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  “Thanks.” She waved her goodbyes to the group, edged her way through the clusters of people crowding the bar area now, with Ryan close behind.

  “Whew.” She turned to smile at him when they were out in the cool air again, tugged her jacket on. “That was loud.”

  “We don’t get you out with us often,” he said, walking beside her up the sloping street towards the carpark. “You’re not used to it.”

  “You’re right. My Friday nights are usually a lot quieter than this.”

  “With your kid? Is it a boy or a girl?”

  She knew she’d told him. Oh, well. “A son. Zack.”

  “How old is he?”

  “Six.”

  “Six. I wouldn’t have thought,” he said, looking at her sideways. “You must get out, though, from time to time. How about a quiet dinner with me, Saturday next?”

  “Sorry,” she said. “Saturday doesn’t work for me.” Zack would be leaving for the camping trip Sunday morning. She didn’t want to go out the night before. Unless she was mistaken, he was pretty nervous about the whole thing. Better to be home with him.

  “Friday night, then?” he persisted.

  “Hard,” she admitted. “My sister picked Zack up from childcare today, but I can’t ask her to do that two weeks in a row. How about lunch Friday instead? I could do that.”

  “I’ll take a lunch,” he decided. “If that’s all I get.”

  “So you’re planning to go, huh?” Lucy asked as Emma finished telling her about the evening.

  “Yeah. I’m not sure he’s my dream guy, but he’s cute. And not very . . . engineer-y. A bit more of an edge, maybe, which I like. As long as I go slow, why not? Because you know,” Emma confessed, “I haven’t even kissed a man for three—no, four months. I don’t even want to think about how long it’s been since I’ve slept with one. And I’m missing it.”

  “Because you still have an itch for Nic,” Lucy pointed out.

  “Wow. That’s refined.”

  “Sorry,” Lucy grinned. “But I’m right, aren’t I?”

  “I can’t go there, though,” Emma argued. “I have to keep seeing him, and that’s so hard. Because I can help but notice.” She sighed and took another sip of wine. “If only he weren’t so ridiculously strong,” she complained. “If he didn’t have those arm muscles, or those big hands, maybe I could do it. Or those eyes. The way they turn down like that, you know?”

  “Oh, boy,” Lucy said sympathetically. “You really do still have it bad.”

  Emma groaned, dropped her head into a hand, and shook it in despair as her sister wrapped a comforting arm around her. “Plus he’s about to get married to the elusive Claudia. And that’s going to be even worse.”

  “Still haven’t met her?”

  “No. And no chance now, not with Nic out of the country for two weeks. And I’m relieved, Luce. Because when I meet her, she’ll be real. And then I’ll have to make myself stop fantasizing about Nic.”

  “Better go out with this Ryan guy,” Lucy counseled. “Sounds like you need some distraction. Or maybe to scratch that itch.”

  “I’m glad you’re here tonight, anyway,” Emma told her. “At least I have somebody to sleep with.”

  Lucy laughed. “In a manner of speaking.” She set down her empty glass, reached out to turn off the bedside lamp, then snuggled down under the duvet. “I like being with you, too,” she told her sister. “I hate it when Tom’s out of town. I’m not used to living alone.”

  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.

  Chapter 15

  “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.

  “Your mum should’ve taken that away by now,” George grunted. “Soft, having a teddy, a big kid like you.”

  “Raffo’s not a teddy,” Zack insisted, his eyes filling with tears again, spilling over now. “And I only have him in bed. Or at extra-special times. And Mum said I could bring him! She said!”

  “Need to harden up,” George said. He glared at Nic. Nic felt his hands fisting, the familiar anger overtaking him. He shoved over to sit on his own sleeping bag, against the wall of the tent. “Bringing Raffo was OK,” he told Zack firmly. “It’s a bit scary, I reckon, going camping the first time. Specially if it rains, and you’re sick.” He put a hand out, smoothed Zack’s hair. “Everyone needs a bit of help sometimes.”