He glances at the ice bucket and back at me, thoughtfully.
‘I wasn’t driving under the influence, if that’s what you’re imagining,’ I blurt out. I have done many regrettable things around alcohol, but never that.
‘Actually, I’ve got someone coming over shortly,’ he explains, gently detangling my awkward assumption, onto which I seem to have piled an unnecessary suggestion that I committed a crime. He rakes a hand through freshly washed dark hair, and only now do I note the change of clothes. The different jeans. The dry shirt. The scent of cedar wood cologne and the sound of water still dripping in the shower cubicle, which, in my defence, he invited me to use just minutes ago.
‘Anyway, what’s the next step?’ I ask him, summoning my inner Mr Drucker.
‘I thought you were the admin genius?’
I seem to have overstated my prowess. ‘This is my first car accident,’ I say, truthfully.
Looking as though he finds this fact very difficult to swallow, he flicks through my insurance policy. ‘Okay, Hepburn,’ he says, although my resemblance tothatAudrey is unfortunately nil. ‘We need to swap details and call our insurers.’ He slides his own papers across the table with an impressively tattooed hand and says, ‘I’m Beau.’
As in French for ‘handsome’? And ‘boyfriend’. It’s a softer name than I’d expected for such a rugged-looking specimen of a man, and I’m lecturing myself to drop this bilingual nonsense and pull myself together, when he passes me his phone and says, ‘Mind if we swap numbers in case there’s anything to discuss?’
Of course! I rammed his car and owe him thousands in insurance money. He probably thinks I’m a flight risk! ‘Should we cut our thumbs and make a blood oath?’ I joke.
He looks at me, horrified. ‘I don’t think it’s necessary for us to exchange bodily fluids, Audrey. Do you?’
Try as I might, Icannotstem the blush that rises furiously to my cheeks. Thankfully I’m saved by a knock at his door, followed by the swanning in of a woman in a slip of material that looks like it cost $400, her wet skin glistening as she shakes rainwater off long platinum hair like an Afghan hound.
I don’t know about Beau, but I’m mesmerised. She beams at him before she clocks me and my rescue-dog-from-the-pound aesthetic and says, ‘Sorry, did I mix up the time?’
Are we on some sort of roster?My head goes into a full-blown David Attenborough narration as the woman glides past me, scented like a field of wildflowers, plants a soft kiss on Beau’s cheek, and then wipes lipstick from his face afterwards with a perfectly manicured thumb.
The amenities block is out of order, I want to point out.This top hasn’t been washed, and the other was saturated after I crashed into Beau’s ute.Thankfully I say none of that and just stand here looking starstruck.
‘I’m Harlow,’ she says, in an appropriately silken voice, taking my unexpected presence in her stride. I’ve gone all ungainly in her presence, as if I can’t work out how to stand.
‘Audrey parked next door,’ Beau explains.Is this the most interesting observation he can muster?I’d almost rather the embarrassment of the full dramatic story. I wait for him to deliver a punchline about my parking, but he doesn’t. Perhaps he’s saving it for later, when they unpack the scenario in bed.It was pouring. She was in those ridiculous yellow Wellingtons, blaring CynthiaErivo …Although, surely they have better things to whisper about across their pillows than my footwear.
‘Well! You seem to have everything in hand here,’ I tell them. I’ve gone full site-supervisor-wrapping-up-a-visiting-inspection. ‘Beau, I’ll make that call in the morning. And thanks for, you know—’ I can’t articulate the list—we’d be here all night.
He waves his hand as if it’s a mere trifle that he didn’t explode at my wanton destruction. His guest lifts the bottle from the ice and decorks the wine with the skill of a sommelier, the pop firing an explosion of full-body muscle memory straight through my body.
This is not her first rodeo in the lair, I can tell. It’s also my signal to leave.
Extricating myself from their love nest, I trudge into the wet night, back to my leaky car and decadesold little caravan, sans ambient light and music and heat and the kind of heady testosterone that I didn’t know I missed so much.Heady testosterone.Not a term paired with my beautiful, gentle Fraser, as a rule. Not by people who knew him only as a quiet academic. Behind closed doors, though, when it was just the two of us …that man and all the ways he knew me!
I’d imagined this moment for ages: my first night on the road. I’d envisaged a campfire under the stars and fairy lights in the window. I was meant to see out my old life—the last day of my thirties—and usher in my fortieth outside my comfort zone, with some sort of sunset clearing ritual. Burning what I want to let go. Journalling dreams. Opening my heart.
But instead I head a little way up the park and into the shrubs with a toilet paper roll, then tramp back, lock myself in the caravan, and use my phone’s torch to find something dry and warm to sleep in.
The light goes out before I can. Battery drained. So all I can do is feel my way into the bed, pull the blankets up around me, and listen to the rain on the tin roof, deciding tomorrow will be easier. Sunnier. Less accident-prone.
This whole decade will be better. It has to be.
I’m not sure what wakes me first: the squawking magpies or the smell of bacon and eggs sizzling outside my window. Wrapping myself in a blanket, I open the door to see my neighbour illuminated by crisp sunlight, tongs in hand.
‘Happy birthday, Hepburn,’ he says as I emerge, sloth-like. He’s in grey sweatpants, a thin black hoodie pushed up to the elbows, showcasing the tattoo of an incomplete nautical compass on his forearm.
What’s that about, then? The thrill of the unknown?
He mistakes the concentration on my face as confusion. ‘Your birth date’s on the insurance papers,’ he says. ‘Couldn’t help but notice it’s a significant one.’
I hadn’t expected this attention. Colour rushes to my cheeks as I wonder, fleetingly, if I’m older or younger than Beau. Older, I’m sure. And then I realise, with a jolt, that I’m also older than Fraser ever was. He hadn’t made it to forty. My heart plummets at the idea of overtaking him, as if he’s taken a tumble in a race and I haven’t stopped to help him up because then we’ll both lose …
The sight of this stranger standing here, frying up a full English on the first milestone birthday I’ve been dreading without Fraser, leaves me breathless and prickly hot. I throw off the blanket, and it bunches around my legs as I kick it back into the caravan and step barefoot onto cooling grass, damp with dew.
