Authors: Rosalind James
Emma snapped out her own light and curled on her side, her
hands under her cheek, facing Lucy. “I miss you,” she confessed in the
darkness. “It’s so much harder without you. Being the grownup. Because you know
I’m not that good at this adult stuff.”
Lucy reached out to rub her sister’s shoulder. “Oh, honey.
You are too. You’re a great mum, and you’re paying your bills, and you’ve got
this place fixed up so beautifully. I’ve always wished I were as talented and
creative as you.”
“Really?”
“Of course I have. All the things you make? You’re really
special. I’m sorry it’s so hard. I’m sorry I couldn’t stay with you. But . . .”
“No,” Emma said, taking Lucy’s hand. “You spent enough of
your life with Zack and me. You needed to move in with Tom. It was the right
thing. I’m just glad you’re still able to come over sometimes and keep me
company. Especially when I’m freaking out,” she confessed, “the way I have been
since Nic showed up.” It was easier to say it, here in the dark.
“It’s because you’re still working it out,” Lucy told her
comfortingly. “You can’t see what it’ll look like, with Zack visiting him and
all that.”
“That’s it,” Emma said, letting her breath out in a sigh.
“What am I going to do, when Zack’s over there? Without my boy? I’m going to
miss him so much.”
“But it’ll be good for him, being with his dad, won’t it?”
Lucy asked.
“I hope so. I
hope
so. Zack’s so happy to spend time
with him, it . . . it scares me. What if Nic hurts him, the way he did me? What
if he changes his mind?”
“It doesn’t sound like he’s planning to do that,” Lucy
pointed out. “He’s seemed pretty committed so far, hasn’t he? And it might be
kind of nice for you to have a little time to yourself. You haven’t had much of
that, that’s for sure.”
“But you’re not
supposed
to have time to yourself,
when you have a six-year-old,” Emma tried to explain. “I’m supposed to be with
my son. He’s supposed to be with me. I’m supposed to take
care
of him.”
“All you can do is see what happens,” Lucy counseled. “And
remember, it’s not all tough stuff. He’s going to be paying too, and that’s
going to make everything so much easier. I really think everything’s going to
turn out for the best, in the end.”
“You think?” Emma asked in a small voice, her throat choked
by tears.
“Oh, sweetie. I know it. Everything’s going to be all right.
You’ll see.”
Lucy wasn’t quite so positive the next morning. “Wha?” she
mumbled when Emma slid out of bed. “What time is it?”
“Before six,” Emma told her. “You don’t have to get up. Zack
and I are watching the game, that’s all.”
Lucy wandered out halfway through, thumped down on the couch
with a sigh. “It’s not even
seven,”
she complained. “On Sunday
morning.
And you two are
loud.”
“It’s the second half, Auntie Lucy!” Zack told her
excitedly.
“Great,” Lucy muttered dourly. She pulled half the afghan
from Zack’s lap to cover her legs. “OK,” she yawned. “Is there any coffee?”
“Tea,” Emma said distractedly. “But you have to go fix it.
Because it’s 14 to 10, and we’re behind.”
“We’re?”
“The Blues,” Zack explained. He held his breath, eased
forward on the couch as the Cheetahs player sent a long kick downfield, and a
Blues player ran forward and to the left to catch it, then took off into a gap,
the two wingers falling in around him.
“It’s Nic!” Zack told his aunt, bouncing up and down in his
excitement. “He told me that bloke likes to kick to his right, because he’s
left-footed! And he did!”
Lucy looked at Emma, her expression quizzical. But her
sister wasn’t paying any attention to her. Her focus, like her son’s, was all
for the screen in front of her, where the players were all still running, the
commentators animated now.
“Right,” Lucy said with a sigh, hauling herself up off the
couch. “Tea. Which I can see I’m making myself.” Nobody was listening, and she
got no response. Just a whoop from Emma, a shout of “Try!” from Zack, and a
smack of palms in a high-five behind her.
“OK,” Emma said, shoving one final pair of socks into
the small duffel. “That’s it, I think. A change of clothes, extra socks. Your
toothbrush. Rain gear, gumboots. Because I’m afraid it’s going to be wet up
there. Toothbrush, toothpaste,” she muttered. “I guess you won’t be taking a
shower.”
“When’s he coming, Mum?” Zack shifted from one foot to the
other next to her. “How long?”
“Pretty soon,” Emma assured him. “He’ll text when he’s on
his way. Run and get your sleeping bag from your closet, OK?”
Zack dashed off, ran back trailing the flannel-lined thing
behind him.
“I hope this is warm enough,” Emma worried. “You’ve only
used it for sleepovers, and this is outside. I may send a blanket too.” She
began to roll it, stopped when she felt the lump. “What’s this?”
Zack looked a little hunted. “What?”
Emma reached inside, pulled out the spotted form,
neck-first. “Are you sure you want to bring Raffo? You’ve been doing OK without
him at Graham’s, haven’t you?”
“But this is
camping.
I may need him, for camping.”
Emma looked into the worried eyes, reached out from her
kneeling position to hold Zack close. “It’s going to be OK,” she assured her
son. She kissed his fine blond hair, brushed it back from his eyes. “Nic asked
you because he wants you to come. Because he wants to show you about camping,
and fishing, and all that good blokey stuff.”
“But I don’t know
how,”
Zack said anxiously. “And
where’s the toilet, in camping? What if I can’t find it?”
“You ask Nic,” Emma told him firmly. “Straight away, when
you get there. Ask him to show you. And I’ll leave Raffo in the sleeping bag,
the way you had him. So he’ll be there, just in case.”
“He’s a bit nervous,” she said in a low voice to Nic when
they were stowing Zack’s gear in the back of the ute an hour later. “You’ll look
after him, won’t you? He’s never done this before, remember.”
“I’ll look after him,” Nic promised.
“Where are your dad and brother?”
“Driving up from Tauranga. They’ll meet us. And you’ll want
my home phone number, my address. Not that you’ll need it, but the mobile
service up there at the tip of the Coromandel can be a bit patchy. It’d be good
for you to be able to reach Claudia, just in case.”
Emma nodded, pulled out her mobile and punched the
information in. Then went to kiss Zack goodbye. He looked half-excited,
half-terrified, strapped into the backseat, and she felt a lurch of fear for
him.
“Have a great time, baby.” She hugged him hard, then stood
waving, blinking back tears, as Nic reversed out of the driveway. A quick wave
from Nic, and they were gone. The last thing she saw was her son’s anxious face
peering out the side window, his hand waving frantically.
Nic wished the boy were in the front with him, but Emma had
vetoed that on the grounds of safety. And had insisted on the booster seat for
this trip, to Zack’s disgust.
“I’m tall enough,” the boy had argued. “You said.”
“By half a centimeter,” his mother had countered. “And
that’s not a good road, and it’s raining. You can ride in the booster seat, or
you can stay home.” So that had been that. They had started out with a fair bit
of conversation, centering around Friday night’s win against the Cheetahs in
Bloemfontein, but then Zack had fallen silent, and Nic had switched on some
music for the hour-and-a-half drive to Thames, where they’d meet his father and
Dan. Thank goodness Dan would be there.
He shook his head to clear the niggle of worry. “How you
going back there, mate?” he asked, glancing into the rear-view mirror to the
seat behind him.
“I need to pee,” Zack said.
“Already? Didn’t you go before you left? Only another hour
to go.”
“I
really
need to pee,” Zack insisted. He was
wriggling, Nic saw.
Right, then. “There’s a service center in a few kilometers,”
he told Zack. “We’re on the motorway, so I need to wait for that. Can you hold
it?”
“I think so,” Zack said dubiously.
“Do your best.” Nic put his foot down a bit more, seeing the
wriggling increase. Geez. Half an hour in. He pulled up in front of McDonalds.
By the time he got around to Zack’s side of the car, the boy was already out
the door, dancing in place.
“OK. Run,” Nic said. Zack raced through the entrance ahead
of him, through the door Nic pointed out. Nic followed him in, breathed a sigh
of relief as he saw that he’d made it to the urinal just in time.
“D’you want a fizz?” he asked Zack as they left the men’s
room. “As we’re here.”
“Really?” Zack asked.
“Why? Is that not on?”
“Nah, it’s OK,” Zack said quickly. “I can have one.” A half
hour later, pulling onto the verge and jumping out to race around the ute
again, Nic had sussed out why it wasn’t on. He’d bet Emma didn’t give the kid
anything at all to drink before a car ride.
“You’re late,” his dad said with a scowl when Nic had pulled
up at last beside George’s own well-used ute in the big Pak ‘n Save carpark.
“Yeh. Couple unscheduled stops,” Nic said, helping Zack
out. “Zack, this is my dad, Mr. Wilkinson. And my brother Dan.”
“Hi,” Zack said shyly, offering his hand with the manners
Nic had noticed from the beginning.
“Nic’s mate, eh,” Dan said with his engaging smile. “Ready
for a bit of fishing?”
“Mr. Wilkinson?” George asked Nic. “Why the hell?”
“Because Emma wants him to get to know me first,” Nic replied
in a low voice. “Shh.”
“Huh,” George grunted.
“D’you want to take the Land Cruiser the rest of the way?”
Nic asked him, changing the subject.
“Nah. I’ll drive.” Of course, Nic thought. He didn’t
respond, just went to the back of the ute and began shifting gear to his dad’s
smaller vehicle.
“Planning to stop in here for food?” he asked.
“We already did it,” George told him. “While we were waiting
for you.”
Nic bit down the retort. “Right, then. I’ll shift the boat.”
With his brother’s help, and to the accompaniment of critical commentary from
their father, he unfastened the dinghy from the top of his roof rack,
transferred it to his dad’s. Then shifted Zack’s booster seat to the other vehicle
while George waited impatiently. It was the unpunctuality, Nic knew. Well,
bugger it. Not like they had a schedule to keep. He wasn’t about to apologize
again.
“Let’s use the toilet before we go,” he told Zack instead.
He’d learned his lesson. He ignored his father’s annoyed sigh and took Zack
into the cavernous building.
“Are we finally sorted, then?” George asked sarcastically
when they returned.
“Yeh.” Nic made sure Zack was strapped in properly, went
around and hopped up into the other rear seat. “Ready to go.”
The positive aspect of the two-hour drive that followed, Nic
thought afterwards, was that they only had to stop once for Zack to pee, thanks
to their newly instituted no-fizz policy. The negative side was that they had
to stop three times for him to spew. He got carsick, it appeared. And the
deeply rutted, incessantly curving metal road from Colville to Port Jackson was
tailor-made for the purpose. By the time he was supporting Zack for the third
time, hastily donned rain gear doing an inadequate job against the deluge that
had begun minutes before, Nic was beginning to have serious doubts about the
entire trip.
“Sorry,” Zack said, tears swimming in the brown eyes and
beginning to trickle down his cheeks under the hood of his anorak.
“That’s OK,” Nic said, pulling off his son’s rain gear, then
belting him in for the—fifth? sixth? time. He ignored his father’s fingers,
drumming on the steering wheel. “You can’t help being sick. We’re almost there
anyway, aren’t we, Dad?”
“No telling,” his father ground out. “Depends how many more
times we have to stop.”
And that was the start of a fun-filled day. Turned out boats
made Zack seasick as well. The frequent bouts of rain didn’t help, either.
Huddling under the concrete cooking shelter that evening, taking their turn
with the electric cooker to grill the snapper that his dad and Dan had finally
caught once they’d returned Nic and Zack to shore, eating with their fingers
from paper plates, Nic had to wonder why he had thought this would be a good
idea. It was a relief to dash through the rain again to the tent, after one
final stop at the toilet for Zack.
“Time to get into those pajamas and get cozy in that bag, I
reckon,” Nic told him once they’d all wrestled off rain-soaked outer garments
and stuck them at the front of the large four-man tent. Dusk was falling
quickly thanks to the cloudy sky, and his dad turned on the lantern in silence
and hung it overhead, where it cast weird shadows.
“I haven’t brushed my teeth tonight, though,” Zack objected.
“Mum says.”
“That’s the beauty of camping,” Dan told him cheerfully.
“Nobody here cares if your teeth are clean or not. Or the rest of you, either.
Your mum probably makes you take a bath too, doesn’t she?”
“Yeh,” Zack said doubtfully.
“See? We don’t care that you’re dirty. Because we’re dirty
too. Covered in fish guts.” Dan made a comical face that had Zack giggling for
the first time that day, and Nic offered his brother a grateful smile as he
helped Zack out of his clothes and into his pajamas. Zack dove into his
sleeping bag, then wriggled down to the bottom, head disappearing, before
coming back up again.
“What’s that you’ve got?” Dan asked, seeing a spotted
something in Zack’s hand.
“Nothing,” Zack said in a scared voice.
“Got a teddy, have you?”
“It’s not a teddy,” Zack said indignantly. “It’s Raffo.” He
pulled out the flocked giraffe to show them.