How to Be Second Best

by Jessica Dettmann

  I’m not going to hold my breath. This book is so late now that it would be a miracle if it were suddenly completed in the next five days. I’ll have to line up some other jobs.

  The adrenalin from my run-in with Helen is still coursing through me so I harness the energy and fire off half a dozen emails to other publishing contacts, advising that I’m available and ready for whatever editing or proofreading they want to send my way.

  I’ve relied on Troy for too long. Inspector Tilde would never do that. Sure, she’s got exes too — many of them are her police colleagues, in fact, and one was even a suspect she had to investigate for a while there — but she lets them go and moves on. She just gets on with her job, and keeps taking steps up the ladder of success, and doesn’t spend half her life waiting for them to text her or wishing they weren’t married. I need to remind myself to do what Tilde would do, and to that end I take a sticky note, write ‘WWTD?’ on it, and stick it to the screen of my phone.

  It’s a small step, and it makes using the phone quite hard, but it feels significant.

  Chapter Fifteen

  I don’t hear another word from Helen or Troy the whole rest of the week. I’m focused, sharp. The days go by quickly — several small editing jobs come in and I turn them around in record time. I’m reminded of why I like my job, something I seem to have forgotten while attempting to do it with two or three small children for company. Dad minds Freya again on Wednesday, and then on Thursday and Friday she is at preschool.

  I fob off her questions about where Lola is as best I can, but when I see her run through the preschool gate and straight into her half-sister’s open arms I feel another wave of anger at Helen and Troy. How dare they try to destroy this bond? These kids are practically twins, and two short preschool days plus every second weekend is not going to be anywhere near enough time for them together.

  Tim can tell something’s amiss with Lola. At dinner time on Thursday, after swimming lessons from which Lola is conspicuously absent, he confronts me about it.

  ‘Mum, is Lola still sick?’

  ‘Still sick? I don’t think she has been sick at all, love. What do you mean?’

  ‘I thought she must have got the vomits like we did.’

  ‘Oh, sweetheart. No, I think she’s okay. Dad and Helen are just . . . trying some different childcare arrangements for her for a while, that’s all.’

  Tim twirls his spaghetti around his fork for so long that his meal looks like a ball of wool. ‘Okay. Are we still going to see Dad sometimes?’

  ‘Mate, of course you are. The new arrangements are just for Lola. It’s not going to affect how much time you guys spend with Daddy.’ Except as I say the words I realise it’s not true. Legally, Troy has the kids two nights out of fourteen. But the way we’ve operated until now, he has seen the kids almost every day, either when we have picked up Lola in the morning or dropped her off in the evening. He’s always been distracted, and never spent time actually playing with my kids during those brief interactions, but it’s clear to me now they have meant something to Tim. And now they’ve stopped.

  I know from reading books about divorce and kids that what I really ought to do now is encourage Tim to talk about how this makes him feel. We should sit together with the bad feeling, and name it, and acknowledge it. This will reduce the power the bad feeling has. This seems to me, in this moment, to be a horrendous idea. Instead I offer him a bowl of ice cream and try to change the subject.

  ‘Who’s excited about camping?’

  ‘Me!’ squeals Freya. ‘I’m going to sleep in a bag. Can I have my own holder torch?’

  ‘I don’t know what that is, but maybe,’ I tell her.

  ‘She means torch, like one you hold,’ Tim translates. ‘You know how she has a head torch for her head? She thinks that means a torch in your hand is a holder torch.’

  ‘Huh,’ I say. ‘Not a hand torch?’

  Tim gives me a look that suggests I am asking too much of a three-year-old.

  ‘Yes!’ I say. ‘We will have so many torches. On our heads and in our hands and up our noses and hanging inside the tent. It’s going to be excellent. And there might even be a campfire.’

  ‘No there won’t,’ Tim corrects me. ‘It’s in a national park. No fires.’

  ‘Really?’ I’m quite disappointed. ‘Not even in a rock circle? How do you know these sorts of things?’

  He absorbs information like this and I’m constantly surprised. He’s usually right.

  Tim’s little factoid about there being no campfires is the first chip in my camping confidence. Why didn’t I know that? What else don’t I know about this camping expedition?

  That night, once the kids are in bed, I scan the information the school emailed when I signed us up for this.

  It’s a camp for all the school community. It’s for one or two nights. We’ve gone for the one-night option, just to see how we go. Campsites are unpowered, up to a ten-minute walk from the parking area and an amenities block with toilets and cold showers. As it is in a national park there are no open fires. Oh. Tim was right.

  But that’s okay — we have a little gas camping stove. We can sit around that and toast marshmallows. It’ll be great. This will be great.

  As I fall asleep, I hear rain start falling lightly on the roof.

  * * *

  It rains all night, and when we wake up on Friday it’s still tipping down. Camping with two kids is one thing, but camping in the rain with two kids is something else entirely. But I will not let my kids down.

  After all, there’s a saying I’ve read on a website for eye-wateringly expensive Scandinavian raincoats that there’s no such thing as bad weather, only the wrong clothing. All I need to do is make sure we are appropriately outfitted for the rain. It’s not terribly cold, so really, who cares about a bit of water?

  On Friday, after I drop Tim at school and Freya at preschool, I scurry out through the rain to the shed. The water is ankle deep in parts of the garden because of the handball that’s still trapped in the drain. The camping gear is sealed in several big plastic tubs, which is good because that means with a bit of luck it won’t have perished along with my marriage.

  I drag the tubs through the muddy garden and up to the back door, then return and haul the tent back too. I wanted to get a smaller tent, but now that I’m hoping to become more financially independent I shouldn’t go buying a tent when I already have a perfectly good one, even if it is embarrassingly big.

  I was hoping to put the tent up today to make sure I can do it by myself, and that it’s in working order, but the damn thing is bigger than any single room in my house so there’s no way I can do it inside. It’s pointless doing it out here in the rain, because then I’ll have to put it away wet and we’ll be sleeping in a damp, mouldy tent tomorrow night. I’ll have to take my chances.

  Once the kids are asleep, I pack the car. It’s raining still, but more lightly than it has all day. Maybe it will clear.

  I’m hoping to get an early start. I don’t generally consider myself a vengeful person, but I can’t deny there’s an element of that in my plan to leave, loudly, at six o’clock tomorrow morning. Julia and Ian, the shouters from across the street, might be the ones getting a rude awakening, for once.

  * * *

  In the morning, I wake to the sound of more rain. Harder rain. But that’s all right because I have the right clothes for everyone. Well, I have a lot of clothes for everyone, and surely that’s the same thing. The car is crammed with at least six changes of outfit for each kid, and a few for me. We have a raincoat each, gumboots that sort of fit, and I’ve thrown in a pile of our oldest towels — all fresh from a hot wash after the gastro of last week.

  For the first time I can remember, I have to wake my kids up. Every other day of their lives they are awake before six, but not today.

  ‘Wakey wakey, campers!’ I say cheerfully before switching on their lights, but suddenly it’s as if I have two teenagers. They are disoriente
d and grumpy.

  ‘No, Mummy, it’s cold. I don’t want to go,’ Tim moans.

  Freya doesn’t say anything, but sits up in bed looking like a surly and baffled tiger.

  I dress them, make them go to the toilet and, putting on my jolliest front, herd them out through the rain and into the car. They’re furious.

  Two kids yelling out the front of your house at dawn on a Saturday? Take that, Ian and Julia, I think. But I look across the road and their driveway is empty. Their car and trailer are nowhere to be seen. They must have gone away for the weekend. How disappointing.

  I cram the kids into the small spaces left in between the tent, Esky, camping stove, foldable table, chairs, bags of clothes, blow-up mattresses, pillows and sleeping bags. I refuse to attach the roof coffin, so whatever fits in the boot and under the kids’ feet is what’s coming camping. At the last minute I run back into the shed and return with the beach umbrella, hoping I can use it to shelter the butane camping stove from the rain.

  At seven o’clock, we finally get on the road. For reasons I can’t fathom, the campground that’s been chosen is four hours’ drive away, on the other side of the mountains. It’s not as if there aren’t closer national parks for us to camp in. There will be some reason for this, like the parents organising it have a holiday house nearby and want to be able to decamp if the weather gets too bad. A theory they may get to test this weekend.

  The drive is meant to be four hours, but that’s in good weather, with more synchronised bladders than ours. This is not good weather, and we stop six times for toilet breaks, and twice for hot chips. With every minute that passes, the feeling that this is a very bad idea grows, and it’s in directly inverse proportion to how great I tell the kids the camping is going to be. By the time we arrive I’ve practically shrieked at them a hysterical list of all the wondrous things about living at one with nature.

  They continue to just stare at me in the rear-vision mirror. I’m fooling no one.

  But as if by magic, when we pull into the campground the rain eases, and then stops altogether. A tiny patch of blue appears in the sky above the clearing where the rest of the school families have set up camp — right beside their cars, thank God.

  I park beside a Land Cruiser with a snorkel and a bumper sticker for our local soccer club, and get out.

  Looking around, I can see there is some next-level camping equipment here. These people are serious. There are lots of large tents, similar to mine, but there are also some techie-looking geodesic domes.

  Tucked way over on the edge of the clearing is something that resembles a bluebottle and when I move closer to check it out, I realise it’s a transparent plastic bubble tent. It’s been inflated by a small fan, and from the sounds of it, the fan has to keep running or the thing will collapse, like a commercial jumping castle. Whoever owns this is running the power leads from the fan straight to their Prius, which is idling gently. I’m not sure this is going to work for as long as they need it to.

  ‘Emma!’ I hear Adam calling me and I turn around and see him emerging from the trees. ‘You made it!’

  ‘We did. Somehow. Not sure how good an idea it was, but we’re here now!’

  ‘It’ll be great,’ he says. ‘It’s meant to clear up this afternoon. But the ground is pretty mushy. We’re setting up over here.’ He points to a secluded nook off to one side of the clearing. There’s a neat little pod-like tent there, an Esky, and a couple of bags.

  I’m suddenly mortified by how much I’ve packed. But looking around I see I have nothing to be ashamed of. People have set up whole kitchens under canopies, complete with plumbed sinks and battery-operated refrigerators. We are not camping among minimalists.

  ‘Can I go play with Bon?’ Tim asks, tugging on my jumper.

  ‘Sure,’ I say. ‘Go, be in nature. Only first, here are the rules: stay together, stay where you can see or hear the campsite, and what do you do if you see a snake?’

  ‘Hit it with a sharp stick.’

  ‘Tim!’

  He rolls his eyes at me. ‘Walk away and come tell a grown-up. I know all this. You told me the rules the whole way here in the car.’

  ‘All right then. And remember Bon is littler than you. You need to take care of him.’

  ‘I’m all right,’ chirps Bon.

  ‘Can we go?’ asks Tim.

  ‘You can go.’

  They squelch off through the mud to where a gang of other kids are dragging fallen tree branches and piling them up. They’re either building a campfire that we aren’t allowed to light, or it’s an attempt at a shelter.

  Adam helps me haul all our gear out of the car, and together we start to set up my tent. The one time Troy and I came camping, erecting the tent took us over an hour — longer if you count the breaks where one or the other of us had to go for a walk and take deep breaths until he or she could trust themselves to resume. That was one reason I wanted to do a test run with the tent before I came, but because we follow the steps as laid out in the instruction manual, which still bears the scars of having been thrown in the dirt and stomped on, Adam and I have the thing up in no time.

  ‘That’s a good tent,’ he says, admiringly. ‘It’s big, but it’s quite straightforward to put together.’

  ‘It is ridiculous. It’s a silly big show-off of a tent. I’m embarrassed to have anything to do with it. If it had been up to me, I’d have gone for something more understated, like yours — but the man who chose it was into grand gestures. Go big or go home, that’s how he rolls.’

  ‘Yes, well, sometimes we just end up with the tent we end up with,’ he says. ‘It could be worse. You could have a clear plastic igloo.’ He jerks his head over towards the Grand Designs: Camping Edition set-up. ‘Are they really going to leave their car running the whole time so they can keep it inflated? That seems to defeat the purpose of driving a hybrid.’

  ‘I’d say so.’ I look around the campground. It’s pretty full. There’s only one spot left — a bit behind us. I’m hopeful that no one will take it and we can have a bit more quiet. From what I can see, Freya is the youngest child here, and not being next to a rowdy tent full of year four kids would be quite useful, on the sleep front.

  But just as I’m thinking that, I hear a familiar shout from where the cars are parked.

  ‘Ian, you can’t leave it there. How’s Karen supposed to get her car out if you’ve wedged her between our trailer and that ruddy great tree?’

  ‘I’m not planning to leave it there, Julia. Of course I’m not planning to leave it there. That would be a very inconsiderate place to leave the car and honestly, it worries me that it would even occur to you to think anyone would leave their car there. Good grief.’

  Excellent. They’re going to be my neighbours here as well.

  Adam looks horrified as he sees Julia and Ian striding towards us. Ian has four fluorescent orange traffic cones under his arm.

  ‘Hello!’ shouts Ian. ‘We know you, don’t we?’

  ‘I live opposite you. I’m Emma,’ I tell him.

  ‘Of course we know her, Ian. Emma has lived across the road from us for years. Years. Sometimes I wonder if you ever look out the windows of your own house, Ian.’ Julia shakes her head. ‘Hi, Emma.’

  ‘Hi, Julia.’

  This is the longest conversation I’ve had with them. I truly wasn’t sure they knew my name, or that I live ten metres from them, but it turns out they do.

  ‘Hello, mate.’ Ian offers his hand to Adam. ‘You must be Emma’s other half. Haven’t seen you around the street much. Work odd hours, do you?’

  Julia looks mortified. ‘Ian,’ she hisses.

  ‘What?’

  ‘This is not Emma’s husband. She was married to the . . . you know, at number twenty-four.’ She says this while trying not to open her mouth at all, but the volume is still high. She looks like a demented ventriloquist.

  Comprehension slides over Ian’s face. ‘Oh. Right, yes of course. Troy. He was . . . yes, and now
he’s, er . . .’

  ‘This is Adam,’ I say. ‘He has a son in kindy. We’re old friends from work.’

  ‘Are you? That’s good,’ Julia says, but she has lost interest. She’s got her eye on Ian, who is marking out their space with the traffic cones.

  ‘Ian, is that really necessary?’

  ‘Yes, I think it is. It makes it easier for people.’

  ‘How does it?’

  ‘Well, it’s easier if they know not to walk through other people’s areas, that way they won’t, well . . . walk through our area.’

  ‘Jesus, Ian, it’s not a battlefield. What are you planning to do if someone walks through our area?’

  ‘I’m not planning anything, Julia. You see, I don’t have to plan anything because people aren’t going to walk through our area because I’ve marked it out with the cones.’

  ‘I might get some lunch started,’ I say, by way of excusing myself. We stopped at two different McDonald’s on the way but I need something to do.

  Adam and I move as far away from them as we can and begin to make sandwiches while Julia and Ian continue their skirmish.

  ‘Are they always like that?’ Adam asks.

  ‘Yes, always. They’re pretty awful.’

  ‘What he said about Troy, does that sort of thing happen much to you?’

  ‘Not as much as it did to start with, but until something more scandalous happens around here I think it will continue, to some extent.’ I try to sound sanguine.

  ‘I’d hate it if people were gossiping about me,’ Adam says, wrestling with a packet of ham that is determined to remain unopened.

  ‘You get used to it.’

  ‘I guess.’

  ‘There are ways to avoid it.’

  ‘Really? What?’

  ‘Don’t have your husband run off with his Pilates instructor and move three doors up the street. That’s the main way I can think of.’

  * * *

  After lunch several of the more gung-ho camping parents, Harvey, Sarah and Steve, round up the kids for a bushcraft workshop. It’s a great idea, except between the fire ban and the reluctance of the parents to allow their children near anything bladed, quite a lot of activities are out.