by Bronwyn Sell
Once (abruptly) back at sea level, they drew to a stop beside another old house, not as grand as the Queenslander would once have been, but pristine and neatly painted in white, with a large veranda, several sets of open French doors, and pretty fretwork. It stood in the centre of a small, calm bay. On either side of it, simple cabins were dotted around the curve of the beach, interspersed with small dome tents and bigger teepee-style canvas ones.
‘This is the backpackers?’ she said. ‘If I’d come here in my twenties, I’d never have left.’ A lie. She’d been far too driven her entire life. Not for her a year of odd jobs and backpacking.
‘You still want me to drop you at the café?’ He nodded at the house, and she realised a few people were sitting at tables on the veranda.
As appealing as it was, what would she do there but start obsessing again? Her mood had lifted, along with the worst of her hangover. Why jeopardise that with solitude? As long as Harry was beside her, the negative thoughts remained largely outside the cone of distraction—and she wasn’t quite ready to summon the helicopter after all. Not just yet.
And without him, this was all like some reality TV show where you were whipped away from the routines and support systems of your regular life and stranded on an island that looked idyllic but was actual hell because you were forced to do nothing but drink and angst.
‘Is the offer of the boat trip still open?’ she said.
‘It never closed.’ He sounded pleased at her change of heart, which filled her belly with happy little bubbles.
She wasn’t breaking his rules, exactly. Fantasising about him wasn’t dwelling in the past, and there was no chance of it being the future. So what if she allowed herself to fall a tiny bit in love with the idea of him? It would remain what it was—a harmless distraction strictly confined to her head.
Another hour or two enjoying his company and then she’d book the flight home.
Trip Review: Curlew Bay
Rating:
Review: Way too much seafood on the menu.
10
Josh
Josh stepped off the windsurfer into knee-deep water at Fossil Cove. Amy was definitely acting strange. Sure, he’d only met her yesterday, so it was possible that last night and this morning were her strange and this was her normal, but … nah. They’d got each other from the get-go—even better than he’d hoped. He might have allowed himself a small fist-pump once he’d got back to his villa last night. And the snorkelling had been awesome—just hanging in the sun in paradise with your best mate. Insta-sister: big tick.
But ever since they’d met up at the resort’s sports shed to load a couple of windsurfers onto a quad bike and trailer, she’d been distant, like she felt uncomfortable around him. Which of course made him feel uncomfortable, which made him act uncomfortable, which probably made her more uncomfortable, which made her act more uncomfortable. She’d shrugged off his attempts to instruct her, preferring to flounder in the shallows, and insisted he sail out to catch the winds past the headland. Now, she was hunched beside a rock pool on the edge of the tiny cove, sifting through its contents.
She didn’t look up as he hoisted his windsurfer onto the trailer, on top of hers. At the other end of the little crescent beach, three kids played on a rope swing while their dad took photos and their mum tinkered with their tender. Their shouts and laughter wafted in on the patchy breeze. In the cove, their catamaran rose and fell with the light swell, like it was breathing in its sleep.
He lashed the windsurfers. He’d hoped to sail around the headland and back to the resort, but the breeze had dropped. Not that he and Amy had practised this lift yet, but he was catching reluctance from her. Maybe she wasn’t as cool with the insta-brother thing as she’d seemed. Maybe she already had enough complicated relatives and couldn’t be arsed with another. She had the kind of extended family he’d fantasised about as a kid, and okay, as an adult too. His entire extended clan, beyond his nuclear (wasteland of a) family, was three people he’d seen maybe twice in his life—his dad’s much older sister (divorced, of course) and her two adult kids, who all lived in Singapore and weren’t coming to the wedding, ‘seeing as it’s not a real wedding’. Sanjay had laughed it off when he’d relayed the conversation, but Josh had heard the strain in his voice.
One of the cousins had sent Josh a friend request on social media a year or two back but when he’d gone to accept, he’d got an error message that she’d reached the friend limit, and that had been that.
He’d bet Amy’s family had noisy gatherings like you saw in movies and on TV, filling both sides of a long table, every chair from the house dragged in and repurposed—desk chairs, outdoor furniture, bar stools levered down as far as they’d go, beer crates with cushions on top. Birthdays, Christmas, anniversaries, funerals …
Shit. Did he just fantasise about a family funeral?
His mum didn’t even have a dining table—‘empty chairs are too depressing’—so they ate at the breakfast bar once he’d cleared it of mail and leaflets. Christmas was him and Pippa watching retro rom-coms while she moaned either about being single or about her latest loser boyfriend. Last Boxing Day, he’d got the usual guilts at leaving her alone while he flew to Melbourne for a delayed Christmas with Sanjay—also just the two of them since Geoff had stayed at Curiosity Island with his daughters and grandkid. He and Sanjay had hit the beach and the sales, where his father had, as usual, offered to spend stupid money on him and he had, as usual, declined, and Sanjay had, as usual, accused him of putting stubbornness and pride before logic. They always ate at restaurants because Sanjay’s house was too quiet. Year after year, Sanjay would invite Pippa to his place for Christmas, and year after year she’d turn down him down. ‘I wish he’d stop trying to play happy families,’ she’d complain. ‘I thought we were beyond pretending.’
He pulled his phone from his backpack. One bar of coverage. He typed a text.
Hi Ma! You should see this place. It’s
He looked up. The ocean was ever-shifting shades of blue and turquoise, depending on the depth and sun and cloud cover, which right now wasn’t much. At the rocks, Amy was examining something in her palm, her sarong twisted to reveal one of her legs—a dancer’s legs, strong and honed and graceful, and always looking like they were posed in some ballet position. Never just two trunks jutting out parallel, like a regular person.
stunning,
He took a panorama photo of the cove and attached it.
#nofilter
He sat on the grass beside the quad bike while the pic uploaded, holding the phone up like an aerial, too scared to move in case he lost the precious bar. Amy stood, brushing sand from her arse. She stared out to sea for a minute or two then turned, her gaze freezing when it reached him. He found himself holding his breath. After another minute, she walked up the beach, the sarong flapping. How was it that his eye was drawn to her legs more when they were partially covered than when she was wearing butt-skimming shorts?
‘Find anything?’ he called. With her sunglasses on, it was hard to assess her mood.
‘My eight-year-old self. I spent hours exploring those rock pools as a kid.’
She sat next to him—well, not next to him, exactly, but near him. He laid the phone carefully on the grass to trick it into thinking it was still being held. At this rate, he’d be on the flight home before the photo sent. He screwed up his nose. He didn’t want to think about leaving here, though now he at least had a friend in Melbourne. His new station crew had been welcoming but were mostly older and had kids. In fact, he had more than a friend—he had a housemate. A sister, even. Home and family in one. Result.
‘You mean on holidays?’ he said. ‘You didn’t grow up here, did you?’
‘No. My cousins did, but Mum got a dance scholarship when she was a teenager and moved to Melbourne and boarded with a cousin of Nan’s. Then she met Dad and had Carmen and me.’
‘Was your dad a dancer too?’
Even with sunglasses maski
ng Amy’s eyes, he could read her are-you-kidding-me? expression. ‘Did you see him dancing last night?’
‘Nope.’ He’d been too busy talking to her. ‘Don’t think I ever have.’
‘Count yourself lucky.’
‘How did your mum learn to dance, out here?’
‘There’s an old schoolhouse on the island—it used to be farmhands’ quarters back in the day, and it’s now the café and kitchen at the backpackers. When Mum was growing up, the kids on the island had a teacher from Spain who’d come over to dance with the Australian Ballet but got injured. He convinced Nan to install a barre. He used to make Mum and her sisters and the other kids recite their times tables while they warmed up. Mum made me and Carmen do it too. To this day, I skip rope in multiples of seven—not that I skip rope that much. Okay, not at all.’
Josh laughed and lay back, the seagrass prickling his bare back. Overhead, a fat blowfly zoomed past and the waxy green leaves of a tree clashed wildly with the blue of the sky. Amy seemed back to normal—back to last night’s normal, anyway. ‘Is there still a school here?’
‘There hasn’t been for years, to Nan’s disgust. She wants the island to be rolling with great-grandchildren, but my niece is the only kid here. Mika bosses all the children at kids’ club, but they rarely stay longer than a week.’
‘She’s growing up with no other kids around?’
‘Yeah, can you imagine?’
‘Crazy,’ he deadpanned.
‘Oh, sorry. I guess you can imagine that.’ She looked down at him, her hair falling over her face. It had been tied up last night. In the sunshine, it looked lighter—blonde streaks in the light brown. She was more like her dad, while Carmen took after their mum. Maybe that’s why Josh had dumped on her last night. You got the same feeling from Geoff. When he asked how you were, you actually told him because he’d look you in the eye like he gave a shit, and he’d wait for the reply, like he really wanted to know. Maybe it was the pharmacist in him. He was used to listening to people’s problems. Sanjay had his good points, but he didn’t do feelings. Neither did Pippa, come to think of it, except for her own, and there were plenty of those.
Josh linked his hands under his head. ‘I had friends at boarding school. But in the holidays, it was usually just me and Pippa, or me and Sanjay. Sometimes they’d find some random kid in whatever neighbourhood they were living in and set me up on an awkward playdate. But I was never into that, so eventually they stopped bothering. It wasn’t like I’d ever be a part of the kid’s life, so what was the point? And I was pretty good at amusing myself, especially after Mum taught me how to windsurf.’
Her forehead creased. ‘I guess you wouldn’t have hung out with your boarding school friends in the holidays.’
‘Nah. They mostly lived in rural South Australia. I don’t think I ever went to a single one of their houses—too many logistics. There were day kids at the school, too, but us boarders pretty much kept to ourselves, and my folks always whipped me away as soon as they could at weekends or holidays. I had plenty of quality time with Pippa or with Sanjay though, which is more than a lot of kids get.’ Whoa, he was doing it again. He rolled up to a crouch and jumped to his feet. Amy had probably gone weird on him because he kept piling on her with the poor-me bollocks. ‘So, you came windsurfing with me. Time for me to fulfil my part of the deal.’ He held out a hand to pull her up.
The skin beside her sunglasses tightened. ‘Your part of the deal? Are you doing this dance just as a favour to me?’
‘I didn’t mean it like that. I’m happy to do it.’
‘You know it’s not compulsory? You are allowed to say no. Mum takes liberties with people.’
He was beginning to feel like a dick standing there with his arm out. ‘Hand on heart, I’m good with this if you are. Where shall we start?’
She glanced at the family down the beach. The mum was shaking out a picnic rug and the dad was hauling an esky from the tinny. Josh took the opportunity to retract his hand.
‘Maybe we should wait until they clear off,’ Amy said.
‘They look pretty settled in. Probably waiting for the wind to pick up. I don’t think they’re wedding guests, so it’s not like they’ll go and tell our dads.’ Our dads. Weird. He’d only ever had my dad, my mum, my aunt, my cousins. He didn’t share a single living relative with anyone.
‘I really need to talk to Mum and Carmen first about the choreography they’ve already planned, to figure out how many counts we have, and stuff.’
‘But we can go over the basics of the lift, can’t we? Like your mum said, we don’t have a lot of time and it’s going to get busy with the—’
‘We’ll be fine.’
And she’d turned again. Was this what she was like, casual as anything one minute, uptight the next? It wouldn’t be the first time he’d got a woman all wrong. ‘Is everything all right, Amy?’
She looked up at him, her head moving so fast he almost expected to hear a snap. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Are you feeling weird about this stepbrother thing?’
She shot to her feet. ‘No,’ she said way too quickly.
‘It’s okay with me if you are.’ Liar. ‘I have launched myself on you guys.’
‘No! Seriously, you’re really cool and it’s great to have you in the family.’
Then why are you holding back? There was some undercurrent here that was flowing right on past him.
‘You know what?’ he said. ‘I should go check in with Sanjay. I didn’t catch him this morning. See if he needs me for anything. Or write my speech. We can do this dance thing another time. Or we can forget it.’ It was an effort to keep his tone offhand. He’d liked the idea of a secret family project, but he wasn’t really family. Not yet.
‘No, no. I …’ She swallowed and looked at her hands, which she was actually wringing. ‘On second thought, that’s probably a good idea. And I should see if Carmen needs help.’
‘Sure,’ he said. Last night, she’d said she’d rather clean out the septic tanks than help Carmen with wedding prep. And he already knew Sanjay didn’t need him. He and Geoff were having a chillout day after he’d worked about twenty days straight so he and Viggo could leave the business for a week. They were like helicopter parents who couldn’t bring themselves to leave their kid with a babysitter. Ironic seeing Sanjay had effectively outsourced the upbringing of his actual kid. Maybe Josh could find Viggo. He grimaced. Viggo could well be at the villa with Amy’s mum. He rubbed his jaw, the sand and salt rolling under his fingers. He needed a shave. ‘How about you head back on the quad bike? I’ll unload my windsurfer. I can sail it back when the wind picks up.’
She didn’t say anything, so he stepped to the trailer and started unclipping the straps. He must have some books loaded onto his phone. He could take photos, play with the filters. Worst-case scenario, if the wind didn’t pick up, he’d walk back over the hill and come back with the quad bike to retrieve the windsurfer. That’d fill the afternoon. He rubbed the back of his neck. It was aching suddenly. Lack of sleep, probably.
‘Okay. Let’s do it,’ Amy said abruptly from right behind him.
He turned, mentally fist-pumping. ‘Do it? Do you mean the lift?’ he said, and immediately regretted it because it sounded like he’d been thinking of doing something else entirely.
If she heard it like that, she ignored it. ‘Maybe not the Dirty Dancing lift. It’s unsafe for a beginner, especially in a crowded room.’
‘How about we try it and see how it goes? I’m sure I can hold you up. We do this sort of thing in training all the ti—’
‘It’s not just about strength, it’s about balance and timing and trust.’
‘O-kay.’ She was a rollercoaster ride. First she wanted to do it, then she didn’t, then she did, and now it seemed she didn’t but she was saying she did. ‘What do you suggest?’
‘There are other lifts we can do that aren’t so …’ Her face screwed up.
‘Risky?’ he offer
ed, though he guessed there was more to it than that.
‘Yeah, risky.’
‘What if we try that thing your mum suggested, where I bench-press you?’
‘No need.’ She backed up to the hard sand above the high-tide mark. ‘We can do an over-the-back roll.’
He followed her. ‘What happens in that?’
‘I,’ she said, raising her eyebrows, ‘roll over your back.’
‘Right. As the name suggests.’
‘Yep.’
‘How do we start?’
‘So, you bend over.’
He obeyed. ‘Liking this so far.’
‘A solid, wide stance with your feet, bend your knees to brace.’ She stepped close and patted his lower back. He arched away. He hadn’t expected the contact after all the distance she’d put between them. ‘Hinge your back to forty-five degrees and keep it straight.’
‘Like this? I feel like this is all a ploy so you can whack my arse and laugh at me.’
‘Don’t tempt me.’ She tossed her sunglasses onto the grass and stood to his right, her body facing the same way as his but with her head turned to him, and again he found himself staring at those eyes into which he’d barfed up his life story last night. Right now, the sun was igniting them green but in other lights they were grey. ‘Hold out your arms, like an aeroplane.’
He complied.
She stared at his nearer hand like she was trying to figure out what to do with it.
‘Am I doing this right?’ he said. ‘Feeling like an idiot here.’
He’d swear the skin on her face and neck had pinked since a few minutes ago. Sunburn? ‘Um, yeah. So I’m just going to grab your hand and pull against you and you pull me in and I use the momentum to jump up and roll over your back, spine to spine.’
‘You’re just what?’
She blinked a few times but didn’t move.
‘Amy?’ he said eventually. ‘My thighs can’t do this forever.’
‘Right, sorry. Just trying to figure out how this is going to She took his right hand with her left, still watching it like it was an unidentified species, her brow furrowed. Her hand was smooth and elegant, like it too had been drilled on posture. She rubbed her lips together. ‘I spin into your arm, launch up and roll over your back, spine to spine, and then spin to the ground. Kind of a barrel roll but you’re the barrel I’m rolling over, and I’m using your arms to launch me and keep me steady.’