Could we burn him?’

Tom, to his credit, tries to hide his reaction. The one that tells her she’s a fucking psychopath.

‘Oh my god, Lou! Don’t even say that, are you fucking insane?’ Ness yelps.

Lou puts her hands up. ‘Pretend I didn’t say that,’ she says, ‘just erase that from your brain.’

Tom shakes his head. ‘It’s not a crazy idea. I just, I don’t know how long it would take, like it would need to be super-hot, like a crematorium is – like, I dunno, a thousand degrees, so…’

‘No, you’re right, it’s stupid,’ says Lou. ‘The kids will be up here in five seconds, they’ll be fucking roasting marshmallows, we can’t—’

‘We could put him in the river,’ Tom says bluntly.

Lou looks at him, eyes wide. Hand to her mouth. She has a terrible urge to laugh.

‘I cannot believe we are having this conversation,’ Ness says.

‘Go on,’ Lou says, ignoring her.

‘Benefits are it’s easy and quick, drawback is he might be found quickly and the bloody huge hole in his chest does not suggest death by drowning.’

‘Could have happened in the water? Like a stick?’

‘They can work that shit out pretty quick.’

‘Stop it!’ Ness says. ‘Both of you, stop! This is crazy talk.’

Lou turns on her sister, ready to explode now. ‘We cannot leave him here, Ness. We cannot let him be found. Ever. Right? Do you understand? Every single thing – your fingerprints on him, on the tractor, the fucking issue with the fence, the fact’ – she laughs almost maniacally – ‘the fact I fucking joked with the real estate agent this afternoon about how convenient it would be if Jacob carked it—’

‘Jesus,’ Tom says. Ness’s face is stricken.

‘Your kids, my kids, Marie’s campaign, this place, all of it, okay? We lose all of it. He cannot be found, here or anywhere.’

She breathes heavily as they both look at her. She needs to make her sister understand the fucking all-encompassing magnitude of what has happened here. There is no scenario in which they call the police and Ness gets off without jail time. And, Jesus, Marnie. No matter how bloody good Ginny is at her job, she cannot spin a death any way that will make Marnie come out looking squeaky clean.

‘Okay,’ Tom says finally, ‘maybe we put him somewhere till morning and then, once we’ve all calmed down, had a chance to – consider our options – we can talk to the others…’

‘No. No-one else,’ Lou says. ‘They cannot know.’

Tom nods slowly, as if, Lou thinks, he might be trying to corral some wild horses.

‘So, just us,’ Tom says, choosing his words carefully. ‘We take him back to his place. Reconvene in the morning.’

Does she trust him? He is not one of the originals. Is he just placating them, before he drives up the road and calls the cops? He could turn on them at any time. He has no children here. No real skin in the game beyond his small share. Well, he can start paying back the sweat equity now.

‘The tractor,’ Tom says and steps back. He washes his head torch across the scene, the one tangled panel of fence, the tractor on a lean. ‘We have to take the tractor back.’

Lou looks at the mess of it all. Fourth: Plan a response.

‘Can you drive a tractor, Tom?’

‘Nothing to it,’ he says. And his casual confidence calms her.

‘Yes.’ Lou is nodding. ‘He’s had a terrible accident. They happen all the time on farms, right? Or he could have just wandered into the bush, had a heart attack?’

‘We take the tractor back to his place, and then we make the body disappear,’ Tom clarifies.

‘We hide it, yes,’ Lou says. ‘Yes?’ She looks at Ness. She needs them all to be on the same page. On exactly the same page.

Ness bunches her fists tight over her face, breathes deeply, once, twice, then looks up at them.

‘Okay,’ Ness says.

Lou resists the urge to clap her hands together to get them into action. That doesn’t feel appropriate. But, she wonders, as they move towards Jacob and the fence, What is the appropriate demeanour for hiding a dead body?

11:45 pm

The three figures glow green in the dark. Leaning over the broken fence, bending and rising as they push and pull and heave. Then they move together, dragging their heavy cargo towards the bucket of the tractor. One figure climbs into the cab and, in a moment, the headlights turn away and the tractor moves out of vision. The two other figures follow.

Saturday

Josie

Dawn blooms through the neon blue of the tent-fly. Tiny beads of condensation pearl at the peak of the inner, where their warm breath has met the cold of outside. Josie turns over and puts one hand on Tom’s back. She knows it well now. The constellation of freckles and hairs and tiny indents and scars that she can trace to make letters and shapes. Wishes for a moment that she had stayed up, danced by the fire with him, brought him to bed and had her way with him. They’ve been a bit like ships in the night with their work recently; Tom’s been flat chat, trying to get through a backlog of projects, navigating the crazy timelines and cost blowouts, and she’s been doing lab work in the department in an attempt to ingratiate herself before the next round of job cuts.

Somehow that first blissful year together turned into two and then five, and it’s fine, it is, but still, she’s been looking forward to this fireside, whisky-warm version of him. She hadn’t even woken when he came in last night, had missed her chance.

She pulls on her jeans and jumper and leans over to kiss him gently. ‘Going for a walk,’ she whispers. ‘Back soon.’

Tom rolls over, squints. ‘Want me to join you?’

Josie shakes her head, strokes his forehead and kisses him once. ‘Sleep in, old man.’

‘Seriously, though, I’ll come with you,’ he says, rubbing his face, propping himself on one elbow. ‘Be good to see your spot.’

Truth is, she wants the quiet moment, just her and the plants. They require so little of her, just her careful attention. She’s excited to see what they’ve done with themselves in the month they’ve been up here without her. It’s as if she is going to visit some friends.

‘No, really, stay,’ she says, pushing him back down gently. ‘Get another hour. Lou’s gonna work us hard today.’

He groans a little. Then mumbles something.

‘What?’ she says, smiling, seeing him already drifting back.

‘Is it up on the hill?’

‘Not really, the forest on the western boundary,’ she says. ‘Why?’

‘Just curious,’ he says, rolling away and snuggling under the doona. ‘Enjoy.’

Out from the tent, the morning is still and cool and despite the other camp setups, all Josie can hear are birds like bells in the surrounding forest, an underscore of chattering river. She sips from a bottle of water, pours some into her cupped hands and splashes her face, dries it with a tea towel. Chucks on a squirt of night cream from where she left it last night, rubs vigorously. Done. Ready for the day. As she steps out from under the little awning she nearly treads straight in a mound of glossy black balls of shit.

She laughs. ‘Hello to you, too,’ she says. Deer must have come right in last night while they were sleeping. She walks on.

Josie is puffing hard by the time she turns to look back at what she’s climbed. The path she’s taken is probably an old animal track, and it zigzags up the steep hill from the riverbank through thick shrub and trees, marked in spots with the little pink ties she left on their first visit. Some ferns, peeking through the wet sclerophyll forest up here where it’s drier – the perfect spot. The sun has risen and the light is illuminating the hill in front of her while she is still in cool shade. She scans the bush quickly, her brain ticking through species names: mountain ash, mountain grey gum, Xanthorrhoea australis, lomandra, and, there, her plants.

‘Hello there,’ she says, bending down to the edge of the first exclusion zone, three by three metres of wire fencing, her control plot. Ten metres to the right, another plot, the same size, her experimental zone, the one with the fungi. Josie steps closer to the experimental plot to ensure she’s not seeing things.

Even without pulling out her photographs for comparison, she can see there has been phenomenal growth in the acacias. They were a foot high when she put them in and now a couple of them are nearly as tall as her. She puts her hand out to touch the long, dark green phyllodes.

‘Impossible,’ she says out loud, even as she knows it is not, for she is seeing it, touching it – there is an explanation, and the explanation might just have significance for her research. She walks back to the control plot; the acacias she planted there have grown, sure, but only as much as she would expect in a month of average rainfall – ten centimetres at most. She crouches down and pulls out her FieldPad, clicking through so that she can add the new information directly into her research database. Once it’s done, she’ll transfer it all over to Entheon. They wanted real-time uploads, but she drew the line, assuring them of her high standards and insisting she be left to record and analyse the data herself before sharing it.

From her backpack, Josie pulls out her soil-testing kits, plant calipers, spectrophotometers. Everything can be measured, she reminds herself, everything has an explanation. For the next thirty minutes she works efficiently, bagging samples, logging measurements, checking and rechecking the growth. It’s only when she moves into the final quadrant of the experimental plot that she finds the frog.

‘Shit,’ she says as her fingers reveal the small carcass half-hidden under leaf litter. The skin is dry and taut, a dark khaki – although she suspects it would have been a brighter green alive. She’s not as good on her fauna as her flora but she knows this isn’t exactly ideal habitat.

‘What were you doing up here, mate?’ she says, pulling out a bigger specimen bag and adding the small corpse to it. She knows that they are close to highly threatened Baw Baw frog habitat, that others back at the uni might be keen to see what they can ascertain from this little one. It won’t be a Baw Baw, they don’t come further south than the plateau, at least they never have before. Whatever it is, it shouldn’t be this far from the damp riverbank. She crawls forward, sampling the soil, and unintentionally reveals another dead frog.

By the time she has finished checking the area again she’s found six of them. Josie feels ill. She hurries back to the control plot, searching the leaf litter with her fingers, but there are no frogs, dead or alive. Then she performs a few spot checks in the area around the two plots. No frogs there, either.

She pushes her hair back from her face in frustration, flicking through the photographs of the dead frogs she’s saved. The only explanation can be that something she planted in the plot attracted the frogs. Lured them up from their soggy riverside homes, all the way up the hill over the dry, scratchy leaves and twigs and rocks. And then killed them. Her stomach gurgles and she’s suddenly ravenous: adrenaline pumping through her as she tries to comprehend the strangeness of what she’s recorded.

Josie reaches down to grab her backpack and spots something moving to her right – big, kangaroo maybe? A deer? She stops, follows the shadow with her eyes, but it disappears behind a big mountain ash and even though she waits quietly it does not reappear.

As she lifts the FieldPad to put it in the bag, a moving shadow is reflected in the dark screen, and she whirls around, hoping to see the animal.

A bloke, head to toe in cammo gear, is standing ten metres away.

‘Jesus,’ she says, ‘you gave me a fright.’

He seems not to acknowledge her as he slowly, slowly lifts one finger to his lips as if to shhh her. Then, just as slowly, he moves both hands to his hip, lifts them, and she sees he has a rifle.

Josie puts both hands forward, fingers splayed – What the fuck? – before she realises he is not pointing it at her, but past her, a metre or so to her left. She breathes rapidly as she follows the level of the gun with her eyes.

There. Through the scrub in front of her, she sees it. The brown bulk of a deer. Enormous. Easily as tall as her, taller. Fifteen metres away, maybe twenty? It’s facing away from her on an angle – the foliage hides most of its head, but she can see one carved antler as the creature bows down towards the ground. Josie swivels her head back to the man with the gun, his eyes trained steady.

She feels exposed, shifts her weight slowly backwards onto her other foot, eyes back on the deer, quiet and smooth as she lifts the other foot, her breathing quick in the upper part of her chest. The antler comes up, the deer stills. Something is wrong with its head. Not one antler, she can see that now, but four, a mass of something in between them. Two heads?

‘What the fuck?’ she says, taking a rapid step back and slipping, losing her balance and crashing down on the dry leaves.

An explosion of movement as the deer leaps sideways, crashing through the undergrowth and away.

She snaps her head back to the hunter as he lowers the gun. He is young. Early twenties, maybe. Darkening of hair on the sides of his jaw but still almost baby-faced. Eyes narrowed. A boy pretending to be a man with his boots and his gun.

‘Sorry,’ she says, automatically, and then, immediately frustrated with herself, ‘What are you doing here?’

He shifts the gun on its straps around to his back.

‘They’re a pest.’

‘I know that,’ she says, realising now how much she was waiting for the shot, the part of her that is disappointed the deer got away. ‘I know that,’ she repeats, ‘but you can’t shoot here, this is private property.’

‘What are you gonna do about it?’ He tilts his jaw up in challenge.

She frowns. ‘There are kids here, it’s not safe.’

He shakes his head gently once. ‘The deer, what are you gonna do about the damage it’s doing? It’s not the only one.’

‘What the fuck was wrong with its head?’

‘Seen it before. Happens during mating season. It’s had a fight with another stag, got its antlers stuck. Ripped the other one’s head off.’ He almost smiles, enjoying the gruesome description.

Josie baulks. ‘So, it’s just wandering around with a dead deer’s head attached to it?’

The man nods. ‘Been trying to get him for weeks. He’s a fucking menace.’

‘Yeah, I get that.’ She feels her voice rising, the loud of indignance. ‘But, look, we literally just bought the place, we have plans. Managing deer – it’s on the list.’

‘I can get him.’

She snorts. ‘Look, I’m sure you can. But you can’t just walk around here with a gun, like I said, we’ve got a bunch of kids down there. Someone’ll get hurt.’

He looks away to where the deer disappeared. ‘I’m tracking him,’ he says. ‘Got cameras set up. I’ll be back out tonight.’ He looks back at her. ‘Tell the kids to stay in their beds.’

He turns around and walks briskly away from her.

‘Hey!’ she calls out, but he has already disappeared into the trees.

Cameras? Tracking? Jesus, this guy is serious. She should tell Lou. Knows she’ll lose her shit, though. Maybe she can talk it over with Tom instead, come out here tonight and make this arsehole listen? She wonders if he’s a local.

Josie hoists her backpack, aware of the macabre contents and spooked now by the strange two-headed deer. She walks quickly down the hill through the hushed forest, keen now to get back to the others.

Lou

Lou wakes to Marnie’s face above her.

‘Hey, sleepy head,’ her wife says, smiling. ‘It’s past seven. You need coffee?’

Lou closes her eyes, shakes her head. ‘Sorry,’ she says. ‘Sorry, slept in.’

‘Too much of your good whisky?’ Marnie says. ‘Must have been late when you got in. Ness okay?’

Lou groans. All of it rushing back. ‘Yeah,’ she mumbles, hiding her face, ‘just pissed.’

Marnie lays back down. ‘That tracks,’ she says. ‘Remember, you can’t solve this for her, huh?’

Lou nods into the pillow. She aches for yesterday, when all Ness had to worry about was her divorce.

Marnie rests her index finger very lightly on the curve of Lou’s breast. ‘Hey, need to get out of your head before coffee?’ she asks softly. Her slow grin, the immediate jolt through Lou’s centre. Their sex life is good, usually, comfortingly regular and definitely satisfying; it hasn’t been on her list of things to worry about. But between the doctor at her last check-up casually throwing up the phrases perimenopause and lack of libido and Marnie getting what seems like all her dopamine hits from this campaign, Lou has been thinking that they might need to up their game or they’ll be in danger of becoming another tired and only slightly horny middle-aged couple who resort to sex toys and ethical porn because it’s easier. But, Jesus, she can’t fuck her wife now, can she? Surely not.

‘Benji still asleep?’ she murmurs, thinking perhaps the moment will pass.

Marnie rolls towards her. ‘Out like a light,’ she says, moving her hand under the sheet and letting her fingers rest on Lou’s hip, at the very edge of her tired old singlet.

Lou’s breath trips slightly as her wife’s fingers drag along the hem of her singlet, briefly touching the waistband of her knickers and flicking back again. God. She likes the feel of her clothed body next to Marnie’s nakedness, has always liked it, as though that one layer of cotton adds all the frisson a marriage needs. She rolls over, mouth close to mouth as Marnie’s fingers continue to pull and tease at her hems. ‘We shouldn’t,’ she breathes into her mouth’s wife, feeling porny and hot as Marnie’s teeth graze her own lips, denying the kiss, shifting instead to the glory of her nipples, clamping her lips and teeth, nibbling sucks as Lou begins to groan. She urges Marnie’s head up, kisses her deeply, then wiggles lower, shifting her hands, so that she can grab Marnie’s arse, hands spread wide, fingers low, at the edge of her wet cunt.

Marnie sneaks her fingers under Lou’s waistband, tugging and pulling while Lou moves her thighs to get her knickers down. Marnie’s fingers on her, in her, Jesus, she’s going to come so quick, fuck peri-whatever the fuck, this is hot and hard and fast and her eyes close and she thinks of her hand in the wetness of a cunt, fingers digging into thighs, she thinks of her wife and she does not think of her wife and she thinks of skin and tongues and arses and Marnie’s gasping brings her back and they come, one after another, and then fall back, breathing heavy, Lou’s singlet only slightly skewwhiff.

She allows herself this moment. Her wife, the familiar skin scent of her, the bubble they make around themselves, for themselves – no kids, no work, no crisis. She rolls into Marnie’s side, her face at her neck, breathes her in. Wants to stay right here, leave the door zipped tight.

‘It was Jimmy,’ Marnie says, breaking the quiet. ‘Yesterday, when I was on the phone. All the messages.’

Lou opens her eyes, annoyed that Marnie has interrupted her oblivion, everything the sex made disappear.

‘The money fell through.’

Lou sits up on one elbow. Looks at Marnie in disbelief. ‘What?’

‘This new development, proposal – whatever the fuck it was, he didn’t get the start-up capital he needed. It’s all fallen through.’

‘And this means?’ Lou asks, but she already knows the answer, her stomach swooping.

‘Well, a couple of things, I guess. It means he’s out of his share of here, or we just keep his, given we’ve already put the money in. But can we afford that? I know you had to move some stuff around?’

Lou lies back down slowly, looks at the canvas roof, tries to go back to the blank post-orgasm brain of minutes ago. Jimmy had told her, in no uncertain terms, that he was good for his share. He’d been amped up, keen to explore different ideas down the track – eco-tourism, wildlife corridors – stuff they were all aligned with. But he had also wanted this for Marnie, for a sense of place for family. He’d been so sure. Normally, Lou took what Jimmy said with a grain of salt, but this time she’d been convinced. Or maybe she’d just wanted to be convinced.

‘I know he’s a pain in the arse,’ Marnie says, her fingers reaching to lace with Lou’s, ‘but it’s also just typical Jimmy. We can work around it easy enough, yeah?’

‘Course we can,’ Lou says as she imagines wringing her brother-in-law’s neck with her bare hands.

Stella

She is already awake and watching from the shadow of her swag when the boy from the camp strides across the empty clearing with a gun over his shoulder.

He mustn’t know she is there – assumes everyone is asleep, it’s still early – because he doesn’t seem to give a shit that he’s walking right through the middle of their place. Something about the way he walks so confidently, like he doesn’t give a shit about anyone else, is making her hold her body still, making her pay attention. He is older, but not that much older. Twenty, maybe, hard shouldered but still boyish in his arse and legs.

She is not like Cin – does not regularly lust after people – or when she does, she doesn’t admit it. The thought of sex makes her skin crawl; how bare you’d have to be, how vulnerable. Kissing, too. The actual mouthness of it. Yeah, of course, she has felt her skin buzz, has had her stomach kick, has discovered and enjoys the wonder of what her own body can do in the dark, the gasp of that.

But this is not lusting or swooning or anything like that, no, it is just… interest.

Stella runs the edge of the sleeping bag across her teeth to wipe the gross film of sleep away, rummages for her hoodie and pulls it over her head, unzips the swag. If she hurries, she’ll reach him before he gets to his camp. Slipping on her slides, she takes off down the hill in a jog, holding her body steady against the slip of the dewy grass.

‘Hey,’ she calls out, raising an arm, and he looks up towards her and stops.

Stella slows down to cross the last twenty metres to where he stands and stops just in front of him.

‘Saw you, thought I’d say hello. I’m Stella,’ she says, pleased with how chill she sounds.

He looks at her, his boyish face at odds with the gun across his shoulder, sparse dark hairs on the sides of his cheeks. ‘Aidan,’ he says.

‘You get anything?’ she says, pointing to the gun.

He shakes his head, looking down.

‘Was it you I saw you with the headlamp down by the river last night?’ she says.

‘Up late?’ He raises an eyebrow.

‘My swag’s just up there.’ She points, then drops her hand. ‘What are you hunting?’ He shrugs and looks towards his camp again, his cheek tensing as he squints.

‘Deer,’ he says, not looking at her, ‘rabbits, all the things that fuck the place up.’

‘Not humans, though?’

He looks at her in surprise.

‘I mean,’ she says, laughing, ‘they fuck the place up the most, right?’

A smile. Only small, but she feels a thrill that she has caused it. ‘Yeah,’ he says, ‘you’re right.’

‘Can I hold it?’

‘What?’ he says, confused. ‘The rifle?’

‘Yeah.’ Stella has never held a rifle before, obviously. Her mums don’t even let water guns in the house.

He looks back up towards the house, the adults starting to gather around the fire. ‘Prob’ly shouldn’t, eh?’

Stella shrugs. ‘Maybe you could take me? When you go out again?’ This would be something – I went hunting.

Aidan looks away, is quiet for a moment. ‘Yeah, okay.’

‘When should I meet you, then?’

‘Later,’ he says. ‘Dusk.’ He turns from her and starts to hurry away.

‘Where?’ she calls out after him.

‘I’ll find you,’ he says without turning around.

Stella wraps her arms around her middle as she watches him go. Hunting. With a rifle. With a boy. A man, really. In the wild.

Phil

The morning is damp, dew on the grass wetting his boots, air sharp and loud with the clear calls of birds. It’s a bloody nice spot. Nicer still that it’s not packed full of other people’s noisy kids, the chaos of their tarps and tents, long line-ups at the shitty national park toilets that they would normally be putting up with. He will enjoy getting used to this.

The fire’s a prick to get started but he’s the first there and he’ll get points for getting it going. He lays the kindling down, couple of smaller pieces of the redgum. Guess the firewood’s coming out of the kitty until they start collecting some of their own. Tom probably brought a chainsaw – he’s the kind of guy who has everything in the back of the ute. Annoyingly useful. Bet he doesn’t have a spit that can hold a twenty-kilo lamb, though.

Phil scratches his head, the decisiveness of last night wavering for a moment. He already knew the lamb would be the pièce de résistance. Did he really need to rise to the old bloke’s challenge?

Match to bark and leaf, wants to do it without paper. He wishes Leo had got out of bed to come and help him, but he was all curled up in his swag, waved him off when he shook him gently. He needs his son to be more interested. To have a bit more get-up-and-go about him. Take some of the passion he knows he has for his bloody games and books and bring it into his body, out into the real world. Like on the basketball court.

He coaxes the flames with more kindling, stands ready with a bigger log.

At least he’s got him a run in the rep team. Benefits of being a coach. It’s not nothing, coaching. Early hours, the training and the games and the bloody compulsory sessions on gender or child safety or whatever shit the league has spouted. And Phil’s good. Feels it in his body – he’s been playing the game longer than any of the other parents, likes reminding them of that. And he knows how to get the best out of the boys. To exploit their pride and ego; to play good cop then bad cop, to curry favour and play them off against each other. Doesn’t always toe the line of the best-practice coaching guidebook, but then he remembers his best ever footy season – when Brian Matting told him to be more of a cunt or get off the field. He kicked three goals in the second half, most possessions of the season. All this pussyfooting around about making every kid feel like they are a winner – what good does it do the kids, long term?

The fire’s kicking now. He piles on the smaller logs, wishes someone would come out and put the coffee pot on so he doesn’t have to.

Well, fuck the club, good luck finding someone else now that they’ve sidelined him with the investigation. What a joke. Things have gone too far, you’re not allowed to do anything, say anything to anyone these days without getting some kind of warning – or worse – slapped on you. Should’ve seen it coming when that little shit and his dickhead parents joined at the start of the year.

The rest of the boys he’d been coaching for years, ever since they were little tackers running the wrong way up the court. Tane was the outsider; moved from another club – apparently an issue with other kids and it quickly became pretty fucking clear why. He was a shit of a kid. A snake. Phil would’ve been impressed if the kid could translate the shithead skills to the court, but he was all bluster and whining. A flopper. Got tech fouls.

There was a diagnosis – Phil was meant to use different body language, a different approach, but who’s got the time for that when you’re dealing with nine boys and you’re trying to coach a win out of them every week? Eventually there was a scene, and sure, it wasn’t Phil’s best moment, benching Tane and giving him a spray that the bloody parents caught on camera, but Jesus Christ, the little prick had it coming.

Now there’s these bloody sessions, mandated by the league, before he can coach again. Phil went to the first one. Bunch of wife-beaters sitting around making excuses for their violence. He wasn’t like these men. He made that clear. That he was only there because he’d yelled at a kid on the basketball court, a kid who was being a little shit, mind you, you know the sort. They’d all just looked at him sadly and nodded. Not in agreement, but like they were taking his confession. He never went back.

Flick and Leo don’t know about the classes. Still think he’s got a club admin meeting Tuesday nights. That he’s just giving the assistant coach a go in the top job for games and training. But Phil just goes to the aths track the next suburb over and runs laps until he’s sweating.

‘Morning, Phil. Coffee, mate?’

He turns around and there’s Tom, cup in hand, a little whorl of steam rising up.

‘Is the pope a big one? You’re a bloody legend!’

‘Saw you taking on the fire, figured you might need one.’

Phil accepts the cup, sniffs it, feels the anticipation in his body, takes a sip, sighs.

‘Nice coffee. What you got in your set-up down there?’

‘Ha, just a stovetop. Imagine you’ve got something fancier in your rig?’

‘Nah, all pretty simple in there. Not as fancy as it looks.’ He sips and smiles because it’s nice that Tom appreciates the bloody money they paid for it, unlike the rest of this lot who just make snide remarks.

‘Expecting fancy for your Sunday lunch, though, right?’ Tom says, with a raised eyebrow.

Phil is pleased, he can sense a note in Tom’s voice – envy? Maybe he’s not quite as nonchalant as he seems. ‘Looking forward to it, even recruited some of the neighbours, reckon it’s gonna be a corker.’

‘Ha,’ Tom says, a little loudly. ‘Which neighbours? Not the bloke from next door?’

Phil knows he’s got to massage this a bit. Lou’s clearly got the shits up already with Jacob about this fence business. ‘I know the cameras and everything seem a bit much, but you expect those types out here, don’t you think? Misfits and odd bods, harmless enough. He was good helping out yesterday. Better to keep on his good side, I reckon.’

‘Yeah, right,’ Tom says, looking away. ‘Probably run it by Lou, though, eh?’

Phil sips his coffee, shakes his head slightly and looks down to the river. Lou and Marnie’s teenager, Stella, is down there talking to a young bloke in cammo gear.

‘That the squatter’s kid?’ Phil says, nodding his head in their direction.

Have they just met, or are they on their way back from somewhere, together? Wouldn’t put it past that Stella, seems a bit wild, definitely no longer a kid. Thank Christ he doesn’t have girls. ‘Reckon they’ve been getting to know each other?’ Phil says, looking back at Tom and grinning.

Tom does not return the smile, drains his coffee. ‘Better get on with finishing the composting toilet system before we overload the old dunny.’ He leaves the cup and hurries away, leaving Phil alone by the fire.

Flick

Flick’s left knee twinges, there’s blister heat in the back of her left sock, but she’s doing it, she’s bloody done it – run and felt the pain, pushed through the barrier – chest heaving, breath thumping and not so ragged now as the hill peters out and she slows to a stop on the rocky bank of the river. Not green, not brown like the river from higher up, but a deep glassy matter as if it is soaking in both sun and shadow, the current dense and pulsing just under the surface. On the opposite bank, bright green tree ferns layer over each other to fringe a lichen-crusted rock face.

‘Fuck it,’ she says, pulling off her singlet and the thick material of her sports bra, shimmying out of her leggings, looking back up the hill to the clearing and the pub, where she can see people moving around. She leaves her knickers on just in case and gingerly steps over the rocks to put her feet in the shallow, pebbled edge of the river. Cold like a blade, so that she puffs out, calls, ‘Hhhhoooooo-boy!’ loudly and laughs as her echo ricochets across the valley and back at her.

She can be loose, she thinks.

‘LOOOOOOOSE!’ she shouts, and the cliffs call it back: oose, oose, oose. She splashes her hands onto the surface of the water, then throws them up in the air, showering arcs of spray into the sun. ‘I’m SO FUCKING LOOOOOOOSE!’

Under, weightless, holding her breath to the other side, until her foot kicks against something and she rises to the surface, swearing. Carefully she explores with her foot, feels a branch, uses her feet to follow it over to the edge of the pool, where there is a bunch of them beneath the surface. Dangerous for the kids. Flick yanks on the end of the slimy branch, bracing one foot against a large log on the bank and pulling back with her body weight. It shifts, catches again. She wipes her hand against her hair so she can grip again, pulls hard and the whole branch shoots towards her like a tooth being yanked.

‘Whatya doing?’ Josie calls out as she appears on the other side of the bank and whips off her jumper.

Flick starts at the sight of Jo and blushes. She’d been so acutely aware of Tom next to her last night, the low orange glow of the fire. She’d been annoyed when he’d said it was probably time to hit the hay, that he’d check Lou and Ness were good while he took a piss, then he was off to bed. She’d said goodnight to him and Marnie quickly, hoping he hadn’t caught her disappointment. Flick had resisted the urge to loop back as she’d headed down to the caravan. Josie doesn’t know. Couldn’t possibly.

Flick swings the branch back into a pile she is making. ‘Clearing up this pool a bit.’ She spreads her arms wide to show her work and grins. ‘Safer for the kids.’

Josie pulls off her shoes and socks and steps out of her jeans, then walks over to the piles of branches, runs her hand against the slimy wood, her face neutral. Flick notes Josie’s long body, a leanness Flick lost with her first pregnancy. Josie seems so comfortable in her own skin, while Flick is weary with her own flab, her wrinkles, the disloyalty of her own flesh.

And yet – a thin, mean thought – and yet, I fucked your boyfriend in my half-finished bathroom.

She coughs, so outrageous is the thought, and quickly points further down the bank. ‘Couple more over the other side, see there? I’d really like to get them out. Give me a hand?’

‘Yeah, nah,’ says Josie. ‘Reckon leave those ones in, if that’s okay.’

Flick looks at her and screws one eyebrow up.

‘Why?’ she asks bluntly.

‘Good habitat, those kinds of branches,’ Josie says, inclining her head in the direction of the pile Flick has made. ‘Whole program to put them back in in the Murray–Darling at the moment – “resnagging”, they call it. Different river, but same principle, I guess. Dead branches and snags are good for the river. Shit for people, for sure, but good for the river. I reckon the kids can deal, yeah?’

‘Oh,’ Flick says, sliding back into the water. ‘Sorry, didn’t know.’ Fuck you, Josie, she thinks, for popping my glorious bubble. ‘Should I put them back in?’ she says aloud.

‘Nah – don’t stress about it, just don’t pull any more out,’ Josie says coolly as she carefully makes her way into the water, stopping when it reaches her knees and shallow-diving gracefully into the pool.

Flick looks away, suddenly terrified that she is about to cry.

Josie pops her head out, sighing deeply. ‘So good,’ she says.

Flick dives under again, away from Josie, striking out with some freestyle before she feels one dangling knee scrape on the rocks. She comes up spluttering.

‘You right?’ Josie says kindly.

‘Yeah,’ Flick says, pushing out onto her back so she doesn’t have to look at Josie.

Josie speaks across the water. ‘It’s a lot, huh? With everyone.’

Flick nods her head in the water, staying where she is, looking up at the morning sky through the canopy that overhangs the little pool. Letting her tension ease out into the water.

‘You carry a lot, Flick,’ Josie says. ‘I can see how you feel you gotta look after all the kids. Gotta look after yourself, too, though.’

Flick wonders how quickly she could drown herself right now. She stands up, lumbering out of the water. ‘Getting cold, I’ll see you up there,’ she says as she grabs her clothes and towel, slips her feet into her runners.

‘Yep,’ Josie says and splashes under again.

As Flick hurries away from the river, she feels like she could just keep going. Away from all of this. Before something gives.

Ness

Ness accepts the coffee gratefully from Tom, screwing up her eyes against the morning light as he takes her elbow and gently leads her away from the cooking area.

‘I need to find the kids,’ she says, imagining her mum making the kids brekky. The guilt.

Fuck.

And she bends at the hips, stumbling forward and spilling half her coffee as Tom gently steadies her.

‘Hey, hey,’ he says quietly, ‘you’re okay.’

She squeezes her eyes tight but then all she can see is her nails scratching that leathery cheek, the body on the fence, the jagged light of the head torches bobbing across limbs as they dragged him. She blinks her eyes open wide.

‘What have we done?’ she whispers to Tom.

He looks concerned, but she finds some comfort in him just being there, knowing what she knows, having her back. This is what good friends, your best friends, do, right? They have your back when the shit hits the fan. You share the load. Or the guilt. Together.

‘Did you see cameras on the road in?’ Tom says quietly.

‘Cameras?’ Her brain is swooping to catch up. She doesn’t know whether it’s the hangover or everything else, feels like she is a step behind her body.

‘Jacob’s place. Phil said there’s cameras.’

Ness’s breath catches. ‘You told Phil?’ Jesus Christ.

‘No. Fuck, no,’ Tom says, shaking his head. ‘He had something planned with Jacob, though, for Sunday lunch, or some fucking thing. And he said Jacob’s got cameras up.’

And now Ness remembers. The little black boxes high in the trees, Phil pointing. Fuck.

‘Did you notice any last night?’

‘It was fucking dark, Tom.’ Her mind is racing. Where does the fucking surveillance footage go? What if someone comes looking for him? Checks it? ‘We need to tell Lou.’

She needs a piss, needs more coffee, some Panadol. And then she needs to go and check if there’s evidence of them moving a fucking body. ‘I’ve got to get back to the kids,’ she says, holding out her hands helplessly.

Tom nods grimly. ‘I’ll find Lou.’

The kids are down by the river with Avril, throwing pebbles into the water, laughing and calling out at the splashes.

‘Sorry, Mum,’ she says. ‘They okay?’

Avril smiles and holds out her hand at the three kids as if to say, See for yourself. ‘About to head up, though,’ she says. ‘This old body needs tea to kickstart it.’

Ness nods. ‘Thanks,’ she says and her voice catches.

Avril looks at her with concern. ‘You okay, my girl?’

Ness feels the tears coming. Get yourself together, she thinks, looking away from her mum. Behind her, Avril calls the kids to get up to breakfast, and they stream past Ness, blocking her escape as they race up the hill.

Her mum is beside her in a moment. ‘Hey. Hey, my girl, what’s brought this on?’ Avril says gently, taking Ness’s arm and turning her around.

Ness looks at her mum’s worried face and can’t hold it in, she’s unstopped the fucking dam of it, and my god, Get your shit together! she thinks, but she cannot, she cannot. She bawls.

‘Hey, hey,’ Avril says, putting both arms around Ness and hugging her ferociously. ‘It’s okay.’

Ness wails harder. ‘No, Mum, no, not this time,’ she says through her wails.

‘Shhhhh, shhhhh, darling,’ Avril says, rubbing circles on her back. ‘Let’s get some tea before Lou puts us all to work.’

Ness baulks at the thought of all the plans today, the bloody schedule. Will Lou be able to keep her shit together? Will she just pretend what happened last night didn’t happen?

‘God, it’s so beautiful here. Just breathe it in, my darling, let it do all that healing stuff you’re always telling me about.’

Ness steadies her breathing as they walk, looping around the creek and up towards the pub. She needs just a few more minutes of her mum making her feel like she isn’t just a piece-of-shit, evil human who fucking killed a man last night. She stops suddenly and bends over, gasping for air.

Avril stops next to her. ‘For god’s sake, Ness, spit it out – what’s going on? You’re a mess!’ her mother says sternly.

Ness swallows. ‘I can’t tell you.’

‘Oh, pffft. Never been a problem for you before. And if I can deal with your eighteenth birthday party being the epicentre of a chlamydia outbreak, I can deal with anything.’

Ness half laughs through her tears. ‘It’s worse.’

Avril stops, grabs Ness by the upper arms and speaks firmly. ‘You don’t have to carry things alone,’ she says. ‘I am here, your sister is here, your best friend is here. Whatever it is, we can handle it together.’

And the words hit good and right, and her mother is so damn sensible and maybe everything will be okay? Maybe she just needs her mum, maybe if she releases this burden, shares it with her mother, maybe the burden will be easier to bear?

Ness takes a deep breath.

‘There’s been an accident,’ she says.

Lou

By the time Lou has pissed and washed her face, things are in full swing. Marnie’s handing out real coffee and Eden is helping her by handing out pretend ones, toddling about in her little gumboots and already filthy green tulle skirt, dishing out her three-year-old smile. Flick is slicing bread as quickly as she can to keep up with the kids grabbing it off the board. Josie’s looping her arms around Tom, who is trying to catch her eye, but she is not ready for that. No. Not now. There are things to do. A plan to follow. She needs to get everyone else on track before she can reconfigure her brain.

‘C’mon,’ she says to them all, ‘grab your cups and toast, I’m taking you on a tour of today’s tasks in five minutes.’

No sign in the sky yet of the predicted rain. It is clear, and the sun is burning off the morning mist and it is beautiful, the perfect day, really. She leads them down to the creek, where they stand in the sun. The kids have followed reluctantly and are kicking the soccer ball around, Benji trying valiantly to keep up with Kai and Leo and Reuben. Winnie is cartwheeling between the ball-kicking, Eden rolling in the grass. Stella mooching at the back, holding a coffee cup in both hands.

‘Right,’ Lou says, ‘Tom’s had a head start on the composting toilet, and Josie poisoned the blackberries back in January so they’re ready to burn. Both of them’ll need a hand with those jobs, plus Phil was gonna check out what needs doing on the pub, and there’s a bunch of shit the previous owners left that we can get the kids to haul up to the blackberry site – we’ll burn it all there.’

‘When’s morning tea scheduled?’ Flick asks, smiling.

‘I’m more interested in cheese and wine at lunch – should we talk to our union, darl?’ Marnie says.

‘Ness and Mum are on lunch,’ Lou says, annoyed because they are taking their sweet time to join them as they make their way from the river. Avril has her arm around Ness and, even at a distance, Lou can see her sister has the rumpled, red look of tears.

No you didn’t, Lou thinks. You fucking didn’t.

‘I’ve got to duck out for a spell,’ Phil says. ‘But I’m on it with the pub stuff.’

‘Duck out?’ Flick says, frowning. ‘Don’t we have to do the rules thing first, Lou?’

She grits her teeth. Smiles. ‘Yep, yep we do. What about we meet back up there at ten thirty, that’s’ – she checks her watch – ‘in an hour?’

‘Can we play soccer till then?’ Benji yells.

‘Yes, my love,’ Lou says, already walking towards her sister and mum. ‘Go play.’

‘Wait, don’t say anything,’ Ness says quietly, putting her hands out. ‘I know I shouldn’t have told her, but there’s something—’

Lou turns away, runs her hands through her hair. ‘I cannot believe you,’ she says to the sky.

‘It’s done, Lou,’ Ness says. ‘Now get over it. She’s our mum, she’s solid.’

Lou spins around in anger. ‘For fuck’s sake, Ness! It’s not Mum’s job to sort this out, to get dragged into your fucking shitshow, again.’

Ness rears back, eyes wide. ‘Oh, now it’s my shit show, is it?’

‘YES!’ Lou says fiercely. ‘Yes it is, like it always is, and the rest of us are running around trying to clean your mess up.’

‘It wasn’t my idea to hide him on his own fucking property under his fucking cameras!’

‘Girls!’ Avril says. She’s walking towards them, Tom close behind her. It’s obvious they’ve been talking.

They fall silent.

Tom speaks first. ‘We could still just call the cops?’ he says, unconvincingly.

Lou has been thinking about this ever since Marnie clambered out of bed, leaving her in the wreckage of the bombshell about Jimmy. She has run the flowchart through her head. And each time she ends up at the same spot. Calling the cops leads to an investigation, which leads to – whichever way you look at it – them. And they just cannot afford that. Cannot afford Ness getting done for GBH or manslaughter, or worse. Cannot afford the real estate agent bringing up the boundary dispute, looking into the purchase, following the money to Marnie – no, this cannot happen, this must not touch Marnie, touch any of them, not now.

‘No,’ says Lou. ‘We’ve put him somewhere he won’t be found and now we wipe this from our minds.’

‘Someone will come looking for him, surely?’ Avril says carefully.

‘Maybe. But they won’t have any cause to look where we put him.’

‘Are you going to tell Marnie?’ Avril asks.

‘God, no.’ Even the idea of it makes her breath catch.

She pauses, looks at Tom. ‘You’re not going to tell Josie, are you?’

‘Do you want me to?’

‘No! The less people who know, the better. What do they say? “Three can keep a secret, if two of them are dead”?’

Tom raises his eyebrows. ‘Comforting.’

Lou looks at her watch. ‘So how do we check the cameras?’

‘I’ll go,’ Tom says. ‘I’ll do it.’

9.47 am

Movement on the road, a man in jeans and boots. Standing under a eucalypt, looking up. He steps back, looks again. There, in the hollow of a tree, a metre or so above his head, a black box.

He tries to throw a stick. Jumps. Rustles around, bent over in the bush, then grabs a longer branch, hoisting it over his head, poking hard at the black box, again and again until finally he dislodges it, and it falls.

He picks it up, turns it over in his hands. Shakes his head. Even at this distance, it is clear that he is laughing.

Flick

It’s well past 10.30 when Lou turns up, flushed, racing through to her tent, calling out that they’ll start the workshop in five minutes. The kids are getting restless, eager to get back to their game, and Flick sees her chance. She must be the only one really paying attention to those boxes in there, and already she can see tiny flies buzzing around the browning bananas and squishy nectarines. Plus, she’ll get fruit into her boys’ mouths if it bloody kills her.

‘Here!’ she says, pushing the plate of cut apple and pear into Leo’s hands. ‘Hand that one around.’

‘Do I have to?’

‘Yes.’

She shoves it at him, feels him take it and whips her hand away to grab the other plate of orange and banana.

‘Do you know if Dad gave Reuben his meds?’

Leo shrugs and walks away.

‘So incredibly helpful,’ Flick mutters.

‘Think there was a line-up for meds just before, Flick,’ Marnie says quietly next to her, placing her hand on Flick’s back.

Flick turns to her. ‘Right, thanks. He’s usually good with them, just out of whack being away, you know.’

Marnie smiles. ‘Think Ness was giving Kai a break from his for the weekend. You try that?’

Flick grits her back teeth, tries to steady her breath. ‘Yeah, nah, not for Reubs.’

‘I’ve got cantaloupe and kiwi!’ Marnie says. ‘Shall I cut that too?’

Flick forces a smile. ‘Let’s see if they eat the apple first?’

Marnie nods. ‘Lots of our friends are trialling flexibility with their kids’ meds. Trying to find the right balance for their families, you know?’

What would you know, Flick wants to say, with your perfect kids with normal brains? She slices another apple. Brutally.

‘But obviously, you do what works for you,’ Marnie says, pressing her hand gently on Flick’s back again and moving away.

Too right we fucking will, Flick thinks, watching as Marnie rummages in one of the bags for a little brown paper packet and walks over to where Leo is half-heartedly handing around the plate. Marnie sprinkles whatever’s in the packet over the fruit – cashews? Chia seeds? Does she think this protects her kids? Everyone’s? Just sprinkle a little chia on top of your kids’ anxiety and behavioural problems and they are magically sorted?

Lou arrives. ‘Bring it in.’ She ushers them around to the edge of the verandah, where she’s pinned a big piece of paper on the wall. She’s brandishing a packet of Sharpies in her hand and looks determined, looking for all the world like she’s running a team-building retreat for her bloody public service job.

Flick wants another coffee. Should she put the billy back on? Or will Lou look at her in that exasperated way she has? She moves in. Surely this won’t take too long. The kids won’t stand for it if it does.

‘So, this is just a brainstorm of the rules and guidelines that we reckon we should follow to run Willow Creek.’

‘Can we have different rules to at home?’ Benji asks.

Flick looks across at Marnie and they share a smile, easing the earlier tension. She’s a good egg, Flick knows that. Just a little uptight.

‘Yes,’ says Lou eagerly, ‘yes, that’s an excellent idea, what rules would be different?’

‘No bedtime?’

Laughter.

‘We can swear!’

‘Hmm, maybe not,’ says Flick.

‘All suggestions are valid,’ says Tom, winking at her, and she feels a thrill straight up her spine. Stop it, she says to herself. Just stop.

‘We can have six marshmallows EVERY NIGHT!’

The kids whoop.

‘But, like,’ says Stella, ‘what about a rule that the adults have to listen to us?’

‘Don’t you think the adults listen to you kids?’ asks Avril gently.

‘No! Never!’ yell the kids together.

There is uproar from the adults. ‘All we ever do is listen to you!’ someone shouts.

‘What about we respect when others are speaking and listen to others’ opinions?’

‘Except if they’re rubbish opinions!’

‘Sleepovers every night.’

‘No being mean.’

‘No rules is the best rule,’ Kai yells out, and there is more laughter.

Flick feels her body tense. She tries not to look at Tom. She has already thrown out all the rules.

‘Maybe rules isn’t the right place to start,’ Ness says as Lou side-eyes her. ‘Isn’t the right word,’ she corrects herself. ‘Like, what are the words you use for school, you lot? Values?’

‘Yeah, like respect and curiosity and stuff?’ says Winnie.

‘What about the doctor’s thing?’ Stella says.

‘The Hippocratic Oath?’ Avril says.

‘Yeah, that,’ Stella says, folding her arms. ‘The “do no harm” one.’

Flick nods. She’s a smart kid, Stella. Lot of attitude, but cluey. She looks across at Leo, who glances quickly away from Stella. Poor kid, Flick thinks, huge crush.

‘Great,’ Lou says. ‘That’s what we want to think about. What are the big values that’ll help us look after this place, and each other, while we’re here?’

‘And they have to be real values,’ Ness says, ‘not just those bloody curiosity and respect ones, they’ve lost all meaning.’

Flick zones out as everyone starts to throw words around. There’s something in Ness that has grown hard. It’s tricky to tell these days whether she’s being vague or deliberately mean. Last night, on dishes, they’d started talking about school and Ness had dropped a question about ‘that fancy school of yours with its filler-faced mums’.

It’s a joke, she knows, but it’s got old. Ness doesn’t seem to realise. Or maybe she does, and each fresh joke is a tiny little stab. How can she tell her that they are, for the most part, just the same mums with the same small worries and frustrations and laughs? That yes, in fact, she does enjoy their company. That it’s nice, for a change, not to have to worry about choosing the place with the hundred-dollar set menu, or ordering something other than the house bubbles. There is no room in her relationship with Ness – her oldest friend – to complain about how to get a chocolate milk stain out of a blazer arm; instead, she feeds her the worst of it, the excessive birthday parties, the discussion of European holidays, the flashy cars. And as she does it, Flick feels small and mean. She likes these women. But she loves Ness, and so she dishes the school mums up as caricatures so the two of them can guffaw and judge and criticise together. It’s a kind of armour. I am not like them, she is saying to Ness. But she is like them.

She had always thought that being with these people, with Ness and Avril and Lou, and then with their partners and kids, was the place she fit best, the place where she was wholly herself. But as she watches them throwing around their words and lofty ideas, she feels oddly detached. Is this what happens in your forties, she wonders. You suddenly feel like you no longer fit – with your oldest friends, even your partner? Or is it chicken and egg? Did that afternoon all those months back – that breathless afternoon, all skin and sweat and astonishment at their own brazenness – did it set off a chain of events that dislodged her somehow from her perfectly reasonable life? She and Tom still have not said a word about it.

‘We should probably wrap this up and get to work,’ Marnie says.

Lou looks exasperated. ‘We’ve hardly got anywhere,’ she says.

Flick watches Marnie move in close to her wife, guesses the conversation, would say the same thing to Lou right now, applauding her effort and now recognising that rules by committee are an actual pain in the arse.

‘Okay, how about some statements,’ Lou says, starting to write, ‘from the things you’ve said?’ She starts to write in big capital letters and Winnie reads out the words.

‘We respect this place,’ she reads.

‘And what about each other?’ Marnie says.

‘And the people here,’ Winter reads as Lou writes.

Flick looks down the hill where Reuben and Kai have already fled and notices a battered ute turning into the driveway. She sees Phil raise a hand and hurry away from the fire like he’s going to meet it. She rolls her eyes. This’ll be his grand plan for Sunday. Two-minute noodles would’ve done the trick for the kids.

Winter’s still reading and Flick squints to make out the words:

We act with integrity and kindness. Good old Lou, she thinks, stickler for her integrity bullshit.

‘What’s integrity?’ Benji says.

‘Like honesty,’ Tom explains. ‘Sticking to what you believe even when it’s hard. Telling the truth.’

Flick glances at Tom, looks away. Cos we are so good at that, she thinks.

Lou keeps writing through the yelling.

Only three marshmallows.

Everyone pitches in.

‘Righto,’ Marnie shouts. ‘We’ll leave it for now and come back to it this arvo. Let’s get our hands dirty!’

Lou stands there, looking at the words on the paper, and Flick wonders if they meet her standards. High expectations, that woman. Of everyone, of herself most of all. She can’t help but feel there’s a Girl Scout vibe to the weekend that’s starting to rub her up the wrong way. Maybe she can creep away with a book and a bottle of wine and no-one will know the difference.

‘Back to work, then?’

She turns and there is Tom beside her. Putting down his cup in the bucket while she is finishing wiping off the table. He grins. ‘Work hard before we play?’

She could be reading it all wrong – his grin, his words – but that doesn’t stop the flush of pleasure. It’s enough to undo her.

Phil

Phil strides towards the approaching ute, anticipation buoying him.

‘Dad!’ He hears Leo’s voice from somewhere behind him and pauses to turn his head. ‘Where are you going? Lou said you’re meant to be working on the pub.’

‘Can’t right now, mate. Getting a delivery.’ He points to the ute now parking behind Lou and Marnie’s trailer.

‘What delivery?’ Leo walks closer, his face expectant. He looks good this morning, Phil thinks. Sharp. This outdoor stuff agrees with him. He looks more rugged, pink in the cheeks, hair tousled out under his cap. Less time on his damn phone, away from his enormous screen and those stupid bloody games.

‘The lamb.’

‘For the spit?’

‘That’s the one.’

‘Cool,’ Leo says and turns to go.

‘Wanna see something, though? It’ll make things a bit more interesting,’ Phil says, trying to keep his son there a little longer. Do them both good to have some father–son time.

Leo turns one shoulder and raises his hand. ‘I’m good, the others are waiting for me,’ he says and keeps walking.

Phil calls out, ‘It’s alive!’

Leo stops and turns. ‘What?’

‘We’re going to see the whole thing through – baa lamb to barbecue,’ Phil says, grinning.

‘Does Mum know?’ Leo asks.

Phil sighs. Why should Flick have to approve everything? How did that end up being the rule of their house? Synching their calendars, adding him to every bloody WhatsApp group, ordering the groceries – It’s easier this way, she says. As if he can’t do it. He builds bloody bridges. Of course he can do it, he just doesn’t do it exactly the way she wants, exactly when she wants it done. Leave it with me, he wants to say, just let me do it in my own time. But his time doesn’t work with hers. They used to be totally in sync. Well, this one is his call. He’s in charge.

‘Nup.’

‘So, this guy’s gonna kill it in front us? Mum’s gonna freak! Isn’t Ness vegetarian?’

A worn-looking man in a flannelette shirt softened with age gets out of the ute cabin, and Phil lifts a hand in greeting before turning to smile at Leo. ‘He’s not gonna kill it, mate. We are.’

Phil guesses Paddy’s about his age but he moves at the glacial pace of a much older man, even his handshake lingers long enough for Phil to feel slightly awkward.

‘Appreciate you moving things around for us. Jacob said you wouldn’t mind.’

‘Jacob, huh?’ Paddy humphs quietly, a small smile on his face. ‘He would say that, wouldn’t he? Wants a finger in every pie, Jacob.’

Phil doesn’t, as a rule, worry too much about what gophers think of him, but he’s conscious that Paddy is a local and he wants to get off on the right foot, imagines a long future of Sunday spits, eventually at local prices.

‘You sure I don’t owe you anything more?’ he says, handing over the agreed-upon cash.

Paddy pockets it without checking. ‘Yeah, nah,’ he says, ‘you’re right. Where d’ya want her?’ The man walks around to the back of the ute where a lamb is tethered on the rails, skittering a bit on the tray as he approaches.

‘She’s… great,’ Phil says, suddenly realising the gulf between the creature in front of him and the spit he has planned.

‘Yeah, good size, enough to feed a big crowd. Had a couple planned to go into the city but order was cancelled, so you got lucky. She’s been off feed for the last twenty-four hours so her guts should be easier. Careful with them, yeah, the guts? You’ve done this before?’

Phil nods. ‘Yep.’

‘When, Dad?’ Leo says, squinting one eye and looking at him expectantly.

Phil motions him away with his hand. ‘Once or twice,’ he elaborates to Paddy. ‘With the boys from work.’

If Paddy is as sceptical as Leo he doesn’t let on and Phil is grateful that he steps him through the process regardless.

‘Just wanna make sure your knife is good for the cut and getting the skin off, and then you want to hang her up and let her bleed. Best to hang as long as you can before you’re ready to cook. A week would be good but I’m guessing you don’t have that time.’

‘Yeah, nah, lunch tomorrow, that gonna work?’ He’s hoping the fancy new knife he bought to slice the lamb off the spit will be sharp enough, otherwise he’s going to be up shit creek.

‘Not ideal, but it’ll do,’ Paddy says as he lowers the back of the ute, jumps up in the tray and starts untying her.

‘You like lamb?’ he says to Leo.

Leo’s eyes go wide.

Phil laughs to cover his son’s awkwardness, ‘Loves it, don’t you, mate?’

Leo nods mutely.

‘You won’t taste better than this,’ Paddy says as he finishes with the knots. The sheep bleats and skitters as he holds the rope and leads her to the edge. ‘You right to grab her?’

Phil steps forward. How the fuck do you catch a sheep? ‘Sure, here, just like…’

‘Keep her legs in under,’ Paddy says as he makes space for Phil. ‘There you go – so she doesn’t kick.’

Phil grabs the sheep, circling his arms around the top of her legs and pulling her weight into his chest.

‘That’s the way,’ Paddy says.

She’s heavy. Phil can feel her heart pattering madly against him, see her eye roving wildly as he bends at the knees and drops her the last few inches to the ground.

‘Grab the rope or she’ll be off,’ Paddy says, and he jumps to the ground. Leo bends to grab the rope before Phil can.

‘You got her?’ Paddy calls out, laughing. ‘Don’t wanna be off chasing your dinner!’

Leo nods, gathering the rope in his hands and gently patting the sheep on the back.

‘Good to go? You got what you need, some ropes or wire to hang her?’

Phil’s starting to think he should just ask the guy to stay and do the killing for him.

Leo is still patting the sheep. ‘Yeah, Dad,’ he says, eyes bold. ‘You got everything?’

Phil bristles. ‘Jacob offered to lend a hand with some gear if we need,’ he says sharply. ‘We’re all good.’

‘Goodo, then. Enjoy,’ Paddy says, jumping in the ute and heading off.

‘You haven’t really killed one before, have you?’ Leo says.

Phil takes the rope from his son. ‘Why would I say I had if I hadn’t?’

Leo shrugs. ‘Sometimes adults lie, I guess,’ he says, already walking back to the firepit, leaving Phil holding the bleating sheep.

Josie

She should be starting the blackberries, but Tom’s told her he just needs an hour to finish the toilet block and Lou practically begged her to take the kids to put up the sign she’s bought. Josie will take this one for the team, but then she’s gonna burn some weeds to the ground.

She gathers the kids away from Phil and his bloody lamb. Honestly, he’s just done it to be provocative, trying to get a rise. She could see Flick was trying to keep her cool in front of everyone, laughing off the surprise lamb and rolling her eyes, but her fury was clear. Josie’s just glad Tom doesn’t surprise her like that.

‘Right, you lot,’ Josie says loudly, ‘I’ve got the first job for you.’

‘What is it?’ Reuben says sceptically, flicking his dark hair out of his eyes and looking up at Josie.

‘You’ll need hammers and nails,’ she says, seeing their eyes brighten.

‘I know where there’s a hammer,’ Benji offers.

‘Yep, you’ll need that! And, Benji, look after this for me, will you?’ She hands him the sign as the kids gather round him.

Winter grabs Eden’s hand and puts her other one in Josie’s. She’s such an easy kid. Wandering around in her own little world while the rest of them do their loud chaos. The little hand in her own is surprising, but nice. The utter ease of these kids. The trust.

At the fence post, Josie asks Benji to read out the sign. He holds it up and reads, slowly at first and then more confident as he recognises the words.

This is Aboriginal Land. We acknowledge the Traditional Owners of this land and pay respects to Elders Past, Present and Future. Sovereignty was never ceded.

‘What does “ceded” mean?’ Reuben asks.

Josie thinks for a minute. ‘Like “given up”, I guess,’ Josie says. ‘That phrase means that Aboriginal people never said that white people could have their land.’

‘But we took it anyway,’ Winnie says.

‘WE didn’t take it, though,’ says Reuben.

‘No, not us, but our ancestors did,’ Winnie says archly.

Kai dumps the sign and begins hammering nails into the post.

‘Woah there,’ Josie says, gently placing Kai’s hands in the right position. ‘Don’t take off a thumb.’

‘Three goes, then it’s my turn!’ Winnie says.

‘So, they’re baddies, then?’ Kai asks, taking one last big whack. ‘Our ancestors?’

‘I guess we don’t talk about it as baddies and goodies, really,’ Josie says. ‘It’s complicated.’

Winnie laughs, taking the hammer from Kai, who gives it up grudgingly. ‘That’s what adults always say when they can’t explain stuff.’

Josie nods appreciatively. They tell it how it is, she’ll give them that. ‘Well, how would you explain it, Winnie?’

Winnie whacks the next nail in and hands the hammer to Benji, pushing Eden’s grabbing little hands away. ‘White people came and stole this land off Aboriginal people and never gave it back and we still live on it.’

‘So should we give it back?’ Benji asks, and Josie can see from his face that he’s not taking the piss.

Josie raises her eyebrows. ‘Some people say that. But it’s not that simple.’ She hears the words and is disappointed in her own lack of spine.

Winter crosses her arms. ‘Just because something seems hard doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try it.’

Josie nods. ‘I agree entirely.’

Reuben takes the nail and hammer tentatively from Josie but she nods in encouragement and he bends down to take his turn, tongue sticking out of his mouth in concentration.

‘But, like, what’s the point of having the sign here?’ Kai says. ‘If we’re not actually going to give the land back?’

‘It’s still important,’ Winnie says, her chin jutting out. ‘Like doing an acknowledgement at assembly.’

‘Done!’ says Reuben and they all stand back to admire their handiwork.

Josie is chuffed. The grown-ups would do well to converse with these kids on the big stuff. The kids are alright.

‘Can we climb the oak now?’ Benji says, looking at Josie with wide eyes.

‘Excellent idea.’

‘What are you looking at?’ Winnie asks from behind her.

Josie reaches out, pointing her finger towards the tiny white buds. ‘This – it’s an orchid, second one I’ve seen around here. Have a look.’

Winnie bends down, pulling Eden along with her.

‘See how it has three petals and this big lip here, so it looks like five? That’s how you know it’s an orchid,’ Josie says. ‘It’s early for orchids, though. All the plants are getting out of whack as the climate changes.’

Eden reaches out her little hand and Winnie grabs it back. ‘No touching, Eden!’

Eden begins to wail.

Josie watches Winnie trying to comfort her as she strains towards the flower.

‘Here, darl, leave her with me for a bit while you explore the tree,’ Josie says, taking Eden’s hand and extracting her from Winter.

Winter grins and ducks under the enormous canopy to where the kids are whooping around the trunk.

Josie stands up. ‘Come on, Eden. Let’s find something you can play with.’

She and Eden collect sticks. And rocks. And pull big leathery leaves from the oak. The child is entirely focused on the pattern she must have in her head as she lays each item down in the dirt. Pushing Josie’s hand away if she places something herself, reaching out for a stick. Josie can’t make sense of it, but she is enjoying watching the child at work.

Eden toddles away, bending low in the grass to grab something. Josie watches as she lifts it to her mouth and scrabbles to standing.

‘No!’ Josie yells, rushing at her. She scoops the girl up, cupping her hand around the little fist and extracting an acorn. ‘Not for eating.’ Eden’s face crumples. ‘But here, can we put it in your picture?’

‘NO!’ Eden squeals, and then she’s wailing again.

Jesus, you need the patience of a saint, Josie thinks. She puts Eden down and starts to collect up more acorns.

Five acorns, ten. She places them in Eden’s cupped hands quickly, trying to distract. The child wants them in her pockets, in Josie’s pockets, wants to line them up end to end, stack them on top of each other. Her little eyebrows furrow in concentration as she holds herself steady with one chubby hand on Josie’s knee. Total trust, Josie thinks. She knows I will protect her. Eden lifts an acorn towards her face and Josie goes to stop her and then realises the child is sniffing it.

‘Yes,’ Josie says and laughs. ‘That’s how we learn! We can sniff things. See if they smell good or bad.’

Eden holds the acorn in her palm. So satisfying, the nutty little cupule just the size to fill her palm.

‘One day,’ Josie says, ‘this tiny seed might grow into’ – she turns, arcing her arm in a wide rainbow to encompass the old oak above them – ‘a big tree like this!’ She remembers another pairing, grown-up and child beneath a tree, close together on forest floor. Her father holding seed pods and nuts between his fingers, her five-year-old wonder, her breathless questions. But how does the tree fit inside?

‘Marvellous, isn’t it?’ her father had said. ‘Gifts of the forest.’ He never explained it, never explained himself either, maybe why her mum took off in the end. His vagueness could be frustrating, but the questions had sprouted like seeds inside her brain. A desire to know how one of these tiny, knobbled things she lined up on her windowsill, on the kitchen bench, underneath the TV, could possibly hold a forest giant within it.

‘More,’ Eden says, reaching out her fat little fingers to grab more acorns.

Seeing her intense focus, Josie lies back on the ground pocked with acorns, feeling them massage her back, and looks up at the spreading limbs of the oak.

It is its own world under here. A micro-climate created by the green dome of the tree. Behind her the huge trunk thrusts into the sky, the twisty umbrella spokes of the branches exploding out from their wooded anchor, the pattern of lobed green leaves struck through by the glare of sunlight.

A little hand on her tummy. She cricks her neck forward to see Eden, lip chewed in concentration, bending down to balance an acorn on her. And another. She rests her head back gently, so she doesn’t disturb the child. Closes her eyes and holds her lower abs still so the acorns don’t fall. The earthy tang of decomposing leaf litter. Something sweet on the child’s breath. Shadows of light and leaf and sun flickering behind her eyelids. This, perhaps, is bliss.

She lets herself sink further into the cushion of grass. Could just sleep here for a moment, the sounds of the kids playing in and around the huge oak, connecting with this place. But – she sits up quickly, she can’t hear Eden. Spies her a few metres away, squatting down and peering intently at something. Josie unfolds herself to standing and walks over to the child.

‘What have you found?’ she says, reaching for a shape in the grass, then pulling back her hand. Mushrooms.

She looks closer. Greenish-yellow caps, the biggest about ten centimetres wide. The skirt. The tapering white stem. She looks up at the oak. Perfect habitat.

Death caps.

She scoops Eden up, checking her hands and mouth wildly to see if she has eaten any as Kai runs over to them.

‘What is it?’ he asks.

Nothing in her mouth. No indication that she’s even touched them – the mushrooms look undisturbed. Josie exhales. ‘Mushrooms,’ she says, crouching down and holding Eden back. Gifts of the forest.

‘Ooh, can we eat them?’

‘No! Don’t touch!’ she says, batting Kai’s hands away. ‘No, not these ones. Definitely not. I’m going to pick these ones here and get rid of them, but if you see any more, don’t touch them, all right? They’ll actually kill you.’

‘Just touching them?’ Winnie says.

‘Touching them can make you super sick, yes. Eating them will kill you.’

She wraps her jumper over her hands and carefully picks them all, does a final check, wraps them in the belly of her jumper, pressing them against her so she doesn’t drop any. ‘Let’s go back, yeah? Who wants to help me build a bonfire?’

The kids holler and run ahead of her, Winnie taking Eden by the hand again.

Benji falls into step with Josie. ‘What will you do with them?’ he asks.

‘Burn them,’ she says.

Phil

There are bloody kids everywhere, back from wherever they’ve been, like a swarm. He’s called Jacob three times now, texted too, but who knows if the old geezer can work a text message. He’s not answering. Prick. Probably trying to prove a point, hoping that Phil’s shitting himself. Well, he’s not. He’ll be fine.

The children gather around the lamb, petting her, crouching down with their fingers in her wool. They coo and murmur and speak softly to her. This was not the plan.

‘She can be our pet!’ Winter says.

‘Can we take her inside?’ Reuben asks.

‘I love her,’ says Eden.

Stella smirks at him. ‘That’s so nice of you to get us a mascot for Willow Creek, Phil!’ she says archly. Phil ignores her.

‘Give her a bit of space, kids,’ he says as he loops the rope around the verandah post and steps back.

Avril arrives with the knife. ‘This the one you were after, Phil?’ she asks, holding it out to him. ‘Sure it’s up to the job?’ He knows the question she is really asking: Is he up to the job? Watch me, he wants to say.

Before he can answer, Lou strides up next to him. ‘You sure about this, Phil? I really don’t know if the kids should be part of this.’

Any nervousness he felt vanishes. ‘They all had hamburgers last night. They’re all gonna eat it.’

‘Not all,’ Lou says, nodding her head towards her sister.

Phil sighs. ‘Well, the vegetarians get a pass, but everyone else, far as I’m concerned, should see how the sausage is made!’

‘It’s a big thing, mate,’ says Lou. ‘You wanna risk all the kids turning veggo?’

‘Or putting them in therapy,’ Ness says, weighing in because of course she would.

Phil takes the knife from Avril and unwraps it, enjoys feeling the weight of it in his hand. Conscious that the women are watching him, he runs his fingers along the steel, tests the point of it against his index finger.

‘Careful,’ Avril says quietly.

Phil draws his finger back and notes the bead of scarlet blood. ‘Sharp knife,’ he says.

‘It’d wanna be,’ Lou murmurs.

‘Look,’ Phil says, feeling more in control now he has the knife in his hands. ‘Kids’ choice, okay? I reckon they should stay, circle of life and all that. Appreciate where their meat comes from. But I’m not a total prick, obviously I’m not going to force anyone to stay.’

Winter is already covering her face and starting to cry. Benji pats her awkwardly on the back and walks away with her.

Well, that tracks. Phil raises his eyebrows at his sons. ‘What d’ya reckon, boys? Give your old man a hand with this?’

Tom coughs. ‘I’m going to start loading up the ute with rubbish from the back of the pub,’ he says, ‘if anyone wants to join me?’ Even bloody Tom is joining the exodus.

Phil turns around to see Flick. She is staring back at him, her arms folded, and she looks ready to bust his balls.

‘Yes! Bonfire!’ yells Kai, and Reuben jumps on the bandwagon, Ness spiriting them away with Eden to help Tom.

‘You two big kids, then,’ Phil says, looking at Leo and Stella. ‘You up for it?’

‘You don’t have to stay, guys,’ Flick interjects, and Phil blinks in frustration. She thinks she’s helping the boys, always giving them options, an out. Never just lays down the rules. He’s not an arsehole who thinks they should go back to the good old days, obviously, but fuck, these kids could use some hardening up.

Leo looks at Stella and Phil can see how much his son wants to impress the older girl.

Stella turns to Phil calmly and shrugs. ‘I’m fine with it,’ she says. ‘As long as it’s humane.’

‘Yeah, I’ll stay,’ Leo says quickly.

Phil claps his hands together. ‘Right, then,’ he says, ‘we wanna clean cut at the throat, then we’re gonna hang her up by her hind legs and let her bleed before we skin her.’

He’s trying to remember Paddy’s instructions, make them sound more like an Ikea flat-pack assembly guide and less like a snuff movie.

‘Best spot to hang her is here under the verandah,’ he continues, looking at Lou and Flick. ‘Good in the shade and the beams are strong. That’s okay?’

‘Jesus, do we have to?’ says Flick.

‘How about under the eaves at the back?’ Lou says, jumping in before Phil can protest.

The sheep kicks its legs and bleats as Phil steps towards it. He runs his hand over her back and leads her around to the back of the pub.

‘Anyone wanna say a few words?’ he says as the others form a loose circle around him.

Flick mutters, ‘For fuck’s sake.’

‘Can you give me a hand, Lou?’ Phil asks.

Lou frowns but nods. He likes that about her. Willing to get her hands dirty.

She kneels beside the sheep and places her arms around the belly, talking quietly to the lamb as it shivers a little before calming.

Fuck, already? thinks Phil. Okay. Just meat, just one clean slice. Will it work with just one cut? He breathes deeply, trying to still his heart rate.

‘You all good here?’ It’s Marnie, coming round the side of the house.

‘Shhhhhh,’ says Lou, stroking the lamb.

‘Everyone ready, then?’ Phil says, as much to them as to himself. ‘I’ll come beside you on the right, Lou.’

Lou nods, leaning her shoulders back and reaching her hands up closer to the lamb’s neck, holding her steady.

Phil steps towards the lamb, crouching down and steadying his hand, the blade gleaming in the light.

‘Don’t let her see the knife,’ Lou whispers as Phil kneels beside the lamb. He places his free hand on the scruff of the animal’s neck behind its ears and holds the knife out from his body.

Everyone is still.

Then Phil makes a noise, clamping his hand harder on the lamb’s neck and sinking the knife into her throat, before bringing it quickly back towards himself.

‘Fuck!’ he yells, throwing his left hand in the air as a splatter of blood arcs up and away. He leaps to his feet, throwing the knife down and clutching his hand. ‘Cut myself.’

Lou is leaning hard on the lamb, who is furiously throwing herself around, crimson blood streaming from the left side of her neck down her front and into the dirt.

Avril rushes forwards, picking up the knife as if it’s a loaded gun. ‘Phil! You okay?’

‘Hand me the knife,’ Lou says, her voice strangled, but Phil can only think about his hand as he cradles it, blood running onto his leg.

‘It’s fine, I’m fine,’ Phil says again as he struggles to stand, to regain control.

Stella

Stella is appalled but she cannot look away.

Marnie rushes forwards. ‘Kids, back here,’ she says, grabbing Stella and Leo and pulling them away from the mayhem.

‘Dad!’ Leo says.

‘Phil, you okay?’ Marnie says. Her grip is firm on Stella’s arm and Stella tries to shake her free, leaning forward to see what happens next.

‘Hand me the knife,’ Lou says again, urgently now. Phil is still bent over, cradling his hand, blood running onto his leg. Grandma rushes forward with the knife, but as Lou reaches for it the lamb lurches up and escapes her grip.

‘Mum!’ Stella yells, seeing the look of panic on Lou’s face.

‘Grab it!’ Lou shouts.

Above them, a scrabbling of gravel as a figure launches down the embankment. It’s him – Aidan – slipping down the high rocky face, one arm out to balance him, while the other clamps on the rifle strap at his shoulder.

‘Who the fuck—’ says Marnie.

Lou looks up. ‘What are you—’ Her words are cut off as she leaps towards the lamb, blocking its exit. It bleats and turns back towards them, desperate for a way out.

Aidan runs off the bottom of the slope, slowing down as he swings the strap from his shoulder and takes the rifle in two hands.

‘Kids!’ Marnie yells, stepping in front of them again, her hands out like a star.

I know him, she wants to say to Leo, to Marnie, to all of them.

‘Get back,’ Aidan says calmly, walking forward and raising the rifle to his shoulder. ‘Back!’ he says, louder this time.

‘Mum!’ Stella cries out again as Lou throws herself backwards to the ground.

He shoots.

She puts her hands over her ears, the sound is so loud, ringing in her ears. There is a spray of blood splattered across the lamb’s ear and on the earth and all the way to Lou’s boot. He’s got it right in the forehead. A gaping bloody hole between its still-open eyes. The lamb’s legs twitch, then stop.

Holy fuck, he just fucking shot the fucking lamb.

Stella feels a cough that might be vomit rolling in her throat and turns around to cover her mouth. But nothing comes, and so she turns back to the scene in front of her.

Her grandma is crouching beside Phil, who is sitting on his arse, hanging his head between his knees, one bloody hand held up in front of him with the other. Grandma gets up quickly and goes to Lou, runs her hands over her body, grips her head in her hands.

‘What the hell did you think you were doing?’ Lou shouts at Aidan. ‘You could’ve killed someone!’

‘Who is this man?’ Marnie shouts over Lou.

‘It’s Aidan,’ Stella says. ‘From the camp down at the river.’ It slips out suddenly. Her mum turns to look at her, astonished. Stella feels the thrill of surprising her.

‘You can’t have a bloody gun here,’ Lou says, standing up.

‘And you sure as hell can’t bloody shoot it into a group of people!’ Phil yells, all red faced.

‘I’m a good shot,’ Aidan says quietly, as he turns away from them all. ‘She was in pain.’

‘Well, she’s got a fucking shot in the head now, hasn’t she!’ Phil yells, as Marnie crouches down over the dead lamb.

Aidan just walks away.

As he passes her, he nods. Just slightly. As though the two of them share an understanding.

Ness

Fake. Jacob’s cameras are fake. Dummy decoys to make it look like he’s watching. Too stingy to fork out for the real thing. Pretending he’s watching to keep everyone away. But no-one is watching.

The relief is a full-body experience. Ness saw it in Lou too when Tom pulled them aside to tell them. Just got to get through the weekend now, he’d said, and they’d all agreed. Avril has shifted into some higher gear, more like Lou than she has ever truly recognised, and is just giving her task after task as though the busy will keep the brainfuck at bay.

‘Right, I’ll do flatbreads,’ Avril says, all business. ‘Quicker than the dinner rolls. You get the pasta water on.’

Ness nods mechanically and rustles about in the black plastic tub of saucepans to find the big one.

‘You’ll need two big ones for the pasta,’ Avril calls out, her hands and forearms already covered in flour, ‘and a smaller pot for that sauce!’

They work in silence. The kids are up at the bonfire, thank god, missed the trauma of the lamb killing. Phil’s retreated to his caravan to nurse his wound and pride. Avril’s dealt with that, too – the nurse skills still strong, bandaging him up even though she says he needs stitches. What a balls-up.

It isn’t fair, how much Ness is asking of her mum right now. She knows she has her own life, knows she’s been trying to recalibrate since the cancer went into remission, to get out on her walks and keep up with her painting group and the volunteer work at the hospital. Knows that every time Ness asks for something – and even when she doesn’t ask but unloads on her mum about the chaos at home, the pick-ups, the logistics of this new life – that she is stealing precious time from her.

And, of course, Avril doesn’t complain, says it’s her pleasure to help, but still. Every time someone on the radio starts talking about the burdens modern families place on the older generations she feels a burn – shame, she supposes – in her throat. And now she’s gone and made her mother an accessory to murder. Nice one, Ness, she hears Lou’s voice, ripe with sarcasm, in her head. You fucking fuck-up.

The Napoli bubbles and pops and spits a glob of red onto her hand. Ness yelps and brings the hand to her mouth, sucks the sauce away.

‘You right, love?’ Avril says, banging the big cast-iron pan down on the fire grill. ‘Careful there.’

‘I’m fine,’ she says, unconvincingly. ‘You wanna wine?’

Avril shakes her head and looks at her pointedly. ‘Bit early?’

Ness feels chastened. ‘Different rules on holidays, Mum, you know that,’ she says, walking away from the boiling pots and grabbing a cold bottle from the fridge.

By the time they have all gathered, the pasta is sticking together and she realises she doesn’t have enough sauce, so she grates a whole kilo of cheese and doesn’t insist the kids have a glob of sauce on top. Marnie hands out the warm discs of garlicky flatbread and of course the kids don’t care that they are not the perfect little dinner rolls they’d planned for the camp oven. The kids do complain that there isn’t Bolognese, but Marnie shushes them quickly and they settle around the fire, stealing the adults’ chairs as per usual while Ness stands behind the trestle table shoving forkfuls of gluggy pasta and cheese into her mouth.

‘Mum,’ Kai yells across the fire circle, ‘did you know there’s poisonous mushrooms here that can KILL YOU?’

Ness raises her eyebrows, gulps down the mouthful of pasta, god she was hungry, and hungover. ‘Woah, don’t bring them down for dinner!’ she says.

Josie and Tom have declined lunch and kept at the bonfire, hoping to get it all done before the weather rolls in. They’d asked Ness to save them a bowl, which she just now realises she doesn’t have.

Winnie joins in. ‘He’s serious, Mum,’ she says, emphasising the ‘serious’ with her most serious tone. ‘Josie showed us, they’re DEATH CAPS.’

Ness frowns. ‘Really?’

Winnie nods.

Bloody Josie. Like, fine to educate the kids, but she doesn’t have kids, she doesn’t really understand. You can’t tell Kai there’s bloody death cap mushrooms and not anticipate that he’ll go and pick them! They’re not just little adults. Their brains aren’t fully developed, they don’t understand consequences.

‘Well, don’t touch them. They really will kill you. Are you listening, Kai? Do you understand?’

Kai dips his head, and Ness immediately feels guilty for her tone in front of the other kids.

‘Bring your bowls up here!’ Marnie yells. ‘Then you can head off again!’

Fucking death caps, Ness thinks, looking out over the picturesque view down to the river as the kids tumble down the grass towards the creek. It no longer feels like it did when she arrived – god, was it only yesterday afternoon? It had felt like a welcoming paradise. She glances towards the dark shade of the forest on either side, the river snaking along their southern boundary. Maybe they are not so welcome here, after all.

Lou

It’s the gun, that’s the last straw, she thinks as she heads down to Dave and Libby’s camp. Shooting the bloody lamb. This has to end here.

Lou can see smoke rising from a drum and the three of them, facing the fire and river, sitting in worn camp chairs. Be firm and reasonable, she thinks, pulling herself up to full height and throwing back her shoulders, her trick every time she goes into a room full of people she knows don’t want to listen to her.

‘Afternoon,’ she calls as she approaches, and Libby turns around without getting up.

‘Right on time,’ she says. ‘Want a cuppa?’

Lou hesitates for just a split second, then decides diplomacy might be best.

‘Great, ta.’

Dave stands up and offers his chair but Lou declines with her hand as Libby busies herself with the teapot on the small aluminium table near the caravan.

‘Looks like that rain might still come in tonight,’ Dave says.

‘Yeah,’ says Lou, accepting the cup from Libby with a nod. Not too much small talk, she thinks, don’t get distracted. The man-boy, Aidan, sits hunched forward in his chair, staring at the fire. His mother doesn’t offer him tea and he doesn’t look up at Lou.

‘You’re doing some burning off, then?’ Libby asks, pointing up the hill to where there is a billow of grey smoke rising.

‘Trying to get on top of the blackberries, bit out of control. We’ll re-veg the area once we’ve got it clear.’

‘Good on you, love,’ Libby says, glancing at Dave with a look Lou can’t interpret. ‘Kevin and Lucy had their job cut out for them once the kids all grew up and moved overseas, too much for them in the end. They were lovely, though, always.’

‘Very hospitable,’ Dave says.

‘Oh yes,’ Libby says. ‘Used to invite us up for dinner in the pub. You know they used to have a licence and everything? All the locals would come down on a Friday and Saturday night, remember that, love?’

‘Good times,’ Dave says.

‘The best, remember, bub?’ Libby says to Aidan, and he nods his head once.

‘Aidan said you got a big lamb to cook up there?’

‘Yes. Actually that’s what—’ Lou says, but Dave interrupts her.

‘Good tucker to feed the hordes,’ he says.

‘Oh yes,’ Libby says. ‘Kev and Luce used to put on barbecues for the whole crew.’

‘Good times,’ Dave says again, finally smiling. ‘Remember the smell of it cooking over the flames all day, nothing like it.’

Lou smiles quickly. ‘I’ll bring some down for you,’ she says. Don’t let them sidetrack you, she thinks, get to the point. ‘Look, I wanted to talk to you about Aidan’s gun and what needs to happen here,’ she says. ‘We’ve talked about it, all of us together, and we reckon it’s time for you to think about finding another spot, off the property.’ As she says it, Lou realises maybe she should have brought some of the others down here with her too. Dave and Libby’s expressions remain utterly neutral, as if she is still just chatting about the coming rain and not the fact that she’s basically evicting them. ‘We’re just concerned about strangers here when we have the kids,’ she goes on, ‘and the gun is an issue for us. Do you think you could find a spot in the campground down the end of the road?’

Dave clears his throat. ‘Not us you need to worry about with your kids.’

She notes Aidan shake his head once, quick, then drop his gaze again.

‘Why’s that?’ she asks, sipping the tea to stop herself saying more.

‘You met your neighbour yet?’ he says darkly.

‘Dave,’ Libby says softly, a warning.

Lou’s had enough. She puts her cup down on the table. ‘Look,’ she says, ‘it’s just not going to work, you camping here. Can you move on today?’

There, she’s said it, no pussy-footing around.

Dave drops his head. Libby is quiet at the sink. Then she turns, her face fallen and suddenly decades older.

‘Can I show you something, love?’ she asks, holding out a hand towards the river path.

Fuck’s sake, they’re more skilled at talking round in circles than the idiots from the Attorney-General’s office she has to meet with every month.

Lou doesn’t say anything but follows Libby down the well-worth path to the river. She can see now the care taken, the round river stones marking the path on both sides, laid out to curl and bend through the trunks to where the rocky bank opens out. One of the big willows hangs out over the bank, the long tassels of leaves sweeping low.

Aidan has followed them, holding a fishing rod in his hand. As he casts out, Libby turns the other way towards the willow. She ducks between the long branches, scooping them away as though they were a curtain. Lou follows.

Under the tree the light is mottled with green and shadow, cathedral like, the ripple of the river slightly quieter in here. At the base of the trunk is a little pool where the river has trickled in and dammed, dark with roots and leaves and tannins. Libby stops at a large rock, piled high with a cairn made of smaller river stones, dark then light then dark again, stacked almost to Libby’s height. She waits until Lou comes close to her, and then starts to speak.

‘We lost her in the summer. January the fifth. It was a perfect day, hot but not stifling. She was five, Aidan was six and a half.’ Libby has one hand on the stone cairn as she speaks, looking out to the river, her voice tight and low.

‘We were all here, Kevin and Lucy and their kids, cousins, friends, by the river all day, it was so lovely, the water warm enough that time of the year that the kids just played and played. Diving in then running off to play hide and seek. Building cubbies in the bush around the camp.’

Lou senses a sick feeling rising in her guts. Does not move.

‘And we were all watching them in the water, we kept track of them, we always did.’ Here Libby stops, her breathing shallower, the words seem stuck in her throat. Lou wants to reach out and touch the woman to release her, but cannot.

‘But Aidan, he was just a little boy, and he wanted a cuddle or a drink or new pants or something from back at the caravan. It’s always bothered me that I can’t remember what was so important, couldn’t then, can’t now. Strange, isn’t it?’ she says and looks at Lou, her eyes red. ‘So, I wasn’t there,’ she continues, ‘and Dave was down the river a way, with some of the boys, fishing.’

Around them the willow leaves sway and shift the light.

‘She was the best at hiding. Would stay there until tea time if no-one found her spot. Your kids like that?’

Lou nods, still unable to speak.

‘They never found her. Searched the mountains. The river. For weeks.’

Lou can’t breathe, the whole landscape seems to close in around her suddenly, infinitely dangerous.

‘Everyone blamed themselves. No-one more than us, of course.’ Libby puts one flat palm on her chest, pushes there. Lou realises she is crying and wipes her face with her sleeve.

‘We kept searching, once the coppers stopped looking. Hired private investigators to follow up on all those tips that keep coming in. Maybe someone snatched her. Took her away. It nearly broke us. Had to sell the house. Kev and Lucy, they were so good to us, understood we need to be here, to keep coming back.’ She looks at Lou and smiles sadly.

Later, Lou will think this is the moment she should have put her arm around the other woman. Touched her hand. Given her sympathies, held her and cried together. But she doesn’t. ‘When Dave said – the neighbour – did they think…?’

Libby folds her hands together, looks out at the river. ‘Oh, they questioned him, questioned everyone in town. Never found anything.’

Lou drops her head. The weight of this woman’s pain. But, oh god, the sly thought. She hates herself for even thinking it. Bodies disappear out here.

‘The hardest thing is the not knowing. I can still feel her warm little body in my arms, snuggling in. This is the only place we have that feels close to her. All we’ve got. We’ll shift the caravan if you make us, but Dave’s done the research – twenty metres either side of the river is crown land. You can’t keep us from here.’

Lou nods. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she manages to blurt out. And then she turns and walks away, fast, wiping her eyes as she ducks under the willow leaves and rushes back up the path to the others, to the children, to the precious, precious children.

Josie

The bonfire is really roaring now. The kids stayed the course with Tom for a couple of trips carrying rubbish up from the pub before they lost them to lunch. But they’ve got most of it on the heap, and Josie’s done load after load with the old wheelbarrow, collecting the tangles of dead blackberries.

They break for a moment, and Tom hands her a water bottle, which she glugs from noisily as he asks her how her plots are going.

She nods. ‘Incredible growth,’ she says. ‘More than I predicted.’

‘You reckon there’s something in it?’

She heaves another pile onto the fire. Not ready to tell him, yet, about the dead frogs. Her worries that something has gone terribly wrong. That she’s possibly set off a chain of consequences that she cannot stop. ‘Yeah, I reckon.’

Not ready to tell him, but comforted by his interest. He is thoughtful, supportive. He’s a good man. She wonders aloud if they’ve got time for a fuck.

Tom laughs her off and turns to chuck a big log on the bonfire.

She thinks about it and realises it’s been a while since they had sex. She pulls a tangle of blackberries hard, yells out to Tom, ‘You know I haven’t fallen off the hormonal cliff yet! Maybe I need a younger lover?’ Tom either doesn’t hear her or pretends he doesn’t.

The fire roars.

‘Looks good,’ Lou says as she comes up behind Jo, putting her hand on her back. She looks sweaty, pale.

‘Wind’s died down,’ Josie says, chucking another dry tangle onto the flames and hoping Lou didn’t hear her proposition her bloke and get turned down. ‘But I reckon it’ll still burn right down before the storm comes.’

Lou squints, nods, seems far away.

Josie turns back to the fire. She loves the crackle and pop, the smell of it. Fuck Tom, she’ll get her kicks from plants and fire. ‘We’ll have to plant some natives in the cleared patches next time we’re up. Keep close watch on it. They’re absolute fuckers, the blackberries, just keep coming back.’

A sound from Lou. She turns to see her friend sit down heavily on the dirt.

‘What’s up?’ she says. ‘You okay?’ She pulls off her gloves and moves over to Lou, putting her hand on her shoulder. ‘You’re so white.’ She touches her forehead. ‘Drenched.’

Lou’s eyes are far away. Is she about to pass out?

‘Tom!’ she calls out. ‘That water, quick!’

Josie kneels down beside Lou. ‘You feeling okay?’ She touches her friend’s chin, tries to get her to look at her.

‘Yeah,’ Lou says, making eye contact then looking down. ‘Sorry, just a bit faint.’ She takes a bottle from Tom, swigs at it.

‘Just sit there for a bit,’ Tom says, his expression concerned. ‘You’ve been going pretty hard.’

Lou nods, still drinking. Water dribbles down the sides of her mouth.

‘Doesn’t know how not to go hard,’ Josie says and smiles. The colour is coming back to Lou’s face. Josie leans down. ‘You don’t have to do it all yourself. We can take our time. This place isn’t going anywhere, yeah?’

Lou hangs her head. ‘Yeah,’ she says, ‘yeah, I know that. It’s fine, sorry, I’m all good.’

Tom picks up another armload of the dead blackberries, steps over to the bonfire and chucks it on.

‘Why don’t you go down and grab some lunch,’ Josie says to Tom, suddenly conscious that maybe Lou needs to debrief, that maybe his presence isn’t helping.

Tom turns to her. ‘No, you go, I’ll stay here with Lou,’ he says. ‘You need a break.’

Josie makes a face at him over Lou’s head. Normally they understand each other’s subtext. She jolts her head towards the pub.

‘You go, Tom. It’s fine,’ Lou says blankly. ‘I’m fine.’

This, it seems, is enough for Tom, who pulls off his gloves and walks away, leaving them.

Josie sits down in the dirt next to her friend. ‘You good?’

Lou shakes her head once. ‘They lost their kid here.’

‘What?’ Josie says, thinking she hasn’t heard right. ‘Who did?’

‘Dave and Libby,’ she says quietly. ‘The campers. They lost their little girl. Years ago. That’s why they still come.’

Josie breathes out, feels the weight of that in her chest. ‘That’s fucked,’ she says. Then, after a moment, ‘What do you mean lost? Like, she died?’

Lou continues to look down. ‘Went missing. They never found her.’

‘Fuck,’ Josie says again, putting her hand on Lou’s back.

They are quiet for a while, the only sound the crack and pop of the fire.

‘You couldn’t have known that when we bought the place, babe. This is not on you,’ Josie says eventually. Knows her friend, knows that she sees herself as the looker-afterer. The one who keeps everyone’s shit together.

Lou looks at her. ‘But this place, what happens here, that’s on me.’ Her face is ashen.

Josie shakes her head. ‘No,’ she says firmly, ‘we’re all in this together.’

‘I’ve fucked up.’

‘You haven’t!’

‘You don’t understand,’ Lou says, rubbing her face with her hands.

Josie pulls Lou into her, stroking her back. ‘Tell me, then.’

Lou is quiet for a long moment, then seems to decide something, raises her head and speaks. ‘We had to cover Jimmy’s share. I told Marnie the bank had agreed to increase the loan. She was so busy, barely checked anything before signing. But they wouldn’t budge. I took the money from Marnie’s campaign funds. The donor stuff. Was just meant to be for the interim. But now Jimmy’s out, and we are too tight and – fuck, Jo, I’ve fucked it.’

Josie breathes deeply. ‘Hey,’ she says, keeping the pressure on Lou’s back, ‘we can work this out.’

‘Not this,’ Lou says flatly. ‘You can’t help me with this. Everyone stretched to the fucking limit for this, and I said it would be fine, said we could all manage it. What the fuck, Josie? What have I done?’

A cracking behind them and Stella is there, throwing a cardboard box on the fire.

‘Shit, Stell,’ Josie says. ‘Sorry, I didn’t hear you come up.’

Stella shrugs. ‘All good. Mum says she made you some lunch, Josie, cos Ness forgot. It’s ready.’

Beside her, Lou wipes her face, stands up quickly. ‘You go, I’ll watch the fire.’

‘I can stay—’

‘No,’ Lou says, putting on a smile for her friend, her daughter. ‘Stell and I have got this. Truly,’ she adds, ‘I’m fine.’

Josie nods, understands Lou wants her to go. As she walks back to the pub she thinks about the money she’ll have if the experiment pays off. To hell with dead frogs and consequences. This is her friend, her oldest, dearest friend. She’ll do what needs to be done.

Flick

At the riverbank, Flick dumps a bag full of three kilos of Jimmy’s unpeeled prawns on the rocks and sighs. And here she is, doing the food prep again.

She forgets every time that with all of them together it’s like they’re a bloody scout camp. Basically, someone’s always packing up from one meal and preparing the next. And some of them end up doing that job more than others. She slings her tote bag off her shoulder, pulls out the bottle of rosé and a glass. Flick nestles the bag in the shallow water between some rocks and props the empty wash tub next to her. To be honest, she’s glad to be down here having a moment with a glass of wine and a bit of bloody respite from the intensity of it all up there. She uncaps the bottle, pours, drinks, places bottle and glass back down chinked in the rocks. She breathes deeply, taking in the sun on the water, the moss on the opposite bank trailing down the rocks to the river.

Bloody Phil and his stupid lamb stunt and now his cut hand and bruised pride. Why can’t he just chill the fuck out? She fell in love with that slightly arrogant chest puff of his, the way he would open doors for her, his confidence – in life, in bed, in what he thought. The way he just assumed she’d give him her number that night at the gig, sliding a drink across the table to her, friend of a friend enough that it was sexy instead of creepy. But that schtick has worn off.

She cracks the heads off each prawn, piffing them out into the river and then peeling back the shell with her nails. She’s probably not supposed to chuck them in the river, but the current will take them down. And anyway, who’s gonna tell on her? This is their place now. They make the rules.

A bird calls loud and long, the river eddies and whorls. Flick drinks, peels, dipping her hands in the water every now and then. She smells like prawn. She’ll need a swim when she’s done.

Flick takes off her shoes, shimmies out of her jeans. Pulls her T-shirt over her head. She looks over her shoulders. Can’t get away with going nude, but she doesn’t want to get her only sports bra wet. She pulls it off, smells the sour sweat of it. Phil showers in the van but she hates it. The closed-in soapiness of it. Much prefers a cold dip.

She steps one foot into the shallows, then the other. It’s cold. Freezing. That just-out-of-the-mountain good cold. Maybe this kind of cold, this kind of water can really wash away one’s sins. She humphs. What bullshit. Some stains run too deep. She stretches her arms high above her head, sniffs her armpits.

‘Can I join you?’

She wraps her arms around her boobs, hunches and turns her head.

It’s Tom. Of course it’s Tom.

‘Jesus, you gave me a fright,’ she says, turning back to the water. Is this some kind of fucking test? Fuck you, universe, she thinks. What are you playing at?

‘Sorry, can go downstream if you want,’ he says from behind her.

But she does not hear footsteps.

‘Nah, whatever, stay.’

She can hear the rumple of his clothes as he undresses. ‘Keep your shorts on,’ she calls over her shoulder.

‘Need to clear my head, been a bit of drama so far, huh?’ he says from behind her.

‘Isn’t there always?’ she says. Cold, cold at her knees, her hips now, she just needs to get her tits under the water so she can turn around and not feel so out of control.

‘Phil’s hand okay?’

‘Yeah,’ she says. Flick is embarrassed for Phil, trying so hard to prove himself, doesn’t like what it says about her.

‘Far out – it’s cold.’ Tom takes in a sharp breath.

‘Toughen up,’ she says, then dives under. Instant freeze in her brain, her eye sockets, the shock of it so intense that she finds her feet on the rocky bottom and pushes up, gasping for air. ‘Fuck!’ she yells, ducking her shoulders under again and wiping the water from her eyes with her hands, turning to look at Tom, who is grinning.

‘Impressive,’ he says.

She breathes deeply, pulling oxygen into the bottom of her lungs, feeling the calm of the cold descend on her. ‘Five minutes,’ she says.

‘What’s that?’ he says, taking a step towards her.

‘How long you should stay in to reap the benefits.’

‘Is that so?’ he says. ‘Dunno if I’ll last that long. What if you just need to get the ash and dirt off you?’

‘Well, I only got in to get prawn juice off me, but I’m making it count. It’s what the wellness gurus say,’ she says.

‘And you subscribe to that, do you?’ He takes another step. ‘Jesus, it’s chilly.’

‘Fuck no,’ Flick says, laughing as she dives under again.

When she surfaces, he is gone, and for a moment she is still, breathing heavy. Then he jumps up close to her, laughing and whooping and flicking his hair to spray her.

She splashes back, then stops, dismayed at the girly flirtation. She strokes out towards the other side.

Tom follows her. It is deeper here and they bob, treading water. ‘Two minutes,’ she says.

‘River’s pretty clear,’ he says, dropping his eyes from her face to her tits floating just below the surface. He grins.

‘Creep,’ she says, jolted, pleased, unmoored.

He swims towards her, lowers his head.

‘All gone?’ he says

‘What?’

‘The ash?’

She stretches her hand forward, runs her fingers quickly through his wet hair. ‘All good,’ she says.

As she goes to pull her hand back, he grabs it on the surface of the water, claps his fingers around hers and pulls it to his face. Breathes in.

‘What are—’ She starts as he holds her hand, her gaze.

He laughs to interrupt her. ‘Still smell like prawns.’

She pulls her hand back. ‘Arsehole,’ she says.

There is one part of her, where the wine and the moment haven’t hit so hard, where the rational self is still pulsing strongly, that wants to laugh at him. That wants to call out the cliché of this older man in the river with her, all wet skin and words and eyes. He knows exactly what he’s doing but doesn’t have the balls to actually say it, makes it subtle enough to laugh off as nothing at all. Maybe she’d have fucked another builder if conditions were right. Got it out of the system, could have just owned that it was a thing she needed – no, she wanted – to do and left it at that. Wouldn’t have fallen down the rabbit hole of rationalising it as fate, as chemistry, as undeniable, inevitable. It’s got nothing to do with Tom, really – she just needed a warm and willing body. Maybe she’d have been held back if she’d needed to go the extra mile with a stranger. Maybe, in fact, it wasn’t about Tom at all, but about Josie? If she was back in therapy she might be tempted to pull at this loose thread, to test it. Was it a power play? Did she have something to prove? Had she always wanted to get one over on Josie – who is older, cleverer, wilder? Was the thrill in fucking Tom actually about fucking over Josie? God, she is base. She swallows. If people knew, if people knew the thoughts in her brain they would be revolted, aghast.

And yet.

There is another part of her – the wild, messy, up-to-her-teeth-in-the-bullshit-sameness-of-her-life part – that wants everything else. Wants to reach forward and grab his face in her hands, wants him to grip her hips in the water, wants to be kissed, wants to kiss, wants to fuck him right there on the river stones.

‘How long? he asks.

‘One minute to go.’

‘Should we make it ten?’ he says, smirking.

‘No, we should not, I can’t feel my feet.’

‘You got a towel?’

‘Nope. You?’

‘Nope.’

‘Sucks to be us,’ she says.

He grins. ‘Doesn’t it just?’

Under the water, his foot meets her leg. Once, as if by accident, then again.

‘Thirty seconds,’ she says, keeping his gaze.

They are closer now, could say it was the current, but it isn’t.

The brush of fingers on her belly. Her waist. Light, light as if they weren’t touching at all. Up, now, his hand glancing past her right nipple.

‘Ten seconds,’ she says.

She reaches out under the water, fingers touch chest, ripple over his hand.

‘Five seconds.’

‘Mum!’

Flick starts. Takes a quick breath, sinks under the water and kicks out towards the bank, only coming up for air when her knees scrape the bottom.

She lumbers out to where Reuben is standing. ‘Where are your bathers?’ he says.

Grabbing her T-shirt, she wipes her face, pulls it over her head. ‘Had to go in in my undies.’

Reuben is looking over her shoulder at Tom. ‘Where are the Oreos?’ he says.

‘In the box,’ she answers. Slicking her hair back over her head, hiding her face in her T-shirt to pat it dry. Jesus, what did he see?

‘Hey, Tom,’ Reuben calls over the water. ‘You finished the new toilet? Can we use it yet?’

‘Nearly!’ Tom shouts back. ‘Come help me with the finishing touches?’

‘Nah, we need a referee for our game. Can you come, Mum?’

‘No worries, have fun,’ says Tom.

‘Mum!’ Reuben gestures for her to follow, he’s keen, his face all lit up with being included with the other kids, dirt on his skinny little knees. ‘Come on!’ he calls again, turning and scampering back up the path.

She flips her jeans over her shoulder, slips into her boots, balling the socks in one hand as she reaches down and grabs the wet bag of prawns with the other.

‘Thanks for the swim,’ Tom says as he walks out of the water. ‘You didn’t make five minutes, though, probably need a rematch.’

‘Not a chance,’ she says, already starting up the track.

Stella

‘Why were you crying, Mum?’ Stella asks as Lou busies herself raking the edges of the bonfire.

‘What?’ Lou says, pretending not to have heard. Stella hates it when her mums do this – buying time to work out a lie.

After all the Snapchat bullshit, the welfare woman had said that it was ‘troubling’ – that was the kind of old-fashioned word she used – it ‘troubled’ her that Stella wasn’t remorseful at all.

‘I was just being honest,’ Stella had said.

‘I guess sometimes we have to be judicious with our honesty,’ the woman had replied.

Stella must have made a face, but also what the fuck was ‘judicious’?

The woman went on. ‘I mean that sometimes honesty isn’t always the best policy.’

‘Okay,’ Stella had said, but there were still twenty minutes to go in their session and this counsellor was determined to counsel.

‘Like, just say your friend got a terrible new haircut and asks if it looks okay. It would be kinder to say it looks great – even if you don’t love it.’

‘I would never say that.’

‘Yeah,’ the welfare woman had said eventually, ‘I can see that.’

All lies are the same. That’s how we got into this mess with the planet, isn’t it? People too shit-scared to speak the truth. The politicians get the briefings from the scientists that say, Um, excuse me, we have a rather large fucking catastrophe on our hands, and the people in charge just go on holding babies and smiling and saying everything’s gonna be okay.

Stella eyeballs her mum over the bonfire. ‘You were crying, I saw you. What’s wrong?’

Lou pauses, leans on the rake, then looks at her. Stella can see she is tossing something over in her brain. Her face kind of cramped and worried. But then she sighs and Stella knows she’s going to get the real story from her mum this time.

‘I went down and talked to the campers by the river and they told me, and please don’t tell the other kids this’ – Lou makes meaningful eyes at Stella – ‘the reason they camp on the river is because they lost their little girl here, years ago, like when you were still a baby.’

‘Like lost lost?’

‘They never found her,’ Lou says quietly.

Stella feels the magnitude of it in her guts. As if she has to take a huge shit. ‘That’s terrible,’ she says.

‘Yeah, it is.’ Lou goes back to the raking. ‘But, also, we’re not comfortable with them being here, you know, so that makes it really hard, because I can see it from their perspective.’

‘Just let them stay.’

‘It’s not as simple as that, Stella.’

‘Why not? If it’s important to them? They have a connection here, we’ve been here for, like, a minute.’

‘Yes, but then there’s the gun – that’s just not on – he hasn’t come up to you or the kids or anything, has he?’

‘Nah,’ she says. Turns out there is a time to be judicious with the truth.

‘Anyway,’ her mum goes on, ‘you asked, and you’ve said time and time again to be honest with you – so there it is. But it’s not your worry, okay? This is for the adults to sort out.’

‘Right. Yeah.’ Stella kicks at a burning twig that has escaped the bonfire, pushes it back in towards the heat.

She sees Lou clench her jaw. ‘Have you got some good pics for Mum’s socials – for Ginny?’ she asks lightly.

‘Some. Just not a group shot yet. I gotta get that.’

‘Maybe tonight?’ Lou says, stopping to look at the sky. ‘Although that storm looks like it’s gonna be here soon. Your swag all closed up?’

Stella sees her chance. ‘Shit, no,’ she says. ‘I’ll go do it now.’

‘Can you check ours? And Benji’s?’ Lou calls after her.

‘Yep!’ Stella shouts over her shoulder.

There’s enough leftover garlic bread to slip three bits from the mound under the foil, wrap them up and set off down towards the river. She goes through the tree line, giving their camp a wide berth, and finds him near the biggest willow, sitting in a blue camp chair on the bank, fishing rod in the river.

‘Hi,’ she says.

Aidan nods.

‘Brought you down some garlic bread. It’s my grandma’s, she’s a pretty good cook.’ She plonks down on the stones a metre or so away from him, placing the bread package between them.

‘Thanks.’

They sit in the quiet. Every now and then there are little plips in the surface of the river and she finds herself concentrating hard to see if they are fish circling his bait. The willow fronds bend and sway, sometimes stroking the water. She likes the name Willow Creek. Even if it’s fully settler-colonial. The willows just seem so ancient. Kind of fairyland creatures. She remembers the one in The Lord of the Rings. Bit spooky, kind of malicious. She looks at the twisted roots, the way they seem to both strangle and hold the bank together. Imagines them as long fingers, grabbing and curling and pulling creatures into the lair beneath them.

‘My mum told me about your sister,’ she says finally. ‘That’s really fucked.’

He looks at her, surprised. Then away again, winds in his reel. Checks his bait, stands to cast it back out. The lure makes a little plink as it enters the water. He sits down again. She waits.

‘I was really little,’ he says after a few minutes.

She doesn’t know if he is starting a story or saying that he was too little to remember.

‘When you’re out hunting, do you ever think you might just find her?’ she asks. Once the question is out of her mouth she realises how dumb it sounds, but, to her surprise, he answers quickly.

‘All the time. Sometimes I think she’ll just walk out of the bush. And I could take her down to Mum and Dad. They keep getting these pictures done, every few years, like I dunno how they do it, some expert, where they predict what she might look like now. She’d be twenty, now. Year or two older than you.’

Stella barks with laughter. ‘I’m only fifteen.’

He looks at her, surprised. ‘Oh.’

‘You reckon you’ll still hunt tonight, with the storm?’

‘Yeah, nah, dunno. Not if it’s bad, eh?’ He doesn’t seem very interested in her, but he’s not not interested either. She can tell by the way he keeps half-glancing towards her then away.

‘I’m going home tomorrow.’ Does she say it because she wants him to say that’s a shame? That she should stay? She doesn’t know how to play this game. Isn’t sure she wants to, really. It’s just. The real of him. Not one of the boys from school – an older one – all to herself.

‘Righto.’

Not exactly enthusiastic but she can’t seem to stop herself. ‘How long will you stay here?’

‘Come up for weekends every month at least. We’ll head home Monday morning. Gotta work.’

‘Are you at uni?’

‘At TAFE. Electrics and stuff. Gotta job at JB Hi-Fi.’

‘Cool.’

‘Get a good discount. I saw you with your camera, you into photography?’

Finally, some interest. She nods in response.

‘Can give you a discount if you come in. Where do you live?’

‘Near the city,’ she says.

‘Ha,’ he barks, as if to say, Of course you do. ‘Yeah, nah, we live in Bairnsdale. It’s not that far from here.’

She is disappointed that they’ve slid into small talk. Wants to ask again about his sister, wonders if she could make him cry.

‘I’ll be heading round to get the trail cameras in the morning, can show you how they work, maybe?’

‘Cool, that’d be good,’ she says. At least that’ll be something out of this stupid weekend.

He reels in the line. ‘Anyway,’ he says, as though he expects her to do something.

‘Yeah,’ she says, standing up, brushing off the arse of her jeans. ‘I should be getting back.’

He inclines his head behind her. ‘Maybe don’t walk back that way.’

Stella looks behind her, through the trees and down the river. In the water, she can see two heads, circling each other close. She leans forward, squints. Is that Tom and Flick? She takes out her phone, snaps a pic.

‘What are you doing?’ he asks lightly.

‘Capturing our first weekend at Willow Creek,’ she says, snapping another few pics as Flick’s head snaps around towards the bank and she rushes out of the water. ‘People go wild for behind the scenes, you know?’

‘Yeah,’ he laughs, that smile again, the satisfaction it brings. ‘They sure do.’

Lou

Tom comes back up from the river and tells Lou he wants to explain how the new toilet will work.

‘You didn’t tell Josie, did you?’ he asks quietly as she follows him behind the pub.

‘No,’ she says. ‘Of course I didn’t. We’ve got to keep this contained, we agreed.’

Tom nods. ‘Good,’ he says. ‘That’s good.’

‘But, Tom,’ she adds, more urgently, as they approach the structure and he opens the new door, ‘I feel sick. Have we done the right thing? How can you be sure no-one’s gonna come looking for him?’

‘They won’t,’ says Tom, turning to her and holding her gaze. ‘We’re out of here tomorrow. His tractor’s back home, there is nothing to tie us to him. So can we just—’

‘Except his fucking body!’

He drops his head. ‘Lou, please, you have to forget about it.’

‘Forget about it?’ she says incredulously. ‘How the fuck am I supposed to forget about it? I keep seeing him on that fence post, his feet shuffling in the dirt while he died slowly and I just stood there. My fucking shoulders ache from dragging a body around. For fuck’s sake, Tom, how do you suggest I fucking forget about it?’ She is breathing hard, feels like she is spitting out venom, spitting out every panic that has been coursing through her while she’s been trying to hold her shit together for all of them. But, fuck, she cannot hold this.

Tom steps towards her, grips her shoulders. ‘Lou,’ he says firmly, ‘I know Josie doesn’t know, but what she said to you up there at the fire stands, yeah? You’re not alone with this. We’re all with you. This place is worth protecting, worth fighting for. You’ve worked so hard for this, and we are so close, so close. Just, here,’ he turns away, letting go of her arms, and picks up a white bucket from inside the outhouse, pulling off its lid. ‘Sawdust, put your hands in it.’

She shakes her head. ‘Tom, seriously—’

‘I am serious,’ he says, taking her hand and plunging it into the bucket of sawdust. ‘Grab a handful of this, now come in here.’

He urges her into the small space. It smells of new pine, a pristine white seat. He stands beside her, lifts the toilet lid. ‘So, you have your shit, piss, whatever. Urine gets separated into a different compartment inside the system, then you chuck a handful of sawdust on top. Go on, chuck it in,’ he says, nudging her forward.

She sighs, throws the grainy sawdust into the dark hole, wipes her hand on her shorts.

‘Exactly,’ he says triumphantly. ‘And then that breaks down all the shit over time and in about a year we dig it out and let the compost mature. It’s a big system, have a look outside – there’s a small door to get in to empty it, easy as.’

She steps back out of the small space, nodding slowly as he points out the small, hinged door.

‘We’ll get a sign on here, one of the kids can make it. Less toilet paper the better, so it should say that, no pads or tampons or anything in the system, maybe a little diagram of how to do the sawdust.’

She continues to nod, mute from the onslaught of his instructions.

He comes in close to her. ‘This is how it works, Lou. We turn the shit into something good. Into this fucking beautiful compost that we’ll use to grow good food.’

‘Literally spinning shit into gold,’ Lou says wryly. ‘That’s the clumsy metaphor you’re asking me to swallow right now?’

Tom inclines his head. ‘I’m not a wordsmith, mate, but yeah.’

Lou sighs again, nodding slowly.

‘Less than twenty-four hours, Lou, and we’re outta here for what, another month, two months? The guy’s obviously a loner. By the time anyone comes looking for him he’ll be a pile of old bones and it’ll be too late for forensics. Old bloke dies in the bush, a tragic fucking accident.’

She looks at him now. ‘Thank you,’ she says. ‘You’ve been solid.’

He nods. ‘Come on,’ he says, ‘let’s bribe the kids to help with the promise of taking the first shit in here.’

She smiles, finally, because maybe everything is going to be okay.

Stella

Stella sits in the front of the car with her notebook. She is thinking about the lamb and the hole in its head. She is thinking about how she could make that feel real on a stage. It could be the climax – the turning point at the end of Act Two. It’s not like it’s gonna be a proper play, more a series of scenes of their time here. And the lamb – what a gift. She can still smell the strange, bitter metal of the gunshot. Aidan’s sweat as he walked past her. How do you get smells on a stage?

‘Hi.’ A head in through the open window. It’s Winnie with Eden clamped on her hip. Eden has half a squashed banana in her hand and is swinging one sticky banana-y hand towards Stella.

Stella leans back, annoyed.

‘Are you writing the play?’ Winnie asks, opening the car door and leaning right in to see the notebook.

‘Maybe,’ Stella says, slamming her notebook closed.

Eden reaches her sticky hands out to Stella. ‘Cuddle,’ she says. Despite the gross banana, Stella softens a little, leans over to hug the child.

‘What should Eden wear for her costume?’ Winnie says.

Stella blinks, focuses. ‘Just her own clothes’ll be okay,’ she says.

She needs to think, an idea is swirling in the mess.

Winter cocks her head. ‘Like a dress, maybe?’

‘Yep,’ says Stella, pulling back from Eden and reaching out to close the door.

‘Can I leave her with you?’ Winnie asks. ‘I’ll be back in a minute.’

Stella sighs. But Eden is already clambering up onto her lap. ‘Stella,’ she says in her little three-year-old voice, and it’s hard to resist. The wanting of the child. ‘Whatever, fine,’ Stella says, popping Eden in the passenger seat next to her. ‘You stay here,’ she says. ‘Want these?’ She pulls the half packet of biscuits from her pocket and gives them to the little girl.

Then she pulls out the notebook again. DEATH OF LAMB? she writes. CLIMAX?

Phil says he has to skin it tonight. Maybe she can take the skin. That would be so disgusting and so excellent. That would elicit a response.

‘Stay there,’ Stella repeats to Eden and she grabs her phone and steps out of the car.

Phil is behind the pub, standing over the lamb and yelling at his phone. She thinks about taking a picture but imagines he’d yell at her.

‘What are you gonna do with the skin?’ she asks.

Phil looks up, startled. ‘What?’ he says, frowning.

‘Don’t you have to skin it?’

Phil sighs. ‘Yeah, I do. The lamb guy said he’d give me a hand.’

The way he is looking at the dead lamb, like maybe he is scared of it? She likes it when adults accidentally show how they are really feeling.

He realises she is still standing there.

‘Why?’ he asks with a bit of a smile. ‘You wanna help?’

Phil’s a bit of a douchebag but he’s no worse than the rest of them. At least he doesn’t pretend to be cool.

‘No,’ she says, ‘I want the skin.’

‘Christ,’ he says, eyes wide. She has shocked him and she is glad. ‘What for?’ he asks slowly, frowning.

‘Can I have it?’ she says, ignoring the question.

‘It’ll be pretty grotty,’ Phil says, suddenly laughing, ‘but sure, knock yourself out.’

‘Stella!’ Winnie calls from behind her. ‘Where’s Eden?’

‘In the car,’ she calls over her shoulder. ‘Thanks,’ she says to Phil.

Within a minute, Winnie is back beside her. ‘She’s not in the car,’ she says.

Stella takes her notebook out to sketch the image she now has in her head. ‘Yeah, she is. I gave her biscuits.’

‘Well, she’s not there. Help! Mum’ll kill me.’

‘Shit,’ Stella murmurs under her breath but loud enough that she sees Winnie flinch. ‘She’ll be hiding in the back seat or something.’

But Eden is not hiding in the back seat. She is not crouched down eating lost chips. She hasn’t climbed into the very back to make a nest out of the piles of clothes. She is not sitting against one of the tyres, hasn’t slid in under the car.

‘Eden!’ Winnie calls, loud and sharp.

‘It’s fine,’ Stella says. ‘She’ll have gone to find your mum.’

Winnie shakes her head, her eyes brimming. ‘I’m gonna get in so much trouble.’

No, I’ll be the one to get in trouble, Stella thinks, putting her notebook back in her pocket and hurrying after Winnie to where they can look down over the clearing.

‘Eden!’ Winnie calls again, cupping her hands around her mouth.

From behind them a voice calls out.

‘You guys have her, right?’ It’s Ness. ‘You said you had her, Winnie?’

Winnie starts to cry. ‘She was in the car, Mum, Stella had her in the car.’

Stella feels a flash of anger.

‘She was just here, she’ll be here somewhere,’ Stella calls out.

‘EDEN!’ Ness starts to yell.

‘Everything okay?’ her grandma shouts from up near the fire.

‘You shouldn’t have left her,’ Ness shouts, turning on Winnie.

Winnie is crying, yelling out Eden’s name.

‘Stella!’ Ness shouts. ‘Where is she?’

Lou

This is not happening.

This cannot be happening.

This will be Lou’s penance.

This, the price she will pay.

She thinks of the little girl, somewhere out there, lost for over a decade now. The bush on either side of the clearing rears up, dark and dangerous and terrifying. So many places, hidey holes and old mine shafts, the creek, the river, the rocky cliffs.

She feels the wrench in her guts. Thinks she might shit herself.

She sees Marnie yelling at Stella, ‘Where? When did she leave?’

‘She can’t have got far,’ someone is saying.

They shout her name. Eden, Eden, Eden. The slamming of car doors.

‘Check the river!’

The kids run around, catching the panic. Eden, Eden, Eden.

‘Someone check the caravan.’

Ness is screaming. Avril is white.

She lost Stella once. Only once. Only a few minutes. In a country town on their way somewhere, stopped for a pie and a coffee. She took Stella, toddling on her little two-year-old legs, into the op-shop while Marnie waited in line at the bakery. They looked at the toys. Lou browsed the books while Stella played with a plastic monstrosity that dinged. Then Lou realised it wasn’t dinging anymore. She was gone. She had been right there. The ladies tutted and stared as she ran onto the street, met Marnie there, with coffees and paper bags in her hand, her startled look. Stella, was all she could gasp, I can’t find Stella. She remembers the splash of the coffee on the pavement. She had wanted to explode, to shake the whole damn town until Stella popped back out. She had felt, truly, like her guts were being pulled from her belly. And then the op-shop lady called out. They’d turned around to find their daughter. Holding the stupid toy and whole and brilliant and there, right there. She’d crawled under a cupboard. She was playing hide and seek. Lou did not stop clutching her for an hour before Marnie gently told her they needed to get on the road.

She will never forgive herself. This is on her. This is her fault.

Eden! Eden! Eden!

Later – how long? A moment? A minute? A lifetime? – someone shouts from down near the river, Got her! And the shout echoes up and up, They’ve got her, we’ve got her, they found her.

Lou runs. And there is Ness sprinting down towards Tom and Stella and… Libby. Eden, holding Libby’s hand.

Lou feels like hugging and tackling and laughing and roaring. She has been granted a reprieve. She has not lost a child.

‘She was looking for ‘the magic birdie’? Quite intent on it, she was. Just bringing her back to you when I heard you calling,’ Libby says. ‘You really shouldn’t let the little ones wander. The river, you know, the old mines.’

Ness is crying, has Eden in her arms. The little girl is rubbing her mum’s cheeks. ‘Don’t cry,’ she is saying. ‘Don’t cry, Mama.’

‘I thought Stella had her,’ Winter is saying to Avril, who is trying to calm the girl and her tears. ‘She said she had her. I TOLD her I was going to the caravan.’

Lou looks back to where Stella is standing, her arms folded, a little way back up the hill. She walks towards her, but Stella turns away.

‘Stella!’ Lou calls out, feeling all the emotion bubbling up. ‘Stella!’ she calls again when her daughter doesn’t respond. ‘Wait!’

Stella stops, doesn’t turn around.

‘That can’t happen again,’ Lou says tightly, rounding on her daughter, who is bristling, her whole body clamped in on itself.

‘It’s not my job to look after her,’ she spits out.

‘It is, if you take it on!’

‘I was busy!’

Lou roars, ‘We’re all fucking busy!’

Stella flinches, her face, all of a sudden, is that of the eight-year-old girl Lou used to be allowed to cuddle.

‘Sorry, sorry,’ Lou says. ‘It’s just, no troll left behind, you know the rule.’

Stella laughs cruelly. ‘You don’t care about the rules. You’ve hardly known where me and Benji are all weekend.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

Stella rolls her eyes and scoffs.

‘I expected more of you, Stell.’

Stella raises her head, her eyes flash. ‘Oh my GOD! You can’t get pissed and make me in charge of all the kids and then lose it if I’m not on top of where every single one of them is. I’m not the fucking babysitter!’

Her daughter is spitting and red faced, so much anger, she is bursting with it.

‘Hey, okay, take a breath,’ Lou says, reaching towards her.

‘You’re such a HYPOCRITE!’

Lou shakes her head. ‘Okay, we can have this discussion calmly. I hear that you’re angry.’

‘Don’t DO that to me!’

‘Do what, Stell?’

‘Manage me. Make me feel like I’m crazy and out of control. You’re, like, GASLIGHTING me.’

‘I am not gaslighting you, Stella. That’s a big thing to say.’

‘I hate this place.’

‘Stell…’ Lou keeps her voice low, tries to de-escalate.

‘No!’ Stella says, stepping forward and pointing at Lou’s chest. ‘I actually hate you!’

Lou winces. ‘We don’t use that word,’ she says, as calmly as she can.

‘Well, I do. Mum,’ Stella spits, ‘I use that word.’

Flick

They found her, thank Christ. Of course, one of the kids was going to go AWOL. That was always going to happen. She loves Ness, she knows it’s hard right now, but she’s been lax and it’s not okay to just expect poor Stella to look after them all. Leo and Reuben are big enough, don’t need looking after, but Eden needs more eyes on her.

The threatening storm means they’ve gone early with dinner and laid out the trestles on the verandah, the camp chairs cramped in. Avril’s even rustled up some tablecloths, got the fairy lights on and twinkling against the dark clouds, and it looks, Flick admits, pretty bloody magnificent.

She pops a bottle of bubbles. Feels the energy of the day, of Tom’s hands on her under the water. She’s gonna get pissed. Proper loose.

‘Stop it, I don’t like it!’

She looks down to where the kids are playing on the slope. Kai is brandishing a stick twice the length of his arm at Reuben, who is red faced and yelling.

‘Reuben!’ she calls out in admonishment at the same time as Avril starts yelling at Kai to drop the stick.

Kai holds the stick up and squints one eye and steps forward towards Reuben. ‘En garde!’ he cries.

Flick sighs, puts down the glass. ‘Boys!’ she yells and starts to move off the verandah.

‘GOTCHA!’ Kai shouts as Reuben stumbles away from him and sits on his arse, starting to cry.

‘Kai!’ Ness yells. ‘Put it down, NOW.’ She rushes over and pulls the stick from Kai’s grip.

Flick gets to them next. ‘Come on, Reubs, you’re alright,’ she says as she pulls Reuben up. She doesn’t like how Phil tries to toughen the boys up, but she’s also no fan of mollycoddling.

Next to them, Ness is bobbing down, speaking softly to Kai. ‘We can’t do that, babe, remember?’ she says. ‘Reuben didn’t like it.’

‘Reuben’s okay,’ Flick says, tousling her son’s hair. ‘Aren’t you, Reubs?’

‘S’fine,’ Reuben says, head down. ‘Doesn’t matter.’

‘It does matter, Reuben,’ Ness says. ‘You didn’t consent to that kind of play. Kai, how can we move forward from this?’

‘I’m sorry for using my sword on you without your consent.’

Flick rolls her eyes. ‘C’mon, Ness, let ’em sort it out, come have a drink with me.’

Ness frowns as the boys run off. ‘We have to teach them, otherwise they’ll turn into those gross manosphere boys.’

Flick puts her arm over her best friend’s shoulder, leading her back up to the verandah. ‘Look at this place, Ness, what we’ve made. I think our kids will turn out just fine.’

The prawns have been barbecued and Marnie’s arranged them artfully on a big platter with little bowls of chilli-lime salt, and there is cured salmon and pickled octopus and three different salads and cut lemons and loaves of bread sliced thick next to slabs of yellow butter. There is champagne popping and bottles of wine especially selected to pair with the dinner and, fuck, Jimmy is OTT, but he also delivers, and the gang, even the kids, are hoeing in already – taking prawns by the handful and tucking paper towels into their filthy T-shirt collars and refusing the hint to congregate at one end of the table, so it is organised chaos, from which Flick now stands back to observe.

‘This looks marvellous,’ Avril says, raising her glass. ‘Thank you, everyone. Thank you, Jimmy – wherever you are!’

‘Why isn’t he here?’ Kai asks, ‘He’s fun.’

‘Yeah, how did he get out of the hard slog?’ Flick wants to know, laughing, pouring another glass. ‘He better be ready to pull his weight next time, can’t just think that sending fancy seafood is his contribution.’

Marnie clears her throat. ‘Actually, Jimmy is out. Of the ownership, I mean, things didn’t work out financially for him, so he’s given up his share.’

‘What?’ Flick says.

‘Thought he was loaded!’ Tom says, laughing. ‘Isn’t he, like, drowning in crypto?’

Marnie smiles, but Flick can see it’s slightly pained. ‘Evidently not right now.’

‘So, what does that mean for the rest of us? Did you cover his share?’ Flick asks Lou and Marnie.

Marnie looks at Lou, who is looking sick.

‘Yeah, for the minute,’ Lou says quickly. ‘But it’s something we need to talk about.’

Suddenly Stella pipes up, ‘Why don’t you offer Jimmy’s share to Libby and Dave and Aidan down by the river?’

Marnie looks at Stella. ‘We don’t even know them, Stell, we can’t do that.’

‘They’ve got guns!’ Flick says. Over her dead body will they share this place they’ve put their own cash into with some armed randoms.

‘But they have a connection to the place, obviously,’ Stella says, loudly this time, ‘because of their daughter—’

‘Stella,’ Lou says sharply and shakes her head, eyes daggers.

Flick looks at Stella, who is pursing her lips, eyebrows raised, delivering dagger eyes back at her mum.

‘Do they have a daughter too?’ Flick asks, confused.

‘Should we get that group photo, Stella?’ Lou says quickly, standing up. ‘While everyone’s here?’

‘Phil’s not here,’ Flick says, sighing dramatically. ‘He’s with his bloody lamb.’

‘After dinner, then,’ Lou says. ‘Don’t forget, Stell. Now, kids, tell us about this play you’re putting on tomorrow?’

The kids start to talk over each other as Flick leans forward, grabs the platter of prawns and circles the table, dishing them out to whoever has empty plates as more drinks are poured and the food is slowly and surely demolished.

Phil

He’s had to call Paddy the lamb guy back to skin it. His hand, he explains, bit of a cut, can’t grip the knife properly, and Paddy has the grace not to say anything. Phil rubs the back of his neck now, takes a swig from the cold can and almost moans in pleasure. He’s brought over a sixpack for Paddy to thank him while he works, plus the extra cash he’s going to throw him, of course. And when the guy asked him if he’d join him, it felt rude to say no.

So, here he is, bandaged hand, sucking down on a beer for the first time in months while he watches another man skin the fucking lamb he failed to kill. What a trifecta of fucking loserdom.

The sky is dark and menacing and he knows it’s gonna piss down soon. Hopes it clears by morning so he can get the fire roaring for the spit. Phil has set the alarm for 5 am. Needs to be up and at it. He’s missing dinner. Flick’s come over to try and get him to join, Leo too, but he waved them away. Pretending he’s needed here to help, but really he just can’t face them all, their faces shaded with some strange mirthful pity, the continual checking if his hand is okay. He makes fists with his hands, deliberately pressing into the cut.

‘You want me to talk you through it?’ Paddy says once he’s standing with the sheep on its back between his legs, enormous knife in one hand.

‘Go on, then,’ says Phil. ‘Might be able to give it a crack myself next time.’

‘Nothing to it, mate,’ Paddy says, placing his knife point near the end of the sheep’s hind leg and slicing right down the inside. ‘Practice makes perfect, yeah?’

For the next fifteen minutes, Phil watches as the man in front of him wields his knife like he’s an artist. From the precision of his cuts, Phil can see exactly where he would have messed it up, how fine some of the nicks have to be – around the arse, down the belly – so as not to cause blood and guts and shit to explode everywhere.

Again, the other man is gracious when he asks Phil to give him a hand hauling the sheep up to hang so he can get the skin off. Phil uses his good hand and his shoulder to help jostle it up to hang off the beam and then steps back as Paddy uses his fist to punch between the white sinew and the inside of the woolly skin, each hit making a sucking sound as it tears the skin away from the lamb.

And finally, what was a skittering, bleating thing a few hours back, begins to look more familiar to him. The long, white-streaked carcass of markets and butcher shops.

Deftly, Paddy guts the thing, slicing at the windpipe and pulling the huge tumble of globular intestines and stomach and lungs down so that he can separate the bladder and bowel, the gall bladder – these he chucks into one bucket. The head with its lolling tongue, the heart and liver, the kidneys, he names them as he cuts and puts them into a bowl. ‘You want these?’ he asks.

‘Nah, mate, you take ’em,’ Phil says, grateful.

While Paddy’s wiping down the carcass with an old towel he’s pulled from the back of his ute, Tom appears around the corner of the pub with two plates piled high with prawns and salad.

‘Hungry work?’ he says, handing Phil a plate and offering one to Paddy.

‘Ahh, thanks, really,’ says Paddy. ‘But I got dinner waiting for me at home.’

‘No worries. You all sorted then, she’s looking good?’ Tom says, grabbing a prawn off the untaken plate and chewing on it.

‘She’s come up a beauty,’ Paddy says, using the same towel on his hands, standing back to admire his work. ‘Though I’m guessing Jacob put the pressure on, to take her live? He likes fucking with the out-of-towners.’

Tom looks at Phil. ‘Something like that, yeah,’ Phil says and shoves a forkful of salad in his mouth.

‘You close with him then, Jacob?’ Tom asks Paddy.

‘Yeah, nah, not unless he’s buying meat. Keeps to himself down here, doesn’t much like visitors.’

‘He got family?’ Tom asks.

Phil can’t help but think that Tom is on Lou’s bandwagon, trying to gather info that might help with this boundary dispute. It’s not like Phil is going to sing his praises anymore. The old bloke clearly set him up, wanted him to fail. Well, bugger him, he thinks, looking at the carcass. He’s done it.

‘Nah,’ Paddy says, ‘not round here, anyway. More of a lone wolf.’

‘Yeah, right,’ Tom says. ‘You sure I can’t pack any prawns up for you?’

‘Nah, mate, you’re right,’ Paddy says as he starts to put away his tools.

As Tom walks off, Phil grabs another can, cracking it and taking a long glug.

‘Nice bloody set-up you got here,’ Paddy says.

‘Got a lot to do, though,’ Phil says, standing up. ‘Reckon we probably don’t know the half of it. How long you been in the area?’

‘Family’s been here for a few generations. Me and one of my sisters each took a parcel of land. Trying to do it a bit different, you know? Different crops, trying not to fuck the soil so much, push it too hard.’

‘Yeah, right?’ says Phil.

‘But for sure, yeah, tough gig. Mighta chosen something different if I had my time again. She’s a fickle fucking boss, this country.’

‘Too right,’ says Phil, knowing he has no clue what it’s like to live off the land, and that Paddy knows it too.

‘Lemme know if you all need anything done here, you know, if you can’t get down for a bit or whatever? My sister and I had a plan to buy this place, turn the pub into accommodation, put some eco-huts in, you know. Used to swim here as kids. It’s a bloody nice spot.’

Phil’s eyes widen. ‘You don’t say. What, couldn’t get council approval?’ He’s thought about tourism and accommodation himself. All very well to have a spot of paradise just for them, but no use letting it sit here empty with no return for half the year.

‘Nah, council loved the idea. Just couldn’t make the finances work.’

Phil can sense the gentle accusation. What this guy must think of them. Swanning in to take the place out from under the locals. He won’t apologise. So he says nothing.

‘Anyway, offer stands,’ says Paddy. ‘Good to see someone looking after the place.’

‘Great, yeah, ta. Will give you a buzz for sure,’ Phil says, still taken aback by the understated poise of the young man. ‘And you know, come down whenever for a swim if you like, don’t think we’ll be gate lockers.’

Paddy smiles and nods. ‘Better run that past the others, might not love the idea of local hooligans divebombing in your patch.’

‘Ha, my share’s big enough that I can make that call myself.’ Phil laughs and waves Paddy off, picking up his plate, finishing the rest of his beer and biting into a prawn. Lime and chilli salt. He reaches up and wipes his good hand across the neck of the carcass, collecting some of the gore on his palm, then the back of his hand, his wrist. He smudges a little across his cheek before walking towards the fairy-lit remnants of dinner.

Josie

After, Avril uses her grandmother power to rope all the kids into the washing up. They’re using Ness’s GreenDreem detergent, which does nothing to get the shit off the plates. Josie thinks the whole thing is a scam, but she still has the entire GreenDreem kit at home. You’ve got to back your friends. Avril shoos Josie and Marnie away, telling them the kids’ll put in the elbow grease this time.

The two of them stand by the fire, drinks in hand, as Josie fingers the joint she’s got in her pocket. She thought Lou might share it with her, but doesn’t want to risk her getting pissed off. Tom’s gone off to take plates of food to Phil and the lamb guy, but this is really the moment for it. She takes the spliff from her pocket and holds it out to Marnie, eyebrows raised in offering.

‘Fuck it,’ Marnie says, ‘why not? I’m off-duty. Let’s sneak round the other side of the pub.’

The two of them stand side by side, leaning against the wall, facing out into the bush as the clouds rumble and morph above them.

‘Could be a good drenching,’ Josie says, inhaling deeply and handing the joint to Marnie.

‘You get all your burning done?’

‘Yeah,’ Josie says as Marnie coughs a little.

‘Sorry,’ Marnie says. ‘Been a while.’

Josie smiles, taking it back. It’s strong stuff, this. One of her PhD students has been experimenting with genetic modification. And Josie is, as always, more than willing to assist with experimental trials.

‘You burn those bloody mushrooms?’ Marnie asks. ‘God, how scary, so glad you found them.’

‘Yeah,’ Josie says, avoiding the question. Because when she did remember the death caps in her pocket up at the bonfire, she couldn’t bring herself to throw them in. Instead, she had carefully placed them in a paper bag in the back drawer of the ute. She’s a plant person, she’d told herself, this is interesting, that’s all. ‘Good to get away from all the campaign stuff for a minute?’

Marnie nods, long and slow. ‘God, yes,’ she finally says. ‘Sometimes I wonder why the fuck I’m even doing it.’

‘Why are you doing it?’

The thunder rumbles, fat and sonorous above them.

Josie looks at Marnie, hands her back the joint. Marnie takes it, holds it for a long moment before taking another drag. No coughing this time.

‘Because when I was asked,’ Marnie says slowly, her voice so soft that Josie has to lean her head right in to hear, ‘it felt like the right thing to do.’

Josie leans back, nods gently.

‘Mum!’ they hear from around the corner. ‘Mum, Marnie!’

‘Shit,’ Marnie says as she fumbles to hand back the joint. ‘I’ll leave you to it. Thanks.’ She hurries back to the fray.

Another rumble of thunder, close this time. Here they all are, then, compromising on the things they hold dearest. Campaigns. Money that isn’t theirs to spend. Dead frogs. They are such clichés, the lot of them. Josie inhales again, the weed and the smell of impending rain. She’s under the cover of the eaves but she watches in awe as the first drops begin to fall. Slowly at first and then faster and faster. She huddles against the wall, laughing. Decides to sit, to finish her joint in the rain and this moment of peace, imagining her little plants out there, stretching out their leaves to absorb this magnificent wet.

A little later, and she is sufficiently high to consider her student’s experimental crop a great success. It’s bloody potent, this stuff. She can hear each raindrop hitting the earth. Hear the ground receiving it, the quiet ahh of the soil. She senses the earth under her, her whole body sparking at every point where it touches the ground, and it is her fingers, digging into the soft, wet soil in front of her, her fingers which are doing the speaking, hooked in now to the entire ecosystem, plugged directly into the mycelium and there are a thousand, no, a million, no, a million million, infinite golden threads of knowledge she is mainlining now into her body and her brain, the ancient wisdom of the forest. She is no-one, nothing, one node in an endless network that stretches on forever and forever, linking back and crossing over again and again and EVERYTHING IS CONNECTED no man is an island she is a tree a forest a continent a branch a single leaf a caterpillar a mite a bug shit consumed by the soil and back again she is a tree a water droplet the weather storm rain sunshine she is photosynthesising is turning carbon dioxide into oxygen wine into water who needs WINE she is planetary the whole universe is held in the glowing golden thread at the very tip of her finger where it pulses in the earth and this is she and now NOW she understands it is beautiful it is everything. They are together and whole here, this is the world, this place the whole world and they do not need anything else – nothing at all, for these people, this FAMILY they have created, they are the world. Nothing else is. The poem she remembers, her mum, oh Mum, true romantic who wrote it out in that scratchy circular font of her school days, She’s all states and all princes, I… the world’s contracted thus and it IS it IS – this is the sphere where they can live out their life, close the gate, the roads, bring it in, bring it in, no outsiders, no others, just here here here with them, nothing else is.

‘Hey, darl? Josie?’ Tom’s voice, waking her. Was she asleep? ‘Come on, Stella needs this photo and then I’ll take you to bed. You’re well stoned, huh?’

She lets herself be led back to the verandah, both of them drenched, the good cold rain on her face reviving her.

Tom pulls her in to the edge of the gang where they are gathered under the lights, the trestles packed away now, everything gleaming and twinkling in the moist air.

They all cheer and say cheese and pull funny faces as Stella’s big black camera clicks and clicks from its position on the chair.

And then Tom leads her down to the car, stands near her while she pisses luxuriously in the dirt and the rain and holds her steady as she clambers through the open tent zip and falls, fully clothed and deeply satisfied, into sleep.

Ness

Those minutes, minutes that felt like years, when she thought she had lost Eden, they were a death. And now she feels reborn. She has not been punished. This is the sign. Everything is going to be okay. The universe has forgiven her. It is sweet, sweet ecstasy.

Ness wants to drink all the bubbles, wants to disappear into the joy and the din and the golden spell the fairy lights cast over all of them, the kids dancing as they pass the dishes along the line, dabbing bubbles on each other’s noses, singing at the top of their lungs.

And yet.

It still lurks in her brain, in her body. She’s basically killed a man.

‘Mumma!’ Eden yells, squirming away from Avril and throwing herself into Ness’s arms. ‘Mumma, thunder!’

They still think they might be lucky as the first drops hit. That the swarming dark clouds might pass quickly, leaving them briefly drenched but without too much hoo-ha. They are wrong. Within ten minutes there are rivulets coursing around the fireplace and down the hill towards the creek.

Stella insists on the group shot, and while Ness isn’t feeling it, she loves that Stella’s trying. So, she helps pack away the trestles, helps Stella get the right spot to set up her camera and the timer, hustles the kids into position.

Like a confetti bomb going off, as soon as the last shot is done the kids explode outwards, squealing as they goad each other into running out into the rain, splashing through the puddles and running back under cover, dripping and laughing. They’re well past trying to keep them dry. Will bundle them all into clean clothes and put the projector on in Av’s room in the pub so they can watch a movie while the storm passes.

After half an hour, it’s clear the creek is rising. They stand on the verandah, peering through the streamers of water rushing out of the gutters, part awe-struck, part hysterical as they watch the water begin to pool in the driveway as it meets the little timber bridge that spans the creek.

‘Your glass is empty, Ness!’ Flick says, leaning in to her and kissing her cheek. ‘Bottle?’

Ness kisses her back. ‘Nah, still recovering from last night.’

Flick makes a please face but Ness laughs her off. ‘Don’t be an enabler – you told me yourself I should probably detox!’

‘That was months ago. We’re on holiday!’

Ness can see the familiar flush in Flick’s face. She’s pissed at Phil for the lamb. Doing that silent treatment that couples like to think they can get away with in a crowd.

‘How is it going, though, really? We’ve barely had time to talk properly. Your bloody sister and all her jobs.’

Too fucking right, Ness thinks.

‘How was Mike at swap-over?’ Flick asks.

‘Fucking nightmare,’ Ness says, sighing.

Flick throws an arm over her shoulders. ‘Shit, Ness, I’m sorry.’

‘I reckon he’s going for full fucking custody. How is that even allowed?’ She doesn’t know this for sure, but the kids have been saying some weird stuff.

‘You serious? He’ll never get it.’

‘Wouldn’t put it past him to dredge up awful shit and make me look horrible, negligent.’

‘Babe, you’re neither of those things.’ Flick gives her shoulder a squeeze.

‘The woman at legal aid reckons he can use the medical stuff—’

Flick snorts. ‘What medical stuff?’

‘Apparently parents have used the anti-vax argument before. Said it’s not in the interests of the kid, as if injecting them full of chemicals is the definition of good parenting. He’ll use anything. It’s kind of terrifying.’

Flick is silent for a second, her eyebrows drawn together.

‘Sorry,’ Ness says. ‘I’m not saying you were wrong to vaccinate. I just mean, well, it’s just another choice, isn’t it?’

She hasn’t always believed in herself, but she believes in the decisions she made for the kids. She made them with him. And now Mike and his new fucking girlfriend have decided those choices weren’t right? That she’s the worst of all things – a bad mum?

‘Is the legal aid person good? What happens next, how can we help?’

Ness can’t help but notice the way Flick avoids the topic, diplomatic. She turns and smiles sadly at her. ‘Just keep being you. And don’t get a divorce.’

Flick sits back and swallows, her face dropping for a moment. ‘Could be fun, though, both of us in the same boat, we could just move in together?’

Ness shakes her head. A month back, another mum at the school gate had said, God, are you loving some nights to yourself, though? And it was all Ness could do not to spit at her, wail, say, Fuck you and your smug togetherness, and what you imagine this life of mine to be.

‘You don’t want this, Flick,’ she says. No-one wants this.

Stella

After she gets the group shot, she takes some atmospheric ones, some videos. The kids laughing as they do the dishes, the lights glowing, the rain pouring out of the gutters. Ginny will be impressed. Maybe she’ll cut them together for her, make some reels that show how wonderful and clean-living and happy they all are out in the wilds, their weekend turned into a political advertisement.

But now, she needs to finish the play. At the very least, she can hand it in as a draft for her drama assessment. Show them she has the capacity to take something real and turn it into a story. It’s not proper at all, not a real script, she’s just told the kids the basic gist; that they’ll all have roles and she’ll direct them and get them to improvise up on stage.

Kai had asked what improvising was.

‘Thinking on your feet,’ Stella had told him. ‘Reacting to what others are giving you. Not overthinking things.’

He’d nodded, but she knows none of them really understand. Doesn’t matter, the grown-ups will all shit themselves with delight over the fact that they’ve all banded together to perform something for them. They’ll think it makes them amazing parents. But Stella is the one who’s done all the work.

She has to sharpen her skills, she thinks, as she sits back, watching the rain, notebook in hand.

Be an observer, Miss Ellison says. That’s what writers do, they hear what a person is saying, but more importantly, they hear what they are not saying. How the body and the words often don’t match. They see how expressions and actions and gestures give us away.

So, Stella watches. And she knows she’s beginning to really see.

How, after he has spoken, Benji’s eyes always flick – to Lou, to Marnie, to Leo especially when they are here, as though he is checking to see if his words are okay.

The way that Ness laughs loudest when she looks as though she might cry.

How Phil breaks sticks across his knee – SNAP – before he feeds them into the fire, and the little flick in his eye that tells her it hurts but he doesn’t want it to show.

But what do you do with all this once you can see it? How do you make that happen in the words, or in your direction? How does she make the play be real like that?

She draws a line under what she has written.

‘What are you doing, Stella Bella?’ Grandma says, pulling in her chair next to Stella’s and peering down at her page. ‘Can I see?’

Stella shrugs and holds the page into the light.

‘ “A good piece of art elicits a response from its audience,” ’ Grandma reads, nodding and smiling. ‘Very true. You thinking about that?’

‘Something my teacher told me.’

She does not want Grandma to move away. She likes her there. Grandma doesn’t really need anything from Stella, doesn’t need her to reply. She just chatters away and Stella feels at home, does not feel like she must do or be anybody for her grandma to adore her. It’s different with her mums. They always seem to need something from her. But she’s never sure exactly what it is. And if she was sure, she wouldn’t necessarily want to give it to them.

‘That was a bit of hoo-ha today with the lamb, wasn’t it? You okay?’ Grandma asks.

Stella shrugs again. It shocked her, when it happened, but also – the action, the drama! That dead lamb in the middle of them all. ‘I wish I’d taken a photo, actually,’ Stella says quietly, then looks at her grandma quickly to see if she thinks she’s mad.

Grandma just nods thoughtfully. ‘There’s a painting at the big gallery in the city,’ she says, nodding. ‘You know the one with the water on the window? I took you when you were little.’

‘I remember,’ Stella says. ‘With the stained-glass roof.’

Grandma nods.

Stella waits. Sometimes you have to wait for Grandma to get through the lead-up to really get the story.

‘In one of the big rooms there is a painting of a sheep. “The Sad Sheep Painting”, everyone calls it, but that’s not its real name.’

‘What’s its real name?’

‘Anguish.’

Stella nods. That’s a good word, anguish. She writes it down on her page.

‘It’s very big, the painting, you kind of have to stand right back to look at it,’ Grandma says. ‘The painting is all browns and dark in the sky, foreboding is the word I would use, and there is snow on the ground, dirty snow, not the kind of brilliant white that makes you feel happy. And there are black crows, some in the sky and others standing in the snow all circled around a sheep. The sheep is looking up, and even though it’s a painting you can tell she is bleating, her mouth is open and if you go closer you can see the breath coming from her mouth. She is standing over a little dead lamb. The mum sheep has her legs over it like she is still trying to protect it.’

Stella thinks of the sheep today. How it was alive and then it was not.

‘It makes me feel…’ Grandma pauses, presses her lips together, then inhales. ‘It makes me feel impossibly sad and also something else, like maybe a kind of a peace or a knowingness, maybe that’s it? That I knew how the sheep was feeling. Even when it was already dead, she was still protecting her baby from the circling crows.’

Stella waits. It’s just a painting of sheep and crows and snow. But it made her grandma think about her own life, feel all of these feelings.

‘When I saw it first I thought maybe it could be called Love instead of Anguish,’ Grandma says.

An emotional response, Stella thinks, yes, one like that. Art that makes you cry and think and talk about it later.

‘Will you take me to see it?’

Grandma puts her arm out and cuddles Stella in close. ‘I would love that, my Stella Bella.’

When Stella extracts herself, she writes Love next to where she has written Anguish. She thinks of the lamb and the blood and Grandma and her mums. She draws a little line between the two words, connecting them.

Lou

The rain begins to ease.

Lou checks the radar – phone ban be damned – and it looks like it’s nearly done. Tom’s been down to check the creek, and it’s risen a bit but not enough to threaten the bridge or Phil and Flick’s caravan spot. Phil’s gone to bed, a little worse for wear, Lou noticed, but didn’t judge. Good on him for lasting this long with the rest of them drinking their body weight in booze. Stella’s brought her bedding in and is sleeping in Av’s room, and Marnie’s put Benji down inside their trailer, which was fine, drenched but dry inside when she checked.

Lou doubts Marnie will be back. Evidently she smoked with Josie, who went to bed an hour ago, too stoned to partake in the rest of the evening. She wishes, despite her misgivings in the past, that Josie had offered to smoke the joint with her. She could use something to chill the fuck out tonight.

It’s just Avril, Flick and Ness with Lou on the verandah now, while Tom strums his guitar softly in the background – the pattering rain on tin as an accompaniment. The kind of moment she’d hoped for.

‘Come on, then, Tom,’ Avril says. ‘One more song before I hit the hay.’

‘Yes!’ Flick says. She’s pissed, overly enthusiastic, while the rest of them are winding down. ‘Do the Paul Kelly one, about the water.’

Tom nods, takes a moment to position his fingers, starts to strum. ‘Deeper water…’ he half-says, half-sings.

‘No, no!’ Flick says, interrupting him. Tom places his palm over the strings. ‘The one about the girl in the river.’ She starts to sing, off key, ‘So much water, so close…’

‘Too sad,’ Tom says.

‘It’s about drowning, Flick!’ says Ness.

Lou can sense her panic, her avoidance. Is Ness thinking about Eden? About what might have been? Is she thinking about dead bodies, about what they have done? Everything that was slowly winding down in her own body is now dangerously livewire.

Avril gentles them with her voice. ‘It’s just a song, a nice one,’ she says. ‘Let him go.’

Tom begins to strum again.

By the time he gets to the chorus, Flick is singing, Ness has her head bowed low and Lou is crying. Quietly, silently. Tom sings low and steady. Does she imagine the crack in his voice when he gets to the line about staying up there fishing while the girl floats in the river? Or is the crack inside of her?

Ness finishes her drink, reaches out to hold Lou’s hand. Lou feels the familiar of her sister’s grasp. Her warm skin. Ness’s need, but also the solace Lou has always felt from her.

Tom finishes. The rain stops.

‘Beautiful,’ Av says, standing up stiffly. ‘Right, I’m off.’

As they stand to hug Avril, pick up bottles and glasses, Flick shivers. ‘Let’s get out of the cold,’ she says to the others. ‘We’ll keep it down, Av!’

‘Don’t worry about me,’ Avril says. ‘I’ll sleep like the dead with all this fresh air and work.’ She holds the door open for them as they enter the pub.

Flick leads them into the bar and brandishes a bottle. ‘What can I get you?’ she says, hand on hip and glasses set out in front of her.

But the song has done Lou in. She is emptied out. She wants the sleep of the dead, too. That oblivion. ‘Not for me,’ she says. ‘Just gonna do another lap to check on the state of things and I’ll head to bed.’

‘Don’t do that!’ Flick says. ‘Stay! Nothing we can do about the rain now. There’s half a bottle to finish!’

Ness is looking at Lou, her brow furrowed. She stands up. ‘I’ll come with you.’

‘It’s all good, I’ve got it,’ Lou says.

‘Ness’s being boring and not drinking!’ Flick says, rolling her eyes.

Ness smiles quick. ‘Only cos I bloody drank so much last night!’ she says. ‘You two stay, I should check on the kids anyway, check they’re not floating away in all this water.’

Flick pouts but pours wine in two glasses for her and Tom. ‘You’ll have to finish this with me, then, Tom,’ she says.

‘If I must,’ Tom says, and Lou takes the opportunity to escape.

‘Love you both,’ she says as Ness follows her out into the dark.

Flick

Half-light at the old bar of the pub, the little blow-up solar lamps that have sprouted like mushrooms in their combined camping kit. Warm enough without the outside chill.

‘Josie okay?’ Flick winces at her own clumsiness. How obvious can she be?

‘Oh,’ Tom says, smiling, ‘she’s out to it, hit it a bit hard.’

She laughs softly. ‘Everyone gets their night.’

‘Except your impressively abstinent husband?’

Not tonight, she wants to say, wondering if anyone else noticed that it wasn’t alcohol-free beer in his stubby holder, whether they’d have a go at Phil if they did. Flick’s delighted, actually. Enjoys it when he falls off his own pedestal from time to time. Also delighted because now he’s out cold, down there with the kids, tucked up in bed, and she is here. She’s pissed, she knows, but not so pissed she isn’t aware of what she’s doing. How much she wants to be here, hiding from the rain, with him.

‘Your tent hold up alright in the rain?’ she asks, wanting to appear utterly unfazed by the fact that they are alone.

‘Yeah, does alright. Creek didn’t get any higher near yours?’

‘Nah, all good, I think. Wonder how much the river will rise?’

He nods and smiles and sips his drink.

‘I enjoyed that swim earlier,’ he says, holding eye contact, sipping. ‘Very much.’

‘Tom—’ she says, cutting him off not because she thinks that Avril will hear them through all that brick, but because it feels too bold, too much.

‘Look,’ he says, his voice very quiet, ‘I don’t know what this is. But I like it.’

Even him saying the word ‘this’ seems to validate all the churn and the fizz and the memory of skin.

‘We can’t—’ she says as he reaches his hand across the bar and stops short of hers.

Good, she thinks. Don’t touch me.

Touch me, she also thinks.

‘I was a mess after that day,’ she says quietly.

He waits.

‘Like… I couldn’t get my head straight. Like, ecstatic one minute and sick to my stomach the next. Just this wild swing between feeling self-righteous that I’d done something that made me feel good, and waves of self-loathing and shame.’ She senses him nodding and she turns to him, waiting.

‘That makes sense,’ he says.

She snorts. ‘I don’t need you to tell me if my feelings were right, Tom. I need to hear if that’s what it was like for you. Or is this just how you roll? Fucking women while you renovate their kitchens?’

He holds her gaze. ‘It’s not how I roll, no.’

She lifts her chin in response, looks away.

‘It’s not something I planned. Not something I’ve done before and, yes, obviously guilt and shame and Jos—’

Flick puts up her hand to stop him saying her name.

He nods, but continues. ‘I felt a lot of things after it, but mostly…’ Tom pauses and she turns to look at him. ‘Mostly I felt grateful. One life, right? If it stays between us?’

She is very still.

Tom speaks again. ‘Mostly I just thought about how incredible it felt to fuck you.’

Jesus, she thinks, feeling the words thrumming in the pit of herself. She hates how goddamn smooth he is.

‘And how much I want to do it again,’ he says.

Long electric quiet.

‘Tom,’ she whispers, sinking back a little.

‘But I can walk away.’

‘Don’t,’ she says.

She wishes she didn’t have to make the decision. Wishes that it was all grabbing and hands and pushing up against walls and not thinking, just doing, just reacting, but he is too experienced, too smart for that, and so he waits.

They sit there, in the half-dark, for so long she thinks the moment will pass. It is excruciating. Neither of them moves.

‘Fuck,’ she finally says quietly, and the word cracks the moment open and they both reach towards each other, her hand on the soft denim of his thigh, his hand lifting her fingers, clasping, gripping her hand in his.

‘Not here,’ she says, keeping his hand in hers, sliding from the stool and leading him into the dark corner of the lounge, away from Avril’s room, to the bench seat by the window. She brings the solar lamp, just enough for her to see him, to watch him want her.

He pulls her to sitting on the bench. Colder through the window behind them, the pitch black of outside. The darkness makes her braver.

He uses his free hand to find her face, to bring her mouth to his and they are kissing again, warm wine breath and whispering into each other’s mouths,
this,
fuck,
yes.

Her hands on his belt buckle, on his zip, his on her waist, under her shirt, long cold fingers tugging at her shirt, dragging across her nipple so she gasps and grabs and, Fuck me, she says, and she is undoing her own jeans, his hands pulling at her knickers, fingers slick in the wet of her, his cock in her hand now and she is pulling him in, pushing hard into the back of the bench, he is bending her knee up so he can reach her, can push himself inside of her, her breath catching in her chest as she tries to exhale, can’t, hands on his shoulders, his hand on the wall behind her, the other on her arse, pulling her into him, quick frantic fucking like they will never fuck again, like it’s the end of time, like this is all there is.

‘Shhhhh,’ he says softly, hand on her mouth as she gasps.

‘Don’t stop,’ she whispers, knowing he has come, that she will not stop, cannot stop – and now his hand moves to her throat, gentle pressing as he fucks her slower, until he brings that hand down to touch her, making her come with his fingers while he fucks her and she is nearly—Fuck, she says, and she shudders, bites his neck, begins to cry as they hold each other, breathe.

Ness

Ness stands next to her sister on the verandah. The fairy lights flicker off.

‘Timing,’ she says to Lou.

Lou makes a sound that is both laugh and sigh. ‘Yep,’ she says.

‘That song…’ She feels the weight of it still in her body.

‘We found her,’ Lou says. ‘It’s okay.’ And yes, Ness thinks, it was the terror of losing Eden, but it was also what they have done. Will this be how it is always? That for a few moments, days even, she will forget, and then something – a song, a word, a bloody picture book with a tractor that Eden wants her to read – will it bring it all crashing down around her?

‘It wasn’t just Eden,’ Ness says.

Lou turns to her, holds out her arms and pulls Ness into a hug. A big one. A big, big sister hug.

‘It was a terrible accident,’ Lou says in her ear, ‘but it’s done now.’

Ness nods her head into her sister’s shoulder.

‘We’ve done the right thing,’ Lou says. ‘Remember that, forget the rest.’

Ness is so grateful she could just stay here, in her sister’s arms, forever.

Lou gives her one last squeeze. ‘Bed?’ she says.

‘Yeah,’ Ness says, scanning the detritus that litters the fire area and noting how many of her kid’s clothes are still scattered about, soaking wet. ‘You go, I’ll grab these last things.’

Lou nods and walks off into the dark as Ness collects a tutu, one pink gumboot, Kai’s red hoodie. She flips them onto the verandah rail. No way they’ll get dry. Have to hope she’s packed enough extra. She wrings out the arm of the hoodie and cold water drips down her wrist.

The night air revives her and she circles the fire area, picking up the remains of the day. Cups, two bowls, five glowsticks almost hidden in the mud. Bloody Flick. She works quietly in the light of her head torch, finally dropping the last of the muddy items in a bucket. She needs to piss.

Ness hurries off around the verandah towards the new dunny, trying to avoid the puddles as she steps off the deck. As she heads towards the outhouse, she sees the flash of light there. Someone beating her to it. Fine. She turns back towards the pub, looking for somewhere out of the rain. Startles as her torch flashes over the something pale swinging in the air. Jesus, the lamb.

Hanging there, all mottled and greasy, headless and hoofless and cracked in half so she can see the ribs, the empty inside of the carcass. Bloody hell, it’s a horror show. Ness shivers involuntarily, hurries past to the other side of the pub so she doesn’t have to look anymore.

She ducks around the corner, jams the torch into her pocket and puts her hand out to steady herself against the wall. She gets her jeans and undies down to her knees, sticks her arse right out so she doesn’t piss on herself. She drips, drips, leans a little and her hand finds the windowsill as she straightens up, relief as she zips up her jeans, doesn’t bother about the button.

Movement through the window.

She squints, puts a hand against the glass. Sees a body, heads, mouths.

It’s someone fucking. She flinches, ducks back down below the windowsill. Just has to move away slowly so they don’t spot her, not that they look like they’re stopping anytime soon.

Right. To bed, she thinks. Leave these two the last ones up. And then she stops.

The last ones up.

Tom and Flick at the bar as she and Lou left.

Fingers on the sill, Ness pops herself up until she can see.

It’s Flick.

Flick is fucking Tom.

Flick

God.

She needed that.

She shifts her body slightly, cramping in her hip but wanting to keep the weight, the heat of him, right there. Wants to stay.

‘Flick,’ Tom says into her neck. ‘There’s something I want to tell you.’

The moment feels weighted with the sticky post-sex slowness, her brain is still catching up with her body.

‘Mmmm,’ she murmurs, in a way that could be a question or a pause or a request to just let them be in this moment a little longer. There’s a shiver of expectation, though. She wonders for a moment if what’s coming is a declaration.

I have fallen for you.

I’m in love with you.

Or, perhaps better, I’m falling for you – a kind of delicious anticipation to it.

It’s not as if she hasn’t imagined him saying these words. God, she’s embarrassed how rom-com banal her fantasies are, slipping from filthy, frantic sex in stolen moments to the filtered mushiness of professing ‘feelings’. Is this what she actually wants, in the end – to be both the object of desire and the wreaker of havoc on his emotional core? Power-tripper, Phil sometimes calls her in an offhand way. So what if she is? She turns back towards her lover (her lover – it’s so thrilling to even think those words, she can get off on that alone), presses her naked torso against him, wonders if he might be up for using his hands to make her come again, she’s not done yet.

Gently, he pulls her shirt back into arrangement, lapping the buttons over the other edge between her boobs and smoothing it down.

Oh God, what if he makes a big deal of it? Not only says that he’s in love with her, but that he has to tell Josie, wants to leave her? What if he tells her he can’t imagine life without her, that they must be together? The fantasy is attractive but the reality is not. She’s not blowing up her life for him – she just wants the intoxication of an affair! Fuck, she thought they were on the same page.

‘Tom, I—’

‘Please, just listen for a second,’ he says.

She sits up, dragging her shirt properly closed, pulling her jumper over her shoulders as the coldness of the night through the glass of the window seeps through her. Maybe she’ll break whatever this spell is by getting her body away from him. What’s that awful phrase she’s heard – cunt struck? Maybe that’s what he is.

He sits up.

She takes a deep breath, lets herself blink and pause there.

‘I just don’t—’ she says, smiling sadly.

‘Jacob is dead.’

She opens her eyes. Sees Tom’s face contorted in confusion in the half-light. Three words, yes, she can feel the imprint of them in the air, but for a strange moment, she thought she heard him say ‘dead’.

‘Sorry,’ she says, ‘what did you say?’

‘The neighbour, Jacob. He’s dead. Last night. It was an accident, but I took care of it.’

His face is odd. Slack. Old. Infinitely less sexy than it looked to her minutes ago.

‘Jesus,’ she blurts. She covers her mouth with one hand as she splutter-laughs.

Tom leans in and holds her elbows, his face so angular and serious.

‘Are you having me on?’ she asks, still half-smiling.

‘No,’ Tom says, quiet and grim. ‘He’s definitely dead.’

She can feel her brain crunching through gears as it tries to catch up.

‘What the fuck?’ she says, rearing back from him.

Tom startles back from her. ‘It was an accident, partly his fault – he was out at night in a bloody tractor trying to tear the fences down. But it doesn’t look good for us.’

‘Who’s us? Why are you telling me this?’

‘Because I – I don’t know, I feel so close to you. I didn’t want to tell Josie,’ he says slowly.

Suddenly, viciously, she wants to punch him. Get her fist right into that soft part between his upper lip and the loops of his long nostrils, feel the flesh sink around her knuckles, hear him gasp.

He must comprehend the expression in the dim light because he backtracks. ‘I mean I wanted to tell you, it effects all of us,’ he says. ‘It’s complicated—’

‘It has nothing to do with me!’ She stands up, pulling up her jeans, mortified now as she struggles to zip and button and stuff her feet into her Blundstones, spitting words at him.

‘Why the fuck would you tell me? You just want to get it off your chest? Is that it? Fuck me again so I would – what?’ She screws up her face in disgust. ‘Comfort you?’

‘It was an accident,’ Tom says urgently, standing up to face her. ‘Ness and Lou tried to stop him, and we had to hide the body because, fuck, Ness scratched the guy, would have gone down for it, and then she let slip to Avril today after—’

‘STOP!’ she says, putting her palm out in front of him as if to force the words back into his mouth. ‘I don’t want to know.’

‘Flick.’ He reaches for her. ‘Can we—’

‘No,’ she says. And then she walks away from him, out of the door, cursing herself when it bangs behind her. She strides away into the dark as she sobs and retches and thinks, Oh god, what have I done?

Sunday

Josie

The early morning air has been washed clean by the rain, and so has Josie. She feels like a new woman, knows she’ll cop shit for having bailed early again, but god, she slept well and deeply and she’s probably the only one feeling fresh enough to be up. The dreams, though, they were something else, she thinks as she trudges up the path, careful not to slip after all the rain. She’ll have to text her student when she gets her phone back. He’ll want to know the effects of his little experiment. They had a hallucinogenic spin on them, the dreams. She catches at the wisps of them in her brain but can only remember the image of mycelium, golden threads connecting, faster and faster and spreading further and further, creating an extraordinary pulsing web.

She’s pulled her jacket on to protect her from the wet foliage but she is sweating hard by the time she reaches the plots. Josie swings off her backpack and shrugs out of her rain jacket, tying it around her waist, then she takes out her FieldPad, pulling up her data log and peering into the control area. Squatting, she squints one eye as she does a quick assessment. Is it possible the acacia grew more overnight? A wonga pigeon lands a couple of metres away. Fat and white-chested against the grey of its wings, it bobs its head to the soil, once, twice, precise and quick, then pulls up a thick white grub, tilting its neck – almost green underneath – before swallowing it whole.

She tries to tell herself that if the co-cultivation works, if this is the spot to keep researching, there’ll be money to protect it. To protect habitat for birds like this. But her self-talk sounds hollow. There is no guarantee that a company like Entheon will stick to its sustainable and ethical mission statement any more than the thousands of companies who have blatantly greenwashed their shareholders over the last few decades. True, sometimes investment can protect a place, but more often than not – and she knows this – the initial investment has positive outcomes and then subsequent actions slowly erode the good work until the place is worse off than before. Has she become one of those people who believe the hype? Has she drunk the Kool Aid? In her eternal quest to get the public to better understand the extraordinary lives of plants, has she been blindsided? Has she been used?

Josie climbs over the fence and begins her search for more dead frogs. She can’t see any, dead or alive, but that doesn’t mean that the dead ones aren’t still a massive problem. If something in this symbiosis between the fungus and the acacia is affecting them, then the right thing to do would be to stop it. Dig it all up. Put it on the bonfire and tell Entheon she’s out. Not only that she’s out, but that this particular co-cultivation experiment has potentially catastrophic environmental consequences.

But – her stomach lurches at the thought. She’s already taken the first instalment of the research funding. It’s what’s allowed them to buy in here. And now, with Jimmy out, there’s no wiggle room at all.

Josie kneels down and presses her fingers lightly to the soil. The control plot fences hold in the acacia, sure, but they can’t hold in the fungus. She’d done the risk assessment, of course, noted that the fungus spreading would likely have no ill effects – it so closely resembled a native species from higher up on the plateau. But what if she’s wrong? She thinks of the golden, pulsing web she saw in her dreams last night. What if that was actually a warning? What if, beneath her, the fungus is morphing and spreading and inching its thin hyphae out into all the good earth of Willow Creek? Into the river, across the whole valley? She sits back, her breath rapid, the panic real.

‘Thought I’d find you here,’ a voice says behind her. She yelps, stands up and swings around to find the hunter, Aidan, with his gun slung over his shoulder. Same cammo gear.

‘Sorry,’ he says, noticing her stricken face. ‘Did I scare you?’

‘Yes.’ She tries to slow her breathing.

‘Worked it out,’ he says, nodding towards the plot.

She bends and puts her device in her bag. ‘Worked what out?’

‘Tryptamine – that’s what you’re doing, with the acacia.’

She cocks her head. Who is this guy? Hunting hippy? Prepper? Gaming guy who likes to get high?

‘Seen it before, out hunting. Some fuckwits come in and strip all the bark, or cut the tree off at the base, just to get their shitty hit of DMT to get high.’

‘That’s not what I’m doing.’

He shrugs. ‘You should leave this place alone.’

She nods her head at the gun on his shoulder. ‘How is hunting leaving anything alone?’

He grins. ‘Deer doing a hell of a lot of damage round here. All through these mountains. Ringbarking the trees with their antlers, trampling the moss, the native stuff – fucking over the frogs, the ecosystem. We let ’em get out of control. Gotta be culled. Restore the balance.’

He looks smug, Josie realises. Has her pegged as someone who’ll agree with this line of thinking and on that, at least, he’s right. Even if the gun still doesn’t work for her. Especially not here. On their land.

She crosses her arms. ‘Thought Lou told you to keep that gun off our property? Thought she made it clear?’

He nods, smiles. ‘Very clear.’

‘She’s serious.’

‘I know,’ he says. That same smile.

Prick, she thinks, feeling the pressure he can apply just by standing there, being there, in her space.

‘So, mate,’ she says, spitting it out, ‘I’d suggest you bugger off or we’ll have to call the cops.’

He throws his head back, laughing. ‘You’re not calling any cops.’

She swings her backpack onto her shoulders, shakes her head at him. ‘I don’t think the police care very much about which species of acacia are here.’

Aidan starts fiddling with his phone as he speaks. ‘Got something else they’ll be very interested in. Might have mentioned that I’ve been out at night after this deer. Got some tracking cameras to help me. Great night vision.’

Josie turns on him. ‘You can’t put cameras up on private property. That’s so fucking unethical. So wrong.’

He starts to laugh again.

‘You people,’ he says softly. ‘What the fuck would you know about ethics?’

Little shit. ‘I don’t have to listen to this,’ she says. ‘Get off this property.’

‘Don’t have to listen,’ he replies, shoving his phone in her face and pressing on the screen. ‘Just watch.’

She has no idea what she is looking at, dark video, green movement.

‘Look, I didn’t have any time for the bloke either,’ Aidan says. ‘But, fuck me, murdering a man over a fucking fence is next level.’

Ness

Ness wakes to Eden’s little hands on her face. Pulls them to her mouth and pretends to eat them, making the child giggle and squirm. For a moment there is only this, her daughter’s arms around her neck, the tickle and giggle of her, the smell of her head.

Eden sits back, holding Ness’s hair in her hands. ‘I’m doing your hair!’ she sings.

Ness squeezes her eyes shut tight. Stay here, just stay in this moment. Eden pulls and taps her head and Ness laughs as she imagines her daughter pulling the dark images from her brain, squashing them between her fingers, making them disappear.

But she cannot.

She sits up.

‘C’mon, grubber, let’s get you to Grandma,’ Ness says. ‘Mum’s gotta have a run. And a swim!’

‘Grandma!’ Eden shouts as she jumps off the mattress.

‘Wait! Jumper! Boots!’ Ness calls, peeling up off the bed and rummaging in the pile on the floor, fishing out a grotty hoodie, one sparkly gumboot.

‘Eden!’

‘Got her, love,’ Avril calls from outside the camper. ‘You go off for your run, get it out of the system, yeah?’

Ness sits back, winded with relief and gratitude.

She runs in the other direction, along the river, away from the hill, away from it all. The path is slippery with all the rain, but the sky is clear now and the sun is glinting off the wetness in the trees. She runs hard. Thinks if she goes fast enough she might outrun it – the ache in her body, the images in her brain. She wants to punish her body.

She stumbles, catches herself, twinge in her ankle, but she just goes faster, relishes the sharp pain shooting up her calf.

For ten minutes she suffers the pain, is grateful for it, then she moans and stops.

‘FUCK!’ she yells, reaching down to feel if her ankle is swelling above her sock. She’ll take ten minutes, shove it in the river, then go back. Deal with it. Maybe the universe is coming for her. How can she ever recalibrate her life around what she has done? Will it be there, every time she looks at her sister, the spectre of him rising up, the guilt like acid between them? She could move away. Take the kids. But Mike would never let them go. Fuck, imagine, imagine if he finds out?

She hobbles off the path and down the riverbank. Finds a big rock partly in the water. Negotiates her way over fallen branches until she can get her arse down and her shoe and sock off, plunge her foot into the cold.

She gasps. Breathes.

The water is freezing, she realises, as she pulls her foot out in relief and tries to work out if there’s a way to just get her ankle in there without giving herself hypothermia. The river here is wide and shallow; she could probably jump across from stone to stone to get to the opposite bank.

A crow caws loudly right above her and she startles.

‘Get yourself together,’ she says softly.

After Dad died, she had to go to the school counsellor. A ponytailed woman who’d held her head so far to one side Ness had wondered if there was something wrong with her neck. The sounds she made were pigeon-like. Ness hadn’t really wanted to talk about any of it – but the counsellor had said it was healthy to talk about what upset her. But was she upset? She didn’t really know. Then, or now.

She squeezes her eyes shut, but the sound of the river rushes in loud and she suddenly worries she’ll topple in, so she opens her eyes again. She couldn’t have known what was going to happen. She reacted. To a stressful, a dangerous situation. And then, like always, she capitulated to her big sister – her calm control. It wasn’t her fault, not really. It was an accident. Not like – fuck – not like Flick.

How, what – and, god, why? Also – when? Just that one time? Is it an affair? She tries to think of anything Flick might have said, a hint, a look. She feels betrayed. Then stupid for feeling betrayed. Fucking your mate’s boyfriend is something you tell your best friend! Or maybe you don’t. Because she’ll tell you how fucked up that is. So you never say. Shit. Does she say something? Just forget about it? God – what if Flick had done this to her? With Mike?

It’s too much – all of it – everything. Stupid fucking Willow Creek will ruin everything she has left, anything that is still good in her life.

Another loud caw from the tree, followed by a skittering in the gravel.

‘Hello?’ she calls out, twisting her head around and pulling her foot from the water. Her skin is crawling. Spooked, Ness steadies herself with one hand on the rock and pulls on her sock and shoe, wincing a little and leaving the laces untied. She tests her weight on it, sore but not too bad. She has begun to limp back to the track when a sudden violent movement shakes the trees ahead of her.

What the hell is that? Big. An animal? That kid with the gun? Another hunter?

She leans down, weight on her good ankle, and picks up a fist-sized rock, straightens up and listens hard. Nothing. She pulls her arm back and then pitches the rock in the direction of the sound.

From the trees, a flash of movement. Ness gasps, but whatever it is flees up the track, the brush crashing and shaking.

A moment of silence and then – there – on the track, an enormous deer emerges. It’s at least as tall as she is, and from the head sprout extraordinary antlers, branching into what look like claws at the tip. But not just two antlers. A tangle of them. And some enormous growth at the base of them, perched right at the top of the deer’s head. Furred and matted and – holy shit, are they bones? What the fuck? The animal looks straight at her. The expanse of its broad brown body perfectly still except for one flick of its tail.

She stands, unmoving. She’s seen those stories come up in her feed about encounters with bears in the wild, how you should take the knee, bow your head. Bears? Or bulls? So that they don’t charge you. Can a deer kill you? With that terrifying head it probably could. What is that thing stuck in its antlers? It looks, for all the world, like a second head.

‘What are you?’ she whispers. The deer just looks at her.

Is it some weird genetic mutation? A response to the terrifying speed of climate change? Maybe the deer are busy growing second heads in the same inexplicable way husbands pack up and start second marriages. A response to a world gone mad? Perhaps what she and Lou did the other night – god, what they did – is nothing more than a natural reaction to too much change, too fast. If a deer can grow another head and still stand so regal, so utterly sure of itself, maybe, just maybe, Ness can outgrow this terrible thing she has done.

Slowly, slowly she bows her head low.

When she looks up, all she can see is the hind legs of the deer disappearing into the bush on the other side of the path. She feels bereft.

Phil

He wakes gasping, mouth tastes like shit, head thumping. Pulls his wrist in front of his face to check his watch. Squints. Fuck! Already seven. Must have slept through the alarm. Christ, he had planned to have the fucking lamb on by six.

He sits up quickly, coughs. His hand aches. Beside him, Flick stirs.

‘You ’kay?’ she mumbles.

‘Slept in,’ he spits out, feeling the hangover pulse in his head. ‘Leo, mate, wake up,’ he says loudly. ‘Need a hand with the spit.’

Flick murmurs something and rolls away from him.

‘Leo,’ he says again as he rolls off the bed, pulling on shorts, T-shirt, jumper, dressing awkwardly as he tries to protect his bandaged hand. He goes over to shake his son by the shoulder. ‘Get up, I need your help.’

Leo grumbles and sits up. In the next bed, Reuben wakes too. ‘Can I help, Dad?’

‘I need your brother,’ Phil says briskly. ‘Up! Leo!’

He doesn’t wait for the boy.

First things first, they’ve got to cut the bloody thing down.

‘Okay, hold it there, mate,’ Phil says, getting his arm around the midsection of the lamb and directing Leo to steady the shoulders. It’s cold. And slippery.

‘Gross, Dad. I can’t—’ Leo has his head over his shoulder, rearing away from the carcass.

‘You can and you will,’ Phil says, his stomach starting to roil as he steadies the wheelbarrow under the hanging lamb. ‘You just gotta make sure it lands in there, otherwise it’ll get dirt and shit all over it.’

Leo makes little noises like he is trying to breathe through his mouth.

‘Bloody hell, Leo. Toughen up!’ Phil says as he reaches up with the knife and slices at the cord holding the hind legs, supporting the weight for a moment as the lamb is released. He lets it fall into the wheelbarrow via his son’s arms.

Leo yelps a little and jumps back, holding out his arms and shaking them, panicked. ‘It’s on me, Dad! Gross! Get it off!’

‘Oh, for fuck’s sake!’ Phil says, biting down on the last word and throwing the kitchen knife into the barrow on top of the lamb. It feels good. He sees Leo’s eyes widen at his aggression – the dead lamb, the knife, his angry father.

‘Grab the handles, you can do it.’

Leo shakes his head. ‘I don’t want to.’

Phil feels the roar in his chest but swallows it back into a dangerous whisper. ‘I don’t care if you don’t fucking want to, Leo. Do it. Now.’

Kai and Reuben race around the corner of the pub.

‘WOAH!’ Reuben says.

‘That’s SICK,’ says Kai.

‘Can we help?’ says Reuben.

Phil stands up and smiles broadly. ‘Sure you can help. Leo here isn’t feeling up to pushing this baby down to the firepit, you reckon you could give me a hand?’

Leo scowls, picks up the handles. ‘It’s fine, I’m doing it.’ He pushes hard, stumbling slightly as he finds the level, then picking up speed as the younger boys race after him.

Phil instructs the boys to get the fire going big and hot; he’s going to need coals. Heaps of them. There’s fresh blood on his bandage but he’s firing now, ignoring the hangover – one bad night doesn’t spoil everything. It’s gonna be magnificent. He’s just gotta dress the thing. Why isn’t Flick up yet? He needs salt. And lemon. The oil, garlic, horseradish. Fuck it, just needs to get the thing on heat then he can do the rest. He opens the box with the brand-new spit, plastic and metal and what looks like a hundred different bits. Fuck. Why didn’t he set this up yesterday? He tips it all onto the ground. Not his fault, didn’t have a second with everything going on. Finds the instructions. He’s watched this on YouTube. Gotta get one metal pole right up its arsehole. One through the chest cavity. Screw it in. Then set up the poles and the motor.

‘Morning, Phil, how’s the hand?’ Avril calls from the steps.

He doesn’t look up. ‘Yeah, getting there, Av. Bit behind, just gotta get this on.’

‘Need any help?’

Phil shakes his head. From his wife, yes. From Tom, maybe. Not from Avril. ‘Coffee’d be great!’ he calls back.

‘Righto,’ she says.

He pulls out the two longest poles. ‘Leo!’ he calls to the boy, who is stoking the fire with the younger kids. ‘Help me with this.’

It takes another forty minutes to get the spit set up. He’s sweating. Only gets the first scalding sip of the coffee, then puts it down and doesn’t pick it up again. Tom’s here, thank fuck. Screwing shit together while Phil wrestles with the lamb. Looks so fucking easy on the videos. It bloody isn’t.

‘Good to go here,’ Tom finally says, testing the little motor, checking the side poles are locked in place. ‘Give you a hand lifting it up.’

Phil wishes he didn’t need his help. Wishes they’d all woken up to him sitting by his rotating lamb, drinking his coffee, spraying the thing every now and then with his little pump-action lemon and oil spritz. Wishes a lot of things.

Tom lifts one end, Phil the other.

‘Watch your hand there,’ Tom says, but Phil just lifts higher so that Tom has to quicken his step backwards and around the firepit. ‘Steady,’ Tom says, ‘one, two, up!’

They hoist the carcass onto its mounts. Phil holds his breath while Tom starts the motor and it buzzes for a moment. Nothing moves.

‘What’s wrong with it?’ Phil says sharply.

‘Give us a second,’ Tom says, kneeling down to fiddle with the attachment.

‘Is it gonna work, Dad?’ Reuben says. Phil ignores him, staring at the thing as though he can make it move with willpower alone.

And then it does, creaking and whirring into action as the carcass shifts, drops a few centimetres and starts to rotate.

‘Yes!’ he yells, pumping his fist in the air.

‘Never in doubt,’ Tom says, standing back.

‘Guess there’s no bacon and eggs on the fire this morning, then,’ says Avril.

‘No,’ Phil says, ‘there’s fucking not.’ And he is delighted by her raised eyebrows, the boys’ sniggering as they run off to play.

Lou

In the pub, Marnie is sorting the food boxes. ‘Keep or chuck?’ she says, holding up two bags of unopened hot cross buns towards Lou.

‘Keep, obviously,’ Lou says. ‘Can toast them.’

Marnie sighs and tucks them into a green bag. ‘We’ll go back with as much as we came with. Why do we never learn?’

Better than having too little, Lou thinks. ‘Under control?’ she asks. ‘I’m going to pack down the trailer.’

‘Yep. Hey, make sure you leave the book out – we haven’t practised our skit!’

Lou nearly groans. The very last thing she wants to do is put on an accent and try to make the kids laugh. ‘Might not be time, darl,’ she says. ‘Lamb’s running over, just let the kids do theirs, maybe?’

Marnie looks at her, aghast. ‘No, we have to! We can’t make the kids do it and not do ours, Stella will lose her mind at that!’

She’s right. Like always. ‘I’ll find the book,’ Lou says, sighing.

The door of the pub creaks behind her.

‘Benji, love, you okay?’ Marnie says, looking over Lou’s shoulder.

‘I want to go home,’ Benji says as Lou turns to him. His shoulders are hunched in, his eyes down.

Marnie pushes past her to Benji, brings him into a cuddle. ‘Oh, my love – we are, so soon. We’ve just got to finish packing and have that yummy lunch and do the play! Mum and I were just talking about it, we can’t wait to see yours.’

‘I feel sick,’ Benji says, his voice muffled by Marnie’s hug.

‘Do you think you feel nervous about the play?’ Lou asks, coming close to them.

Marnie lets him go and he frowns.

‘I don’t know,’ Benji says.

‘Where does it hurt?’ Marnie asks, tender voiced.

‘Your tummy? Your head?’ Lou asks.

‘I just wanna go home,’ he says and hangs his head.

‘Seriously, Benji, my darling,’ Lou says, getting frustrated. She knows, she knows the lure of home, of soft, clean bed, of hot shower, of leaving this debacle behind them and letting it go. But she is determined to finish on a high so all of the kids, everyone, goes home with the Willow Creek dream intact. ‘We’ll be going home so soon, just try and enjoy the rest of the day, huh?’

Marnie cuddles him again and he turns away, his head still hanging down. As he heads out, Josie appears at the threshold.

‘I need to speak with you,’ she says. She is red faced and sweating and looks stressed. Join the club, Lou wants to snap.

‘Tell her we have to do the skit,’ Marnie says. ‘She’s trying to get out of it!’

‘It’s not about that,’ Josie says sharply. ‘Come.’

Marnie gives Lou a look. ‘You go,’ she says.

Josie storms out the door of the pub and off around the verandah.

Lou shakes her head but follows. It is an unspoken rule between best mates that when they demand you, you are there.

Josie is standing behind the pub, facing away from her. ‘What is it?’ Lou says, standing in close. ‘What’s wrong?’

Josie explodes. ‘What the fuck is WRONG? Jesus Christ, Lou, what have you done?’

Suddenly, Lou feels very, very cold.

‘What do you mean?’ she asks, grasping, she knows, for the possibility that this might be something else altogether.

Josie leans in, whispering furiously. ‘Did you fucking kill him? Did you and Ness and Tom kill Jacob?’

Lou feels her head start to pound, the blood rushing to her core to try and keep her standing.

‘How—’ she starts.

Josie grabs her arm. ‘He’s got it on fucking video, Lou.’

‘Who has, what?’

‘The fucking kid with the gun from the river! Aidan. He’s got trail cameras everywhere; he just fucking SHOWED me. I saw you, Lou.’

Lou leans forward, grabbing her knees to stop herself toppling over.

‘You two okay?’ Lou hears Tom’s voice and shuts her eyes. Jesus Christ. It is real. It is over.

She straightens up to see Josie advancing on Tom, who is stepping down from the verandah. ‘What’s going on?’ he says.

Lou looks at him wildly. Where is Marnie? She cannot – she cannot find out.

‘What the fuck, Tom!’ Josie explodes, pushing Tom in the chest so that he stumbles backwards.

‘Josie, shhh, please,’ Lou says, racing forwards to grab her friend as Tom rights himself.

‘What were you thinking?’ Josie hisses. ‘How could you?’

Tom has his hands out. ‘Jo, Jo, it’s not – it’s a mistake – it’s not what you think, I promise.’ Lou sees how white he has gone. They should never have kept it from her – from any of them. They should have told the others straight away.

‘You’ve fucked everything!’ Josies yells.

‘It was one time, Jo, it was—’

‘One time!’ Josie screams. ‘What the fucking fuck? You’ve hidden more than one dead fucking body?’

Tom looks at Lou now, colour rushing back to his face. ‘Fuck, Josie, we just didn’t want – it was an accident.’

Lou jumps in. ‘He was out of control, it all happened so fast—’

Josie turns on them both now. ‘Why didn’t you call the police?’

‘We were trying to protect Ness,’ Lou begins.

‘We didn’t know what to do,’ Tom says.

Josie crosses her arms. ‘Well,’ she says, ‘now someone’s got video evidence of you pulling a dead body off a fucking fence and driving it away in a tractor, so what the fuck are we gonna do?’

The three of them stand there in silence, breathing heavily. Lou’s brain is spinning, but she has one thing, one tiny little glint of hope, so small, but something.

Josie said ‘we’.

Flick

Her head aches. She’s gotta get in the river. Wash the hangover off. Wash the sex off her. Jesus. What has she done?

The kids and Phil are up at the firepit, thank Christ. She pulls her damp bathers on, chucks on a hoodie, grabs a towel and heads to the river.

And what Tom told her, fuck, is he for real?

She has to tell Phil. He will fix this. Pack them up and leave here, make it clear that they have nothing to do with any madness – accidental or not – that has gone on here.

But how can she tell him that and not everything else? Does one secret cancel out the other? Will Phil ask why Tom told her?

And Ness! What the fuck? Ness’s in on this too? And he said Avril – my god, have they all just been playing happy campers all weekend and holding on to this?

She hears one of the kids yelling from the pub, but she waves her hand behind her and hurries towards the river. Just get her head under, freeze this all out.

She stops at the riverbank, rips off her hoodie, steps forward into the river, it’s higher and faster and Jesus maybe it will just wash her away, take her downstream away from the fucking mess they’ve made.

‘Hey.’

Flick turns to see Ness emerging from the trees.

She stands up, breathes deeply. Ness is wearing running gear and she looks good. Maybe this is what happens when you dump your husband. Or when you accidentally kill someone. You take up running and get into shape.

Ness walks right up to the riverbank, a few metres away from where Flick stands waist deep in the roiling water.

‘I saw you, Flick,’ Ness says.

Flick swallows. Frowns. ‘Saw what?’

Ness sighs. ‘Can we not do it like this?’ There is a sadness in her face, as though Flick has disappointed her in some fundamental way. ‘I saw you and Tom. Last night.’

Flick looks at the river so she does not have to look at her friend’s face. She can still deny it. Her mind swirls and her guts churn and she thinks there must be a way she can play this. She has done hard things: watched them pull two humans from inside of her, done forty-eight hours of back-to-back kids and husband with explosive gastro, lost four kilos doing those stupid CrossFit classes and overpriced juice fasts to be the lean bridesmaid her cousin never asked for, asked a boss for the pay she deserved. Surely having an affair – not even an affair, an indiscretion – is just another of the complexities of modern life? Surely her friend will understand this?

But, when the words come, she is gutless. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

Ness shakes her head, half laughs and puts her hands on her hips, looking away.

Flick feels sick.

Ness turns back, her voice steady. ‘Okay. You know, fine if you’d been able to keep it under wraps, I would never have known. But now I do. And I can’t unsee you and Tom with your hands everywhere and, Jesus, Flick, what were you thinking? Was that the first time? Is it just a once-off? Or is it something else? Cos, like, fuck, maybe you were drunk and things got a bit wild, maybe at a real long fucking stretch you can justify it, both of you, but that didn’t look like getting a bit close with a mate, babe, that was full-blown sex, with your friend’s partner – with Josie’s partner.’

Flick is silent for a moment. Then the rage spews out of her. How fucking dare she? ‘At least,’ she starts, with the thrill of throwing a brick at a window, ‘I didn’t fucking kill somebody.’

Ness’s face drains of colour. And it is satisfying, so satisfying, to see her friend undone now.

‘What are you talking about?’ Ness says.

‘I know about Jacob.’

‘How?’

‘Tom.’

Ness grits her teeth, scoffs, shakes her head.

‘You could have told me!’ Flick yells, crying now, no longer keeping it in. ‘I’m your best friend.’

Ness looks down.

‘Who knows?’ Flick asks.

‘Lou, me, Tom, Mum,’ Ness says blankly.

‘You told your mum?’

Ness shrugs. ‘I couldn’t hide it.’

‘So, Josie doesn’t know this either?’

Ness’s eyes blaze. ‘Okay,’ she says, ‘these are two totally different things, let’s just stop.’

‘No, you stop,’ Flick says, splashing forward out of the water, standing in front of Ness, dripping and freezing cold but burning up on the inside. ‘I’m here feeling such deep shame, such huge shame that for once in my life I’m doing something for me, I’m behaving badly, I’m not being perfect, and I hate myself – I hate myself, and you have the audacity to come at me and humiliate me further, make me feel like a piece of shit for the oh-so-horrendous act of infidelity while you, you have been hiding the fucking body of a man you KILLED? Are you fucking serious?’

Ness juts out her chin. ‘It was an accident – I wasn’t trying to hurt anyone.’ She wipes at her tears furiously. ‘And my fuck-up doesn’t erase yours. You’re still fucking your friend’s partner.’

‘Fuck you,’ Flick says, pushing past her, grabbing her hoodie and walking up the bank, away.

Stella

She’s waiting by the car for her phone to charge when Aidan appears, beckoning her to follow him. He looks jumpy, excited even.

She turns around to check the phone, but it’s glacial using the car to charge. She closes the door and walks over to meet him.

‘You survive the rain down there okay?’ she says.

‘Sorry I didn’t come and get you last night,’ he says. ‘The storm, you know.’

She smarts, hoping he doesn’t think she cared. ‘Yeah, figured. Got washed out, was in the pub so couldn’t have anyway.’

He nods. ‘I’ve got something to show you.’

‘Cool,’ she says, ‘what is it?’

Aidan looks over her shoulder. ‘Not here,’ he says. ‘Come down to the river.’

She frowns. ‘Okaaay,’ she says.

He trots away from her. Maybe he found the deer he was looking for? She hasn’t got long, the kids are gagging for her to organise them for the play, and she’s gotta get her swag rolled up, things packed so they can finally get out of here.

Still. She wonders what it is that’s got him so excited.

Down at the river, Aidan is pacing along the bank. The water is higher than yesterday. Branches and leaves and bubbles like cappuccino froth whirl in eddies around the edges.

‘So, what do you want to show me?’ she asks as she approaches.

He has to show her twice. He’s cut clips and put them together so the whole thing only takes ten minutes or so, but she needs to see it twice before she believes him.

She has not been observant, not at all.

But she’s paying attention now.

Phil

He’s watched so many YouTube videos of beefy blokes lovingly tending to their meat, looked at so many recipes online that he knows you’re meant to leave it to rest for three hours, not cut it, but he hasn’t got time for that now. The coals have been fired up and parts of the lamb are already starting to blacken, he’s had to cut them off and keep them warm so the flesh closest to the bone can cook through. But between the basting and turning and cutting and getting the kids to find him some trays and foil, everyone in pack-up mode, he’s feeling out of control. He really should have gone for dinner last night instead of this final lunch – everyone is already checked out in their heads, like they’ve turned to face away from the weekend and towards home and normalcy and, fuck it, he just wants them to be truly present for this lamb.

‘Getting there?’ Avril asks, coming up next to him.

Phil tries to shift the carcass up a little on the metal spike. He’s sliced too close and a flap of ribs is hanging off, almost touching the coals every time it rotates. Maybe a tent peg would do it? Hold it in place.

‘Oooh, uneven heat,’ she says. Yes, thank you Avril, I can fucking see that, he thinks to himself. ‘Can I taste?’

Phil leans forward and quickly grabs a perfectly brown piece of meat off the leg before it turns over again. He hands it to her, waves his fingers from the heat.

Avril chews, nods. ‘Is that horseradish you’ve used? Usually best with beef, but you’ve somehow made it work,’ she says.

Phil is relieved. ‘Not too dry?’ he asks.

‘Not dry, no, that’s not the word I’d use,’ Avril says, ‘but I wouldn’t wait too long to serve it if you get my drift.’

He checks his watch. It’s after midday. Maybe he’ll cut off the cooked stuff and serve them that. He’s so close, he can’t fuck it up now.

Ness

Ness slams the bags in the back of the car, not caring how filthy and muddy they are. She needs Lou to help her get the camper down, Phil’s too busy with his bloody lamb and it’s not like she’s going to ask Flick now. They have never, ever spoken to each other like that.

She throws in another bag and smashes her knee against the tow ball.

‘FAAARRRK!’ she yells, grabbing her leg. First her fucking ankle, now this. She’s falling apart.

‘Hey,’ Lou says behind her. ‘You right?’

Ness whirls around. ‘Give me a hand, will you? Can’t get the trailer down on my own.’

Lou looks behind her. ‘Josie knows.’

Ness’s eyes widen. Fuck. But does that lessen her own bombshell? ‘Flick knows too,’ Ness says.

Lou screws her face up, her eyes closed. ‘Has she told Phil?’

‘I don’t know. She will, though. Is that everyone but Marnie, now? Fuck, fuck, fuck, hardly a secret now! What do we do?’ Ness feels the panic rise in her body again.

Lou opens her eyes, breathes in and out, deeply and slowly, indicating that Ness should do the same.

‘It’s gonna be okay,’ Lou says, ‘just keep breathing.’ She stops and closes her eyes for a moment again. ‘Listen, can you find a minute to speak to Flick? Find out if she’s told Phil, and let her know that Josie is in on it now – that everyone knows except Marnie and it has to stay that way. In a few hours we’ll get the fuck away from this and everything’s going to be okay.’

Ness nods, following her sister to the trailer where they begin to take it down, one fold at a time.

Josie

She pulls another green bag onto the edge of the verandah for someone to claim and sees Lou hurrying away from Ness’s packed-down trailer.

She keeps expecting Aidan to appear beside her, his eyebrows raised. Asking for whatever it is he wants from them. Money, the property, something worse. Fuck that, that is not what’s happening.

She leaves the bags and follows Lou.

‘Lou?’ she calls out. There is no response, but as she ducks around the side of the car she smells the cigarette, turns and sees her friend standing against the back wall of the pub, eyes closed, head back.

‘Got a spare?’ Josie says quietly and Lou nods before opening her eyes, passing the packet over.

‘Ultra-light?’ she asks, looking at the pack. ‘That stop us getting cancer, then?’

‘Only lose our toes, apparently.’

‘Goodo,’ says Josie, taking the green lighter out from where it’s tucked in the packet, giving it a couple of goes before the flame takes and holds.

Josie hands the packet back. ‘Remember when we used to hide out like this?’ she says. She will not apologise for losing her shit when she found out, but now she’s in it, and she is ready to help.

‘Nicking off from Mr Petrov’s class?’ Lou says.

‘Yeah.’ Josie laughs, inhales and attempts a smoke ring, which fails. ‘Pot of coffee, cigarettes, thought we were so sophisticated.’

‘Year nine?’

‘Probably.’

‘Impossibly young. Stella’s older than that already,’ Lou says, a sadness there.

‘That’s crazy,’ Josie says, wishing they could stay for a moment, just reliving the past. But Lou is somewhere else in her head. And she is hurting. Josie wants to say to her friend, Tell me what I can do, let me fix this. But she imagines Lou like one of those blood-red rockpool anemones – if you get too close, they snap all their little bits up inside. Change shape. Stay closed.

‘You remember talking about getting a place like this then?’ Josie says instead.

‘Hmmm.’

‘Remember – At Ardilla, was it? We’d read that book and we desperately wanted a beach house for ourselves.’

Lou smiles now, nods. ‘And then Tomorrow When the War Began.’

‘Fuck yes. We wanted a war so we could run away and be self-sufficient,’ Ness laughs. ‘And so we could fuck Homer.’

‘You wanted to fuck Homer, I wanted to fuck Ellie,’ Lou says, raising one eyebrow. ‘Or be her.’

‘True.’ She takes a long drag on the cigarette. ‘You did it, Lou. You made this happen. You found Willow Creek. This is our place now. We can fix this.’

‘I’ve fucked everything.’

‘You haven’t—’ Josie starts, but Lou cuts her off.

‘No, you don’t understand,’ she says, gritting her teeth as though the words are being forced from somewhere deep inside her, but she can’t stop them. ‘I don’t know if I can forgive myself for what we did to Jacob. And Marnie will hate me when she finds out about the money I stole. She’ll leave me, and Stella too – you don’t know how she looks at me. She despises me.’ Lou starts to cry. Loud, wracking sobs. ‘I can’t lose them, Jo. I can’t lose any of this.’

Josie puts her arms around her best friend. No-one is losing anything.

Phil

It’s so bloody hot over the fire. He’s sweating and swearing under his breath, dismissing everyone as they tell him the salads and bread are ready, tell him the kids are pretty hungry, ask if he needs anything. Yeah, he needs this fucking lamb to not be charred in some places and red-raw in others, he needs everyone to stop clamouring about the pack-up and time for the stupid fucking talent show, he needs to go back to the vision of him laughing and brushing off the compliments as people bite into the juicy meat he slaughtered and cooked over fire with his bare hands.

‘Just start!’ Phil calls out. ‘There’s heaps there!’

And there is, there’s enough to feed a whole bloody town.

He turns the spit again, jumps back as fat splatters up on his arm.

‘Fuck!’ he shouts, slapping at the spot, wanting to kick the fucking beast into the fire. He pushes roughly at the edge of the spit and the lamb starts to lean precariously. He grabs at it, pulling it back upright – and only then does he feel the searing heat in his hand.

‘Christ!’ he shouts again. He grabs his hand.

‘Mate, you alright?’ Tom says behind him. ‘We’ve got heaps, mate, come and eat.’

Phil can’t look at him. ‘Watch this, will you? Burnt myself.’

‘Sure thing, yeah, no worries,’ Tom says, and Phil walks away.

Ness

Ness looks up from the plate she’s doing for Eden to see Flick standing by the firepit, watching Phil storm away from the lamb. She can see from her shoulders, her head, that tense, taut stance of hers, how torn she is.

She remembers a younger Flick in the driveway at their place, watching her dad back his car out fast, kicking up gravel. There’d been some fight, there always was – Flick’s churchy parents implying that Ness and Lou and Av were a bad influence. Not their kind of people. The defeat in her best friend’s face as she turned back. How Ness had hugged her. Got her ready for whatever party they were going to, done her make-up, got Avril to buy the UDLs Flick was absolutely not allowed to have, talked her through her first nervous pash. They had been inseparable. Essential to each other.

She puts the plate down, hands Eden a piece of bread. ‘I’ll just be a tick,’ she says.

Ness stops behind her. Puts her hand to Flick’s back, then steps out to her side.

‘I’m sorry and I’m a total dick and I love you,’ Ness says softly, putting her chin on Flick’s shoulder. The spot where it fits. The spot where it has always fit. ‘I want what’s best for you, I want you to do you, I’ve got no right – all the things, Flick. Okay?’

‘You made me feel like shit,’ Flick says, not moving, still stiff.

It hurts. ‘I know,’ Ness says. ‘I’m sorry. I don’t think you’re shit.’

Flick shakes her head. ‘I already feel like shit. There is nothing you can say that will make me feel more like a horrible, traitorous, piece of shit.’

‘You’re not.’

Flick turns now and looks at her hard.

‘Maybe you are,’ Ness says, ‘but on the scale of pieces of shit, like, there’s a lot worse.’

Flick suddenly throws her arms around Ness. Hugs her hard. ‘What are you gonna do, babe?’ she says against her neck.

‘Don’t worry about me,’ Ness says, so relieved in this hug that she can’t possibly ask Flick if she’s let slip to Phil yet. ‘Me and Lou’ll sort this out. Please, don’t get involved – you just sort your own shit out. Looks like maybe Phil needs you?’

‘It’s done,’ Flick says. ‘It won’t happen again.’

‘You don’t owe me an explanation.’

‘No, and I don’t owe it to Phil either,’ she says. ‘Or to Josie. But I’ve got to be accountable to myself. And I don’t want to be that person. Even though,’ and she looks at Ness now as though she is pleading with her, ‘even though it felt so fucking good to feel like that again.’

Ness wraps her arms around her friend, can feel the wet of her tears on her shoulder, and she keeps hugging her, holding on tight.

Flick

Flick finds him at the river.

‘Babe?’ Flick says behind him. ‘You okay?’

Her husband does not turn around. He shakes his head.

‘Hey. Hey,’ she says softly, as if she is approaching a horse about to bolt. Her hand on the small of his back. Soft pressure, just there.

‘I didn’t get another coaching gig.’ He coughs out the words as if they taste bad. ‘I lied. Steve didn’t get promoted because I’ve been head hunted for state juniors.’

‘Okay,’ Flick says softly. She wants to laugh, wants to say, Oh, my love, this is the least of my worries right now.

‘I’ve been going to an anger-management course. Mandated. Have to pass it if I want to coach again.’

She is quiet. He turns around.

‘I’m a fuck-up. I lost my shit at some kid and then I lied to you. I was just so ashamed. What does that say about me, huh? What kind of a dad am I?’

She looks at him with both pity and relief. He looks down.

‘We fuck up alright, we’re human,’ Flick says softly, stepping towards him, placing one hand on his chest.

‘I have to tell Leo,’ he says brokenly. She doesn’t say anything, just holds her hand there, steady. ‘I feel so ashamed.’ She wraps her arms around him and he begins to weep.

‘It’s gonna be okay,’ Flick whispers in his hair, ‘all of it.’ He wipes his nose on her shoulder. ‘I don’t know what it looks like,’ she says, ‘but it’s gonna be okay.’

As she holds him, feels the tension release from his body, his sobs, she knows what she has to do. ‘I have to tell you something,’ Flick says evenly. She will keep her own secret, she will take that to the grave – it will never happen again, it is done. But she has to tell him about Jacob. Phil is her husband. They can do hard things together. She pulls away from him, still gripping his arms.

‘Yeah?’ he says carefully.

She takes a deep breath. Sudden vertigo. Just say it, she thinks.

‘It’s Jacob. He’s dead.’

Phil frowns. ‘Dead?’

Flick nods.

He starts to laugh. ‘Is this a prank? Have you got one of the kids filming me?’ he says, looking around behind him.

She pulls him back to face her. ‘He had an accident, a bad accident.’

‘Bloody hell. When? Just now? Has someone called an ambulance?’

‘He’s been dead since Friday.’

‘Friday? We arrived on Friday. He was here on Friday. I’ve been trying to call him…’

‘Yes,’ Flick says, trying to keep her voice steady. ‘He was here when it happened, I think. Ness and Lou were… there. And that’s why I need you to stop asking about him, to delete his number from your phone, to not speak of him again.’

Phil’s eyes boggle. But he keeps himself calm. ‘Flick, babe, are you fucking serious?’

Flick sighs. ‘I know, it’s a lot. Lou and Ness, Tom – they tried to fix it—’

‘They’re all in on it?’ Phil explodes.

‘Not everyone,’ Flick says quickly. ‘Avril and Josie found out. But not Marnie. Marnie can’t know. Obviously. For, you know, the campaign.’

Phil steps back, turns towards the river, puts his head in his hands.

She waits. ‘We don’t have to do anything, just have to stay quiet.’

Phil spins around to face her.

‘Where is he?’

‘Who?’

‘Fucking dead Jacob, where is his body?’

‘I didn’t ask.’

Flick is still as Phil advances towards her.

‘Our neighbour, who we saw on Friday, is dead – maybe somewhere on the fucking property that we own, with all of our names on the fucking contract, and you’re telling me to stay quiet?’

His face is going red, redder, his eyes bulging.

Josie

There is so much lamb. She and Lou and Marnie have filled every Tupperware container they have and there is still a plate piled high and the carcass with more on it. Maybe they can make stock?

‘Sure you can’t eat more, Marnie?’ Josie says, pointing at the plate.

Marnie shakes her head. ‘Can we just chuck it in the fire?’ she says quietly, leaning in towards Josie.

‘But the food waste! Ness will kill you,’ Josie says, laughing, then she sees Lou’s face and quickly swallows the laugh.

‘What about we take the rest down to the river campers?’ Marnie says, looking at Lou. ‘A peace offering?’

Josie feels the idea springing to life like a new seedling inside of her. ‘Actually, I think I might have another Tupperware container in the back of the ute. Give it here,’ she says, taking the plate of meat and the green tin cup of gravy from Marnie.

Marnie smiles. ‘Excellent,’ she says. ‘When you get back, I reckon we’ll be nearly ready for the talent show.’

Josie walks quickly down the hill in the direction of her camp, passing Phil and Flick, who are hurrying back from the river.

‘Where’s Tom?’ Phil says.

Josie shakes her head. ‘Not sure, why?’

Phil stops and looks at her. Flick stands beside him, head bowed.

‘We know, Josie,’ Phil says.

Josie freezes. ‘Know what?’

Phil leans forward, whispers hoarsely. ‘Jacob,’ he says. ‘I need to talk to Tom. Do you know where he is?’

Suddenly, Flick points up towards the pub, ‘There, he’s there, Phil.’

Phil jogs off in Tom’s direction and Flick hurries after him, not looking back.

Josie stares after them for a moment. Does Phil think that he and Tom can fix this – that it’ll be fine now the men are on the job? They don’t even know about the video. About Aidan. Only she can fix this. She hurries towards the ute, praying that this will work.

From the corner of her eye she can see the smoke coming from the camp by the river. Imagines Aidan sitting there, flanked by his parents. Has he told them? Shown them the video?

He is smart, and patient – a hunter has to be. He thinks he can control this; thinks he’s landed on a prize. He’ll wait till he has all the evidence.

There is only one decision to make. Her hand has been forced. Could it go wrong? Fuck, yes. In a thousand million ways. But this might be the only opportunity. She cannot second-guess. At her campsite, she rests the hot plate and the gravy cup on the little table, and goes to the ute. She opens the drawer in the side and pulls out the paper bag. She grabs the gloves too – filthy from the fire but they’ll do the job.

The mushrooms have shrivelled, pale yellowish brown. Nothing alarming about the look of them. She takes a small knife from the drawer and, holding it carefully in her gloved fingers, she chops a mushroom until it is in tiny pieces. She takes these and sprinkles them into the gravy. With the end of the knife she stirs it a few times, but the gravy is so thick anyway, no-one would ever know.

She can see the three of them sitting quietly around the smoking fire, backs towards her.

‘Yoohoo!’ she calls. ‘Anyone in?’ Okay, dial it back, she thinks, he’ll see you coming from a mile off.

Libby turns around and smiles broadly. ‘Hello, there.’

Josie tries to return the smile. ‘Hope I’m not interrupting,’ she says. ‘I’m Josie, Lou’s best mate. Thanks so much for finding Eden. Everyone was beside themselves.’

Dave nods his head and looks back at the crossword book in his lap.

Aidan looks up from his phone screen, then down at the plate and cup in her hands. He smiles. Your move, he seems to be saying.

‘Just glad everything’s okay,’ Libby says. ‘Have to be careful round here.’

‘Yes!’ Josie says, too loud, too forced as she tries not to look at Aidan. ‘Yes, we’re learning that. Look,’ she says, hurrying on, ‘we had so much lamb, thought I’d bring some down for you.’ She places the covered plate on the red and white tablecloth. ‘And here—’ She lifts the cup before placing it down next to the meat. ‘Can’t have lamb without the gravy!’

She wonders if that’s overkill. Has she been too much, just the right amount? Will he suspect something?

‘Well,’ says Libby, standing up, ‘isn’t that thoughtful of you? We’ll have that for our tea.’

‘You know who’d appreciate some of that?’ Aidan says, looking at his father. ‘Crazy Jacob next door.’

Dave shakes his head. ‘Wouldn’t bother.’

Aidan looks at Josie. ‘Didn’t see him round when I was out this morning. You lot must be making too much of a racket for him.’

Josie swallows. ‘Anyway, Lou thought you’d enjoy, I told her you mightn’t want it, but…’ she trails off.

‘Very neighbourly,’ Aidan says. ‘Guess the killer should get a cut. When you heading off?’

Josie feels herself start to falter under his gaze. ‘We’ll be gone by nightfall.’

He nods slowly.

‘Make sure you come down and grab your plate before you go!’ Libby says. ‘Camping kit doesn’t come cheap.’

Josie stretches her mouth into something she hopes is a smile.

‘Too right it doesn’t,’ Dave pipes up from his seat. ‘Especially not with all the tech nonsense our boy brings along. Essential, he reckons,’ he says, shaking his head.

‘Wouldn’t have any venison in the freezer back home if I didn’t,’ Aidan says.

Josie can’t read his face. He looks so smug.

‘You and those bloody cameras,’ Libby says to Aidan. ‘And you still haven’t got that big deer you’re after, what use are they?’ she says, laughing.

‘Useful enough,’ Aidan says. And then the fucker winks at her.

Josie coughs, recovers. ‘Well, enjoy,’ she says. ‘Will drop by before we head off.’

‘Catch you later,’ Aidan calls after her as she hurries away.

Lou

Lou leaves Marnie to pack up. Nods her head quickly when her wife sends that questioning look her way. The look that says, I see you, I know something’s up, talk to me.

‘Just gonna have a quick swim, then I’ll be back for the show,’ she says, turning away before Marnie can question her.

She cuts down to the river, away from the camp, and walks along the bank towards the swimming hole. She needs to get in the water. Scrub off the filth and the memories and the shame.

It has to finish here. If she has learned anything in a career of forensically investigating people’s poor decisions, it is that they have a tendency to cascade. One begets the next begets the next until all hell breaks loose. It must stop right here. They just have to put it behind them. They have jobs to do, families to protect, this place, the dream of it. Enough.

Up ahead on the bank, she sees her mother, stripped down to her red bathers, standing at the edge of the water, one hand clasping her other wrist behind her back. God, she has got small. A shrunken version of the woman who was always larger than life. How has Lou not noticed this? Has she been so distracted discussing the ins and outs of Marnie’s aged care reform policy that she’s failed to see her own mother fading away in front of her? Has the cancer come back? Surely she would have said something, told her own daughters?

‘Mum?’ she calls out, suddenly anxious.

Avril turns, smiles serenely and raises one hand.

‘Nothing matters to the river, does it?’ Avril says as Lou comes close. ‘This current just keeps on keeping on, we could be bones on the riverbed and it would not change a thing.’

‘It’s cold, Mum, you sure you want to go in?’

Avril smiles. She has piled her hair high in grey twists with a clip. Noble, that’s how she looks, skinny and almost luminously pale, but noble.

‘We need to submerge, at least up to the neck,’ Avril says. ‘That’s where the good of it is, getting your chest under, forcing the lungs to breathe deeper. At least five minutes, Flick said. Can you set your watchy thing?’

Lou nods, sets her timer for five minutes, counts them down.

On three they both splash forward, squealing and determined, and then, when the water is at her thighs, Lou yells out, ‘I’m going under!’ and she stretches her arms above her head, tilts and dives.

Down she goes. And back to air and, god. She gasps, scream cut off by her attempt to inhale – but she feels it leave her body, imagines the echo of it rolling up the opposite hill and back over itself, reverberating down through the valley and across the surface of the water, until it’s out and she can breathe again, once, twice, the ache in every cell, right down into her bones. She turns, looking for Avril, and there she is, chin just out of the water, eyes closed, face beatific.

‘You okay, Mum?’

Avril breathes and smiles. ‘Yes,’ she says. ‘Isn’t it marvellous?’

Not the word she’d use, Lou thinks as she scrubs her arms vigorously with her knuckles, breathing hard and gritting her teeth against the cold.

‘Stop fighting it, my love,’ Avril says quietly.

‘I can’t,’ Lou says, and she begins – violently, unexpectedly – to weep.

Avril does not move, does not stretch out her arm or embrace Lou, only says, loud enough to break through the loud crying: ‘Of course you can.’

Maybe the rest of the tears have frozen in situ, maybe it’s the familiar shock of her mother’s casual and irrefutable faith in her, but Lou stops crying, stops shivering, breathes into the frigid cold and stills her body.

Of course she can.

She can start to make things right. She’ll start with Libby and Dave. Give them something back, something to make up for her callousness. Maybe it’ll bring Aidan round. Maybe they can make some kind of peace. Lou remembers something her therapist said: When you feel your worst, reach out and do something for someone else.

Her watch vibrates and she leaps up from the water, lumbering out towards the bank, looking back and checking for Avril, grabbing her hand to help her over the uneven stones until they are on dry land, whooping and shaking the water off, flapping their arms to warm up. Lou passes her mother the towel and grabs the other end to rub her own face vigorously, feels the burning buzz of the blood rushing back, starting at her feet and rushing up her body, and now she laughs, and Avril laughs, great cackles that echo up and down the opposite hill so they are laughing in chorus now, with themselves, over and over again.

Stella

Stella claps her hands and the kids all turn to face her. ‘So, does everyone know what they have to do?’

The children clamour at her, hands and questions and worries and excitement. She holds up her hands until they quiet.

‘Remember what I showed you in the cemetery?’ she says, softly enough that they have to gather in to hear. Six faces look at her expectantly.

‘The bird skull,’ Winnie says reverently.

‘Birdie!’ says Eden.

‘Yes,’ Stella says, ‘exactly. And remember I told you it was our talisman?’

‘Like magic!’ Benji says.

‘And we spat on it!’ Kai says and laughs.

‘And,’ says Stella, ‘you know how I said it protects us and makes us strong?’

They all nod.

‘So now you just have to trust me, trust our talisman, okay? I have to go and do one last thing and then, when I come back, it will be time.’

They nod, bristling with excitement now.

‘I’ll be back soon,’ Stella says. She hurries out of the pub. Hockey was good for one thing – she’s fast. She tucks her phone in her pocket and runs towards the gate.

Phil

As he pulls the wheelbarrow off the back of Tom’s ute, a cloud of cockies fright in the trees above them and take off, keening and circling and then flying away to settle again somewhere else in the valley.

‘Over there,’ Tom says, pointing to the tractor parked near a pile of rusted tin and old car bodies.

Phil grabs the wheelbarrow and they walk around the tractor, parked haphazardly amid the bits of metal spiking up in the earth. Bloody hoarder. There’s shit everywhere.

Tom stops, points.

Phil feels his stomach turn. He is on his back, a mass of fabric and flesh and dark, dark blood for a chest. The hands, the face has begun to bloat, a scratch on the cheek dark against the pale white-blue skin. Around the eyes and mouth and nostrils tiny black bugs gather and swarm.

‘You just left him here?’ He is incredulous. What the fuck were they thinking?

‘Mate, we didn’t have a heap of time. He’s fallen out of the tractor, see?’ Tom says, pointing.

Christ, they very nearly fucked this up so completely.

‘What d’you reckon?’ Tom says.

Phil turns away from Tom and the foul corpse. He bends over and dry-retches. Hands on his knees. Coughs again. Get it together, he thinks. They need you. He stands and looks across towards the tree line. There must be one around here somewhere. He begins to walk. Skirting old engines, plastic tubs filled with gungy water, beer bottles, a toilet turned on its side. It’s grotty, everything still damp from the rain. He stomps harder, kicking at a decomposing blanket.

‘Seriously, mate,’ Tom calls after him. ‘He’s fine here. He’ll be so rotten in a few days no-one will see the scratch. Or we chuck a bit of tin on his chest? See? Like he fell on it?’

Tom’s fucking useless. But Phil? He can do this. He fucked the coaching, he fucked the lamb, he fucked up being a dad and he very nearly fucked his marriage, but he’s not going to fuck this up.

‘Give me a minute,’ Phil calls back over his shoulder.

He knows he’s found it before he even kicks the pile of rocks away from the tin.

‘Here,’ he calls back to Tom, using his hands now to lift the last rocks away, slide the tin to the side and reveal the mine shaft. ‘Bingo,’ he says, under his breath.

Flick

The cars are all packed, the firepit doused with water and covered over with sand. They’ve got Ness’s trailer hitched and Flick has packed down all that she can at their place – more than Phil’s ever let her do, she feels quite proud, really.

The boxes that are to stay, the crockery and cutlery and tables and chairs, are stacked tidy in the corner of the lounge and the only thing left to do is the talent show.

But they have to wait for Phil. Again. He and Tom left forty minutes ago. The kids are whining now, and it’s almost three o’clock. Flick just wants to be on the road, aches for the familiarity of home, needs a hot shower to obliterate the whole weekend.

Avril brings her bag out onto the verandah and hands it to Lou, who’s just finished reversing the Prado up to hitch her camper. She notices them gathered around the damp firepit.

‘Where’s Marnie?’ Lou calls over.

‘Doing make-up for the kids’ play,’ Flick calls back.

Lou takes Avril’s hand and leads her over to the circle.

‘And where the fuck have Phil and Tom snuck off to?’ Lou says quietly.

‘Gone to deal with it,’ Flick says.

‘How?’ Josie says.

Flick breathes deeply, incensed that she is part of this, relieved that she is not on the outside. ‘Just fix it, okay?’

‘What does that even mean?’ Ness squeaks.

‘Shhhhh,’ Avril says as Lou glances up at the pub.

‘Okay,’ says Lou, setting her face. ‘So this is what’s going to happen.’ They all look at her expectantly. ‘After today, we never, ever speak of this again. Not cryptically, not drunkenly, not confessionally, not in therapy, not to our partners. And not, ever, to Marnie. It’s as if it never happened. We wipe it from our brains.’

This is the Lou that Flick loves most. Totally capable. Absolutely in charge. They all nod.

‘What about the footage?’ Ness whispers.

Flick feels like she’s been punched. ‘What fucking footage?’

‘Footage?’ Avril says.

‘What are you talking about?’ Flick says, her voice coming out scared and small.

Lou looks like she might kill Ness there on the spot. ‘I’ve taken care of that,’ she says firmly.

‘How?’ Josie says.

‘Will someone please explain the fucking footage?’ Flick whispers hoarsely.

Lou looks over her shoulder. Turns back. ‘Aidan, the kid with the gun, had some trail cameras out. Got some…’ She pauses. ‘Got something on video. He showed it to Josie, made out as if it was gonna cost us for him to make it go away.’

Flick looks at Josie, who is pale and visibly shaking. God, how much worse can this get?

‘So, we go down and take the fucking cameras off him!’ Ness says. ‘By force if we have to!’

‘Haven’t we done enough fighting with the neighbours, darling?’ Avril says.

‘And he’s the one with the bloody gun, Ness!’ quavers Flick.

Lou cuts in, clearly frustrated. ‘I’ve sorted it. I’ve offered them Jimmy’s share. It’s the right thing to do. They lost their daughter here, they could never afford to buy it themselves. But with us, I just – it feels like making something good out of this whole entire fuck-up. Like it might set something back in balance. Grant us some kind of karmic fucking redemption.’

Josie steps back suddenly. She looks as though she is going to throw up.

‘You okay, Josie?’ Lou says.

‘Sorry,’ she says. ‘Go on! I’ll be back in a bit.’

‘Josie!’ Lou says.

But Josie turns from the circle, sprinting away from them and down towards the river.

A horn toots in the driveway and Flick sees Tom’s ute driving fast up to the pub. Relief floods her. ‘They’re back,’ she says. Thank fuck. But honking the horn? Seriously.

‘We never, ever speak of it again,’ Lou says, acknowledging each of them in turn with a slight nod. ‘Now,’ she says, smiling wearily, but it’s a real smile, ‘let’s go show these kids how much fun we are.’

Josie

As she races across the grass she looks for the smoke from their campfire but sees none. This could be good, she tells herself as her legs begin to burn. They could be having a nap, fishing, is it a good time for fishing? Her watch vibrates, telling her to take a breath, and she tells it to fuck off and goes faster.

She slows at the back of the camper trailer, breathing hard as she tries to listen over the ruckus of her own body. She can’t hear anything, so she creeps to the corner and pokes her head around. Dave is sitting in a chair, head tipped back – fuck! But no, the puff of his chest. Doesn’t work that fast anyway, could take days.

But the plate is not there, it is not there, fuck fuck fuck, so she tries the door of the trailer, open, she pulls on it and Libby is there and she looks up, she has the plate in her hands, oven mitts on, foil and steam, oh god, there on the bench is the cup.

‘Oh, you’re off then? Just heating this up, what are you—’

But Josie grabs the cup, spills some of the gravy on her hand in her haste, turns around and steps back down out of the camper, straight into him, Aidan.

‘What are you doing?’ His head is cocked on an angle, his eyes narrowing.

She looks down at the cup and then quickly flicks her wrist and throws the gravy in a long arc onto the ground.

‘What the fuck?’ says Aidan.

‘Goodness!’ says Libby.

‘Diarrhoea,’ says Josie. ‘Terrible, horrible – the kids have just started going down with it, we reckon it’s the gravy. But maybe chuck the lamb as well, just to be safe.’

‘Oh dear,’ Libby says, holding the plate away from her and stepping down from the camper. ‘Not what you need when you’re heading home. Plenty of towels, I hope?’

Josie nods.

‘Tricky thing, getting it right. Maybe not cooked for long enough?’ Libby asks, scraping the plate into a green garbage bag hanging off the side of the van.

‘He didn’t have a clue what he was doing,’ Aidan says.

‘Right? Ha!’ Josie says, relief now washing through her. ‘All of us still finding our feet a bit. Lou said she’d been down to talk to you about the property?’

‘She did, lovely woman,’ Libby says. ‘We didn’t expect anything of the sort of course, but, well’ – she puts her hands on Aidan’s shoulders – ‘we’re very touched by the gesture.’

‘Still some things to discuss,’ Aidan says.

‘Of course,’ Josie says. ‘Let me give you my number.’

Aidan inclines his head as if he is thinking about it, then reaches into his pocket, pulls out his phone, unlocks it and hands it over.

It’s so intuitive, so easy now that it is here, she can’t believe she didn’t think of it first. She wants to laugh at the simplicity, kick herself for what she very nearly did instead.

She types her number into the phone and hits save, laughs and shakes her head as if she is in idiot. ‘I’ve put in my bloke’s number,’ she says. ‘Only other one I know off by heart. Sorry, I’ll try that again.’ Aidan rolls his eyes.

Quickly, she navigates to his camera roll. She scrolls, and there is the dark footage she saw, the little time stamp showing it’s a video. There are three of them. She deletes them all. Laughs again, and apologises, closes the app and hands the phone over.

‘I’ll be in touch,’ Aidan says, taking the phone back and sliding it into his pocket without looking.

Before she goes back to the talent show, Josie walks to the river and rinses the cup, careful to keep her hands from touching the residue. Then she throws it far in, watches it float away.

She picks up stones and scrubs her hands. Rubbing and rubbing, rough on her skin so that they redden, almost to grazing but still she rubs, picks up handfuls of the river mud and rubs her hands, up to her wrists, up further to her elbows, through the gaps in her fingers, scrubbing and scrubbing, then stones again and then water, rinsing, rinsing again.

Then she vomits. Into the water, watching the lumps of lamb and potato, the brown slick of gravy, and then just bile. Again and again, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. Is it there, the toxin somehow ingrained now, stained into her skin? She worries that she has poisoned herself, that she’s going to vomit until she dies here on the side of the river. But she knows this sickness comes from her own conscience. As soon as the kids have done the play, before they drive back to city, she will take her shovel and walk up the hill and dig up the acacia and the fungus, all of the fungus, she’ll dig up half the mountain if she has to, and then she will burn it all, and she will tell Entheon she’s out, and they will find another way to get the money, and there will be no more, no dead frogs, no dead anything, not by her hands.

Stella

Finally. The grown-ups have finished applauding Tom’s stupid bogan song and their stupid skit about the bad old days. Living in a shoebox. Working twenty-nine hours a day. You were lucky! So cringe. Marnie looked like she was having a riot of a time with her ridiculous accent and her hat, pretending to smoke a pipe, and Grandma put in the effort too. But Lou wasn’t trying at all, and she had to do Josie’s part as well because she ran in so late, all sweaty and red. Stella doesn’t know why they bothered.

But now it’s her turn.

She quells the rumbling in her guts.

Before opening night, Miss Ellison told the cast that what they were feeling was adrenaline. It can feel like nerves and it can feel like excitement, she’d said. It can make you feel sick in the guts. But you need to channel that. Know that your body is giving you what it needs to get out there and perform.

Stella closes her eyes and breathes into the churning in her stomach. Adrenaline. It’s giving her what she needs.

Winnie does an earnest little Acknowledgement of Country like the one she says she does for school assembly, and then Stella steps onto the stage.

‘Welcome to our play,’ she says, using the theatre voice from deep in her chest and spreading out her arms. ‘The Rules of Willow Creek. Please, sit back and enjoy.’

Stella feels a thrill rising in her. She knows what’s coming. And she knows that they have no idea.

Ness

Stella clears her throat. Centres herself in front of the white sheet they’ve tacked to the wall. The little projector perched on a chair right in front of the seated grown-ups. The children are still throwing on bits of their costumes, whispering to each other. ‘Present day, Willow Creek,’ Stella says, turning around and ushering the children onto the stage

‘Oooh, look at this lovely old town we bought!’

‘It’s nice, peaceful, very lovely.’

The kids smirk and giggle, putting on their grown-up voices.

Ness realises they are all wearing the adults’ clothes. Winnie in her yoga pants, Leo wearing Phil’s Lakers T-shirt and cap. It’s hilarious. The kids are delighted, laughing and strutting around, and Ness feels a bubble of pure happiness start to build in her chest. She almost weeps for it.

‘We need a composting toilet!’

‘And we need some rules!’

The kids pick up the empty bottles and pretend to swig from them, mime munching and crunching handfuls of food.

Oh, how they mock them. Ness guffaws at Winnie holding an empty wine bottle, pretending to be drunk. It is so not okay, very cheeky of Stella, of all of them, but how can they deny them this glee? The kids are all thrilled, puffed up with their own funniness.

‘Oh no! I ran off the road! It wasn’t my fault, it was the bloody deer,’ Winnie says, her voice deep.

‘Oh my god! Winter!’ Ness says and puts her head in her hands as everyone laughs. Next to her, Flick puts her hand on her back, laughing.

Kai walks on holding two sticks to his head, ‘I’m a very scary deer!’

‘Don’t worry, I’ll shoot you!’ Benji says, holding up a stick like a gun. He’s wearing a black T-shirt and black hat with dark streaks that look like smudges of eyeliner on his face.

‘No guns!’ Lou shouts, but Ness can see she is smiling, only mock-stern.

Stella pushes Reuben onto the stage. He is draped in the lamb skin.

‘Oh god!’ Flick says, her hands flying to her mouth. ‘Take it off, Reuben! It’s covered in germs!’

Ness is at once appalled and thrilled by Stella’s audacity. Reuben looks at Flick, then Stella, trying to wriggle out of the skin. And, look, the skin is seriously revolting, but also, those kids ate the meat that was beneath it, didn’t they?

The kids giggle nervously but Stella hurries to urge them on, pulling the skin back over Reuben as he freezes on the stage while the other kids begin to argue in their grown-up voices about whether to shoot it or keep it as a pet. Leo is clearly enjoying himself, lunging about the stage, holding his wounded hand – Ness glances at Phil expecting him to be cross, but there’s a big grin on his filthy face. Benji shoots Rueben, who drops to his knees.

‘I’m dead,’ he explains, and everyone laughs again.

‘I’m a vegetarian!’ wails Winnie.

Ness catches Phil’s eye now, and they both grin and nod.

Stella leads Eden into the middle of the stage. Bends down and whispers in her ear. Oh! Oh! Ness thinks, her little girl, up there with her big, amazing cousin.

‘Uh oh, a storm!’ Eden says, breaking into a grin at her own confidence.

The kids all race around, waving arms, making rain and thunder noises, pretending they are splashing in puddles. Ness laughs, the bubble in her chest threatens to explode. She loves this. Loves them, so so much.

Phil

The sheet on the wall fades up to an image as the projector comes on. White text on a black background: The Rules of Willow Creek!

Stella’s done a bloody good job, Phil thinks, gone and made a whole film while he thought she was just mooching around being a moody teen. Good on her.

The music starts. Ha, perfect choice. Good Riddance, Green Day. The soundtrack of their youth. Not that the kids believe they were ever young. He starts to hum along.

A long pan of the valley, the river, the campsites and up to the pub.

‘Beautiful!’ Marnie calls out.

There are murmurs and squeals of delight as the images flick through, the kid’s faces, the fire, the lamb! Looks quite professional, really, Stella’s spooky footage of the cemetery, a close-up of a tiny bird skull, figures swimming in the river. Can’t make out who they are, it goes by so quick, but the river looks beautiful. He should jump in for a swim before they head off.

The song morphs into instrumental background music as a video of Eden in close-up fades in. She giggles and bows her head, then she looks just beyond the camera and nods, repeating the words that can be heard whispered off screen: ‘We respect this place and the people here.’

She giggles again as the sound returns and everyone cheers.

Next it is Kai, who spins into view and uses a Star Wars-style voice to say, ‘We act with integrity and kindness,’ and everyone cheers.

Then it’s Winnie. She fills the screen, her face bright. ‘Integrity, in case you didn’t know, is about honesty, about telling the truth, it’s about doing the right thing even when it’s hard.’ Well said, he thinks, seeing a flash of Jacob’s body. He can do hard things. Phil focuses his eyes back on the video. He wishes his boys had got a turn at this bit, he’s quite impressed at the way Leo mimicked him up there on stage. Confident, like he was really enjoying himself at last.

Josie

Josie stands at the back, Winter’s gorgeous face big on the screen – ‘It’s about doing the right thing even when it’s hard,’ she says, and then the screen fades to black.

Josie feels a pang in her chest. The kids know right from wrong and she just nearly—no, she stops herself. It’s over.

‘Where’s the end bit?’ Winter says as Stella steps in front of her. ‘There was supposed to be the end with us all yelling—’

Stella interrupts her. ‘Something extra,’ Stella says. ‘Just wait.’

The screen shows a grainy video, night-time, a figure backlit by fairy lights.

‘He’s doing a weeeeeeeeeee!’ Kai yells.

And then it is clear, on the screen – the silhouette of a man with the lights of the pub behind him as he pisses in a long arc away from his body before the arc drops, and sputters.

Okay, Josie thinks, maybe a bit off, Stell.

Some laughter, guffawing. Someone – Marnie maybe – says, ‘Woah, no. Not okay.’

Now on screen, Lou at the back of the pub, cigarette in hand, breathing round smoke rings into the air.

‘Mum!’ Benji yells, looking at Lou.

Oh fuck.

Lou stands up. ‘Off! Now!’ she says loudly, and Kai is the only one still laughing now.

The screen fills with the image of Josie and Marnie passing the fat joint. Josie gasps – does Stella know what it is? Will the other kids? She half laughs, looks at Marnie, who is very much not laughing.

‘Stella, turn the projector off,’ Lou says firmly, standing up and moving towards it, but Stella steps in front, blocking her mum.

‘It’s not finished,’ Stella says.

Lou looks, for a second, like she is going to push her daughter, but she stops.

‘I’m warning you,’ Lou says, low and dangerous, but Stella turns back to the screen, her body protecting the chair and the projector.

The screen changes again. Very dark but there, in the corner of the video, there is movement.

‘I can’t see it properly!’ Kai complains. ‘What is that? Is that the weird deer?’

Holy fuck. Aidan’s night footage – how the hell does she have this? Why would Aidan…?

But. This isn’t what he showed her. Those aren’t the tractor lights. It looks like the pub. A window.

Across the room Tom stands up and yells angrily, ‘Turn the fucking thing off, now!’

Stella hunches her body over the chair. Lou turns to Marnie, throwing her hands up.

It is two figures. In the window. Green in the darkness. Bodies entwined. They are fucking. And then another figure, outside, looking in.

‘I said turn it off!’ Tom yells.

Why is he so angry? Can’t be them, they haven’t had sex all weekend. And who the fuck is that perving through the window?

She looks desperately at Tom, who is staring at her, face ashen. And then the penny drops. It is Tom. But it is not her.

She covers her mouth with her hand.

Feels her world detonating around her, but oh god, oh fuck, what if they know about the dead man, the body in the bush, and worse, worse than all of this – the mushrooms, what she tried to do?

Flick

She has to turn it off. Why is no-one turning it off?

‘Phil!’ she yells. ‘Make it stop!’ On screen, Tom’s hand moves to Flick’s boob, Flick’s hands on Tom’s bum.

But Phil does not look away from the screen. ‘Leave it THE FUCK on!’ he yells, standing up and walking over to the projector, moving Stella away from it to guard it himself. He points at the screen. ‘That’s you, Flick. That’s you and that’s fucking Tom.’

‘Jesus Christ!’ Marnie yells. ‘Stella!’

Flick is yelling now. ‘Stella. Turn it OFF! Lou! Control your fucking teenager! NOW!’

Lou is trying to wrestle the phone from Stella but the girl is holding tight, using her whole body to protect it, to keep the thing playing.

Tom and Flick disappear from the screen. Leo has stopped laughing. Eden is wailing.

Flick stands, tries to get through the bodies crammed up in front of her, can’t.

‘That’s enough, Stella!’ Lou bellows, pushing her daughter firmly now, as the chair rocks and the projector rocks and the vision on the sheet wibbles and wobbles but – it keeps. Fucking. Playing.

The scene changes. Still dark, figures in the distance lit up green like those army night-vision goggles, hard to see. ‘Is that a tractor?’ Reuben asks.

‘Stella! Phil!’ Ness yells.

But Phil stands guard over the projector, his eyes fixed on the screen.

And Stella grips her phone in both hands, shaking her head.

Stella

She knows they are angry. But she is angrier.

She can feel her rage billow out from her around the room. You don’t get to tell me what to do anymore, she wants to say, but she’ll let the finale do the talking. Miss Ellison would be proud.

Slow motion, Stella is particularly proud of this, the fact that she’s cut it together with so little time. It’s not perfect – would have been better if she wasn’t so rushed – but CapCut makes anything look good and it is, actually, quite effective.

There’s Aidan’s footage of the tractor, the figures wrestling and the tractor tipping, cutting to the three figures dragging the body. Then, her own contribution, the shots she got all on her own just an hour ago – Phil and Tom with the body in the wheelbarrow dumping it into the old mine.

It’s not great, she had to have it on full zoom, can tell how hard she was breathing from the way the camera shakes. But it’s enough.

The song reaches a crescendo but now there is deathly silence among the adults. Except for Phil. Who has kind of lost his shit. Holding the chair steady and shaking his head, and is he laughing?

Lou sits down.

Ness covers her mouth.

Benji runs to Marnie, who holds him and stares at the screen in confusion.

The song fades as the image blurs into a fire burning higher and higher, roaring on the screen as the music falls away.

And then, the thing Winnie has been waiting for – the recording they made, the sound of the children’s voices filling the room again as the video finishes with the group shot, all of them smiling and laughing and hugging each other.

The audio is crackly but clear enough. Stella’s voice, ‘One, two, three,’ and then all the kids yelling, ‘Thank you for a great weekend at Willow Creek!’

The song swells up again, filling the otherwise silent room with sound as Stella’s movie cuts to the last sequence.

A phone screen recording. An invisible finger swiping to open the video, pressing send, selecting the Instagram logo, then Reel, then Share.

This.

Finally.

This elicits the desired reaction from her audience.

Lou

Amid the madness, Lou sits very still and silent.

There is always a third act. The one we never saw coming. Coming to blindside us. Disarm us. Ruin us, perhaps.

Stella, oh Stella, what have you done?

What have I done?

Stella’s made one of Benji’s Rube Goldberg machines and flicked the first domino down. She’s clever. So clever. But oh, Stella, you haven’t played it all the way through. You have no idea what you have set in motion.

She looks over at her daughter. Her fiery, clever daughter, who is right now stony-faced, pale, staring straight ahead.

She has no idea what she has done.

Marnie has Benji tight to her chest. She glances over at Lou, her face a question, something like disbelief, something like a last shred of hope.

For so long Lou has believed that she could control her own fate; that if she squared up her karmic balance with the universe she would always, somehow, come out on top. She knows, of course, intellectually, that this is a fallacy. And yet, it has persisted. This bone-deep belief, as familiar to her as her own face: she is a good person. Good things happen to good people. If you work hard and play fair and be good and tick all the right boxes, life will be kind to you.

And now.

Everything is ruined. And not just for her. For the people she loves most dearly.

She looks at Stella. Marnie is standing in front of her now, finger pointed, yelling, waving her hands. Tom and Josie and Phil and Flick, all yelling at each other, Ness rounding on Stella, screaming at her to give her the phone, to delete the post. Stella is stepping back, one hand up in front of her, the other clutching her phone to her chest, fear in her eyes.

‘Stella!’ Lou calls, and her daughter turns to face her. Now Lou sees the child who so astonished her on that very first night, in the hospital. When she had watched her tiny chest rise and fall and felt love balloon in her, outside of her, enough to swallow the whole world.

‘Come here,’ she says urgently, and Stella takes three steps and then collapses into Lou’s arms, gasping and crying.

This. What she should have known, should have seen: yes, the children come from them, are made up of skin and flesh, their DNA, made up of a thousand early mornings and sleepless nights and tears and hugs and clenched teeth and an exhaustion that is other-worldly, yes, but the children are also their own. Their own invincible selves.

‘Shhhhh,’ Lou says, stroking her daughter’s head. ‘Shhhhh, I’ve got you.’

She holds her daughter. What else is there to do?

For now, there is only this, Stella in her arms, and the words Lou says over and over like a lullaby, It’s okay, my darling, my love, everything’s going to be okay.

Everyone

A loud bellow from the river.

They stop.

Stop yelling and pointing and crying and holding.

It comes again; urgent, visceral, inhuman.

They run, outside onto the verandah, all of them, then down the hill, the adults, the kids. Spread out as if they are running the one hundred metres at a picnic.

It is the deer. Alive, its hind leg caught in a snare. Its grotesque mirrored head, four antlers entwined and that ball of flesh and bone, dead and rotting.

‘Oh my god!’

‘MUM!’

‘What is that?’

‘Someone do something!’

The deer is squealing.

The hunter, Aidan, and his parents stand near.

‘It’s crying,’ Winter says.

‘It’s hurt,’ Benji says.

The smell is foul, wafting over them all as they all creep forward to see.

The deer bellows again, tries to lift its enormous, misshapen head. Seems to look up, to gaze at the man approaching him.

Aidan steps forward, and lifts his gun to his shoulders.

‘Back,’ he says, firmly.

And the adults scatter back – standing in front of the kids, pushing them behind, forming a wide semi-circle, the deer at the centre.

‘No!’ yells Josie.

Marnie pulls Benji close.

Stella leaps forward, escaping her grandma’s grip, howling like a wild animal, one hand stretched towards the deer, one hand, palm up, facing Aidan and his rifle. She seems to fly through the air.

It all happens in a moment.

Lou flies forward after Stella.

Josie reaches out her arms after Lou.

Tom runs to Josie.

Marnie drops to her knees around Benji.

Phil grabs Leo and Reuben.

Ness drags Kai to her belly.

Avril swoops over Winnie and Eden.

Flick steps in front of Ness.

Dave clutches Libby against his chest.

And a shot cracks through the air.

The deer lies still. One perfect hole in the middle of its broken head. Aidan bends down to it. Touches the creature, so gently. Shoulder, head. Then he works quickly, assessing the junctures where the bone is entwined, this way and that, as intricate as if he were untangling a fine gold necklace. He pulls once, hard, and stands back. In his hands he holds the rotting head, the huge, branched antlers.

It is quiet for a moment, save the wind in the trees. The oaks and the willows, the mountain ash and stringybark all whisper with their leaves, bend their canopies towards each other, creak their branches and loose their seeds to the soil.

And the rest of them – the children, the grown-ups, the friends and partners and sisters and mothers and fathers – they touch each other’s faces in relief, clasp each other in fierce embraces, and weep.

The General Store

The bell tinkles on the door as Sal bustles in, followed by her little dog, Harry. They both shake themselves off, white hair fluffing up.

Wendy turns and grabs the ice cream from the freezer, plonking it onto the counter to soften.

‘Like bloody Burke Street out there,’ Sal says as she approaches the counter.

Wendy sighs. ‘You’d think they’d have found something else newsworthy by now.’

The papers, and the telly, and the podcasters and the YouTubers and the rubberneckers have relished the comeuppance of the sort of people who pride themselves on being the right sort of people. The pictures of them all over every channel and front page. Laughing and clinking glasses, all of them arms looped around each other under fairy lights outside the old pub.

There’s a veritable smorgasbord of charges: manslaughter, improper disposal of a body, impeding the course of an investigation. Hard to tell who’s going to stand trial for what. Seems they are all implicated. Except, maybe, the one who wanted to run for parliament, although obviously she has made her earnest withdrawal from the race. A few tears for good measure. Shame, really, she might have fit right in at parliament.

Wendy hands over Sal’s milkshake, points at the front page of today’s paper. ‘It’s this one I can’t stop thinking about.’

Sal shakes her head, slurps long and noisy on the straw. ‘All this time,’ she says as they both look down at the photograph of the little girl who’d been lost so long.

Once the coppers got wind of the viral video they were down there quick smart. Started looking everywhere for the body of Jacob Pallas. When they found him, deep in an old mine shaft not fifty metres from his front door, they had to dig in further to get the bugger out.

And that’s when they found the bones.

So small.

It was only a formality, really, until the tests came back. Everyone knew. It was the little girl who’d gone missing from the river camp all those years ago. They showed the family – mum, dad and their grown-up son – standing solemnly in front of their weatherboard, saying they were grateful they could finally lay their girl to rest. Not a dry eye in the state.

All kinds of theories getting about, but the one that seems to have stuck is that it was Jacob who took her. Took her and killed her and buried her deep in one of those mines that pockmarked the mountain. Retired coppers from the next town over quoted as saying it was impossible, they’d searched everywhere. But they would say that. Sal looks back down at the paper.

‘Couldn’t have happened to a nicer bloke, eh?’ Sal says, digging her index finger into the small photo of Jacob next to the girl, leaving a swipe of milkshake froth that blots him out.

‘Now, now,’ Wendy says, ‘we don’t speak ill of the dead.’

Sal leans in, pondering. ‘It’s all those city kids I keep thinking about.’

Wendy nods. ‘Although it was one of them who made the video, was it not?’

‘Maybe the kids are alright, after all?’ Sal says, smiling wryly.

They pause as a young man in green uniform with the Gurnaikurnai Joint Management logo on his breast pocket enters and takes off his cap.

‘G’day, Col. Cappuccino, two sugars?’

‘That’s it, thanks, Wendy. G’day, Sal. And a bacon and egg roll if you got one hot?’

‘Make one up for you fresh, love.’

‘Thanks,’ Col says, leaning on the counter next to Sal. ‘Still swarming all over our mountain, aren’t they?’

Sal nods. ‘Just discussing it.’

Wendy leans back from frothing the milk. ‘You lot got any info on what’s happening down there? Eggie reckons both properties should be on the market soon, practically jumping with glee at the thought.’

Col straightens up, smiles slowly. ‘I mean, we wouldn’t want to count our chickens, ladies.’ He bends down to scratch Harry’s head.

Sal says, ‘Go on, son, tell us what you’re not counting.’

‘Just that someone heard, and I’m not saying who,’ Col says, as he leans in and lowers his voice conspiratorially, despite the fact it’s still just the three of them, ‘but they passed it on to Aunty Lil, who passed it on to Uncle Doug down at the Land Council that apparently there’s some legal finagle down there.’ He wiggles his eyebrows, a few times too many.

‘Define finagle?’ Sal says.

Col leans back, takes a huge bite of his egg and bacon roll and chews slowly while they wait. ‘Something about a biohazard. Found it while they were digging, something whacky in the soil, shouldn’t be there. There’s a crew down there in those white onesies and googles.’

‘What do they reckon it is then?’ Wendy says.

‘They’re not saying – some fungus, weird disease – who knows? But whatever it is, they’ve marked off that whole section of the mountain. Willow Creek and Jacob’s old place. Don’t reckon Eggie’ll be getting his hands on either of ’em anytime soon.’

Sal and Wendy both breathe out through little o lips.

‘In fact,’ Col says, winking at them, ‘might be they decide the best course of action is some kind of joint management. CSIRO and—’ He spreads his hands wide, nodding slowly.

‘Your mob,’ Sal says, her eyes wide.

‘You didn’t hear it from me,’ Col says, winking again as he pays Wendy.

‘About bloody time,’ says Wendy.

Col taps his nose. ‘Keep it to yourselves for now,’ he says as he takes his coffee and his roll and turns to go.

‘Give our love to your mum,’ Sal says.

‘Will do, thanks, ladies,’ Col says as he leaves.

Sal takes a long slurp of her milkshake and pushes it across the counter, licking her lips. She tucks the paper under her arm. ‘C’mon, Harry,’ she says, and the little mutt looks up at her with adoring eyes. Sal turns back to Wendy. ‘Silver linings, eh?’ she says, smiling. ‘See you tomorrow.’

Acknowledgements

I pay my respects to the Traditional Owners of the lands and waters of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation where I live and work, and the custodians of unceded Dharug, Gundungurra, Bunurong and Gunaikurnai land where this novel was written. The story takes place on the land of the Gunaikurnai people. I honour their continuing care for Country and pay respects to Elders past, present and emerging.

I’m incredibly lucky to have an amazing team behind me: thank you to my brilliant agent Pippa Masson at Curtis Brown. Huge thanks to Ben Ball for your faith and thoughtful conversations, Lizzie Levot for your sharp editorial eye, Gina Flaxman for proofreading, and the whole team at Simon & Schuster Australia, especially Dan Ruffino, Anna O’Grady, Jasmine Aird and Kelly Jenkins. Thank you Sandy Cull for another electrifying cover.

Grateful thanks to the Blake Beckett Trust, Varuna the Writers’ House, Tess and Glen for Glen Alvie, and Kinchem Hegedus for Springfield – each gave me precious time and space to write.

Thank you to early readers: Tegan Bennet Daylight, Inga Simpson, Hayley Scrivenor, Mark Mupotsa Russell – your insights were gold. And to the many writers who supported, advised, cheered and challenged me: Alice Bishop, Alice Robinson, Amy Lovat, Anna Downes, Ashley Kalagian Blunt, Catherine McKinnon, Charlotte Wood (and the masterclass crew), Chris Flynn, Chris Hammer, Hannah Kent, Helen Garner, Iain Ryan, Jane Harper, Karen Viggers, Katherine Collette, Mark Brandi, Penni Russon, Pip Williams, Penny Harrison, Sally Hepworth, Sarah Bailey, Sarah Sentilles (and your Word people), Victoria Hannan and Zana Fraillon. Special shout-out to the Varuna 2024 crew – Laura Elvery, Kris Kneen, Anthony Mullins, Dominic Hoey and Yu Shi. And to the crime writers I’ve bailed up in green rooms – thank you for letting me interrogate your craft. I broke most of the rules you taught me, but I needed to know them first.

Specific thanks to: Michael Langhammer (contracts), Benny Holmes (fences and tracking cameras), Shaun Gray (deer hunting), Ben Campbell (star picket role-play), Rebecca Baillie and Andy McMahon (plants). All errors are my own.

To the broader Australian book world – the readers, booksellers, writers, librarians and festival folk who keep the wheels turning, even when we are up against it – thank you for your passion and enthusiasm for books and authors.

Thank you Mark Wells, Julia Shekleton, Mel Monigatti and Rob Boschma for the fireside conversation that started it all (sorry I got so worked up, but look – I made a whole book out of it!). To the camping gang for EVERYTHING, and my girls chat – Shay, Tess, Mel, Katj, Amy, Poll, Bell, Julia, Jessie – thank you for all the random answers and enduring friendship. Christine French – thank you for sanity.

Jill Langhammer – you keep the ship steady and my back covered. Thank you.

If she weren’t already one of my best friends, I’d hire Shay Gardner to manage, edit, dress and hype me. Luckily, she does all that because she loves me. There aren’t enough words.

Eri – I’ve got you. Thank you for always having me x

It takes a village. Mine – Mum, Dad, Maggie, Michael, Helen, Brian, Lorinda, Brent – is the best kind. Special thanks to Mum, Dad and Maggie for early reads, line-checks, and proofing for unintentional cameos.

To my loves – Ad, Gracie and Etta – thank you for the tea, hugs, pride and endless patience. You are the reason. I love you more x

More from the Author

The Hummingbird Effect

The Mother Fault

About the Author

Author photograph: © Gemma Carr

Kate Mildenhall is an author, writing teacher and podcaster.

Her debut novel, Skylarking, was longlisted for Debut Fiction in the 2017 Indie Book Awards and the 2017 Voss Literary Prize. Her second novel, The Mother Fault, was longlisted for the 2021ABIA General Fiction Book of the Year and shortlisted for the 2021 Aurealis Best Science Fiction Novel. The Hummingbird Effect was shortlisted for the 2024 ABIA Literary Fiction Book of the Year and longlisted for the 2024 Stella Prize and the 2024 Indie Book Awards for Fiction.

Find Kate on Instagram (@kmildenhall) and at www.katemildenhall.com.

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Also by Kate Mildenhall

Skylarking

The Mother Fault

The Hummingbird Effect

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© Kate Mildenhall 2025

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The line ‘She’s all states, and all princes…’ quoted on p. 207 comes from John Donne’s 1633 poem, The Sun Rising.

The Maurice Sendak quote used as an epigraph comes from ‘The Paternal Pride of Maurice Sendak’, New York Times, 8 November, 1987, p. 42.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the National Library of Australia

9781761429057 (paperback)

9781761429064 (ebook)

Cover design by Sandy Cull

Table of Contents

Title Page
Dedication
Epigraph
After
The General Store

Friday

- 1. Lou
- 2. Josie
- 3. Ness
- 4. Phil
- 5. Lou
- 6. Stella
- 7. Flick
- 8. Ness
- 9. 6.55 pm
- 10. Josie
- 11. Stella
- 12. Lou
- 13. Flick
- 14. Phil
- 15. Stella
- 16. Lou
- 17. Ness
- 18. Lou
- 19. 11:45 pm

Saturday

- 20. Josie
- 21. Lou
- 22. Stella
- 23. Phil
- 24. Flick
- 25. Ness
- 26. Lou
- 27. 9.47 am
- 28. Flick
- 29. Phil
- 30. Josie
- 31. Phil
- 32. Stella
- 33. Ness
- 34. Lou
- 35. Josie
- 36. Flick
- 37. Stella
- 38. Lou
- 39. Stella
- 40. Lou
- 41. Flick
- 42. Phil
- 43. Josie
- 44. Ness
- 45. Stella
- 46. Lou
- 47. Flick
- 48. Ness
- 49. Flick

Sunday

- 50. Josie
- 51. Ness
- 52. Phil
- 53. Lou
- 54. Flick
- 55. Stella
- 56. Phil
- 57. Ness
- 58. Josie
- 59. Phil
- 60. Ness
- 61. Flick
- 62. Josie
- 63. Lou
- 64. Stella
- 65. Phil
- 66. Flick
- 67. Josie
- 68. Stella
- 69. Ness
- 70. Phil
- 71. Josie
- 72. Flick
- 73. Stella
- 74. Lou

Everyone
The General Store
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Copyright