Her mind spins off into a fantasy of two tents pitched near the ocean—maybe down the Great Ocean Road. A campfire with marshmallows, and homemade damper filled with honey cooked on the fire. A bottle of red. The kids in bed—insisting on sharing a tent. Which would mean Kim and Danika would have to share the other tent…
With a start, she realises Bella is talking. “What was that, Hella-Bella?”
“Cami says she wanted to go camping with Dad, but he’d never take her.”
Kim concentrates on the road, on the traffic through Rowville. Chris had loved camping. Maybe, though, camping was something special that he did only with them, not something he wanted to share with Danika and Cami. Her lips twist. Or maybe, more likely, it was so he didn’t muddle camping trips and talk about something that happened with them to Danika.
“It would be awesome to go camping with Cami!” Bella bounces in her seat. “It’s my favourite thing apart from soccer.”
Kim loves camping too, but what she loved most was seeing Bella and Chris so immersed in the experience. In nature, on the beach, finding shells and seaweed and the occasional washed-up sea creature. Salty bodies and stiff seawater hair. The stars at night.
Kim catches her breath. She would love to go camping with Danika, as much as Bella wants to go with Cami. “I’ll check with Danika.”
“Cool. Can we stop for ice cream?”
“We can do that on condition you tidy your room when we get home.”
“Okay.” Bella giggles and offers Kim a wide grin.
It’s the next day before Kim raises it with Danika.
“Bella wants to go camping,” she says, “and she’d love it if Cami came too.” A pause. “And I’d love it if you came too.”
Danika’s breathing breaks the silence on the line.
“Or if you don’t want to come, then would you be comfortable if Cami came with us?”
“It’s not that I don’t want to come,” Danika says. “I’m thinking practicalities. We don’t have camping gear. The closest we ever came to camping was a cabin in a caravan park in Gippsland.”
The opposite direction to the Great Ocean Road. Careful Chris, keeping his two lives apart, even for something as low risk as holidays.
“We have two tents, and most things we’d need. I’m sure I’ll be able to borrow anything extra from Suze. She and Jorie come with us sometimes. There’s a gorgeous place we know down the Great Ocean Road. It’s a national park campsite, right on the beach.”
“That sounds great,” Danika says in a rush. It’s as if she’s made an instant decision and wants to confirm it before she changes her mind. “When were you thinking?”
“If we go before school starts, I can manage three or four days. It will be busier during the holidays, but we can’t help that.”
“How about…” The rustle of Danika consulting a calendar. “Next week, Tuesday to Friday, if that’s not too short notice for you? Then we’ll avoid the holiday weekend when it’s likely to be extremely busy.”
“That works for me.”
They firm up the arrangements, and Kim hangs up and goes to tell Bella the good news.
Chapter Twenty-One
Danika
Danika sits in the passenger seat of Kim’s Subaru as they drive the narrow Red Johanna Road, the last part of the journey.
Bella and Cami are chattering away in the back. They haven’t stopped the entire three-hour drive from Melbourne.
The road ends at a large grassy clearing. There are a few tents and caravans already there. Kim finds their site on the ocean side of the clearing, separated from the surf beach by a band of coastal vegetation. She parks the car, and they all jump out.
The air is fresh, and the rhythmic crash and drag of the surf surrounds them. A small mob of eastern grey kangaroos grazes at the other end of the clearing. They lift their heads to stare at the intruders, then lower them again.
Cami and Bella are entranced.
Danika takes a deep breath of sea air. She’s missed this. Melbourne’s Port Phillip Bay doesn’t have surf beaches, more small lapping waves, or whitecaps out on the water whipped by a storm. But this… This is magic.
