The Highway North, part VI

Final installment of NaNoWriMo 2010. Previous installments here, here, here, here and here.

“As you’d expect,” Jules smirked, “I’ve done this BRILLIANTLY.”

I was staring. It’s rude to stare, but I don’t think the car minded. The car was a Porsche 928S from the late ‘80s, early ‘90s - the same model Clarkson munted on that old Top Gear challenge years ago. Except this one wasn’t munted. It was shiny, pristine and very much un-munted. It looked in lovely nick for its vintage, from its low, long bonnet, deep front splitter and round headlights through to the black rear wing on its curved rear. The colour was British Racing Green, which seemed odd for a German sports-GT, but other than that, it looked… almost concourse-spec.

“What the very fuck are you doing with this?”

“One of Dad’s mates. Was over last night. Serious fucking car bore. Porsche owners’ club president. Lives out on St Helena Road.” The ridge overlooking Byron where the likes of Paul Hogan and John Cornell had houses. In other words, he was Cashed The Fuck Up. “Has about half a dozen [classic Porsches, I assumed]. He’s been trying to sell Dad one of his old cars for ages, he even brought it round. When he told me the price…”

Jules had already told me the price. Hence the glazed-eye staring.

“You thought ‘What an excellent idea for a first car, a twenty-thousand-dollar twenty-year-old sports car with an arse bigger than Oprah’,” said JC.

“And a massive V8,” added Chris. “That will cost half a million dollars to run. And maintain. And insure.”

The latter was a dirty word at the moment, Chris having spent most of the morning on the blower to various insurance agencies and rental car peeps, all of whom were sheeting responsibility for solving our current carless status amongst each other. The buck appeared to stop everywhere and nowwhere at once; it was indeed Schroedinger’s Buck. In the end, our friend Chris had suggested they could all stick it somewhere functionally problematic, and hung up.

“Pretty much,” Jules concurred cheerily. “What are you trying to say?”

“You’re fucking mad?”

“Ah, that’s what you’re trying to say,” he grinned.

“Seriously, how can you afford this?” Chris asked. “And don’t say because you earn in pounds.”

“I earn in pounds,” he replied flatly, with a little look in my direction.

“It’s true,” I said. “He does.” And, with a little grin, “Had to be the one with the back end like the Millennium Falcon…”

Jules’ grin was twice as big as mine. Guilty as charged. “Ah, you remember that then. I was wondering when you’d bring that up…”

Most true Porsche aficionados (including many of Jules’ London stockbroker mates) gave the bird to the 928 - and the 944, and the 924, and pretty much anything that wasn’t a 911 or a derivative thereof. You didn’t want to mention the desperately ugly Cayenne 4WD or Panamera in their presence, anyway. But Josh had always had a soft spot for the 928. He didn’t know much about cars, but he knew what he liked, and he liked the Porsche 928. For this, back in the dim distant past, had been Jules’ favourite Matchbox car. The one with the back end like the Millennium Falcon from Star Wars.

As it happened, the 928S4 (as this particular example was) was far from the worst of all Porsches to try and go travelling in - it had boot space in the back, a 4.5 litre quad cam V8 in the front, and seats for four - but buggered if I could figure out how Josh’s suitcases were fitting into it.

“They’re not,” he admitted. “Leaving them here. Guess I’m staying with the folks for a while anyway, until I sort my shit out.”

Seems at least some of the story re Jules’ visa status had gotten out to the others. Particularly to JC, who as it turned out had spent the balance of the night at Jules’ olds’, making sparkly small talk with the party guests. Erm, yeah. The family thing, how’d that gone?

“How do you think it would have gone?” he chirped.

“Poorly.”

“If by ‘poorly’, you mean ‘being blamed for giving my mother cancer through the existential crisis my gayness has inflicted on her’, then yes, ‘poorly’ probably covers it.”

“Fuck that with a stick,” I declared. “That’s cunted.”

“My sentiments exactly,” JC agreed. “Shall we blow this popsicle stand?”

“Let’s do it,” I said. Chris nodded.

“One last thing,” Jules interjected. He fished around in the boot, pulled something out and shut the hatchback. “Been waiting for this for nearly 15 years,” he said.

And slapped a bright yellow magnetic L plate onto the tail of the Porsche.

I burst out laughing. I couldn’t help it. It was the most fucking ridiculous thing I’d seen in a week of tremendously fucking ridiculous things.

“You’re laughing,” JC smirked. “We drew straws. You’re the one who’s the sober licence-holding grownup who’s teaching this guy how to drive...”



We weren’t in any hurry. We couldn’t check in before 2pm anyway, even though Surfers was only a short sprint up the highway from here. So we took the backroads - partly to avoid encountering traffic, partly to avoid creating it limping along in the slow lane of the dual carriageway at a L-plate-limited 80 kays, being buzzed by fuckers in fulleh-sic Civics and lowered Hyundais. The back roads through the hinterland were ideal. They gave Jules a good grounding in road awareness, setting up for turns, sight lines, lane positioning and general feel for his new car. They were also bumpy, hilly and twisty, which meant those two sniggering bastards wedged into the back couldn’t enjoy their bottle-shop-roadie Heinekens without them frothing down the fronts of their shirts. Say it with me: Muahahahaha.

We wound up through Mullumbimby to the pie shop at Billinudgel, which was as good a place as any for lunch. Pity it was eleven. So we went to the pub in Ocean Shores for a cold beer instead until pie o’clock sauntered around. After a suitable feast of meat in pastry we pushed on, onto the old highway as far as Wooyung, then turning right onto the old coast road that made eastwards for the beach, then followed the coast north through Pottsville, Hastings Point and the spectacularly named Bogangar. (AKA Cabarita Beach, as the local tourist authority would prefer it.) Casuarina and Kingscliff were next along the coast, but there wasn’t much point dropping in on my folks considering they were poncing around Europe on a bus tour as we spoke.

Jules had gone alright so far, to be honest. There’d been intersections, traffic and a fair gamut of challenges for him to negotiate around. Just one squeaky bum moment loomed before we reached the Goldie, at least in terms of being dive-bombed at speed - the twin bridges over the Tweed at Chinderah, which were situated on a 110km/h stretch of highway, well in excess of what Jules was legally limited to. We made it… just about. With Jules white-knuckling the thin-rimmed steering wheel of the 928S for grim death, a steaming, screaming B-double up his bevelled-off Teutonic jacksie, as he braved as much as 89km/h in his dash for freedom and the safety of the urban speed zones on the run up the Banora Point hill…

That pretty much buggered him. He pulled over in a bus stop, pale and drawn, hands shaking, head bowed. Silently, defeatedly, he tossed me the keys.

Which was how I got to drive someone else’s Porsche up the M1 and into the heart of the Gold Coast on a glorious Friday afternoon.

And yes, it still went like a ballistic missile, and yes, it still sounded like caged thunder - particularly in the tunnel under the airport at Tugun, where I made everyone roll down their windows (amazingly, the electrics still worked) for best acoustics. And it cruised like nothing on earth, monstering everything in its path. Of course, remembering to take the L plates off BEFORE stoking the beast up to 110 going through Nerang would probably have been clever, but the nice policeman was very understanding. Even posed for a photo with us. Amazing the shit you can get away with when you’re prepared to admit you’re on assignment for the nation’s leading weekly tits-and-beers lads’ magazine.

It looked the part on location, too. Cruising over Chevron Island into the heart of Surfers, we did a lap of the Esplanade just for the hell of it - which turned into a very sedentary lap of the Gold Coast Indy track, up to Main Beach and back. Yeah, just like every other knuckle-dragging bogan in a shiny car within a 50 mile radius, but it was hard not to. Surfers in the sunshine just made you want to cruise, promenade, cast an eye over the scene. Sure it was all fake and plastic and shiny, but if you sat around being Captain Cynical about the place you’d never get any joy from it. Enjoying Surfers meant putting aside the acceptance that it was a superficial sinkhole and buying into the hedonism. We’d bought in. It was going to be a good night. The International apartments were old and dated - typical ‘80s vintage Surfers high-rise fare - but we’d picked up a pair of two-bedroom units for next to fuck all, given the season, and they’d thrown in secure undercover parking for free. Which, back when it was Chris’ precious Magna which was to be secured therein, had seemed like a Big Deal.

Jules needed a stiff drink after the nervewracking drive up the coast - which hadn’t stopped with the wracking-of-nerves when he’d handed over the keys, what with being stopped by the fuzzy muff, freaking out every time the speedo needle approached illegality, and the renown kamikaze tendencies of Gold Coast taxi drivers and Surfside Buslines operatives in the confined spaces of central Surfers - so he stuffed the remaining six of Heineken from the roadie carton into the freezer in the apartment he was to share with JC and filched one of the minibar offerings as an IOU while waiting for us to stop faffing about in the pool like teenage fuckwits. We eventually returned dripping wet, but with another carton of goodness from a damp wander through a local drive-thru liquor outlet. Beer prices were highway robbery, as you’d expect, but Jules probably wasn’t that keen on us piling into his lovely new Porsche with wet chlorinated arses and making for the nearest Unky Dan’s. So $48 for a carton of Coopers Pale it was.

Chris was, and is, one of those anoraks who has to roll his Coopers. This, apparently, is The Proper Thing To Do if you’re a proper aficionado of the product. Me, I’d sampled enough dodgy homebrew in my uni years to know that yeasty shite at the bottom was not where the untrammelled win lay resident in any bottle of beer. The rest of us decanted ours into glassware, apart from JC who called us all a bunch of wet nancy-boy poofters for doing so. JC was a different sort of Coopers tragic, he reckoned unless it was off tap it was just off. Still, didn’t stop him from smashing his way through five before dinner. I say dinner. It was chips and gravy from the Surfers Beergarden, chased with more ales. And off we went again.

The Beergarden’s just a bogan beer barn slapped at the end of Cavill Mall, but it was as near to a regular as we had on the Goldie - that and Lansdowne Road up the street, the rugby pub at Chevron Renaissance, which was on the agenda for later in the night anyway. The Beergarden was pretty basic - a bunch of big tables, a bunch of big screens, a big fuck-off balcony and a bar that served alcohols - but that’s about all you need when you’re kicking off the night.

JC clearly had a big one on the agenda. He’d taken advantage of the specials on buckets of Vodka Cruisers for twenty-five bucks. Had no plans for sharing, I should note, just parked the bucket in his lap and hoed in. Chris and I were sampling pints of Matilda Bay Fat Yak, whatever the fuck that was, while Jules had declared himself over beer and was onto the pear ciders, since they were So Hot Right Now. And by Right Now I mean last summer.

“What’s the plan, Stan?” declared Jules. JC was about to pipe up, but Jules got in first: “Yeah we know about you. You’re on a mission to find the only decent gay club on the Gold Coast.”

“There has to be one!” JC insisted. “And dammit, I’m going to find it!”

“I’m going to drink beer,” I said, “and see where the night takes me.”

“That there,” noted Chris, “sounds like a plan.”

“See, no ambition,” tsked Jules. “You can do that any night. You DO that EVERY night. This is the Gold Coast…”

“Yup,” I agreed, “very observant of you. What do you propose we do instead? Go stuff twenties down strippers’ knickers at Showgirls?”

“They’ll like him,” Chris nodded. “Just quietly, I heard somewhere he earns in pounds.”

“Just saying, not everyone needs to carry on like they’re in an old married couple. Particularly those who aren’t actually in a couple.”

So Jules wanted to go trawling for muff, it seemed pretty clear. Which meant a different profile of drinking establishment. Instead of the pubs and bars and big-screen sports which had been in our future, instead it looked like we’d be… clubbing.

Arsebiscuits.

I hated clubbing. I hated clubbing on the Goldie more than anything. The scene was full of spivved-up wankers and plasticized Barbies; the clubs were dark and deafening and played shithouse music which loosened the lining of your bowels. And so it proved: yes, once again it’s fun times. I wasn’t alone in my distaste. Chris lasted about twenty minutes at Shooters before suddenly remembering we had free wireless internet and disappeared for the night. Personally I think it was that fucking Kid Rock mashup of Sweet Home Alabama and Werewolves of London remixed to a chinzy R&B dance beat that finally broke him. Just about broke me too.

Which left me and the two clubbists - not that the hardcore dance-trance-take-off-yr-pants types like Jules and the gay-bar-gay-bar-WAAAOOWW devotees like JC could ever agree on what the one true dance music was - en route to SinCity, which felt like the sort of place one should throw oneself under a Surfside Buslines coach in order to avoid. But no, in we went. Ten dollar beers and asinine top-40 R&B. Kill me in the fucking face. I suddenly wished I was in a long-distance relationship. Sure, no sex, but at least I’d have an ‘out’ for shit like this. I was even thinking of just fucking off home, drinking beers on the balcony and reconnecting with my imaginary friends in the Twuntersphere.

Twitter’s a funny thing. You end up conversing with all sorts of people, all over the globe, all of which you have bizarrely eclectic connections to, most of whom you’ve never met. Some were other writers, some were people I knew from uni or around the traps. Most, though, were people who’d either started following me through something funny I’d said that’d been retweeted, or vice versa. The roadtrip had certainly paid off in one entirely non-commercial way; I’d picked up a bunch more followers, seemingly keen to hear the latest pithy 140-character update or questionably-captioned imagery from the road. Hadn’t yet tripped over anyone on our travels who knew who we were and what we were doing - not that surprising, I’d just cracked a thousand followers though probably half of them were spambots (such is the joy of Twunter) - and also because I tended to tweet location info after-the-fact and steered well clear of crap like 4square which revealed your GPS-tagged iPhone’s location to anyone who had an interest.

I’ve gone in, to SinCity. There’s no win, in SinCity. Night was going alright, now it’s turned to shite. It’s fucken grim, in SinCity… #sorrybonscott

Jesus arsebadgering Christ, the only talent in here over the age of half-past puberty appears to be a hen’s party. Messy. #actyouragenotyourshoesize

It’s all on. Tiaras. Frocks. Shots on the bar. The most sexually harassed barman in the universe. You go girls

Can’t tell which the blushing bride is. All equally caked in blusher. Bob the builder wants his trowel back luv

For those asking - you don’t want a pic, these are not the droids you are looking for

RT @mitchunicornjism You gonna tap dat? ;) >> No go bro. Something might come loose and inconvenience passers by

MY EYES THE GOGGLES DO NOTHING

For the record, I’m meant to be someone’s best man in 48 hours, so banging someone else’s fiancee is probably a bad look

Hmmm not stopping our man Juleser though. Rats on chains have taken out restraining orders on him before

Truth be told, hanging shit on the whole concept was about the only way I could put up with it. Somehow we’d ended up attached to this hen’s party - three late-twenties/early-thirties girls, none of them desperately unpleasant, but all the same, not my thing. Particularly because, as mentioned above, I was meant to be observing and respecting the sanctity of marriage as of first practice tomorrow. Even if none of the slovenly trio we’d met here seemed to. I hadn’t been interested enough to be taking names, but one hoped it wasn’t the one Jules was tuning with the demented enthusiasm of the work-experience kid at Midas Car Care who was the one that was supposed to be getting hitched at some point in the next few weeks. I chose to believe so, anyway. Jules’ target was the least objectionable, at least until she spoke. *involuntary shudder*

They were all hideously drunk and obnoxious - even water polo girls would have said they were putting it about a bit too fervently - and while JC was loving the chance to bust out his weapons-grade snark on a mostly oblivious audience, watching with glee as his machine-gun bursts gave them a fresh parting in their hair as it sailed over their heads, I just couldn’t enjoy this on any level - ironic or otherwise. I flicked Chris a text, saying that if he was able to pry himself away from Skype or Facetime or Arsebook Chat or whatevs, I’d be watching the game down at Lansdowne Road in ten. Then said as much on Twunter.

Fuck this for a game of soldiers. I’m off to watch a game of footy instead. To the Lansdowne, and step in it.

Watching a game of league in a rugby pub seemed vaguely bizarre. I’d never been much into union, though, even if there had been a game on to watch tonight. Where I’d grown up was league territory, and union to me was still the game of the moneyed elite. But hell, even drinking alone in a rugby pub, running a snarky boozy Twitter commentary on a who-cares Friday Night Football game between Cronulla and Penrith had to be better than getting deaf, dumb and cynical in that fucking shithole of a club.

What happened to my wingman?? read Jules’ text. Thought you had my back?

Negative ghostrider. The pattern was full. Of drunken skanks with the intellectual depth of a kiddies paddling pool. Besides you’ve got JC

Nah he’s fucked off to the gay bar. To start a nuclear war

He’s got something to put in you!

Fuck I hope not. We’re sharing an apartment. Anyway back to work. Enjoy sleeping alone.

I would have replied with a witty rejoinder, but that would have required wit. Instead I told him I’d never be sleeping alone while his mum was within an hour’s drive.

His response to that was not suitable for public airing.

I’d sat down at the bar, ordered an Asahi - my go-to beverage of choice when feeling a bit beered-out, as I was after a heavy week on the drink - and had arbitrarily decided to back the Sharks in this one because they’d busted out their cool old 80s-style jerseys which I remembered from when I was a kid, and because given the choice I’d rather live in the Shire than the foot of the mountains. Same quality/quantity of bogans but the surf was better. Besides JC’s family were originally from Penrith, the bigoted fucking Cletuses. Both teams were travelling like busted arses this year, well down in the lower reaches of the table. Below Souths, anyway, which was the important thing.

The important thing for drinking alone in a pub - presuming you don’t want to LOOK like you’re drinking alone in a pub and hence a bit sad and desperate - is to look like you’re waiting for friends. Take up a position at a table with a spare seat or two, flick a few glances towards the door from time to time. Technically, I was waiting for friends, though deep down I didn’t rate my chances of extricating Chris from his online session with Lisa, no matter how much joy he would have taken from the prospect of his Dragons’ old territorial rivals from the Shire possibly getting a touch-up from the Panthers.

That’s no try. Knock on. I could see it from here and I was 800 kays away yafargencahrn. But no, Tony Archer couldn’t, so he’d sent it upstairs to the video ref. And none of the angles were definitive, so on it went, replay after replay…

Sod this. I went back to Twitter. Because Tony Archer was a grievous arsehat, and the WORLD HAD TO BE TOLD ABOUT IT. Thing was, Twitter said I had a direct message. From someone called @layperson19.

Surprise!

I looked up. And yes, I was surprised. You would be too, if you’d just been tracked down in the real world by way of crap you’d posted on the internet. Cyberstalking: never not creepy.

OK, it’s sometimes not creepy. It’s not creepy when it’s done by Layla Siracusa, formerly number 19 for the Phoenix Mercury of the WNBA. Then it’s just all kinds of fucking awesome.



“How…” I trailed off. The rest was implicit. I hoped, anyway, because I was too baffled to come up with the rest of the sentence.

“Cyberstalking,” Layla admitted. “Between you on Twitter and JC on Facebook, you guys aren’t exactly hard to miss…”

Fahhahaahaaarrrkkk. Words. I had some, somewhere. I was being force-choked by my own astonishment.

“I thought you were in Perth or somewhere?”

“I was,” she said. “I’m a moving target, babe.” Then, with a laugh, added, “I’m housesitting for Mads at the moment. Sort-of. I call it housesitting, she calls it squatting.”

“How is Mads?” I asked. “And more to the point, how are you? It’s been a while…”

“It has,” she agreed. “It has. I’m good. Mads is… well, just read the gossip magazines…”

“This is true,” I said. Keeping in touch with what the Siracusa girls were up to wasn’t that tricky. Layla was on Twitter, sporadically at least - not nearly as chatty on there as I remembered her. Madeleine, for her part, just had her every second movement catalogued by the paparazzi…

OK, that’s going to require a bit of background.

The Siracusa girls were chronic, endemic overachievers. Always had been. Even before she’d left school, Layla had already been taken under the wing of the Queensland Academy of Sport and represented her adopted state in both netball and basketball at under-17 level. Turned out she’d have to choose between her sports sooner than she realised. The plan, such as it was, had been to stay with the QAS netball programme and do part-time uni in Brisbane. That lasted for as long as it took for Europe to come knocking. Benetton Treviso, the Italian-based Euroleague basketball team, came down on an offseason tour, bringing both their mens and womens teams. Layla came off the bench for the senior QAS team which ran the Treviso women close in an exhibition game on the undercard to the senior men playing the Boomers at the Brisbane Ent Cent. She impressed. Enough to get scouted by them. So while Jules, JC, Chris, Munter and me were struggling through the pressures of the HSC, Layla had a different kind of stress on her hands. Deciding whether to pack up and move to Italy.

“So what made up your mind?” I asked her. Somehow, we’d gotten onto filling in the missing dozen or so years. Probably because asking people to tell me their stories had once been my full-time gig, and it was what I fell back on in moments of CATASTROPHIC BRAINFAIL like this.

“In the end?” She frowned. “It was Mads, actually. Her career just took off. Six months before she’d been shooting swimsuit ads for the local surf shop. Since then she’d basically been Sydney-Melbourne-Japan-Sydney, and now Elite [her new agency] wanted her in Milan.”

In the same way Layla had been discovered by Euroleague basketball, Madeleine had been discovered by International Faaahhhshun. She had Layla’s height, but more of a sylph-hipped, rake-thin catwalk figure, almost Roswell-like almond-shaped eyes and angular features, and most crucially had perfected the art of flouncing saucily down a catwalk on ludicrous heels with that all-important look of vacant haughtiness in her eyes. She was a natural.

“Treviso’s not particularly close to Milan though is it?”

“No, it’s further east, nearer Venice. Three, three and a half hours drive at least. Luckily Zia Gina - Dad’s sister - had gone back to Italy to teach English, so at least we knew someone. Mads lived with her in Milan, I flatted in Treviso and came back when I had a couple of days off. At the time she was living in a northern suburb of Milan… not too far from Monza, actually.”

“Handy for the race track,” I noted. “Tempted to get out and cut a few laps?”

She laughed. “No… but I did learn to drive in Italy. That was… interesting. Zia Gina’s little Fiat Uno at 130 in the middle lane of the Milano-Brescia Autostrada, getting blasted off the road by Ferraris and Porsches in the fast lane…”

“Jules has a Porsche,” I said. “Drives it around at 80 on L plates.”

“You’re such a bad liar,” she grinned.

“I posted the picture on Twitter!”

“I know,” she said. “Just teasing. Hey, I did get to go to the Italian Grand Prix once when I was still playing for Benetton Treviso. Pretty cool. Very loud.”

“Meet anyone famous?”

“Well I was with Mads, so…”

“She met famous people and you were there as her audience?”

“You know, it’s like you were there,” she marvelled ironically. “We were guests of the Benetton team, they were still around then. Her because of the industry connection, me because they owned my team. Technically I was an employee just like the Formula 1 drivers. Didn’t get to meet them, but we met that Flavio Briatore… guy... creep.”

“Don’t tell me he had a shot at the title…”

“Of course,” she said. “Would have been disappointed if not... He asked me which agency I modelled for. He was a little taken aback when I pointed out I played centre for his basketball team…” She laughed. “Best of all, before Mads could introduce herself, Heidi Klum started giving him the eyes from across the room. He disappeared faster than the dye on a Hypercolor T-shirt.”

“I had one of them,” I said.

“I know,” she said. “So did I. You washed yours didn’t you.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Fucked it. Royally.”

“Yes, it did a bit,” she giggled. “You know, those things are worth hundreds on eBay now?”

“Generation Y. The stupid, it burns.”

“Says the one who was born in the 80s.”

“Hey… watch it, you only just avoided that yourself. Got in by a few hours.”

“I got in, though,” she pointed out.

The journalist in me wanted to keep asking questions. Getting people to tell me about themselves was about the one social skill I did have. Even though I kinda knew her story anyway. I’d followed it from afar. Harder to get done for stalking that way. Still, it was one thing to have her on my TV screen beaming through a post-match interview courtside, it was another thing to have her emerge out of the stagnant Surfers night air into my life again.

“So it was what, two years in Italy?”

“Three,” she corrected me. “Loved it there. Such an awesome country. Everyone looked after me…”

“What did they call you over there? Baby Giraffe, wasn’t it?”

“That’s right,” she said, and I could swear she was blushing a little. “Forgot about your scary-good memory, Benny-Bob. Giraffa bambina.” She was a fan favourite in Italy. Helped being young, pretty, talented and Australian, not to mention having a budding supermodel sister who found herself in the gossip rags on a regular basis. “Anyway, yeah… three years in Italy. Then two in Greece with Panathinaikos, which was cool, we won the Euroleague… then one in Turkey…” She pulled a face. I got the impression it hadn’t gone well. “I mean… we played well, I got MVP of the Turkish league… it was just the off court stuff. Amazing country… it was just me. I just couldn’t deal. I was over it. I was 21, 22 years old and just wanted to have a life, the novelty had worn off. My friends from school were all still at uni or whatever drinking and partying and having fun, and here I was living in a shoebox in Istanbul being leered at every time I left the house. That was the first year since I went away where I came home in the off season and I didn’t want to go back.”

While playing in Europe, Layla used to spend her off-seasons back in Australia playing for Queensland in the national netball comp, as the local WNBL basketball conflicted with her European season. She even made the Australian netball team for one international series against NZ - making her a dual international - but didn’t get selected again. Ostensibly because of form of other players, but unofficially because they refused to pick her unless she was prepared to come home permanently and commit to Netball Australia full time. Which she came very, very close to doing after her year in Turkey. But instead, she nominated for the WNBA draft.

“It was Lauren Jackson who talked me into it,” Layla said. “I’d missed out on the Opals team for the 2002 world championships and was pretty down, and she basically said I needed to get more visible. And I couldn’t be happy on the court unless I was happy off it. Loz was playing in Seattle, loved it, reckoned they’d be keen to pick me up. So I went for it.” A wry little smile. “Of course, none of us foresaw Phoenix getting in first with their earlier draft pick… I should have been flattered, I guess…”

“Hell of an act to follow.”

“Michele Timms?” she queried. “Yeah, just a little.” The Mercury had form with hiring superstar Aussies. “They retired her jersey the night of my first game. Just a little bit of pressure there for the replacement Aussie…”

“How did you go?”

“I tanked. It was appalling. Sure the owner wished he’d kept the receipt. Could have got a refund.”

She improved. Layla spent seven seasons in Phoenix, ranging from desperately average to begin with, to a championship in 2007 after US star Diana Taurasi joined the team. The Mercury won again in ’09, but without Layla. She’d spent most of the season on the sidelines with a knee injury, and was released after the season was over. That’s American professional sports right there. Thanks for the good times, now GTFO.

“I’ve never really had the frame for basketball,” Layla admitted. Which was a strange thing for a former two-time WNBA All-Star to say, I thought. “No, really… you look at someone like Lauren Jackson. Granted, she’s six-five, so she’s four, five inches taller than me. But she’s much squarer-shouldered. She’s built. My natural body shape is more like… well, Mads, I guess. And the WNBA is more physical, more so than in Europe. Eventually took its toll later into my twenties.”

“Short season though, I thought?”

“Yeah, relatively, but most of us took up short-term contracts in the off-season playing in Europe, or Russia, or Korea. You’d be surprised which countries have strong womens’ leagues.”

“Lauren Jackson still plays down here in the WNBL doesn’t she?”

She nodded. “She does now. We played together for Spartak Moscow for a couple of off-seasons. That was… random.”

“A bit different from Phoenix.”

“Everywhere’s a bit different from Phoenix,” Layla pointed out. “It’s what happens when you stick a massive city in the middle of a desert…”

“How big’s Phoenix?”

She screwed up her face. “Four, four and a half million? In the greater Phoenix area. The city itself’s about Brisbane sized, 1.6 million. I lived pretty central, not far from the uni.” About all I knew of the University of Arizona was they had a fuck-off-awesome huge indoor stadium where the entire pitch rolled in and out of the stadium on a massive tray, so they could grow the grass in sunshine. They’d had the Superbowl there a couple of years back.

“How would you describe it?”

“In a word?” Layla mused whimsically. “Hot. In two words, stupid hot.” She laughed. “Highs regularly got to 120 in summer, that’s fifty Celsius. And keep in mind our season ran through the height of summer, we basically played when the NBA boys finished up for the year.”

“How the hell do you live under those conditions?”

“Basically, you air-condition the living hell out of every space you want to exist in or move between. Houses, cars, shopping malls, practice venues, carparks, airports, whatever, you name it. You lived with a water bottle by your side - as much to rehydrate from the aircon than from the heat. And in the middle of the day… do as the Mexicans do. Siesta.”

“You don’t sound like you liked it…”

She frowned. “I just hated how it ended. Just left a foul taste in my mouth. And yeah, the heat got to me, and I hated the American attitude to food, and coffee… after five years in Europe I’d become hooked on decent coffee, which just wasn’t happening in Arizona… and American politics, and their news media, and their healthcare system, and education, it’s all so incredibly depressing how much they screw their own people just so corporate interests can maximise profit. It reminds you that we’re actually lucky here in Australia that we’re haven’t gone down that path. Not yet anyway.”

“We’re going that way,” I observed.

“I wish you weren’t right on that,” she nodded. “But, yeah, like I said. I didn’t like elements of living there. And I’d rather have been playing in San Francisco or New York or even in Seattle with Loz. But if I had it to do again, I wouldn’t change anything. They were good times.”

“Good money?”

“Oh, alright?” she said with an evasive smile? “It was OK. I wasn’t endangering anyone on the BRW top earners’ list, but I survived.”

“I think you might have me covered,” I admitted with a wry grin.

“Is that your way of saying it’s my round?” she replied. “What are you having?”

“Asahi,” I said.

“Not Extra Dry?” she quipped.

OK, so even my going-out dress shirt was a freebie. Actually, it was kinda cool - a narrow green, lime and silver stripe pattern. That choice of colours of course had nothing to do with the Tooheys Extra Dry logo on the sleeve. Nothing whatsoever.

Layla returned from the bar with another Asahi for me and something called a Peroni Leggera for her.

“Low carb beer?”

“Yeah, I know, it’s marketing fraud. But I’ve got to at least make an effort, even if the season is over.”

“What’s it like?”

“Well… it’s got a third less carbs than normal Peroni… and it’s 3.5%, so a third less alcohol than normal Peroni… so you tell me.”

I took a discreet sip.

“Tastes like normal Peroni,” I said. “Watered down by a third.”

“Yeah, funny that…”

“I’d have thought you’d be used to watery beer though,” I pointed out. “Living in America and all…”

“Didn’t drink over there,” she admitted. “If you can imagine that. They’re so puritanical over there with their attitude to alcohol. And sports stars… even relative nobodies like WNBA players… you just can’t go out and socialize.”

“Had to come back to Australia just to have a drink?”

“Something like that,” she mused. “Seriously though… it was time to come home, you know? There’s only so long you can live out of a suitcase. Twelve years was a pretty good effort. Besides, I was starting to get horribly homesick. It’d been a long time since I’d even come home for a holiday, let alone for an off-season. Started doing stupid things like bursting into tears when Australian tourism ads came on TV.”

“If it’s the ‘Where The Bloody Hell Are Ya’ ones, they had the same effect on me. Maybe not for quite the same reason.”

I could still make her laugh. “That was the other thing I missed,” she admitted. “Guys with a sense of humour. Very rare in the US.”

“So hang on… if you were homesick, what made you choose to move to bloody Perth when you came back?”

A thin grimace. “Not my choice. I signed with Netball Australia to play in the ANZ Championship - which is a fantastic competition, first ever professional netball comp in the world, and I was kinda over basketball, the physicality of the game and all… so it was perfect. Seriously, if it’d been around when I was 18 I might never have left. That said, it was Netball Australia who were going to sort out which team I was to play for, and I was given certain assurances that I’d be playing for certain teams which would have suited me better from a personal perspective…”

“Like the one based in the state you went to school in.”

“For instance.”

“Or failing that not the team in Perth that’s shit and loses all the time.”

“…You said that, not me. But yeah. That was officially the reason I ‘signed’ a one-year deal with West Coast. To get a ‘big star’ over there with ‘leadership qualities’ and ‘proven mentoring abilities’. Translation: we think you’re old and washed up and you can prove yourself by teaching a bunch of kids to play.”

“Or break down injured and retire, either way it’s not our problem.”

“Again,” she noted, “you said that…”

“You went OK this year though didn’t you? Within a game of making the finals…”

“Yeah we did,” she smiled. “Sounds like you were watching.”

“Hell yeah,” I said. “Monday night netball’s must-see-TV at Casa del Spurioso.” When Layla’s team were playing, anyway.

“Well, you’d know. We had a pretty good year. Beat Melbourne, which is always good times.” I’d seen that game. She’d marked Australian shooter Sharelle McMahon out of the contest to such a degree of frustration that the latter had dropped the F-bomb in a live post-match sideline interview. Classy. “Didn’t get picked for the national team, but as it turned out…” The Australian team had been soundly beaten by the Silver Ferns in their mid-year matches.

“They’ll never pick you and Laura Geitz in the same team anyway,” I pointed out. “Too similar.”

“Playing style?”

“Hairstyle,” I said.

“Yeah thanks,” she frowned. “Mine’s natural. And way to bring up my sworn nemesis over a nice civilized drink like this…”

“Serious?”

Layla shook her head with an endearing smile. “Nah, we’re cool. But she’s the reason I’m never going to get signed by Queensland any time soon.”

“Bugger ‘em,” I said, “come down to the Swifts and hang out with JC and me.”

She paused, saying nothing. Which for Layla was a significant achievement.

“Well,” she began, “since you mention it…”

“Serious?” I said again.

“Yup,” she nodded, trying to stifle a smirk. “I’m moving to Sydney.”

“When?”

“Three weeks… Playing for NSW in the national state comp, then for the Swifts next season.” She was barely containing a smile. “Scored a job as a marketing manager for Asics… finally that dodgy marketing degree I took a thousand years to complete at three different unis comes to something…”

“Hmmm, are you sure you’re going to be OK with that whole playing for NSW thing though, what with being a Quoinslaandaaa and all?”

“Pffftt,” she waved, “we both know what side of the border I was born on. Besides, as you know, I’m pretty easily bought off.”

“Where are you living?” I asked.

“Don’t know yet. They’re talking about helping me find a place, probably somewhere in the east, their base is at Moore Park - same facilities as the Swans.”

“Meh. You’d rather live in the inner west with the washed-up hippies, trendies, wannabees, has-beens and never-will-bes.”

“Yeah that’s me. I’m just soooo Newtown,” she quipped. “Sorry. I’m pathetically yuppy. Always have been. You know the school I went to. I drive a Mini Cooper for God’s sake.

“Mini Cooper?” I said. “Awesome. Cooper S version?”

“Of course... though it is an auto. Yeah, I know. Living in the US made me forget how to drive a manual, it’s pathetic. Though we had a sponsorship deal with the local Pontiac dealer, and they gave me a GTO to drive after we won the championship… that was kinda awesome.”

“You moved to the other side of the world in order to drive a V8 Monaro.”

“Not on purpose,” she insisted. “You’d have turned it down then.”

“Hell no,” I grinned. “That was going to be my next car. Unfortunately going slightly broke kinda put paid to that.”

“How’s the writing going?” she asked. “Disclosure… I do kinda read your stuff. Not the Grunt stuff so much, but the stuff you link on Twitter...”

“Yeah… it’s alright. I remember a conversation a long time ago when I said I didn’t know whether I’d be any good at writing but I’d have a crack. Turned out, I was alright. Not really good enough to make it work, but I had a crack.”

“I remember that conversation,” she admitted. “Would have been the last time I saw you. My birthday. New Years Eve.”

“Ah yeah,” I nodded. “Are we allowed to talk about that?”

“I think the statute of limitations has passed,” she replied with a smirk. The sort of smirk that didn’t really tell you whether the memories it spoke of were fond, embarrassing or long since forgotten. Did it matter? Of course it did. I was as hopelessly smitten with her as I’d been since… well, ever, basically.

But she was already back talking about other things. “You don’t need me to tell you you’re a good writer, Ben. And you don’t need to tell me about how much a part dumb luck and being in the right place at the right time has in maintaining a career - whether it’s in writing or in sports.” Or in science, Chris might have added, had he not been back at the hotel making Facetime googy-eyes with Lisa. “I’ve known plenty of girls who had the same talent as any of the girls I knew who made it to the WNBA or played for Australia in netball or basketball, but the cards just didn’t fall their way.” Layla was contemplating the label on her bottle, which was determinedly resisting her attempts to peel it off. The advent of the plastic sticker as beer label had frustrated the already-frustrated. “And even when you do supposedly make it… I mean I’m not much of an advertisement for supposedly making it, am I?

“I dunno,” I said. “You’ve got a Cooper S.”

“Yeah, I shouldn’t have told you that. You should have seen the fun we had getting it back from Perth. Mads wanted to fly back from LA and road-trip with me across the Nullabor…”

“I’m not seeing the dotcom millionaire liking that,” I said.

“Excuse me,” Layla corrected me. “Dotcom billionaire… And yeah, he didn’t really think his four months pregnant fiancée would be best served flying halfway round the world to drive a Mini across the most deserted road in Australia, populated only by serial killers and transvestites on silver buses.”

“Such a control freak.”

“I know,” she said. “Bastard… Actually he’s a really nice guy. For a geek, which he kinda has to be I guess. Goes with the territory. My folks love him. And DON’T SAY IT.”

“Say what?”

“I can read your mind, Benny-Bob. You’re about to bring up my little sister being engaged and having a baby, and me being a washed-up thirty-something spinster.”

“You sure it’s my mind you’re reading, not your mother’s?”

“I said DON’T say it. Am I going to have to use violence?”

“If you must, so long as I don’t have to pay extra…”

She laughed. “Yeah. That’s me. A scary S&M dominatrix. Whatever does it for you, Benny-Bob.”

“Where was that from?”

“Benny-Bob?” she laughed. “Wasn’t it that dodgy James Bond movie we watched years ago?”

“Live and Let Die? That’s not dodgy, that’s cinematic gold dammit…”

“Looked pretty dodgy to me. Even aged ten, or whatever we were. ‘Mah cousin Benny-Bob has the fahhstest boat in the whole bayou…’”

“Pretty sure it was Billy-Bob.”

“Yeah it was. But I soon figured out you hated it when I called you Benny-Bob, so I kept doing it.”

“Deliberately inflicting cruelty… and you wonder why I can see you as a S&M mistress.”

“You’re just getting a visual of the outfit aren’t you?”

“Well, if you’re offering…”

“Maybe later, after a few drinks… might need to move onto something a little stronger than this though.” Layla’s eyes sparkled. She was a spectacular flirt. She could flirt for Australia. Then again she was already a dual international, she hardly needed representative honours in yet another discipline. “C’mon though. At least Benny-Bob isn’t as obscure as Norco. If you’d been Benny-Bob on Twitter I might have actually found you sometime sooner than a few months ago…”

“Oh, so you’re actually on Twitter then?”

She gave me a glare. It was a cute glare, but a glare nonetheless.

“Look, after that Stephanie Rice thing…” Said ‘thing’ involved the former swimming glamour girl making an arse of herself live-tweeting a rugger game vs the Boks, to wit instructing the latter to ‘suck on that faggots’ at the final whistle, and doing herself out of a contra-deal Jaguar in the process. “After that we were all instructed by Netball Australia’s media office to either get off Twitter entirely, hand over our accounts to them, or follow their guidelines as to what constituted appropriate comment…”

“Oh for fuck’s sake.”

“…Wouldn’t constitute appropriate comment,” she nodded. “No swearing, no personal stuff… It’s probably for the best. With my mouth… and my habit of spending a lot of time alone talking to myself as it is… it’s not good. So yeah, I don’t get to say much on there. It doesn’t mean I don’t listen.”

“So you’re a cyber stalker… lurker… person…”

“Look, I’m a consumer of content, you’re a producer. What’s so wrong about that? Isn’t that how social media works?”

“That’s such an old-media attitude,” I said. “You remind me of my old boss.”

“Caroline?” Layla asked.

At that, a little chill shivered up my spine. Ah yeah. Not all of us were as good as keeping our personal sweary stuff off the Twittersphere. Particularly late at night after a couple of hundred beers.

“I need to get me a copy of those guidelines,” I remarked softly.

“Hey,” she said, “if it wasn’t for me being a creepy stalky lurker, I’d have never have found you tonight. Or known anything about what you do these days… I mean it feels like I’ve been talking about myself all night.”

“I ask a lot of questions,” I admitted. “It’s kind of my job. It’s hard to switch off. Besides, your story’s more interesting than mine.”

“I don’t know about that…”

“Failed journalist goes through ugly breakup. The end.” I shrugged. “Somehow ‘awesome chick is awesome’ makes a better narrative.”

I was still feeling fairly ill about just how much of my recent story she probably knew. Back in the worst of it, most of the really visceral stuff - whether tweets or blog posts - got deleted pretty soon after it was written. Next morning once I’d sobered up, usually. Still, someone reading in Perth would have had an extra couple hours to catch up on all the anguished thrashing about. Fucking humiliating, really. Time I went and worked on an oil rig or something. Somewhere out of 3G coverage.

All of that fell into a lingering, awkward pause. Somewhere in the background, a crowd was cheering. Presumably Panthers-Sharks. No idea which side of the bogan divide was winning. My live Twunter call was an unmitigated fail.

“That one you wrote,” she began gently, “‘How you hurt me, how you cause me pain…’ you remember? Yeah?”

“Yeah…” I offered reluctantly. “‘With a hurt like mine, you could never understand.’”

“You made me cry with that one.”

“They’re just Black Keys lyrics.”

“I know. I’ve got the album,” she said. “Saw them at South By Southwest. Knew where it was from. Didn’t stop me wanting to jump on a plane and come find you to give you a hug. Broke my heart.”

“Sorry,” I said.

“You should be,” she admitted. “That’s three times for you. It’s starting to become a habit.”

Me? …How? …Why? …When? All of which came out as “Muhuh?”

Three fingers. She had lovely hands. Remarkable for someone who’d played professional basketball most of the last dozen years. “When I was sent away to boarding school. Deported. We’d stay friends, you said. We’d stay in touch. We’d write to each other. I wrote you letters. Did you ever write back, Benny-Bob?”

I shrugged. “Didn’t have anything to say,” I mumbled.

“It’s OK,” she said, “it doesn’t matter now. Just stupid kids. Wouldn’t have mattered, if you hadn’t done it a second time...”

Yeah, I kind of left that bit out, didn’t I. Layla and I had swapped email addresses earlier that NYE night at Munter’s. I’d promised to keep in touch. You can guess the rest.

“You were going off to be awesome in Europe. I was going off to live in a dodgy sharehouse in Leichhardt with Chris and JC like a fucking Felafel reject.”

“Like it’d have killed you to send me a few emails, Ben?”

“Probably, yeah,” I admitted. “I’m not very good with words.” Then realised how stupid that sounded for someone who made a living by them. “I suck at goodbyes. It’s why I don’t do them.”

“Doesn’t matter,” she reminded me. “Just stupid kids, like I said. I just… like I said, I was very alone there for a few years.”

I wondered how many ‘a few’ counted for. Twelve or thirteen?

“Come on, Layla. You were too busy travelling the world being awesome for that stuff…”

“Yeah, there was that,” she offered with a smile. The melancholia in her eyes melted a little. “Hey look… I know you’re just hanging on the result of this match, but could we maybe take this elsewhere? Like some cool little bar somewhere where we can talk?”

“This is Surfers,” I said, “so no, not really… you know how God-awful the bars in this place are.”

“Well, I’ve got a nice bottle of red back at my place…”

“Really?”

“Well actually, Mads has a nice bottle of red back at my place which she’s forgotten about and probably wouldn’t miss.”

How could I say no to that?



These things are meant to be awkward. By definition. When you wake up in unfamiliar surrounds, tangled in sheets scented equal parts with beautiful girl and the energetic entertainment thereof, it’s meant to be awkward. If she’s no longer there, even more so. If you can’t find your pants, likewise.

I found the pants, tangled like me in the sheets but the rest of my ensemble of last night remained AWOL. I padded barefoot through lush carpet to the bedroom door. The place was seriously flash. I felt like I was bringing the property values down just by being here. Mental note, stop leaving fingerprints.

I found my shirt in the kitchen. Layla was in it. Unbuttoned, it and a pair of white cotton knickers were all Layla had to face the morning in. No makeup. Hair styled by the bed in the next room. And just searingly, achingly beautiful. The awkward - the erm-hi, how-about-that, where-do-we-go-from-here - that just melted away. Evaporated. Last night had been fun. I liked fun. I’d like to have a lot more fun in the future.

“Hey,” she smiled. Killer fucking smile that girl had. Could light up the national grid.

“Hey,” I replied.

Two hazel-gold eyes regarded me under a tangled fringe of sandy-blonde hair.

“Erm… for the record, just so you know… I don’t usually do that sort of stuff on a first date.”

I grinned. That sort of stuff had been particularly fun. That sort of stuff was my special topic on Mastermind. As it turned out I was still good with words and I was still good with that sort of stuff too.

“Technically we’ve not actually had our first date yet,” I reminded her.

“Hmmm,” she said. “You’re right, I guess… I do have this thing on this weekend. A wedding or something. It did say ‘and partner’ on the invite, I’m sure Munter won’t mind me bringing a plus-one…”

“Well I don’t really have much else on. Apart from this best man thing, but I can blow that off. Doesn’t sound like much of a big deal.”

Baby giraffe, while it was a cute nickname, wasn’t really fair. Baby giraffes are awkward. Layla covered ground more like a gazelle. She was across the room and in my arms in just a few short bounds. I think she’d also been waiting to see if The Awkward was going to raise its ugly head. It just wasn’t. It felt right. Felt right last night when we’d gone from sharing our secrets and Madeleine’s wine in her apartment, to taking up where we left off years ago, and it felt right now.

She looked good in my shirt, too. Mostly for what it left uncovered.

Her phone beeped on the kitchen bar; she broke away for a moment to check it. And burst out laughing.

“I might have told Mads,” she admitted. “Just before. Was hoping for an unbiased opinion…”

And showed me the landlady’s response from the other side of the world on her iPhone’s screen: about fucking time. ;-D

That was all the endorsement I needed, really.

“So, would you like breakfast?”

I liked the sound of that even better than getting the sisterly thumbs up. Up until Layla opened the fridge. One pot of expired yoghurt and some scary looking stuff in the crisper.

“Eat out a lot?”

“Best you find out early, I’m not much of a domestic goddess,” she frowned. “You wish you kept the receipt too, yeah?”

“Nah,” I replied. “It’s cool. We all have talents in different areas. Yours just happen to lie… well, not so much in the kitchen, more let’s say in the bedroom?”

The sort of thing you say just to see whether you can get away with it. Which, judging by the smile on Layla’s face, I had. Just about.

“I’m offended,” she said. “Only the bedroom? Not the kitchen table or the fire escape? I thought you writers were meant to be all about imagination…”

She was arching her back and her gorgeous long limbs by the window, and my shirt was coming perilously close to failing its duty of care in keeping her covered. Particularly after she stretched both arms to their fullest extent, palms reaching for the furthest corners of the glass sliding door to the balcony. The sunlight bathed her bare upper body in gold. Bad time to point out that the paparazzi usually had this place staked out from the tower blocks over those way in the hope of catching her little sister sunbathing nude?

“You realise the paparazzi usually have this place staked out from those tower blocks over the way in the hope of catching your little sister sunbathing nude.”

Only one way to find out.

She glanced back at me over her shoulder.

“Is that right,” she said. “And how do you happen to know that? Nothing to do with working on the sort of scumbag magazine that would print those sorts of pictures, of course…”

I sidled up behind her. “I’m just saying, that’s all. I’m sure it’s all fine, long lenses don’t work well through glass. So long as you’re not naked out on the balcony…”

“Little risk of that,” she laughed. “I suck at heights. Haven’t been out there yet. Don’t plan to be.”

“Not even with me to hold your hand?” I sucked at heights too, but adrenalin rushes are adrenalin rushes. They had certain physiological effects. Who knew where they might lead to.

She’d read my mind, of course. It wasn’t hard. Well actually it was, and that was probably what gave it away. It was reliable, at least. Even after a heavy night, still turned up for work on time next morning.

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you. Me all trembly and terrified, while you had your way with me from behind… your fingers slipping down my front…” OK, so that was more live-action play-by-play than idle thought. Her cotton panties slid the length of her thighs with no protest whatsoever. My lips burrowed against her neck as my free hand searched upwards for her breasts, as her fingers urgently fumbled to release me from my boxers. Someone else wasn’t feeling the effects of a long energetic night either, it seemed. “Oh fuck, babe,” she murmured. Unless it was an instruction. “Are you always like this in the mornings?”

“Pretty much,” I breathed.

“Good to hear,” she said. “Wanna if we can get into the gossip pages?”

There were no paparazzi staking the place out at this time of year, of course. Probably. Possibly? We’d find out later in the month, I guessed. Would be a damn pity if any such photos ended up crossing the editorial desk of my ex-boss. Right now… not so concerned by matters of detail.

Although there was one detail which needed attention. A text I felt I really should be sending that former boss of mine. No, not a cameraphone video, you classless lot of scruff.

Reconsidered your offer (the job one). Still open?

Because you can only be a whiny little martyr about stuff for so long. And hell, if I was going to sell out and take the money, I may as well take more money than I was on at Grunt to write about stuff I actually wanted to and telling stories I wanted to tell. To start with, one about a certain incredibly hot Australian sportswoman.

The troops were gathering down on the Esplanade for breakfast. We found this out by strolling hand-in-hand into a randomly selected beachside café in search of coffee and bacon and getting a round of applause from a table of dodgy best-avoided troublemakers. This time the cries of “About fucking time” came from JC. (He and Mads had similar tastes in haute couture too, as it happened.) Layla got big smothering bear hugs from JC, a kind of awkward half-hug-half-body-check from Chris and a sheepish squeeze from Jules, who was looking pretty second-hand, like he’d been lost in the footwell of a Valley taxicab for a week or two. Or, more likely, been given a thorough seeing-to by the scary one from last night’s hen’s night. His studied silence told the story. That and the rather unappetizing brace of hickeys up his neck. Eeewww. What the fuck was this, were we all still seventeen or something?



Noone’s gonna take me alive
The time has come to make things right
You and I must fight for our rights
You and I must fight to survive…

So yeah, Layla couldn’t cook and had appalling taste in men, but she was cool. Cool in a ‘totally willing to howl along to Muse’s Knights of Cydonia on Triple J while hammering up the M1 in her Cooper S fifteen kays over the limit’ sort of way. Layla had the sunroof down, her sunglasses on, one hand on the wheel while the other picked imaginary notes from an imaginary fretboard, rocking out like Allison Robertson from the Donnas. She’d be ace of aces on Guitar Hero or Rock Band. Me, I’ve always been more an air-drumming exponent. And Knights of Cydonia has The Air Drum Break Of All Time.

Noone’s gonna take me alive
The time has come to make things right
You and I must fight for our rights
You and I must fight to survive.

Insert drum break. Yup, that’s the one. Right there.

Meanwhile, some distance behind, Jules was still keeping very quiet in the passenger seat of his 928S4 while JC kneed him in the back and Chris did his accountant road warrior routine behind the wheel. Think I made a good call to bail this morning. Besides, I had a streak to maintain. Spending consecutive days in the same car on this roadtrip would just disrupt the narrative. And as all writers know, narrative is king.

We rocked up at the Indooropilly Golf Club, Layla and me, just on eleven. The carpark was full of cars I couldn’t afford, but at least I had a girl none of them could. What I couldn’t see was a dirty white Ford Ranger with worn 4x4 muddies, a diamond-plate toolbox in the tray and a mining company logo hiding behind the caked-on mud. In time, the Porsche - which would have fitted in much better than us, had it been some time around 1991- was slowly diagonalling the speed bumps in the carpark entry to avoid scraping the front spoiler, a trio of grumpy faces in the windows. But still no ute. Munter being Munter he’d probably either parked it in the club presidents’ carpark or in the bunker on the 18th green. Any excuse to get a bit of dune work in there Norco.

“Ay,” said Munter. “Jesus, here’s a turn-up. G’day Layla.”

Just as our attention was diverted watching the boys clambering and bickering their way out of the low-slung Porsche, Munter had meandered up in a golf cart, driving with one hand as the other was somewhat occupied with a frosty can of Jim Beam and Coke. He was still in his grubby work shirt, jeans and Blundstones, didn’t look like he’d seen a bed or a shower for a good few days, and smelled as much.

“G’day mate,” I said. “You right?”

“Nah, not really,” he said.

“What’s up?”

Munter grimaced. “Farkin got word this morning. She’s off.”

“What, the wedding?”

“Yup,” he nodded. “The missus, the wedding, the lot. Farken woman went and farked another bloke on her farken hens’ night. Down on the farken Goldie last night...”

Oh. Fuck.

Layla broke the stunned silence. “Oh, Mark,” she said. “I’m so sorry, that’s awful…”

“Jesus Christ,” I said. “That’s fucked.” OK, so I actually said farked. It was hard not to in Munter’s presence. Farken.

Meanwhile, Jules slunk lower into the passenger seat of the Porsche, suddenly desperately interested in something that required his attention on the screen of his phone. Or possibly just Googling STD clinics in the local area.

“Nah,” he shrugged, “it’s right. Farken over it anyway.” He crunched his empty can flat and bounced it gently off the bonnet of a nearby Lexus. “Her farken family shat me to farken tears anyway. Come to think of it, so did she.”

“So what do we do now?” asked Chris.

Munter frowned. “Well youse are all up here anyway,” he mused. “might as well make use of it. Couple of quiets?”

“Could be in that. Here?”

“Fark no, they’d never let us cunts in,” he observed.

“The bar at St Lucia would be open,” Chris pointed out.

He meant the Hundred Acre Bar at the golf links. “Nice spot for a beer over there,” I recalled. Also happened to be the nearest bar in the vicinity, unless you swam down the river to the Indro Hotel.

“Sorted,” Munter said, and cranked up the golf cart by kicking it in the guts.

“You need a lift mate?”

“Nah, gonna just farken flog this bucket of shit,” he said, aiming the Klub Kar at the open road, the shortcut across the links to the bar at St Lucia, and freedom. “They can farken book it up on me tab.”

“Her old man’s tab you mean?”

Munter’s leathery features offered a genuine grin for probably the first time that morning. He nodded.

“Ay.”

The Highway North, part V

NaNoWriMo 2010 contined. Previous installments:
Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four


Thursday. Port Macquarie. Hungover.

“As you’d expect,” Chris began, “I’ve done this properly.”

It’d be easy to characterise Chris as our very own James May. The one in the old jumpers and polo shirts. The careful, precise, logistical one. The one who understands how stuff works. The one you’d never expect to be the one with the long-term girlfriend. It’d be easy to make such a cheap and lazy shortcut of characterisation, I agree. It’d also be true. James May was Chris’ one true hero - well, along with Richard Feynman and Steve Waugh. He had very clear ideas on How Things Should Be Done and he never entered into a situation that he didn’t have complete annotated and blueprinted plans A through Z as to the management thereof.

He also always had insurance. Some people saw insurance as belt-and-braces. You could throw in suspenders, lederhosen and a surgical truss in Chris’ case. For this trip - a week-long drive up the national highway between the eastern seaboard’s only livable capitals - Chris had taken out travel insurance. OK, so travel insurance through the uni was dirt cheap, but the point remained - he’d taken out travel insurance for a week-long roadtrip. To go on top of the travel insurance that came with his Visa card. And his super-comprehensive roadside assistance package from the NRMA which included travel insurance. And the travel insurance component of his car insurance. So, in short, he now had multiple groups of people offering to make money available to him to prevent his holiday going irrevocably tits-up. He took this as sound validation of his approach. I took it as an indication at least three of those policies were functionally redundant, but hell, it was his cash. And since he was spending it on us (even if that wasn’t strictly the intent), more power to him.

What he’d Done Properly was wander along to the local hire car offices - after first assessing who had the best deal via a bit of on-line sleuthing, of course - and sort out wheels for the continuation of a mission I wasn’t entirely sure he was still buying into, but I guess he figured he had to get home somehow, preferably via the wedding he was meant to be groomsman at.

And yeah, he’d done it properly alright. Brand-spanking shiny new Falcon XR6. I was nominally a Holden man, but I wasn’t going to complain. Not that I’d been given a chance to - key to the Chris Bellamy concept of ‘doing it properly’ meant ‘doing it in a way that avoids having to listen to anyone else’s advice on the matter’. He’d done it while I was tied up at the wreckers haggling an extra hundy out of the proprietor for Mitch’s stereo, about the only valuable and salvage-worthy part of Frigmobile. That said the $450 we eventually cleared out of selling it to the wreckers wasn’t a lot less than Mitch was ever likely to get for it second-hand, so he sounded happy enough over the dog-and-bone. So much so that I was wondering whether I should have told him we’d cleared less out of the deal, just in case our raiding party came across any further… erm… difficulties.

The only problem with Chris’ new rent-a-toy was the colour. It was, frankly, rancid. Fluorescent yellowy-greeny-mustardy-something with metal-flakey bits in it. A real look-at-me-I’m-a-berk sort of colour, as you’d expect for the target demographic for the XR6. Already this morning, the colour in question had variously been described by the assembled drunks as Leaky Highlighter, Canary Fucken Yellow Indeed, Council Roadworker Hi-Vis Jacket, Something Radioactive Man Coughed Up and my personal favourite, for its accuracy on this hungover morning as much as anything: Berocca-Piss Yellow. Still, knowing Chris, he’d probably managed to save at least 49c a day on the rental agreement by accepting a colour that not even a attention-seeking fuckwit with would opt for. He was Doing It Properly.

Doing It Properly, Chris-style, also meant he’d taken the upfront financial arse-pounding for excess reduction, despite the fact his holiday insurance covered for that - although for all I knew his car insurance were probably paying for the car rental or something anyway. It also meant Chris was the only signed-up licence holder allowed to steer the thing, which I would be willing to swear on a stack of Origins of Species was the actual reason behind sorting the rental deal on his own. There’d already been far too much faffing about on this mission already, and there would be no further faffing about on his watch.

We tried. Really, we did. The boys took right up to our 10am checkout time to get the bags into the boot of the XR6 which he’d had parked out front since ten past nine, while I faffed about at the wreckers. Went for breakfast, strung that out into brunch. Stopped off at Settlement City shopping centre to pick up a new AUX stereo cable. We knew what we were doing; we were trained professionals in the art of faffing about.

“Sea Acres,” I remarked, as we passed the back of a tourist sign heading out of town. “I hear that’s awesome.”

“Yeah, most southernmost temperate rainforest in all of NSW,” JC read off the sign. “I want to go to there…”

Chris barely even registered the interruption. He had his road face on, sunglasses in position (more for the glare off the XR6’s garish plutonium-waste bonnet than for sunlight), eyes locked on target. The only things in the universe which existed were the road, the speedo, the fuel computer readout and his iPhone delivering the ‘80s cheese like a pipeline from the Bega factory direct into the XR6’s stereo. Requests to switch back to the more group-amenable ‘90s playlist he’d put together for the trip fell on deaf ears, as deaf as the ones which received our plaintive lamentations about the awesomeness of the café at the old Telegraph Point butter factory, or the Fredo pie shop north of Kempsey, or how great it would be for all concerned if JC didn’t have to wet himself and the back seat in lieu of a roadside convenience between here and the Northern Rivers.

And yet still he powered on. Signs and towns came and went. Clybucca, Macksville, Nambucca Heads, Urunga, Raleigh…

“Go karts,” I said.

“Go karts,” Jules repeated. He’d seen the sign too: Raleigh International Raceway. As laughable a concept as that seems. Raleigh International Raceway was a go kart track, and they had go karts for hire. Go karts, Chris. You know you love go karts.

“Go karts, Chris,” I reiterated. “You know you love go karts.”

“We’re only 20 kays out of Coffs Harbour…”

“I know mate. It’s probably a fastest-ever most-efficientest stage time for Port Macquarie to Coffs Harbour, for anyone who gives a fuck. Meanwhile… go karts.”

“Go karts,” Jules said.

“Go karts,” I nodded.

“Go karts,” mused Chris.

The blinker went on for the Raleigh exit, with that broken sigh we’d last heard somewhere near the Central Coast. We’d broken him.

Go karts win most arguments. The ones they don’t start, anyway. Ever since childhood bumper-car derbies on the old Lismore Grand Prix go-kart course - now lost forever under the carpark of a Bunnings (bastards) - they’d done both. Didn’t matter whether you drove like an old grandma on the road (Chris), couldn’t drive at all (Jules), or sneered in the fact of all that macho paternalistic competitive overcompensatory bullshit (JC). When the flag drops, the bullshit stops.

Until the end of the race when it gets recycled in ready-made Racing Driver Excuse Form.

“I’m sure mine was down on top end. Throttle cable felt like it wasn’t pulling cleanly…”

“Well my front tyres were fucked. Old and shitty. Couldn’t hold that quick left hander flat. Took ages to come up to temp…”

“That spin was oil on the rears. Serious.”

“YOU, you were driving like a fucking muppet. Changing lanes in the braking area for that hairpin?”

“What braking area, who brakes for that? Lift off and chuck it in…”

Still, everyone went away happy. Jules set overall fastest lap of the morning - yes, the guy who couldn’t drive, half a hundredth of a second ahead of the gay dude who drove a Barina. Fair to say we were all about as poor as each other, though. Of course, if anyone actually competent had shown up, we would have had our arses handed to us, but it was a mid-week morning in winter and we had the place to ourselves. I beat Jules in the reverse grid final, which did a little to wipe the Grin of Eternal Smugness off his chops ref my misadventures with Miss Tabitha. Chris won the mini-golf afterwards. I got a bunch of good photos. The owners actually got customers. JC finally got to have a wee. Everyone was a winner on the day.

We still had a fair distance to travel before our overnight halt, and large amounts of fuck-all to see between here and there, so after a long, leisurely and somewhat boozy lunch at a pub in Coffs - which Chris didn’t thank us for, since he was stuck on the pub squash (a self-inflicted injury, as we reminded him) - we fell in with his philosophy towards the road and how she must be relentlessly tamed, and let the man do his thing. The XR6, I had to concede, was a fair weapon for smashing kays flat, even camped in the cheap seats out the back with JC. And the sun was out and the road was empty and I’d had a late one smashing ales with Jules on top of more beers at lunch, so I’m not ashamed to admit I basically flaked out and cranked zeds for an hour or two as the sunshine flitted through the window. Jules had the dark glasses on as well, very much seeing this afternoon through the prism of last night’s minibar bottles. Perhaps a quiet one would be in order this evening.

Fat fucking chance.

Actually, that was a bit of an issue. Technically, I didn’t have a place to stay tonight. Thing was, we were headed home - back to the Northern Rivers of NSW, up in the hinterland behind Byron Bay, with the loose plan of some ales in Byron tonight - but that wasn’t actually home for me any more, not since my folks had sold up and retired to the Tweed Coast near the Queensland border. Jules’ folks were still locals, so were Chris’ family - in fact you suspected his determination to keep up the highway pace this afternoon had more to do with wanting to keep a post-work tee-time with his old man at their local council course - but I felt strangely unrooted, coming back these days. Still had friends, still knew the place like the back of my hand, still had memories of every street… still, it didn’t feel like home for me.

Didn’t feel like home for JC, either. His family were still here, of course, just that they were massive, massive arseholes.

His old man, simply, was a cunt about it. JC didn’t exist, as far as he was concerned. Even in the same room. He was a fuckwit anyway, ex-military, the sort of bloke who only functions properly in the cretinized hierarchy of the defence forces. Couldn’t understand why the same approach to personnel management - basically, institutionalized violence - didn’t work on his wife and kids, which was why he usually found himself spending time away from his wife and kids at the behest of the family court. Last JC had heard he was down a mine in Kalgoorlie, digging, drinking, fighting and whoring. So that was JC’s father, an abusive prick. JC’s mother was worse, if anything, because she was a manipulator, a vicious moral hypocrite who believed absolutely in the fucked-up derivation of Christianity their fundie church perpetuated. And, so it followed, that her son was sinning against God by carrying on with the lifestyle he’d chosen. She alternated between cajoling, threatening, negotiating and belittling, but the argument always came down to the same endpoint: when are you going to give up this attention seeking (because that was all it was, of course) and grow up?

For his thirtieth, there’d been some sort of rapproachment. She’d sent him a card with a cheque for two hundred dollars. JC had found it the morning after his monumental 30th bender - OK, so he was still very much mid-bender at the time, having returned from the clubs of Oxford St for noms (meanwhile I was trying to have breakfast and go to work at the time, seeing as though it was Tuesday.) He showed me the long, rambling letter which came with it. Along with the brochures for a programme run by the Mercy Ministries people, who were VERY nice, which had been shown to help a lot of people with issues like him…

JC tossed the lot - cheque, letter and brochure - into our fireplace and burnt it. Then and there. Had my wholehearted support in doing so too, even though we were behind on the bills that month. I’d known about the ‘gay correction’ programmes run by that lot ever since the links blew up in the media between them, Hillsong and the Gloria Jeans coffee muppets who were underwriting it all in some sort of dubious way. A year or so prior I’d been prepping a story on it for one of the news mags in the stable until Team Legal nixed it. Someone else from Fairfax ran the same story and cleaned up, of course. Fucking lawyers. Only people I hated more than fucking lawyers are fucking fundamentalist arseclowns who think it’s their business to ‘correct’ people of themselves.

“This sounds familiar,” I said.

“Should do,” Jules replied, “it’s your playlist.”

Chris’ iPhone had finally been persuaded away from the end of the AUX cable, to be replaced by an argument as to whose music would be least offensive to everyone else. Buggered if I know how it ended up as mine, that had to be considered a first. We were somewhere between Grafton and Ballina. Correction. We were nowhere between Grafton and Ballina, because nowhere is all there is between Grafton and Ballina. Sorry, places between Grafton and Ballina. You know it’s true. Them Crooked Vultures’ Scumbag Blues was resolutely kicking its way out of the XR6’s speakers.

“See, Chris, you should listen carefully here,” I quipped. “A piece of music that’s actually been written sometime in the past fifteen years…”

“And yet sounds like it was recorded in 1971,” he noted. Bastard. He had a point. “Hey, are you OK for a place to stay tonight? Wasn’t sure if you’d sorted anything out…”

“Erm, no, actually,” I said. “Hadn’t thought that far ahead.”

“Well, I’d offer up my place,” Jules began wearily, “but my folks are putting on a family thing to welcome me back from overseas…” The way he said ‘family gathering’ seemed to echo the intonation with which clinically depressed BBC reporters recite the phrase ‘massive flooding in Bangladesh’ or ‘the desperate humanitarian situation in Ethiopia’. “Much as I’d love to drag you all down into the misery with me, I couldn’t possibly do that to another human being…”

“So no banging backpackers in Byron tonight then Jules?” I jibed.

“Not for either of us, with your form,” he replied stoutly. I had to stop bowling him long-hops he could smash over the backyard fence. Where was that taped-up tennis ball that swung like a bastard?

“It’s fine,” Chris said, “you guys are welcome to crash at mine.” Which was an amusing turn of phrase. Noone ever ‘crashed’ at Chris’ parents place. That suggested couch cushions hurriedly stacked into makeshift piles, and old throw-rugs requisitioned as blankets. Every night, every bed at the Bellamy’s was made-up and in a permanent state of overnight-guest-readiness. “I’m guessing I should call ahead and book two into Hotel Bellamy?”

“Erm, not me,” JC said. “I’m kinda… also... doing the family thing… tonight.”

You could feel the intake of breath in the car.

“Really?” I said. “How come?”

“Oh, you know. Happened to be passing through the area and all…”

I coughed ‘Bullshit’ into a clenched fist. He acknowledged it with a nod. “What’s the story, there been a change of policy there or something?”

“Or something,” he admitted.

“They still being cunts?”

“Probably,” JC said.

“Someone would want to be fucking dying then,” I said.

“Yup,” he nodded. “They are.”

Ah. “Fuck man, I’m sorry, that was a bit rough… your mum?”

“You saying my mum’s a bit rough?” he quipped. “You’ve met her then.”

“What’s she got?”

“Cancer,” he replied, matter-of-factly. “Docs say she’s fucked. She reckons it’s because we’re not praying hard enough for her. And clearly she’s being punished by God for my sinning against humanity…”

“Fuck, man,” I said again, “I’m sorry.” I was the only other person talking. Chris and Jules had gone vewy, vewy quiet. Thousand-yard stares each.

“It is what it is, yeah?” JC winced. “Hell of a fucking argument for karma, you might say. So yeah. I’ll be doing the family thing tonight. And they’ll fucking well appreciate it.”

“Mate, if you need anything,” I said, “just shout.”

“Call for backup,” Jules chirped. “We’ll bust you out of there. A-Team styles.”

“You’ll be hanging by the phone waiting for the call yeah Jules?”

“Hell yeah. I’ll be standing in the one part of the house that gets Vodafone reception all night, hanging off the balcony railing getting people to bring me beers…”

So that just left Chris and me for the projected Mission: Beach Hotel Byron for the evening. Which, more than likely, would just turn into a hit of stick around the council golf course with Chris’ old man (which, given they were both good at and serious about the game and I was neither, was always a bit awkward), then kicking back at the Bellamys thereafter watching whatever was on TV on a Thursday night in rural and regional NSW. Pretty much as it’d been the last time I’d checked: fuck all.

But I was OK with that, I supposed. Heavy night last night, and let’s face it, I could do without the further humiliation. Even the idea that we were going to head out to Byron to try and chat up morally flexible visitors to our shores was basically a standing joke - as we’ve explored in probably more detail than I’d have liked to by now, I was laughably poor at that stuff, on account of being clinically unable to take myself seriously enough to put on the Big Act. Still, I figured some sort of attempt should be made - or even just be seen to be made - for the sake of the boys-trip narrative, if that was still the story I was trying to tell here, if I even had a story to tell. I didn’t really know anymore.

Anyway all that indecision lasted for as long as it took Chris to remember how much he enjoyed sitting around home with his folks watching every news and current affairs show broadcast on every channel from the start of the 5pm Ten News to the end of the 7.30 Report, and then remember that test cricket was on from the Caribbean, which would require pay TV, which would require a pub, which - to hell with it - justified a half-hour-plus drive through the back roads of the hinterland to Byron and the Beach Hotel for a few (light) beers and a big screen televising the opening morning’s play between Australia and the Windies. Sounded alright to me (though subbing the light beers for something a dash heavier, of course). Serial Ashes-losing failure Ponting somehow still had a gig, which I was none too impressed about, but the beers were cold and the banter (with a couple of Pommy lads who were deathriding the Australian attack as though their lot were still facing them - and credit them, we’d do the same if the favour was returned) was entertaining. More so than the inevitable fail that would ensue from actually going and talking to that willowy blonde and her surfie-chick friends over by the outside bar.

“So, this stuff with Caroline…” The stuff we’d just gone over again. Nothing non-single blokes like doing more than quizzing their single mates on their relationship fails. “How’s that affect your, you know, career prospects?”

“Erm, it means I don’t have any?” I laughed. “Nah, look, I can’t work with her. My choice, as much as anything. Just not happening. Which means that entire outfit’s out of the equation. Half the publishing industry, as things stand… But that’s just how it is, yeah? I mean, you go into this stuff thinking you can keep personalities out of it… you go in thinking a lot of idealistic bollocks about it, actually. Not just about work relationships, about the job in general. Maybe the same as science, I dunno. You go into it bright eyed and bushy tailed doing it for the pursuit of truth and beauty and whatever, then you find out it’s all bollocks and everyone’s dodgy and it’s about who you know and who you haven’t fucked off, not how good your ideas are… or am I just a cynical cunt who’s wayyyy off base on that.”

“Nah,” he reluctantly conceded, “you’re pretty much on the money there… I kinda wanted to ask you about that.”

“Yeah? How so?”

Chris screwed up his face. “Look… don’t take this the wrong way.”

“Promising start…”

“But… I remember when we were heading off to uni, and you were sure this was your thing. You were gonna be a writer, be a journalist, break big stories, stand up to bullshit, fight for truth and justice and all that. And, have to say, it struck a chord with me because that’s how I felt about science. But now it seems like you’d sell out tomorrow if you had the chance…”

“Yesterday,” I said. “Where do I sign.” This sounded too much like a Caroline lecture, and frankly, Chris didn’t have the rack to carry it off.

“Mate,” he said, “when you find out, tell me.”

“Serious?”

He nodded, taking a grim sip of Cascade Light from his schooner glass.

“But you’re shit hot, aren’t you? Publications up the arsehole…”

“Not shit hot enough,” he remarked. “There’s always someone working harder. Some no-life Euro postdoc who works 6am to midnight. Someone with sharper ideas, or who talks bigger, or who networks better. I’m beginning to see the end of the road. Options closing off. Every step in the science career progression there’s massive die-off - I mean you do the maths, they train ten times as many PhD students as there are postdoc positions for them these days, because postgrad completions are a metric they get assessed funding on…”

“Fuck me. Really? Ten times as many? Fucken. If you did that with a trade apprenticeships scheme, pissed away 90% of the capital the government invested into the system…”

“Fucking tell me about it,” Chris seethed. “There’d be questions asked in parliament about it. And the pyramid just continues at every step, you have another cull for getting lecturer jobs…”

“Sounds like pro writing,” I said. “Plenty of cheap, relatively unskilled labour out there. Fucking hard to perpetuate a career at any sort of reasonable higher level.”

“That’s just it,” he said. “You can’t maintain a living out of it beyond a certain finite lifespan, say into your thirties… Plenty of young wannabe kids happy to work lower pay and longer hours for a shot. And I don’t know about you,” he said, “but I’m a bit fucking over it.”

“Didn’t put ten years into this in order to become superfluous to requirements.”

“That’s the one,” he nodded. I think he was impressed with my schooners-to-big-words ratio, but that’s why I was a professional writer and not a parking officer. At the moment.

“So what are you going to do?” I asked. “You’ve still got funding for a while I thought?”

“Yeah, I’m on the big multi-year ARC grant the boss has. Which basically means I supervise all his students, write all his papers, manage all the staff he’s crap at dealing with because he’s basically a social retard with no empathy or personal skills, all while not getting any of my own work done. I’m all kinds of fucked if I apply for a fellowship. Wouldn’t even make second round. And with Lisa coming down from the UK…”

“She’s alright I thought?”

He raised his eyebrows. “She’s fine. She’s genuinely shit hot. She’s bringing her own Wellcome Trust funding for fuck’s sake, they’re desperate to have her. But we can’t really have two wannabe scientists on soft money in the same family, can we?”

“Shit, you mean you’re gonna chuck it in?”

“…Not quite chuck it in. Sell the fuck out, more like. Go into commercialisation or industry or something. Had a few chats with people, sounds like there’s a market for it. 'My skillset is attractive',” he mused with a sardonic smirk at his own turn of phrase.

“Is it what you want though?”

He shrugged. “What I want,” he said, “particularly with Lisa coming over, is to have a good life, enjoy myself, enough money and time to do the stuff I want, and no stress so I can enjoy it. I mean, if that’s not the point of this whole thing, I want to know what is.”

“Sounds fair enough to me,” I said. And recalling a track from Tuesday morning’s playlist in the Magna - Christ that felt like a long time ago now - began reeling off some old Reel Big Fish lyrics:

“Sell out… with me tonight, sell out… with me oh yeah… The pharma company’s gonna give us lots of money and everything’s gonna be all right…”

We were never going to get laid singing along and air-drumming to Reel Big Fish songs, but that didn’t matter. Mitchell Johnson was never going to take a wicket bowling that shit, but it didn’t seem to dissuade him.

We headed back at the end of the morning session, what was lunch in Barbados and beddy-bye-time in Byron (for us, anyway). Hadn’t heard anything from either of the other two, so the assumption was neither had found their families to be fatal on contact. Or they were burying them out the back of a state forest beyond cellphone range. Either way, it was a Friday morning problem.

Chris knew the road, of course, like he knew every road around here, but it was a bit wet and bloody dark with the moon wreathed in cloud, so he took it easy in the XR6. The temptation to fang hell out of it must have been there, but also front-of-mind the thought that it might be nice to complete more than one day of this road trip in the same car as we began yesterday in.

While Chris had careful control over his hoon urges, others didn’t seem to be operating under the same sorts of constraints. Perhaps it was a full moon out there behind all that cloud, or something. Maybe ten kays out of Byron, on a barely-straight bit of road connecting two narrow twisty bits that only a desperate moron would overtake on, a desperate moron screamed out of our rear-view mirror, lights ablaze; then, with a ferocious howl and a chattering whoosh, he was past and gone. The silhouette looked vaguely Falcodore, with a big rear wing and a not-dissimilar attention-seeking-fuckwit paintjob to ours (if anything, though difficult to assess in the darkness, possibly less a radioactive-waste green and more a urinary-tract-infection yellow) while the VRAAAA-KSSSHH definitely suggested something turbocharged with some sort of wastegate. Probably an XR6 Turbo with some aftermarket chip-work done.

For his part, Chris correctly identified the pilot as a wanker, and settled back down into his work.

“Someone’s in a hurry to make a fucking mess of themselves,” I observed.

“You’re not wrong,” Chris noted. “These are seriously not roads you want to driving like that on.”

“Unless you were us, about ten-twelve years ago,” I pointed out.

“We’ll gloss over that,” he said. “Besides, there’s not that much trouble you can get into in a 1976 Corolla anyway…”

“I dunno, I seemed to manage,” I admitted.

“Not to Munter scale,” he said.

“Oh hell no,” I agreed. “That’s a different scale entirely. Richter scale.”

“Beaufort scale.”

“Yeah,” I said, “that too. Whatever that is.”

“Gale force winds,” Chris explained. “Ha, here we go. I’ll get well out of the way here.”

He’d picked up the red-and-blue lights in the rear view mirror, monstering the closing distance like a locked-on missile. Chris bundied off and wound the XR6 over to the side of the road. For a moment, as the highway patrol SS Commodore lingered on our tail, I wondered if we were about to be mistaken for the fleeing party, but clearly by colour or numberplate or some identifiable feature they realised we weren’t the droids they were looking for, and took off up the road like a scalded cat with a NASCAR V8 wedged up its jacksie. Or something. Hell, it was late, I’d had a few and unmixed metaphors weren’t my strong suit.

At least we had a short run tomorrow. Originally we’d planned to meet up on the Gold Coast with Munter for a few Friday drinks ahead of the wedding shenanigans on the weekend - on the quiet of course, keeping his missus and her family out of the picture given she wouldn’t have approved - but work was a bastard for him at the moment and Munter was going to have to mission it up to Brisbane from central NSW at sparrows on Saturday morning instead. The Gold Coast stopover tomorrow probably seemed a bit redundant - particularly since it was only an hour and a bit to there and then an hour and a bit on to Brisbane next day - but we’d already committed to it (i.e. we’d already booked a couple of cheap apartments on Wotif ahead of time and couldn’t get refunds.) And there’s always fun and stupidity to be indulged in on a Friday night on the Gold Coast. Jules and Chris had mates from uni who lived locally, so some sort of tribe of no-goods could surely be assembled. Chris and I were tossing ideas around for plans, locations, headcount and so forth amongst ourselves - most of which was getting sidetracked into discussions of epic nights barely remembered and once-great Goldie venues that now sucked the big one - when we rounded a tight 55km/h (advisory) left and the world exploded.

OK, that’s a little melodramatic. When I say ‘the world exploded’ what I mean is that the darkness in front of us suddenly burst apart with about eleventy billion candlewattages, Chris and I both went ‘YAAARRRGHH WTF??’ and we crashed the car.

Actually, Chris did that bit. He didn’t need any help from me with that. Blinded by the headlights, driving lights and spotties of the police truck which had been waiting off to the side of the road against the flow of traffic to launch its luminal fusillade, his reactions (somewhat understandably) went from ‘Hmmm what a nice night for a drive’ to ‘OMFG I CAN’T FUCKING SEE’ and henceforth driving directly off the road into the scenery at the posted speed limit.

All in all it was probably some sort of justice that what we ended up ploughing into was the police truck. Didn’t do them much damage, but it annoyed them, and that was something. Annoyed them enough to find ourselves surrounded by shouty angry voices waving black things at us which I really fucking hoped weren’t guns. Smashing up a rental car was one thing, despoiling the upholstery was another. While we were being screamed at to get the fuck out of the car, a torch shined into the window, directly into Chris’ eyes. Because he hadn’t quite had enough of that sort of shit already, apparently. And suddenly everything went a bit quiet.

“Aww, fuck,” said a voice.

I knew that voice. So did Chris. His response defined incredulity. And disgust.

“Dobbo?”



So there followed a fun couple of hours at the local cop shop which neither of us were ever going to get back, while super-sleuth Senior Constable Wayne Dobson established that in fact we were NOT a possibly-armed local drug kingpin fleeing to his bolthole near Tabulam in a stolen chipped-‘n’-boosted XR6 Turbo after shooting a ‘business’ rival in a deal gone wrong out the back of the Broken Head caravan park, and in fact were… two guys he’d gone to school with who’d been long convinced he surely had to be too thick for the coppers to take him at the Academy.

Still, at least he ran us back to Chris’ place in his old Land Rover. His work truck, it seemed, wasn’t going to be mobile again for a little while. Nor would he, once his superiors had finished sorting the story out. Chris was far too wired to sleep after that, so cranked up the interwebs and told Lisa all about it. For me, though, that half-two night from last night had finally caught up with me. I flaked, and slept soundly.

I still had a head full of random next morning - and a bloody sore neck - and since we didn’t look like we were going anywhere anytime soon, I grabbed a takeaway coffee from the corner shop - the same one I’d used to buy my 20c worth of lollies from as a young bloke, which now had alfresco table-and-chairs, a proper Gaggia coffee machine, someone who knew how to use it, and regular deliveries of freshly roasted beans from Zentfelds outside Byron - and went for a wander around the old town.

I wasn’t really dressed for a hike. Boardshorts, double-pluggers and a black Foo Fighters T-shirt from a promo we’d run for their last album. But that was OK, I wasn’t really aiming to cover ground. Just wanted to meander around the streets I’d grown up on, ridden my bike around, learned to drive on, then like most kids of my age and station in life, had fled the moment the opportunity availed itself. Ironically, of course, most thirty-plus types now gravitated towards tree-changer hinterland towns and villages like this because they were so cool and laid-back and wonderful for raising kids. If that’s what you’re into, of course.

The Bellamys were still in the house they’d always been, with the reserve next door (too swampy to build on, but fine for racing BMXs on, or playing-out our endless Test series of cricket and football.) My family’s old place was a couple of blocks away, further up the hillside into the trees - the Bellamys were practically in grid-reference suburbia by comparison, with a kerb-and-gutter driveway and a picket fence around the outside. We’d basically been in the bush. I slowly made my way up to the old place, steeling myself for the disappointment, which duly came; the latest set of new owners (the place had been through a few since my folks had sold up) had continued the utter fuckedification of the place. First lot of new owners had massacred all the trees from around the place - the ones we’d climbed up, swung off, fallen from and raced bikes between - through some obsession with it being a bushfire risk, no matter that no fire had ever reached that part of the landscape since back when the Bundjalung tribe were tending it. This meant you could now see the place from the road, which meant you could see the astonishingly ugly urban-wanker-bar gentrification that the subsequent new owners had wrought on the place. Glass, wire and stainless steel. Seriously, it looked like the fucking Regatta. They’d also smashed through the corner of the house where my room had been and tacked on a deck that looked like it’d been hacksawed off the arse of a cruise liner. Way to piss on my childhood memories, cunts.

And for what? The house was deserted. Probably had been for weeks, if not months. A sign hammered into the ground in front of me advertised ‘Holiday Lettings’. And, with an ironic touch, the contact details and logo of Geoff Wright Realty - Jules’ old man’s estate agency.

Fuck it. You can never go home. Particularly if someone sells it from under you. The folks’ new place in Kingscliff (or Casuarina Beach or whatever the place was technically called) was nice enough - more compact, closer to everything, made more sense for them as they got older, less shit to do around the house with trees to prune and gutters to clear of leaves and the eternal battle to keep ants and spiders outside. It all made sense. Depressing amounts of sense. I just wished… I don’t know what I wished. To go back and have another crack. To not make dumb calls about what I wanted to do with my life which would end up with me in the same career station at 30 as I’d been at 20, i.e. bumfuck nowhere with the arse out of my trousers. But none of that was ever going to happen, so fuck it. As you were.

I wandered off again. Back towards town - thinking about whether I wanted to do a cruise-past of JC’s place, then figuring if there’d been serious problems I’d have seen the mushroom cloud go up and the smoke billowing from the rooftops - then out towards the golf course and the lifestyle blocks in the valley. Out towards Chateau Munter, in other words. Munter’s folks had sold up too - they’d gone touring around Australia, Grey Nomad style, in a Transit campervan - but Chateau Munter remained largely as it had been back in the day. The old house, typical ‘70s in painted Besser blocks and western red cedar panelling. And up the back, almost hidden from view, the old shed. Dammit, the memories here were almost as thick as they were standing outside my own house. Or maybe it was because of being able to glimpse the Siracusas’ place down the road, just about visible through the trees.

Not that I’d ever spent much time there. Mr Siracusa didn’t think much of his eldest’s choice in mates. Mainly because he’d hoped for better things for her than hanging around with the local boys like some sort of feral tomboy. He might have cut her some slack, I thought; she was eight at the time. We had a decent posse, back in the day. The four of us - Jules, JC, Chris and myself - plus Munter, of course, and a bunch of other lads, most of our year from primary school, including the aforementioned Dobbo (and yes he’d been the butt of most jokes then as now). And our token chick. Layla Siracusa. She was the only girl in our class of nine, and refused to accept she was either outnumbered or inferior. Which spoke to either a furious tenacity or a deep inability with maths, and if you knew Layla you knew it probably wasn’t the latter.

Layla was feisty. Athletic, too. She fought harder, ran faster, jumped further (particularly on the BMXs - she was lighter than us, it was clearly an unfair advantage) and basically argued and scrapped and fought her way to parity, until by the end of primary school she was considered one of the boys. At which point her father decided to pack her off to boarding school on the Gold Coast to make a lady out of her, rather than a grubby-faced urchin who came home from school with skinned knees and boisterous tales of beating us all at handball or soccer, as well as wiping the floor with us in maths or spelling tests.

The day she left was not a personal highlight, it’s fair to say. She didn’t want to go, we didn’t want her to go - and not just because she was our secret weapon for our under 11s indoor cricket team, nobody expected her to pack the skillset she did into the frame she had - and I remembered vividly watching her being driven away in the Siracusas’ big old LandCruiser, her face streaming with tears - but only once she’d thought we couldn’t see her anymore. A fighter to the end, she was.

I remembered feeling gutted, too. But because I knew it was The End, regardless of what anyone else was telling me. I’d had a few mates who’d moved away - kids who I’d buddied up with in kindergarten or preschool or whatever, only vague memories now - and remembered how no matter the assurances we were given from both sets of parents that we’d stay in touch, we’d meet up at holidays, whatever… it always turned out as goodbye, forever, the end. Same with Layla. There were assurances that we’d catch up again in the holidays, that it’d be just the same as it always had. But, of course, it wouldn’t. That was the point, after all. Mr Siracusa didn’t WANT it to be the way it always had.

I was right, but for the wrong reasons. Summer holidays, end of our first year of high school, Jules and I ran into Layla at the local shop. Layla had friends with her. Friends we’d never seen before. Friends who didn’t think much of what they were seeing in us, and Layla seemed to be of a similar mindset. She was dressed differently, had different hair, a different attitude. She looked like… well, a girl. A girly girl. Something told me not to ask whether she’d be into coming down the basketball courts for a bit of half-court. Jules, who was a bit more ahead of the game than me, asked one of her friends to the movies. Got laughed at, but at least he had a crack. Hadn’t even occurred to me to ask. These were Layla’s friends, and Layla was… well, Layla.

So, yeah, the boy-girl thing got in the way. Didn’t see much of Layla after that for a good few years. Not until about ’95 - that was year 10 for us, the first year Triple J were broadcast into the local area - when we were down at the beach on Australia Day, listening to our first ever Hottest 100 and wondering what the fuck this music was and where it had come from and why the fuck it couldn’t have gotten here years ago. Bore not a lot of resemblance to the commercial radio we’d been listening to up to then courtesy Lismore’s Triple Z FM (no relation of the legendarily random 4ZZZ of Brisvegas.) Still, it was an education. Under a tarp Chris and I had strung between the trees and a couple of golf umbrellas used as tent poles, we’d set up with the portable stereo, a big old Esky (mostly full of soft drinks… mostly), a bunch of deck chairs and a feed of fish and chips from the local takeaway joint. We were fucking SORTED. Hats off to Captain Logistics, Mr Christopher Bellamy, then as now. So we sat, and ate, and drank (soft drinks… mostly), and talked shit, and played cricket, and smashed ourselves in the oversized surf, and got sunburned, and all the usual good stuff. And this being pretty close to Byron, we also spent a goodly amount of time kicking back and watching the world go by. By which I mean chicks. In bikinis. Because that’s how we rolled as undernourished teenage lads. Or as thirty-somethings, come to think of it.

“Four o’clock,” reported Chris. He wasn’t telling the time, just discreetly alerting us to approaching targets of interest. Of course if I could figure out what he was referencing as 12 o’clock I might actually know where to look, but I was guessing it was either down the beach towards Broken Head or up the beach towards Byron. Yup, there they were; target acquired. Three girls, bikinis, pretty (well as much as you could tell from this range, and through the shimmering haze of hormones.) Everything you could ever want. The tall one was the pick of them, I decided, though Jules made a passionate and characteristic case advocating for the one with the biggest tits. Nah, the tall one. She had long, wavy blonde hair, a slender, athletic figure, and… holy fuck. She’s waving. At us.

At JC. Of course. Bastard gets ALL the female attention around this fucking place. Wish we had his skills with the ladies.

“Lay!” bellowed JC.

And she came over. And it was Layla, all right. Her old man had sent her away to become a lady; she’d come back a woman, that was for sure. And yeah, she’d changed; she indulged in grown-up small-talk with us, mostly about herself and how awesome she was (to be fair, she had the press clippings to back it up - word had even reached our parochial local paper of her exploits with the under-17 Queensland Academy of Sport basketball and netball sides), and she didn’t once wipe her nose on her sleeve. Not that she had one. (A sleeve, not a nose.) Just bare, golden brown arms that (like her legs) seemed to go on forever. Particularly if you were the opposing goalshoot trying to sight the netty ring over the top of them.

“She’s changed,” Jules declared after she and her two lovely girls (and her friends as well) had wandered off again. “Don’t like her.”

“You don’t like her because her friend laughed at you for asking her out.” Yes, again.

“Well, none of you lot were going to, because you’re soft…”

“In your company, I’d fucken say so, yeah.”

So that was Layla. A nice girl, ruined. Fucking private schools. Burn them all and salt the ashes. The end.

Except… the story doesn’t quite end there. Flick forward a bit further. New Year’s Eve 1996. Munter’s place. Mrs Munter was away for work and Mr Munter was keeping out of the way (he was safety officer for the council’s NYE fireworks down at the beach.) And Munter was throwing a bash in the shed. The bash to end all bashes. Pool, stereo, beers, all the good stuff. There was a sort-of end-of-days feel to it anyway, we knew by the same time next year - New Years ’97, the end of Year 12 - we’d all be going our separate ways, locking into our various uni or job choices. And, not to put too fine a point on it, we were all fucking petrified of that, so were living for the now and not thinking too far ahead. I was drinking Reschs Real, because it was what the old man had in the fridge (he knew I took it, I knew he knew and he knew I knew he knew, we were just going to move forward under the tacit understanding that it was all OK so long as I didn’t go stupid and Mum didn’t find out.) Jules and I were busy rewriting the record books for the worst game of pool ever played on Munter’s rock-hard obstacle-strewn excuse for a pool table when in sauntered JC with a Cheshire Cat grin and a girl under his arm.

I say under. She was almost his height. Blonde hair, jeans, pink cardigan. Pink cardigan. Pink. Cardigan. And a handbag to match. Oh, how the mighty have fallen.

“All hail the birthday girl!” he bellowed cheerily, over Layla’s protests that she couldn’t stay, was only stopping by to say hi, she had another thing to kick on to. But I was impressed by his memory. It was her birthday, too. December 31st. I remembered because she used to have to hold her actual birthday a few weeks earlier so her friends from school and sport wouldn’t have buggered off on holidays with their families yet. I thought that was somehow cheating, at the time. I’m sure I’d have been more supportive if, like a mate of mine from uni, I’d been born on Feb 29 of 1980 (a leap year). Poor bastard.

As it was, that made Layla a month or two older than most of us, and standing in front of us in Munter’s shed, she seemed even older again. More mature, more with-it. Being in the Queensland system, she’d already finished her final year of high school, so she’d been through the growing-up experience we all feared and loathed. Listening to her disarmingly elegant small-talk - humouring my bad jokes, carefully fending-off Jules’ clumsy chat-up, mirroring JC’s sparkle - you could tell she knew how to work a room, comfortable in any situation, ready for the real world. Which made one of us, at least. Keep in mind I was wearing lairy rainforest-foliage-print boardies and a T-shirt that advertised Roy and HG’s 1994 Asian Pigshooting Bushromp (‘If It’s Feral, It’s In Peril’) and was drinking Reschs Real stubbies with a stubbie cooler from one of Mr Munter’s fishing trips which read ‘RBT: Random Breast Testing’. I was about as ready for the real world as Shane Warne is for the popehood.

But then… then stuff changed. Not to me. To Layla. She stayed for a drink - one of JC’s Subzeros, freely offered. Then another. And another. And the carefully constructed façade started to fray at the edges. The pink cardie was tossed behind the couch - under it she was wearing a athletic tank top singlet with the Qld Academy of Sport logo on it - and she started slurring her words, and laughing that thermonuclear explosion of a laugh she used to have, and sledging our choice of music, and beating us at pool. And suddenly, awesomely, our Layla was back. Better and brighter than ever.

Not that JC noticed - by eleven he was passed out on the grass having overindulged heavily on cheap vodka mixed with Home Brand orange fruit drink (warning: may contain traces of fruit juice). Jules was off having either a D&M or a domestic (or all of the above) with his then-girlfriend somewhere out in the yard. Chris and some cricket mates were smashing golf balls off a square of carpet on the balcony into the forest behind the Muntons’. The house and barn were a melee of fun-loving faces, some we knew, some we didn’t - and as usual, Munter himself had gone very silly very early in the piece on booze and weed and more booze (and some magic mushies of supposedly legendary Nimbin renown, according to the feral neighbour of Munter’s who provided them, that subsequently out to be dried shitake offcuts from the local market) and was face down and gurgling on the floor of his room by half-eight, oblivious to the random couple who were rutting in his bed at the time.

“We might be the only two left upright to see the New Year,” I pointed out.

“This is upright?”

Layla had a point. We were flaked out on ancient bean bags and mattresses in the loft of the barn. It was a bit musty and dodgy up here but we were kinda stuck, the ladder had given way just as I was following her up. Better view that way, of course. All well and good being trapped in a loft with a seriously cute netball goal defence, but I was seriously concerned about where my next beer was coming from. Layla was alright, she had goon. Yup, our upper-class boarding school princess had moved from Subzeros onto fruity lexia in a bag. Jesus fucking Christ I was crushing on her, it was making my head spin worse than the Reschs Real. Deeply and drunkenly in love with her. From the waist down, at least. She was funny and giggly and still sharp as a tack despite being at least as drunk as me, which was very.

“Yeah, OK. The last two awake. That better?”

“The last two who count, anyway,” she nodded. “The originals.” We clinked glasses. Hers was a goon-filled plastic tumbler with Disney characters on it. Mine was a half-empty stubbie of Real.

“I thought you had some other thing to go to?”

“I lied,” she admitted. “I’ve got nothing. All my friends are still on the coast, or on holidays. Happy fucking 17th birthday Layla.”

“Aww, you’ve got us…”

“You,” she reminded me. “I’ve got you.”

“That’s all I want…”

“Huh?”

“Crowded House,” I said. “Or Split Enz. Not sure which. They both suck.”

“Then why are you singing it then?”

“Cos I’m fucking smashed?”

She liked that answer. “Ha. I’ve missed you, Benny-Bob. You make me smile.”

“Missed you too, Layla-Jane.”

“Hey, no middle names,” she protested. “Below the belt.”

“So, seventeen? That’s, like, old and stuff,” I grinned. “What next?... I suppose you’ve got the whole thing all planned out from here?”

“Can we just not?” she replied.

“What, serious?”

“Serious,” she nodded. She wasn’t kidding. Intense little frown right there.

“C’mon,” I said, “I thought you were supposed to be taking over the world.”

“Yeah, you heard that too,” she said distantly. That’s a decent swig for a drunk girl. “Why, what do you have planned?”

Hell, may as well admit it. Might impress her.

“Going to be a writer,” I offered. “Finish the HSC, fuck off to Sydney, do journalism, have a go. Not sure how good I’ll be, but figured I’ve got to have a crack.”

She looked at me for a long time, trying to figure out if I was serious. Then, she smiled, and the world lit up. “I’m glad,” she said finally, and seemed to mean it. “And you’ll be awesome.”

“I’d settle for being alright,” I replied. “Just good enough to get paid.”

“Liar,” she laughed. And we were close, all of a sudden. And we were touching. And she was smiling - mostly with her eyes. And I could barely hear myself think over the pounding in my chest, which seemed to reverberate through my ears, through my temples, in my throat.

“You have a girlfriend, Benny-Bob?” she wanted to know.

Lots of potential answers, ranging from little white lies to abject perjury. Then, there was the truth. Which was what she and her big confessional eyes got from me.

“No,” I said softly, “no I don’t.”

She paused a little before offering a reply.

“…Would you like one?”

We were kissing. I don’t remember how or why or who moved first. Perhaps I levitated across the room. But we kissed. She tasted of… well, goon. But sweet, exotic goon. And I probably tasted of cheap beer and barbequed sausages so it wasn’t my place to complain. Didn’t seem to dissuade her. We kissed again, and again. As if to prove this was actually happening. Never felt wrong, not for a second. The kids we’d once been, and the relationship there’d been between us then, were distant, long-forgotten memories. Non-issue. We liked each other and wanted this to happen. And so there we were… a few minutes to midnight, curled up in the loft. Layla was sitting in my lap, tugging off her tank-top with a little smirk… and yes, she was just as gorgeous topless as I’d imagined (and, let’s be honest, since Australia Day on the beach nearly two years back I’d imagined it more than once.) And she loved my fingertips, and my lips, and my tongue…

All in all, a shit of a time for her old man to storm in. He was looking for Layla, Layla’s little sister Madeleine (who was a 15 year old firebrand far more capable of getting herself into trouble than her sensible older sis), and/or any form of responsible adult he could harangue for letting things get so disgracefully out of hand over here with drunk teenagers and loud music and widespread depravity. It just so happened that Layla and I were to wear the full force of his Sicilian temper. Then again, I suppose finding his eldest playing with one of the boys he’d sent her to boarding school to get away from would have been a bit of a disappointment…

Memories. Like the corner of my mind. I’d never forget that mental freeze frame from up in the loft - Layla in my lap, half-naked and just the most beautiful thing in the world. Not just because of the boobies thing - though obviously, the boobies thing matters. (Boobies ALWAYS matter.) It was her eyes. Warm and intense and hazel-gold, they said something I’d never seen in a girl’s eyes before: I like you. I might even love you, but we’ll figure that out in due course. I’d see it again, with other girls, eventually - after sulking, pining and generally wimping-up the place for most of year 12, I got back on the horse that threw me once I got down to Sydney in first year - but in terms of your all-time missed opportunities, that ranked up there with the biggest. The one you carry around with you wherever you go.

Message alert. Chris. Where are you?

Wandering about, I replied. What’s doing? We got wheels?

Appears so.

I considered writing back ‘You’ll have to do better than fucking Appears’ but wasn’t sure if he’d remember the line from Lock Stock or get offended and sulk. So I just walked back to his place.


Concluded in Part Six