He looked upset. When he was five years old, Uncle Cam had given him a pony called Mr Tupps. The pony arrived wearing a straw hat with holes cut for its ears, and Xander had been pink-faced with delight. He had phoned Cam every week for months to regale him with tales of what Mr Tupps had been up to now.
‘Yeah,’ Nathan said. ‘People wondered that at the time too.’
Jenna and Jacqui had been alone in the car for nearly three hours. Jenna had been quiet, apparently, but then so had Jacqui, who would’ve been more than a little bit tired and hungover if Nathan remembered rightly.
‘Mum would have helped her.’
‘Anyone would have helped her, mate. We’re not monsters.’
‘I didn’t mean –’
‘No, I know. Of course your mum would have helped her. If she’d said something.’
It hadn’t only been that, Nathan knew. After whatever had happened in the dunes, Cameron had offered to drive Jenna back to town and she’d accepted. She possibly didn’t have many other options at that time of night, Nathan realised, but as Cam had pulled up outside the pub, the landlord had seen two people leaning towards each other in the front seats, their kiss illuminated by the dull yellow of the interior light. Jenna had then climbed out of the car and walked away in the dark to the staff accommodation block.
‘Looked completely normal, mate,’ the landlord had told people later. ‘No worries at all there.’
‘And she didn’t tell anyone that morning while she was still in town?’ Xander sounded uncertain.
‘No.’
More than anything else – more than Cameron’s good nature, more than what anyone had or hadn’t seen at the party – it was the delay that swayed public opinion. The morning after the party, Jenna had sat in the bakery, drinking a coffee while waiting for Jacqui. The police station was fully visible through the bakery windows and the medical centre was at the end of the road. She had visited neither.
‘As far as I know, she didn’t say a word about it until her boyfriend heard the stories from the party.’ Nathan dusted his hands on his shirt and nodded at the car. ‘Go and check the radio. See if this is working.’
‘It’s so weird that Jenna would suddenly contact Uncle Cam now, though,’ Xander said.
‘Yeah. Try the radio.’
‘Because if it’s a coincidence, the timing –’
‘I know. The timing’s shit. Radio.’
‘So –’ Xander didn’t move. ‘Do you think it’s possible that something bad actually did happen at that party?’
‘If I did, I would have said so at the time.’ Nathan walked past him, pulled open the car door and tried the radio himself.
‘But even if you didn’t think so at the time, now –’ He heard Xander follow him.
‘But nothing, mate.’ A bleep on the airwaves. The mast was working. ‘This is fixed. We can go.’
‘What if –’
‘Look –’ Nathan’s voice was louder than he’d intended and he took a breath, made himself lower it. ‘This is your Uncle Cam we’re talking about. He’s family. You know him.’Knew him.
‘Yeah. I know.’ Xander looked down.
‘He was shocked when he heard what she was saying.’
It was true. Cameron had sat on the verandah steps and cried, his shoulders shaking as Liz sat next to him. She’d rubbed his back with one hand and pinched the bridge of her nose with the other, her eyes squeezed shut.
‘And he was always really clear about what happened.’ Nathan looked at his son. ‘He was asked about it loads of times over those few days – by our dad, by your grandma, the town cop at the time – and he always said the same thing.’
Cam had met Jenna at the party. They had talked, they had been drinking, they had gone behind the sand dunes and they had had sex. Yes, they had both wanted to. No, she hadn’t told him she had a boyfriend. Yes, of course she had gone with him willingly. No, she hadn’t said anything that made him worried. Nothing at all. Not during, not afterwards.
Nathan started packing up around the mast.
‘How does anyone know what actually happened, though?’ Xander said in a way that made Nathan look up. Bub had abandoned loading the car and was watching, his arms folded across his chest. Xander blinked, suddenly looking a little nervous.
