Saturday 27 August

‘So this is Three Rock Hill. I don’t know why they call it that – as you can see there are considerably more than three rocks in the vicinity.’ Kate’s walking with a big stick – we all are – and she uses it to highlight the abundance of consolidated mineral matter.

‘It’s when they gave up counting,’ Ben says.

We’ve been walking for ages, through pale grass into twilight. The rocks closest to us are huge and look like ancient faces.

‘Wasn’t it a volcano?’ Kate asks Ben.

‘Yup. Feel it. It’s porous.’

We walk around like we’re on psychedelics, ahhing and pressing our palms against the strangely Styrofoam-y surface of the rocks. Ben lights a campfire in the gully. We share a bottle of damson gin that Kate swiped from her parents’ storehouse. I can feel Ben looking at me. He likes me. I’m flattered, but . . . I don’t get it. I’m wearing my slobbiest clothes and zero make-up. I’m so not scintillating – I’m feeling vulnerable, and too sad to try and hide it. Maybe Kate’s talked me up. Maybe country boys are more desperate.

The night grows dark around us and the stars are just – there’s so many of them – they make me feel tiny and insignificant, but they also fill me with wonder and an aching sort of joy. Beauty exists, and it has nothing to do with people. We’re just silly, bumbling humans who come and go, all full of ourselves, and really, who cares?

Kate says the gin is truth serum, so we drink and tell truths. Then Ben whispers in my ear: do I want to take a walk? He shines his torch on the ground and we walk to the top of a hill, and then climb onto the biggest rock and sit cross-legged. Ben turns the torch off.

‘So this is an important site,’ he tells me.

‘How so?’

‘A local guy, Jim Mulready used to come here on December 21st, ten pm, every year for fifty years. He’d set up camp and then he’d climb up this rock and wait.’

‘What was he waiting for?’

‘Aliens.’ Ben stretches his legs out, so I stretch mine out next to his. His body feels warm next to mine. His jacket smells of wood-smoke. ‘Jim’s dead now. He left behind a whole thesis on his theories, my Dad’s been lobbying to get it put in the library.’

‘I wonder what he thought was going to happen with the aliens.’

‘He thought they’d tell him how to have a more evolved existence.’

‘I’d come back for that,’ I say. ‘My sister says I’m primitive.’

‘What?’

‘She’s really smart.’

‘Book smart or life smart?’

‘The first.’

Ben fumbles for my hand. He finds it and holds it. I let him. ‘Well,’ he says. ‘Sometimes smart people can be really fucking stupid.’

We sit like that, waiting. And the stars keep revealing themselves to us, and the soft wind stirs the trees. I can hear the others, not so far away. Happiness is someone to love, something to do, something to look forward to.

‘I think we’re too early for the aliens,’ Ben says finally.

‘We’ll have to come back. Continue Jim’s work.’

For a second I think that I’ve said the wrong thing, hitched on to his story too soon, but Ben squeezes my hand and it’s like he’s given me something to look forward to, even if it never happens, right at this moment, I’m a third of the way to happy.