6 p.m.
The pub is busy when Grace arrives for dinner with Lucas. A group of older men, wearing faded jeans and boots and with their cowboy hats on the bar in front of them, are standing near the door. They nod, small inclinations of their heads, as she and Lucas walk in, their eyes curious, assessing strangers. Two younger men are standing at the far left of the bar. One – short, lean, lots of tatts but not good ones, more homemade style – looks her up and down in a way that makes her feel uncomfortable. But the guy beside him is cute in a rugged way, with a nice smile, dark hair to his shoulders, a lick of it falling over his eyes, jeans that fit him well and strong arms visible under a tight black t-shirt.
Lucas turns the other way, towards a little dining area. The five tables are empty apart from a couple – a woman, mid-thirties probably, and a guy a bit older – sitting on the far right. She’s a bottle blonde, you can see the beginnings of her roots coming through, and is dressed up, wearing tight jeans, a low-cut figure-hugging white top and lots of jewellery, including a big diamond ring and a necklace with a colourful stone set in silver. Her partner is in none-too-clean work shorts and a crumpled-looking shirt, his hair dusty and standing up all over the place. They make an odd couple and they’re not talking. She’s looking at her phone; he’s staring into his beer.
‘You grab a table,’ says Lucas, passing her Ginger’s leash. ‘What do you want to drink?’
‘A bottle of Corona, please,’ she says, ‘with a wedge of lime.’ Lucas raises an eyebrow but doesn’t say anything. To be honest she doesn’t drink much, and she probably should have ordered a Coke. She’s only just old enough to drink back home – she turned twenty-one in April – and she never really knows what to choose. But she’d gone to Miami with Ashley last year and they’d had Coronas – Ashley’s parents are kinda boho and hadn’t minded them drinking a beer underage – so it’s the first thing that comes to mind now.
Lucas goes up to order and she chooses a table that puts her within eyeline of the guy at the opposite end of the bar. She’s happy she decided to leave her hair out, it’s hanging long and glossy beyond her shoulders, and that she brought one top with her that’s a bit cuter than a t-shirt – cream-coloured and cut off at one shoulder. It shows her tan off well. The vacation is turning out alright. She hadn’t liked Kanpara when they’d arrived. You can’t really call it a town: a couple of deserted streets, houses that look half-abandoned, no stores. It’s more like the set of an old western movie, with the bar at the heart of the wide-open main street. And it has the same vibe, slightly menacing. But she’s happy she’s with Lucas; he’s got the protective big-brother thing down pat, she thinks with a smile. The little cabin they’re sleeping in is cute, it even has Wi-Fi, and now that they’re set up somewhere comfortable for the night, the bar is busy and there’s even a hot guy, she’s buzzing with the adventure she’s having. She’s already posted a few videos on TikTok and she’ll have so many stories to tell everyone when she gets home.
The heat of the day has passed. The sun was slowly setting, a ball of orange on the horizon, as she and Lucas walked up to the pub just now, the trees around them filled with a flock of little green parrots that flash orange and yellow breasts when they fly, and bigger birds, white with bright yellow crests, squawking and shrieking. The streets were so still and quiet, the only sound the exotic hoots and calls of the birds, that she was pleasantly surprised by the number of cars parked outside the bar and to find other people inside.
The place is totally different from anywhere in Boston. It’s rustic, she decides, snapping a few discreet shots on her phone of the old-timers and, behind them, through the open doors, the last light of the sunset spilling across the empty highway. Definitely a western vibe, she thinks, mentally going through a playlist of the music she might use for the reel.
‘They don’t have Corona or lime,’ says Lucas, arriving back at the table with two big glasses of beer and a bottled beer. She feels a slight lilt of surprise – the lady behind the bar hadn’t even looked her way, let alone asked for ID. ‘I got you a XXXX Summer,’ he says, handing her the bottle. ‘Susie at the bar reckons it’s a light sort of beer. She’s got a slice of lemon if you want it?’
‘No, that’s great, thanks,’ she says, taking a picture of the drinks before she sips hers. With a pang of sadness, she remembers that Kaia had posted a ton of pictures of herself drinking cocktails when she’d been here earlier this year. The beer’s OK but not really to her taste. She decides she doesn’t like beer much, other than maybe a Corona on a sunny day by the water. She’ll ask for a Vodka Cruiser next time. She’d tried them at a bar in Sydney, vodka and fruit juice, sweet and not too boozy, easier to drink.
‘I was just thinking of Kaia,’ she tells Lucas, but then, as something dark and sad passes across his face, wishes she hadn’t. Kaia was a good friend and a lovely person, but she’d had her problems. Lucas had befriended her, tried to be there for her, but hadn’t been able to prevent her death, and she knows he feels responsible. It’s been a horrible few months for them all.
‘Do you miss her?’ he asks.
‘Yeah,’ she says. ‘I do. We all do. She was so fun and like, well, always laughing and so active, it’s still kinda hard to believe sometimes.’
‘I think of her a lot too,’ he says. ‘I wish I could have been there, saved her.’
‘It wasn’t your fault.’
‘I know. But still …’
At that moment Blair arrives, bringing a menu and a big smile with him and lifting the mood. He says ‘G’day’ to the couple at the next table and introduces them – Mark Bailey, his boss, and Mark’s wife, Vero. They smile and say hello but it’s kind of half-hearted and after a few awkward moments they turn back to their own conversation.
She grabs the menu. She skipped lunch and is hungry now. It’s one side of A4 and pretty simple – steaks, steak sandwich, burger, peppered calamari, barramundi – a local fish, according to Blair – and parmi, a chicken schnitzel, says Lucas, all served with chips and salad. They’re a million miles from the ocean so she skips the fish and calamari. Living in Boston has made her fussy about seafood and she’s pretty sure it won’t match up out here. A burger, she decides. That’s pretty standard everywhere.
They sit there and the bar gets first emptier as the old-timers leave, jamming their hats on as they go, and then busier again as more guys turn up. They stand at the bar, most of them in dusty work clothes, all of them keeping a fair distance from each other but seemingly acquainted because they chat in a low-key sort of way. Then two older couples arrive, and stand together at the bar, looking curiously at her and Lucas. She keeps an occasional eye on the good-looking dude too, gratified to see that he’s watching her as well.
Another guy turns up, orders a beer, looks around and spots the couple at the table beside them. In his mid-thirties, he’s dressed differently from the others, wearing flip-flops, not boots, and a vividly bright Hawaiian shirt stretched over a big stomach, his hair oiled back. He walks over to them, giving Grace a sleazy grin on the way past that she ignores.
‘Mark, how are ya? Vero, looking good as always,’ he says. Vero smiles back but Mark says nothing. Unperturbed and uninvited, Greasy Hair takes a seat at their table anyway. ‘So,’ he says, ‘I heard you found a big ’un, a monster, a million-dollar opal …’
‘Where’d you hear that?’ says Mark.
‘Ah, you know me, I got my sources.’ He touches the side of his nose and winks theatrically.
‘Well, your sources are wrong. I haven’t found nothing.’
‘Is that right? Look, I know you don’t like to talk about what you’re finding, like to keep things on the QT, but you know I’ll give you a fair price for anything you’ve got. If you’ve found a big one – well, I’m the only bloke out here who’s good for the money. You know that, Mark. You know you can trust me.’
Grace, who has heard the rule that anyone who says ‘You can trust me’ is basically untrustworthy, decides she doesn’t like the guy, his greasy hair, his fake smile.
‘Fuck off, Dean,’ says Mark, who obviously feels the same way. ‘Even if I had found something you’d be the last cunt I’d sell it to.’
The man stands, seemingly unbothered by the insults. ‘Well, if you change your mind, I’ll be in the shop. I’m staying in town for a couple of days,’ he says. As he passes their table, Grace avoids his eye, but he stops anyway. ‘It’s Blair, right?’ he says, proffering his hand to Blair. ‘I’m Dean Wilson, maybe you heard of me?’
Blair shakes his hand and says, ‘G’day’, but Grace can see he’s less than enthusiastic. She glances at the table beside them and sees Mark, Blair’s boss, watching and listening to the conversation.
‘Mind if I join you for a beer?’ says Dean, again not waiting for an answer as he grabs the chair between Blair and Grace. As he pulls it out, Ginger, roused from her doze under the table, lets out a long, low growl. The sound is so unusual, so unexpected, that Lucas, Blair and Grace all look down in shock. Grace has never heard Ginger sound even slightly menacing. Dean hesitates with his hand on the chair, then says, ‘No worries. I’ll leave youse to it,’ as Susie appears with their meals.
Lucas calls Ginger to his side, runs his hand under her chin. Ginger rests her head on his knees and Grace can feel the gentle swish of her tail against her feet. She notices Lucas doesn’t admonish Ginger, but his eyes follow Dean Wilson all the way back to the bar.
Susie sets their plates down and Grace is happy to see her meal is huge. She’s so hungry she dives right in and finds it totally delicious. A soft bun piled with salad, cheese, bacon and a beef patty that’s thick and homemade beside a pile of fat French fries. She clears her plate, sips the beer – decides it’s definitely not her thing – as Lucas and Blair tell stories about their childhoods in Caloodie.
‘Then Lucas decides he’s going to tame this huge goanna by hand-feeding it some of his steak,’ says Blair, laughing at the memory. ‘But he’s being stingy, he only offers it this tiny little piece, and the goanna decides it’s not enough and takes a bite out of the top of his middle finger as well. They’ve got razor-sharp teeth, he’s lucky he’s still got most of it. They stitched it up at the medical centre, bandaged it tight, he couldn’t bend it or wash it or nothing, and he spent the rest of the summer holidays giving everyone the finger.’
Lucas holds up his middle finger with a grin, showing her the two white scars, long slender teeth marks, that run down from beneath his nail.
‘Oh my god!’ she says, half horrified, half laughing.
She loves being a part of this other side of her family, so different from the Boston side, who are mostly academics. They’re nice too but they’re super-serious and not exactly in touch with real life. Her mom, a respected mathematician, is often lost in her own world and doesn’t play up her Australian roots. But this – Lucas and Blair laughing and making fun of each other, down-to-earth and real – this is her family too.
A bell rings at the bar and Susie, the woman who runs the place, shouts out, ‘Happy birthday, Vero, thirty-five today! Hip hip hooray!’
At the table beside them, Vero stands and takes a bow, as one of the guys at the bar calls, ‘Good on ya, love, happy birthday!’ and another shouts, ‘Drinks on Mark, is it?’
Vero laughs and says, ‘You bloody betcha!’ grabbing a wallet from the table and dancing out of reach of her husband’s hands, pulling a card out and giving it to Susie behind the bar. ‘This round is on us!’
The bar erupts in cheers and when Susie comes to clear their plates and ask them what they’d like, Grace asks for a Vodka Cruiser, relieved to be done with the beer. The free drinks seem to loosen some invisible social bond. The guys at the bar are standing in a group now, Vero moving among them getting birthday hugs and kisses. Mark comes over and says something in a low voice to Blair, who stands and says, ‘Back in a sec.’
Grace gets up to use the restroom and when she comes out she sees Lucas at the bar collecting their drinks. She goes back to the table to grab her bag. Vero is still at her table, looking at her phone. When Grace approaches, she looks up, startled, and pushes the phone away. She smiles at Grace. ‘Your boyfriend is a spunk,’ she says.
Grace must look confused because Vero adds: ‘I love a tall man, especially with those broad shoulders. Yum. Lucky you!’
She suddenly gets it and laughs. ‘No, eugh! That’s my brother. My older brother. He’s way too old to be my boyfriend.’
‘Well, that’s good news for the rest of us,’ says Vero. She glances around. ‘I don’t know where Mark is. Come on, let’s chat with the blokes, that’ll be more fun. You can introduce me to your spunky brother.’ She stands, grabs Grace’s hand and drags her, Grace half feigning reluctance, over to the bar.