Isla climbed out of the Tarago and staggered over to the bushes near the edge of the driveway, feeling like she might throw up. The air conditioner had blown a plasticky smell onto her face throughout the long drive, which included some alarming hairpin bends with sheer drops just beyond them. If you were out here in the dark, she thought, you’d be likely to walk off a cliff.
As a kid, Isla had never been afraid of heights. She would climb the scrap heap near her parents’ house every weekend, wobbling on rusted wheels and old freezers, and was one of the few who dared to leap off the top. She’d come home bruised, scratched, and grinning all over her dirty face.
She and Oscar had honeymooned in the Daintree Rainforest, at a resort surrounded by scenic trails. One night, while he was in the shower, she switched on the news. In Colorado, a climber had fallen to her death when the rock she was clinging to broke off the cliff face. For some reason, Isla couldn’t get the image out of her head. She didn’t sleep at all that night, and the following day, when they hiked up to a lookout, she wasn’t able to go close enough to the edge to take a good selfie.
Oscar asked if something was wrong. She said no, and he believed her.
That was the moment Isla realised her mistake. She loved Oscar partly because he hadn’t gone to Warrigal High. With him, she could pretend to be the person she wished she was. But now she was married to a man who didn’t know her.
Every night for the rest of the trip, she dreamed she was scaling a wall of red stone, Oscar waiting for her at the top. She would reach for his hand, and he for hers, but just as their fingers were about to touch, she’d lose her footing and plummet into the endless dark.
Dom and Cole were unpacking the back of the Tarago while Felicity stood nearby, breathing on her gloved hands for warmth. Oscar and Clementine were surveying the house. The quiet up here was eerie. A small town like Warrigal still had some level of background noise: dogs, traffic, a neighbour’s radio. This far from civilisation, even the birds seemed reluctant to break the silence.
Isla turned to face the bushes and bent over, putting her hands on her thighs and willing herself not to vomit. She took deep breaths, counting the leaves on the dirt driveway between her feet—six, seven, eight … When she ran out of leaves, she counted the tyre tracks from cars and mountain bikes. She tried to imagine what kind of fruit loop would ride a bike all the way to the top of this mountain.
‘You okay?’ Cole asked behind her, making her jump.
She straightened and forced a smile back at him. ‘Just a bit car sick.’
Cole owned a gym and looked the part. His muscular arms were always exposed by a short-sleeved shirt, a fitness band gleaming on his wrist, and his close-cropped hair highlighted the bulges on either side of his neck. His short blond beard often twinkled with sweat. But he was soft-spoken and gentle. Isla had once watched him lift an injured bird into a cardboard box, and she’d wondered—out of nowhere—if he held Clementine as tenderly as that.
‘Try standing up straight,’ he said. ‘Watch the horizon. Give the fluid in your inner ear some time to stabilise.’
From Dom, Isla would have found this annoying. I’ll look wherever I want, thank you. But she followed Cole’s advice, squinting in the midday sun as she gazed out across the endless bush.
He rested a strong hand on her back. ‘Is it working?’
The moment felt familiar. Isla remembered hiding behind the science block as a teenager, her guts churning, face burning. Cole’s arms around her, and his gentle voice: don’t worry. You’ll be okay.
She exhaled, banishing the memory. ‘Maybe,’ she said.
‘Just a sec.’ Cole hurried to the boot and unzipped a leather bag. He kept his back to her as he did it. When he turned around, he was holding a blister pack. ‘I packed ginger tablets.’
Isla wasn’t surprised. Cole was perpetually—almost pathologically—organised. He never forgot anyone’s birthday and was always the designated driver. A while ago, Isla had noticed that his shoelaces usually matched the colour of his shirt, so either he had a lot of shoes or he regularly changed the laces. Even his body was tidy: no freckles on his tanned skin, no veins visible in his blue eyes.
Isla realised she was staring. Averting her gaze, she found herself looking at Clementine. She was blonde, like Cole, and equally partial to activewear. When she and Cole were side by side, with their matching serious expressions, they looked like the creepy telepathic kids from a sci-fi novel she’d discovered as a girl.
‘The Midwich Cuckoos,’ Isla once whispered to Oscar, pointing at Cole and Clementine.
Oscar had frowned. ‘Huh?’ He hadn’t picked up a book since university.
She tried the title of the movie. ‘You know—Village of the Damned.’
‘Oh, right,’ he replied, with no idea what she was talking about.
This made her realise she was making fun of Cole and Clementine, her oldest friends, because she envied them. She’d expected to have a marriage like theirs, where two people seemed to fuse into a single organism, with the same opinions and goals. Instead, Oscar had somehow forced her into the role of the wet-blanket sitcom wife, casting himself as the beleaguered husband. If she asked him to unpack the dishwasher or get his clothes off the bathroom floor, she was nagging. If she did it herself, she was being passive aggressive. If she didn’t, she was lazy.
When they first met, Oscar had loved the way she talked about big ideas rather than the meaningless day-to-day gossip that enthralled the other students—or so he claimed. Isla was starting to wonder if that was just something he’d said to get laid: you’re not like other girls. You’re interested in serious things. Because now she wasn’t allowed to be anything other than his wife and Noah’s mother. If she wanted to go to a job interview, she was leaving him to pick up the slack; if she tried to keep track of politics, she was spending all her time on Twitter. She could only imagine what he’d say if he caught her on Pornhub—particularly if he saw what she was looking at.
At that thought, her hand twitched towards the phone in her pocket. She stopped herself.
‘Aren’t these for sea sickness?’ she asked, taking the ginger tablets from Cole.
‘I think they’re mostly a placebo,’ he said. ‘So why wouldn’t they be just as effective on land?’
She laughed. ‘I don’t think placebos work if you tell the patient they’re placebos.’
‘Oh. My bad. Maybe there’s some real evidence? Hang on.’ He got out his phone.
‘Are you going to pretend to find something, just so I feel better?’
Cole was squinting at the screen. ‘“Ginger tablets have been shown to cure car sickness in clinical trials.”’
‘Really?’
‘No.’ Cole showed her the screen. ‘No reception up here.’
‘What carrier are you with?’
‘Optus.’
Isla was with Telstra. She checked her own phone: no bars.
Dom was walking past, carrying a suitcase in each of his big hands. There were sweat patches under the arms of his Hugo Boss shirt. ‘This is supposed to be an unplugged weekend! A digital detox.’
‘A what?’ Cole asked.
Felicity, who had been rummaging through her backpack nearby, also paused when she heard this. ‘There’s wi-fi, right?’
‘Nope,’ Dom said. ‘Just us and nature.’
‘You’re kidding.’ Felicity was twenty-four—she’d probably never been without wi-fi in her whole life.
Isla thought she saw something flicker across Dom’s expression—nervousness? But she couldn’t think of anything he might be nervous about. Everything always turned out just fine for him.
After high school, she’d never wanted to see Dom again. But then her best friend, Clementine, had married Dom’s best friend, Cole. That connection, indirect as it was, often put them all in the same room. She always acted friendly to avoid ruining everyone else’s night, then went home burning with self-disgust. Now that she was thirty, her supply of fake smiles was running low.
‘I don’t remember signing up for a digital detox,’ Isla said.
‘The house has a landline,’ said Dom. ‘Relax.’
‘A landline,’ Felicity marvelled. ‘Could come in handy if we need to call a phrenologist, or a blacksmith.’ She resumed searching her backpack.
Isla hated being told to relax, especially by Dom. ‘Whatever,’ she said as she grabbed her suitcase.
The house towered over the landscape, even taller than it had looked in the photos. Metal cut-outs shaped like birds were mounted on the exterior walls. Garden chairs with weatherproof cushions were scattered around the porch, safe from thieves and vandals out here in the middle of nowhere.
Isla could hear Clementine and Oscar talking inside. She felt tense whenever her husband was alone with someone she’d gone to high school with—which, on this trip, was everyone except Felicity. But it sounded like they were just admiring the decor. Isla told herself everything would be fine.
‘Here’s your key,’ Felicity said, handing Isla an envelope before immediately snatching it back. ‘Oh, hang on—I’m supposed to give the key to Oscar.’
‘I can give it to him,’ Isla said, confused, but Felicity was already flouncing towards the house. Isla suddenly noticed how much the younger woman’s new haircut resembled her own. She wondered if Dom had suggested the style; if he was training his wife to look like her.
Why did Oscar get a key while she didn’t? She resolved to make him give it to her later, on principle.
‘Can I carry your bag?’ Cole offered.
‘No,’ she said, not wanting to be dismissed as helpless. She hauled the suitcase inside.
The living room was modern, full of sharp-edged tables, glass-doored cabinets, and other things they couldn’t have at home because of Noah. There was an industrial-sized oven, in case they wanted to cook twelve pizzas at once. Huge windows overlooked the terrifying slope they’d just driven up.
‘There’s a hot tub,’ Oscar called from the deck.
‘Dibs on the upstairs bedroom!’ Clementine called from somewhere else in the house.
As the others staked their claims, Isla opened the fridge. There was butter and mayo, but nothing substantial. She hadn’t brought any groceries—Oscar had said Dom had paid for the luxury package, with food and drinks included.
‘Are we supposed to hunt and kill our own dinner?’ she asked. It was a joke, but she found herself picturing it. Catastrophising, her psychologist would have said. She imagined herself whittling a spear that was too blunt, stumbling through the bush looking for something to stab, then twisting her ankle in a wombat hole and freezing to death.
Dom appeared at her shoulder. ‘There should be …’ He frowned at the empty fridge. ‘The agent said there would be food here.’
Isla felt a perverse joy at seeing something go wrong for Dom. She would gladly starve, if it made him look bad in front of the others. She opened the cupboards: also empty. ‘No cereal either,’ she said loudly.
Glowering, Dom pulled out his phone, presumably to call the agent. He pushed some buttons, and then swore under his breath.
‘Digital detox,’ Isla said smugly.
But Dom’s anger quickly evaporated. ‘No problem. Hey, Cole?’
Isla watched him jog along the hall towards the stairs, infuriated by his fake cheerfulness. When he didn’t come back right away, she decided to check out the bedrooms.
Felicity and Dom had claimed the west bedroom, closest to the kitchen. One of Dom’s expensive suits was laid out on the bed, and a bag had been left unzipped in the corner. Isla could see some brand-new bushwalking clothes, probably Felicity’s. Isla closed the door.
Next there was a bathroom, then another door, slightly ajar. Isla could see carpet through the gap.
She thought she heard a scuffle.
She knocked. ‘You decent?’
When no one replied, she pushed the door the rest of the way open. Another bedroom, and it was empty. The sound must have come from upstairs. Oscar’s suitcase was under the bed. Isla’s own bag was on the mattress, open. That was odd—it wasn’t like her husband to start unpacking for her.
Oscar’s phone was on the bed. She woke up the screen, just to check if he had reception—he was with Vodafone. But there was nothing.
This bedroom had an exterior door leading to the deck. Isla closed and locked it. When she turned around, she saw Dom hovering in the hall. ‘Sorted,’ he said. ‘Cole’s going to drive to town and bring back some food.’
He’d sent his oldest friend 130 kilometres away, like a king dispatching a knight on a quest.
Look at that, Isla thought. Things work out for Dom, yet again.