Lovestruck

by Bronwyn Sell

‘I would love to go snorkelling,’ she found some version of herself saying.

  ‘Legend.’ He held up his glass, and she picked up hers and clinked it. ‘It’s a date.’

  Trip Review: Curlew Bay

  Rating:

  Review: I don’t get why this place has so many four- and five-star reviews. It’s so basic! If you’re not into swimming or water sports, there’s nothing to do but eat and drink and sit on the beach and have massages!

  4

  Harry

  As an amber dawn broke over the hills behind Curlew Bay, Harry strolled through the doors from reception into the pavilion. The restaurant staff were still restoring the space to its breezy norm after last night’s action and pushing back the bifold doors to the deck, and Lena was behind the bar, working the coffee machine. Score. His little sister made the meanest espresso on the island. After his late night, he needed caffeine to finish off a funding application for a new boat before taking the old one out to Stingray Reef to check on an outbreak of crown-of-thorns starfish. If the engine even started. Really, he needed the caffeine intravenously, but Lena’s double espressos were the closest you got without needles.

  ‘Morning, Hazza!’ Lena called, looking up. ‘How’s the …’ She trailed off as something caught her eye outside. ‘Hel-lo there,’ she murmured. Harry followed her gaze over the deck and pool to the beach, where a fit, shirtless guy jogged along the high-tide mark, silhouetted by the pale-gold water.

  Harry pulled up a bar stool. ‘Eyes off the guests, Lena.’

  ‘I’m checking for security threats.’

  ‘I don’t think he’s carrying.’

  ‘His body is a weapon,’ she said, arching up to get a better look. ‘I may have to check that he’s registered it with Security. Which is—oh that’s right—me.’

  ‘I thought you’d promoted yourself to chief operations officer?’

  ‘Which literally made me my own boss. Turns out I’m a pain-in-the-arse employee. And a nightmare boss.’

  The floorboards behind Harry creaked and he felt a double pat on each of his shoulders. He briefly pressed one of the hands. ‘Morning, Nan.’

  Nan shuffled up onto a stool, flicking her thick white braid over one shoulder. ‘We appear to have a jilted bride.’

  Lena pulled a cup out for Nan’s morning cappuccino. ‘Which wedding?’

  ‘Not one of ours.’ Nan laid her shoulder bag on the counter and slipped her laptop out. ‘The wedding was supposed to happen in Sydney last weekend. They booked the Frangipani Villa for a two-week honeymoon, but she’s there alone, and I’m getting increasingly concerned. The woman has every right to wallow, but we have a responsibility. I’m hoping you can sort it out, my love,’ she said to Lena.

  ‘Sort it out?’ Lena said. ‘What, force them to the altar?’

  ‘Checking up on her will do for now.’

  Lena’s forehead screwed up. ‘Has she killed him?’

  ‘Not that I know of,’ Nan said, hinging the laptop open. ‘He didn’t come off the plane with her at Hamilton Island, so whatever’s happened, it didn’t happen on our turf.’ She typed something and pushed the computer toward Harry. Some gossip website slowly loaded. ‘Sausage Heiress Ditched at Altar,’ he read aloud. ‘How the Mighty Rich Fall.’ The photo showed the tall blonde with bright blue eyes who’d downed two champagnes in as many seconds last night, though she looked ten times more together on the screen, wearing a long purple dress at some red-carpet thing.

  ‘Sausage heiress?’ Lena said.

  ‘The story says her mother made a fortune in processed meat,’ Harry said, scrolling down, the internet glitching with every third keystroke. ‘Father’s an MP. Big names in Sydney, by the look of it. She’s a partner in some big law firm. Bloody hell—her fiancé dumped her the night before the wedding.’

  ‘Imagine doing a thing like that,’ Lena deadpanned.

  ‘I hear what you’re implying but I didn’t get anywhere near the altar.’ Harry nodded at the screen. ‘This loser only figured it out the night before.’

  ‘And this honeymooner,’ Lena said to Nan, raising her voice over the hiss of the steamer, ‘is she a danger to herself or to others?’

  Nan brought up the guest management software. ‘She’s ordering champagne, and desserts by the menu-load, and mostly keeping to her room. The room attendants report she’s listening to …’ Nan peered at the notes field. ‘Murder Ballads. That doesn’t sound good.’

  ‘She turned up to the bar pretty wasted last night,’ Harry said. ‘I had her driven back to her villa on a golf buggy. Still, I’d probably want to be drunk too.’

  ‘Maybe you could ask your ex-fiancée about that,’ Lena said.

  He scowled at her. ‘We were never technically engaged.’

  ‘You were together about a hundred years.’

  ‘Eight years and don’t remind me.’

  ‘She ordered a bottle of Dom Perignon at five last night,’ Nan said, studying the screen. ‘A room attendant collected the empty from her veranda at six-fifteen.’

  Lena whistled as she pushed the coffee to Nan. ‘How the other half drown their sorrows. It’s still not my portfoli—’ Her focus darted to a spot over Harry’s shoulder. ‘Seriously?’

  The shirtless guy was running past again, the rising sun glinting off his aviators. Harry did a double take. Hang on—it was a different shirtless guy. Another two guys followed, wearing identical blue shorts, tattoos spiralling around their biceps.

  ‘The sun’s hardly even up,’ Lena said, absentmindedly twisting one of her many silver earrings. ‘Some people don’t know how to holiday. And I’m good with that.’

  Harry watched as two equally cut women jogged into view, dressed in grey tanks and the same blue shorts. A sports team?

  ‘I’m concerned for her wellbeing,’ Nan said.

  Lena was still leering. ‘Yes, very concerning …’

  ‘Eyes on me, my love,’ Nan said briskly. ‘She’s been here four nights and she’s hardly come out of her villa, which would be normal behaviour for two honeymooners, but not one.’

  Lena grabbed an espresso cup for Harry. ‘Sounds like a job for the spa and wellness manager. I’ll call Mum.’

  Nan dropped her glasses down her nose and gave her granddaughter The Look. ‘Your mother is busy this morning.’

  Lena shrank back. ‘Chief concierge?’ she said hopefully. ‘Aunt Rosa is awesome at that stuff. She can go around after her yoga class. Perfect timing.’

  ‘I’ve arranged for Rosa to show Sanjay’s business partner the island.’

  Lena huffed. ‘Nan, I’ll just end up telling her to sort her head out, and that men suck and she should get over it.’

  ‘She would, too,’ Harry offered.

  Nan grunted. ‘So would I. Perhaps we need someone with compassion.’

  Two pairs of amber eyes trained on Harry, one framed by orange-rimmed glasses, the other by thick blue eyeliner. He held up his palms. ‘No. I don’t have any expertise here, apart from the fact I’m a regular human being, which you two will never become without practice.’

  ‘And you know what it’s like to be in a jilty situation,’ Lena said.

  ‘Every circumstance is different,’ Harry said. ‘Besides, I’m busy helping creatures with actual life-and-death challenges. If she’s rich enough to book out the Frangipani Villa, she’s rich enough to fly in a team of psychiatrists with Mummy’s salami money.’

  ‘Sausage,’ Nan corrected, sipping her coffee.

  ‘What the actual?’ Lena said, clinking Harry’s cup onto a tiny saucer by feel rather than sight, the precious coffee sloshing around the rim. He dived for it. ‘Is there an Olympic sprint team staying that I don’t know about?’

  Half a dozen more men and women were running past the window. As they jogged out of sight, more arrived.

  ‘They must be staying at the backpackers,’ Harry said, sliding the coffee toward him.

  Lena bent double, resting her elbows on the bar and her chi
n on her hands. ‘Strange that Aunt Rosa didn’t mention anything. She must have seen the booking come through.’

  ‘If they’ve come from Juno Beach, that’s a decent run,’ Harry said. ‘What time did they get up—midnight?’

  ‘They are very sweaty,’ Lena said huskily. ‘Their muscles are actually glistening.’

  ‘They’re not backpackers, they’re soldiers,’ Nan said.

  ‘Soldiers?’ Lena stood straight, tearing her eyes from the view.

  Nan opened a document on the laptop. ‘Item six for this morning’s executive staff meeting, which you would know about if you’d read the agenda, as you’re contractually obliged to do.’ She pushed her glasses up her nose, and ran her finger halfway down the screen. ‘There it is, right before “New marketing slogan brainstorming”, which you so-called millennials have proved hopeless at so far. “Confirmation of lease”.’

  Harry looked at Lena, whose face twisted into a beats-me expression. ‘Come again?’ he said.

  ‘I’ve signed a deal to lease Mischief Bay to the navy. Reopen the World War II base.’

  Bloody hell. He knew they were struggling, but …

  ‘If that’s item number six on the agenda, I don’t know if I want to hear items one through five,’ Lena said. ‘How long is this lease for?’

  ‘Fifty years, initially,’ Nan said. ‘They’ll stay in the old bunkers while they build new barracks.’

  ‘Holy shizer, Nan,’ Lena said. ‘Fifty years? When were you planning to tell us?’

  ‘When we got to agenda item six,’ she replied serenely. ‘I had to sign an NDA. It expired when the advance party landed last night.’

  ‘I don’t think it’s called an advance party,’ Harry said. ‘They’re not invading—are they?’

  ‘Scouts then? Reconnaissance?’ Lena said, sounding hopeful.

  Harry remembered his espresso and downed it in one. He sucked on his teeth. It kicked like whisky. ‘I’m more concerned about the implications than the terminology. How does a military base fit our eco-resort image? And what about the marine reserve, and the coral regeneration? What firepower will they have there? What ships? What weapons?’

  Nan sighed. ‘Why do you youngsters always think that people my age were born yesterday? No large ships, no gunfire, no run-off, plus solar panels, rainwater tanks, wastewater treatment and bio-cycling. We have the space; we may as well make money from it.’

  Harry rubbed his forehead. ‘This isn’t like renting out a spare room on Airbnb, Nan.’

  ‘It’s not going to be Pearl Harbor. It’s going to be …’ Nan scrolled down the document. ‘“A small training post for joint team building and upskilling with the US Indo-Pacific Command, Malaysia, Japan, South Korea, New Zealand, and other key allies”. This lot’s here for a week of dive and fitness training—they’re not going to blow anything up. Even when it’s fully set up, there’ll only be a small permanent staff. Believe me, our lawyers have picked through the contract like vultures over a carcass. Expensive vultures, but needs must.’

  ‘Nan, we should have talked about this,’ Harry said as Lena took his empty cup. ‘Surely there’s something better we could think of than—’

  ‘Everything else we’ve tried has failed, my love. We need this, and the deal is done. Not only will it be a steady income—which will shore us up in the short-term—but part of the deal is that they’ll upgrade the old jetty at Mischief Bay so the supply barges will stop their whinging, restore the old airfield so we’ll have options beyond the ferry and the chopper, and build a mobile-phone tower that we can piggyback on. And this could eventually fund all the environmental projects you desire—and you can’t complain that you don’t get a voice here.’

  Harry grunted. After the last big cyclone several years back, they’d had to close the resort for months to sort out the damage. On his insistence, they’d channelled the insurance payout and some grant money into making the resort more sustainable, but they’d had to borrow to cover the shortfall. Nan was always quick to remind him of the opportunity cost. You can only spend your money once, unless you’re a blimmin’ bank.

  ‘Will it at least mean I can get a new boat?’ he said to a groan from Lena.

  ‘You already spend too much time with fish,’ Nan said. ‘Humans can be nice. You should try them.’

  ‘Hazza is only interested in species that need rescuing, Nan. Though that’s most of the humans I know, so …’

  Harry ignored his sister. ‘If I get a new boat,’ he said carefully, seeing an opening, ‘I can start running eco-tours, which means my work can be self-funding and I’d be forced to talk to people who aren’t related to me.’ He mentally high-fived himself at leveraging Nan’s two great preoccupations—money and matchmaking—in one pitch.

  Nan pushed the laptop aside. ‘You’ll get a boat eventually.’

  ‘Eventually as in I don’t need to write this application today, or eventually as in maybe five years from now?’

  ‘Eventually as in we have debts to pay down before we can even think of spending more money. Write your application. Get Carmen to proofread it.’

  ‘Sure thing, Nan.’ Not a chance. Carmen would vomit red pen all over it until she got so frustrated that she’d rip it up and write it herself—and she was already stressed with planning ex-Uncle Geoff’s wedding.

  ‘These soldiers could be a tourist attraction in themselves,’ Lena said. ‘Come to Curlew Bay where the views are fine—and the scenery’s not bad either. There’s your slogan, Nan! Or …’ She bounced around as she warmed to the theme. ‘What about, Come for a holiday, leave with a hero. Or heroine. Is there a gender non-specific term beginning with H?’ She dropped to a murmur. ‘Come for a vacation, leave with a—’

  ‘Venereal disease,’ Harry finished. He ducked the dishrag Lena threw.

  ‘Maybe I’ll find soldiers to marry you kids off to—as long as they’re permanently stationed here.’ Nan picked up her cup in two hands. She blew on the coffee even though it was probably air temperature. ‘You’re not much of a sales pitch for the wedding and honeymoon market. Come to Curlew Bay, where the family tree is withered and dying.’

  ‘I’m cool with being a disappointment,’ Lena said, making Harry a second espresso without asking, which was one of the reasons he tolerated her. ‘How about you, Hazza?’

  He inhaled through his nose. ‘I got closer than any of us. Someone else’s turn.’

  ‘Nan, I couldn’t even think of marriage until my poor older siblings are settled,’ Lena said melodramatically. ‘Not to mention The Sisters Three.’

  ‘How considerate,’ Harry said.

  ‘You two make it sound like execution,’ Nan said. ‘And honestly, I don’t care if you don’t get legally married. Just have some blimmin’ children.’

  ‘Got to keep the supply of slave labour going,’ Lena called over the coffee machine.

  Nan sniffed. ‘It’s not just about that. I want to see all you kids happy before I die. Is that so evil? You’re thirty next year!’

  ‘I am? Why didn’t someone warn me?’ There was a tinge of frustration in Lena’s sarcasm. She might act like she didn’t give a damn about anything, but she’d had her unfair share of relationship disappointments. ‘If it’s a wedding you want, you could make an honest man of poor Reg. Set a good example.’

  ‘I don’t understand it,’ Nan continued, conveniently failing to hear. ‘Three daughters and nine grandchildren and not a single one in a relationship. What did I do so wrong?’

  Lena passed Harry’s espresso to him. ‘You mean aside from breeding a family of hermits and complaining about how useless Granddad was for decades and telling us our whole lives that the outside world was a big bad nasty place, so we’d stay on the island forever?’

  ‘It’s a mystery,’ Harry said.

  Nan scoffed. She had, in fact, sent the entire family to university on the mainland in the express expectation they’d bring home useful partners and breed beautiful grandchildren in a big, hap
py, genetically diverse, non-culty commune. To date, the score was zero from twelve, though Aunt Rosa had survived enough years in Melbourne to marry, divorce and raise Amy and Carmen, who had shocked everyone by bringing home the sole great-grandchild. (‘Carmen, of all people!’ Nan had said, gleefully.) Aunty Tam had three kids (all single) from two failed relationships. Harry’s mother, Jaz, had imported a husband long enough to have four kids—a stellar result by their family’s standards—but his father had eventually tired of island life and moved to the bright lights of Auckland. It’s too claustrophobic up there, said the guy who now lived in an apartment so small you had to fold the bed up into the wall to make room for the pop-up dinner table.

  Harry had got as far as bringing Rachel home to meet the relatives—several times—but in the end she’d understandably freaked out at the idea of living in the family echo chamber, though it would have been good if they’d figured that out sooner. Like, eight years sooner.

  The tablet on the bar beeped and lit up. Lena checked it. ‘Jilted bride is still alive and thirsting for a Virgin Mary.’ She grabbed tomato juice from the fridge. ‘Wanna play bellboy, Hazza?’

  ‘You do know I don’t work for the resort?’

  ‘Pwease, Hazza? You’re my favourite big brother on the whole island.’

  ‘There’s only me and Cody here at the moment, so I should bloody hope so. Look, the woman just needs time and space.’

  ‘Even so,’ said Nan, typing again, ‘while she’s on my island, under my watch, I’m delegating someone to check up on her.’

  ‘Is there any sacrifice you wouldn’t make for your guests’ well-being, Nan?’ Harry checked his watch. ‘This funding application needs to be submitted this afternoon.’

  ‘This will only take a few minutes,’ Lena said, squeezing a lemon over the glass. ‘Think of it as penance.’

  She made it all sound like such a comedy when it hadn’t been at all funny—still wasn’t, as much as he played along with the family jokes. If you got as much mileage out of a car as they had out of his break-up, you’d be a happy driver. ‘I didn’t jilt anyone at the altar.’