He Would Never, page 22
‘It’s not condom year!’ Juno screeched. ‘That’s horrifying. They’re children. And they’re like cousins.’
‘Cousins can have sex.’ Ginger laughed. ‘I’m almost certain there are some kissing ones in my family.’
‘I think they’re just doing standard stuff,’ Emily said, calmly. ‘Vaping. Plotting our demise, you know, the usual.’
‘Well, I know that Trick might wish he needed condoms around Lyra,’ Sadie said. Her voice was still loud. ‘But it’s pretty clear you don’t think he’s good enough for her, Dani.’
Dani’s head snapped around to Sadie. ‘What are you talking about?’
Lachy leaned forward. ‘Yeah, Sadie, what the fuck?’
‘I told you earlier today, I think Trick has a crush on Lyra –’
‘Ha!’ shouted Lachy, and Liss’s stomach clenched.
‘And you made it pretty clear that was a non-starter.’
‘Sadie, I just meant . . .’
‘What did you mean?’
‘All the things we’ve spoken about,’ said Dani, her voice high, irritated. ‘They’re kids. They know each other too well. Lyra’s oblivious to all that, anyway. Jesus, Sadie, it’s been a rough night.’
Liss thought she heard Sadie snort.
‘Yeah, come on,’ Juno said. ‘We’ve never fought over the kids, let’s not start now.’
The tension wasn’t fading and clearly Dani was done. ‘I’m going to go to bed,’ she said, standing and stretching. ‘Not really in the mood after everything today.’ She looked over to Liss. ‘Walk with me, Liss? I need to talk to you.’
Liss couldn’t move from her chair. A look of confusion crossed Dani’s face for a split second and then Lachy was up, walking his blue toes over to Dani and wrapping her in a hug. ‘You did the right thing,’ he said. ‘Didn’t she, Liss?’
Liss managed a dumb nod and what she hoped was an encouraging smile.
‘For fuck’s sake.’
It was Sadie. Of course.
‘This is ridiculous.’
‘Sadie.’ Juno’s tone was warning.
‘Well it is. It’s obvious why Dani said no to Craig. He suspected it, it’s what he came to ask me about last night, and of course I lied for you. But he’s gone and it’s clear what’s been going on here for years, and yet we all just go along pretending that we haven’t noticed.’
‘Sadie!’ Ginger was shaking her head.
For Liss, Sadie’s words sounded a little like they were coming from behind glass. She just kept seeing Lyra Martin’s face as she ran away from the cave. It wasn’t happy. It wasn’t calm, or amused, or reassured. She’d looked scared.
What if Sadie was right, and Liss was wrong? What if the edge of danger she was so attracted to in Lachy, right from the beginning, was not so impotent and harmless? What if she had made that terrible mistake, the one she thought she was steps ahead of, too smart for? Building a life that was entwined with his in great big ways and silly small ones. Sitting next to him at polite couples dinners, standing beside him at interminable company cocktail parties. Making him a home, feathering him a nest. Fucking him and hugging him and crying in his arms. Almost killing herself giving him children. Looking into his eyes and seeing something that wasn’t there. Defending him. Laughing with him and laughing him off to so many of the people around them. Endlessly making small, uncomfortable excuses for him.
He would never.
‘Oh for fuck’s sake,’ Sadie went on. ‘Right in front of your face, Liss! They’re right in front of your face.’
Oh. Sadie was yelling at her. Liss brought herself back to HQ, where Dani and Lachy were standing in the centre of the circle, and Sadie was leaning forward in her seat, her eyes glittering. To Liss, she looked as if she was shimmering with a furious energy.
‘Here we go again.’ Lachy had stopped hugging Dani, whose arms had remained by her side. ‘Liss, I told you we should have asked her to leave.’
In contrast to Sadie, Liss knew she looked dumb, empty. It was how she felt.
‘Dani is in love with your husband,’ Sadie said, pointing a steady finger at Dani and Lachy. ‘It’s why she excuses his creepy behaviour. It’s why Dani can do no wrong in the Short house. It’s why the girls’ dad left in the fucking first place.’
‘Shut up, Sadie.’ Dani sounded remarkably calm. ‘You have no idea what you’re talking about. No idea at all. Liss, come on.’
Why did Liss’s tongue feel so thick and slow?
‘Liss, I know you know,’ Sadie pushed on, her voice trembling. ‘I saw you all. I know the deal you’ve made.’
‘Sadie. What about today, at the pool?’ Dani asked in a voice much softer than Sadie’s. ‘What’s wrong with you?’
‘What’s wrong with me is that I’ve been going along with this charade. And I’m living a different kind of life now, of truth. I know it’s awkward for all of you, and even for my Trick, who just wants to fit in, but . . .’ She choked a little, running out of fuelling fury at the thought of her son.
‘Sadie.’ Liss found her voice. ‘Please.’
‘I saw you that time, you know,’ Sadie repeated.
‘Sadie.’ Liss realised now that she might finally be shouting, because the eyes that had been focused on Sadie had turned to her. ‘Stop it.’
Sadie pulled herself up, put her glass down with the others on the crowded Formica table.
‘I saw you all that day, on the beach,’ she said. ‘Everything I’m saying is true. And I’m going to bed now.’
Part Three
24
2018, Camp Four
Green River Campground
Dani
It was the year of the storm. The year the heat sat in the campsite basin like a sodden, heavy cloth, stinking and hissing out a low warning that something had to give.
By Saturday afternoon they were all exhausted, sapped by the relentless downward pressure of the humidity. There was no hint of a breeze, and the tide was so far out the relief of a swim had shrunk to a possible muddy roll in ankle-deep, coffee-brown water.
There had been an exodus to Arcadia, where the blissfully air-conditioned old art deco cinema was showing the second Paddington. The double-draw of Hugh Grant and choc-tops had left only a handful of stoics breathing through the afternoon at Green River with mozzie spray and iced water at hand.
By 4 pm, the storm was approaching. Even Dani could feel the edge of electricity cutting the solid weight of the air. Finally, the leaves on the palms were beginning to flutter with the slightest breath of wind.
She’d stayed behind because Lyra was feeling particularly bad in the suffocating heat, and was currently sitting with her feet in the paddling pool and a flannel on her head, being granted the very rare permission of connecting to Dani’s wi-fi to watch toys being unwrapped on YouTube. Liss had stayed because she was a hostess who didn’t leave her post. Emily because Bob had already seen the animated bear making marmalade in prison, and she wanted the peace to just read a book, even in a furnace. Lachy because he hated children’s movies.
‘Come and watch the storm roll in.’
It was the sort of thing Liss said on camping weekends. Determined that even the world’s worst weather wouldn’t dent the wonder of Green River, she jigged in front of Dani with a bottle of bubbly wine, eyes as shiny as the sweat slick on her bare shoulders.
‘Day-drinking?’ Dani asked, nodding towards Lyra. ‘Is that responsible behaviour for the single parent of a sick child?’
‘She’s going to be fine.’ Liss smiled. ‘Emily’s here and happy to keep an eye out. This weather’s breaking any minute now. Come on!’
Liss was giddy and Dani was happy to let the silliness infect her. She had just put her signature to two significant life moments and she was allowing herself, just maybe, to breathe out this summer. She had the plans for a Bronte apartment, her very own home. And a new job. Leaving the bank behind and stepping into the role of chief marketing officer at a small but prestigious fund with big ambitions. It felt right, and it also felt like the result of many hours standing around Liss and Lachy’s kitchen island, swapping industry gossip and gaming out strategy with Liss as cheerleader, lightening the mood, flitting about filling glasses with pinot gris and tipping pasta into bowls for the children. Sometimes Dani thought, This must be what it’s like to have a wife.
Now she thanked Emily and trailed Liss down to the beach, picnic blanket under her arm, plastic wine flutes in hand. Lachy was already there, the legs of his camp chair pushed down into the sand like he was the only customer at an epic movie theatre. Beyond the far bank of Green River, the distant sky was billowing black. The light was an electric silvery-grey. Dani had never seen a sky like it.
‘We should call the kids to see this!’
‘Or we shouldn’t.’ Liss grabbed the rug and shook it out next to Lachy’s seat. ‘And just enjoy the show. It’s going to be the sweetest relief when it hits.’
‘If it doesn’t blow us all away in the process.’ Lachy took a slug of his beer and rolled his eyes for Dani. ‘Only Liss could love the worst weather in the world.’
The champagne was opened, the plastic glasses clunked together and as the little cold pops of alcohol trickled down Dani’s throat she tipped her head back and closed her eyes and let herself feel what Liss was feeling, what she imagined Liss often felt.
Three years since Seb had left and it finally felt like life was where she’d hoped it would be when she’d dragged him back from New York. And these people, Liss and Lachy, with their generosity and support, eccentricities and in-jokes, well, they felt like how family was meant to feel. As the bubbles went down and the dark clouds inched forward, Dani felt the need to say so.
‘Liss, what if you’d walked into a different mothers’ group, back when you were crazy?’
‘Unimaginable,’ Liss said, reaching for Dani’s hand across the rug. ‘I’d be locked away somewhere. Tia would be in care. Or, you know, living with Lachy and his second wife.’
‘I’ve always wanted two wives,’ Lachy said, throwing them a sly smile.
‘Of course you have, Lachy Short, you’re a greedy man.’ Dani squeezed Liss’s hand. ‘I’m glad I didn’t cut you loose when Anne lost her shit.’
The distant horizon lit up momentarily and rumbled at them. Liss let go of Dani’s hand and jumped up, spinning around on the sand, glass in the air.
‘Feel that, family? We’re alive! The weather’s changing!’
‘My wife is insane,’ Lachy said, but he was beaming.
Dani laughed, watching her friend twirl like one of the little girls, bare legs splattered with mud, her skin glistening, her hair two shades darker, stuck to her scalp.
‘She’s completely troppo.’ Dani’s eyes met Lachy’s for a moment, their smiles matching.
‘Why are you like this, Liss?’ Lachy called over the gathering breeze. ‘Why aren’t we at a five-star resort in Byron? Or a beach house with air con? I know a lovely one, not that far away.’
‘Because you didn’t marry someone boring.’ Liss ran over to him, put her hands on his knees and leaned in to kiss him. ‘You married a wild woman.’
Dani rolled her eyes, pulled off the shirt she was wearing over her swimmers. ‘You married a woman who likes to pretend she’s wild. The Land Rover can take you to your beach house in twenty minutes, you know.’
‘Pah! Your other wife is so sensible.’ Liss spun away from Lachy and sank down next to Dani on the rug, grabbing her hand again.
Later, Dani would try to recreate a picture of what Lachy saw then that changed everything between them. She and Liss, lying side by side on the beach blanket that billowed with dark pink roses. She was wearing a bikini top and shorts, a combination she’d worn in his presence a hundred times before. Liss, beside her, in her strapless one-piece, the old 1970s number with the toucan she lived in when they were at Green River. Her curves and dimples and freckles as familiar to Dani as her own. Both women damp, laughing, breathing hard from the mood and the heat. Their fingers intertwined.
When Dani had opened her eyes, Lachy was kneeling between them. Like she’d woken up and was still in the slightly hazy reality of a dream. He was looking at her in a way she either hadn’t seen or hadn’t noticed before. She couldn’t think of a better word for it than hungry. It made her uncomfortable, but it also made her stomach flutter, and that made her uncomfortable, too.
Liss, Dani saw, had propped herself up on her elbow and was staring at Lachy, saying nothing, her lips pushed together in a way that Dani couldn’t read. Disapproval, or encouragement? Lachy had redirected his hungry look from Dani to his wife, but as his eyes locked with Liss’s, his hand hovered over Dani’s thigh.
‘May I?’ He was asking Dani, but he was looking right at Liss. He was asking them both.
He was beautiful. There was no question about it. Lachy Short ticked the boxes of tall, dark and handsome, the stereotypical romantic lead, but it was his confidence that either attracted or repelled you. In this moment, Dani felt his certainty as something she wanted for herself, something she could pull towards her and take a bite of. As she looked at Liss for the answer to his question, what flashed through Dani’s mind was whether she had ever imagined Lachy’s hand on her.
She had to admit that yes, sometimes she had.
There had been fuzzy evenings, when she and Liss and Lachy had been laughing together, playing music from their separate past lives, sharing stories, and he’d be spinning his wife around the kitchen, his hand on the small of her back, the place that only a lover puts a hand, and Dani had felt pangs. A longing, maybe, for a man like that? Or for this man? No. Not this man. Dani knew too much about him to ever be unguarded in his presence. To give too much of herself away. But right now, the way he was looking between Liss and Dani, and the way his fingers were just centimetres from the bare skin of her leg, she allowed herself, for a moment, to imagine being possessed by him, like Liss was.
Liss nodded her head. Just the smallest movement, and Lachy’s hand was resting on Dani’s thigh. She sucked in hot air as she considered its presence, what it meant to have her best friend’s husband’s hand on her skin.
She was still lying down, eyes on her friend. ‘Liss,’ she whispered. ‘What are you . . .?’
‘Can I kiss you?’
Lachy’s hand moved from her thigh. His body shifted and he was above her, holding himself up, his body over hers, his face so close to her own.
‘Dani,’ Liss asked. ‘Do you want to?’
She was, Dani realised, still holding hands with Liss.
The sky’s rumbling was louder, nearer. Dani’s eyes were now on Lachy’s, as his face moved closer to hers. Their bodies almost touching, she felt the energy between her bare skin and his flickering and bouncing like the static in the air. He was so close. She had never noticed that dark freckle just on his top lip before, how full his mouth was, and how neat and sharp his teeth. Like an animal.
His lips brushed hers. His chest brushed hers. His thighs reached hers. Just a tiny bit more pressure and she would feel the weight of him on her. She wanted to, just for a second. To know how it felt. To remember.
Big, ugly drops of water began to pelt the ground beside Dani’s head. She realised she had closed her eyes, anticipating Lachy’s lips, and she snapped them open.
‘Stop!’ It was her voice, and it was Liss’s voice, and they’d said exactly the same thing at exactly the same time. Liss’s arms pushed at her husband in the moment Dani also shoved him with her hands and tried to pull herself to sitting as he rolled, with a loud, theatrical groan, onto his back, onto the wet sand.
The minute the rain hit Dani’s skin, the spell was broken.
‘Mum!’ Lyra was standing just a few steps away, the flannel that had been pressed to her head dangling from her hand like a wet rag. ‘Mum, I’m scared. Thunder’s coming.’
Her daughter’s hair was beginning to shine with raindrops. The trees were moving behind her as if there were others there, too. Lyra didn’t look troubled, just irritated that her mother wasn’t exactly where she wanted her.
What had Lyra seen?
‘It’s all fine, darling, storm’s not here yet, run back to camp, we’re just bringing everything in!’ Dani was up, gathering the blanket, the plastic glasses; the cloud of Prosecco bubbles completely popped. It was just her, and her best friend, and their middle-aged bodies, and a dangerous man she had almost kissed, laughing hysterically on the sand.
‘To be continued!’ he called, from the ground, across the wind, as the girls turned and ran back to the tree line, the palms and ferns bending and waving with the weather.
‘No!’ was all Dani could manage, as she, arms full of blanket and clothes, followed Lyra back to camp.
The storm was short, intense, unforgiving, ripping tents from their pegs, flinging tree branches across paths and palm fronds across cars. Sadie and her kids had left the movie early, and the storm had chased them all the way back to camp, where mud and sand left a fine film of muck over absolutely everything. By the time the rest of the movie contingent made it back, Dani and Liss were two respectable friends dressed for the cool change, putting things back where they should have been, righting the mess.
‘Where does it go?’ asked Lyra, happily reunited with Tia, ineffectually sweeping to a Katy Perry soundtrack.
‘Where does what go?’ Dani asked, distracted, trying to keep herself moving, trying to stop herself from settling on a particular feeling that accompanied a particular image in her mind, the sensation of her lips being only centimetres from Lachy Short’s, his body about to push into hers. Also, was it her imagination, or was Sadie looking at her strangely? Stop.
‘The storm. Where did it go?’
‘It just kept moving,’ said Dani. ‘And it will keep moving until it blows itself out.’
