The Geography of Friendship Read online

  She thinks in part this is why she’s agreed to come back, to have it proved to her that what happened here has been recorded in some way. That the landscape carries if not a memory of it, then at least a scar.

  But now that she’s here, she knows the truth is something else. While these trees and rocks bare witness to everything that passes before them, they hold no sentient proof of it. And any physical changes she might have brought about have long been integrated into the matrix of the land. Grown over. Supplanted. Erased. Even her mistakes. Hopefully her mistakes. She wishes she were a rock or a tree.

  Not enough has been erased from the landscape though, or from Nicole’s memory, for her not to recognise that they will reach the long beach soon.

  But first she must pass the tree where he’d hung her bikini top. Maybe it’s the boredom of walking that frees her mind to allow such precise recollections. They are recollections that have become sharper each day. Or maybe this memory is as sharp as it is because of the visceral punch-like response she had when she saw the scant fabric strung from a branch.

  Nicole wonders if Lisa’s and Samantha’s memories have the same precision. She’s been tempted to ask them to recall their defining feature of the man. But she expects if any one of them were asked to draw his most distinctive characteristic, then all three of them would come up with a completely different image. Each though, would provide a jigsaw piece of what they’d experienced.

  Nicole’s image would focus on the wide span of his hands. The tiny forest of coarse black hairs that grew above the middle knuckle of each finger. She has always imagined these hands as part-animal, part-human. Hands caught in evolutionary confusion.

  As it turns out, Nicole doesn’t recognise the exact tree where they found her bikini top. It could be any one of a number of tall eucalypts alongside the trail.

  The tree was a sapling back then. Now that it’s aged more than twenty years, it’s quite possible that it’s been victim to environmental hazards – bushfires, drought, lightning strikes – which might have stunted it or obliterated it altogether. Or alternatively, it’s healthy and thriving and metres taller. Unrecognisable. Like meeting a child at age two and being expected to recognise it again in its mid-twenties.

  Nicole looks up into the lush canopy and for a moment she selfishly hopes that the tree has been erased from the landscape and that something purer, something without a history, has taken its place.

  She can’t stop herself. She pauses when she reaches the spot and looks around. What does she hope to find? Some tatty remnant of red Lycra? Maybe she thinks if she sees something of it, rotted amongst the humus on the forest floor and home to ants, or fibres of it intricately threaded into a bird’s nest, then it will confirm that this landscape was marked for her all those years before.

  As it is, when she looks around all she sees is nature’s colours: greens, browns and greys. Nothing of her at all.

  The bush is quiet but Nicole’s memories of it shout. Especially those of how she’d yelled ‘Leave it!’ at Samantha when she reached up with her stick to lift the bikini top down from the branch that day. Her words had carried with enough force to silence the call of a magpie.

  Samantha had withdrawn her stick. ‘Don’t you want it?’ she’d asked timidly.

  ‘No!’ Nicole didn’t need to see close up what he’d done with it.

  It took Samantha a moment to see why. To see the brown stains.

  Even if it hadn’t been smeared with excrement, Nicole wouldn’t have reclaimed it. To disown it somehow reduced the violation.

  ‘At least we know he takes a dump every day,’ Lisa said.

  So blasé. So tough and brave and stupid.

  Lisa and Samantha pause behind her. They also look up into the trees, tall and reaching with enough branches now to hold hundreds of bikinis.

  Why do they search where there’s nothing to find? Nicole wonders. Do they hope to find some scrap of their innocent younger selves?

  She knows Lisa would have them walk out of here with their previous story erased. A new one written with the soles of their boots. But all stories contain the ground stock of past ones. And the roots of them are like those of trees; they run long and deep.

  When no one speaks, Nicole moves on. Her feet cross the ground and the unalterable history for which it’s lucky enough to hold no trace.

  As Nicole pushes her feet into the squeaky grains of white sand she has a sense of unease. Is it dread? Mounting shame? Fear? She can’t be sure, but imagines it’s something similar to what people feel when confronted by the figure of their phobia.

  There are several sets of footprints on the beach this time. Last time there had been only one. And the tide is on its way out. Just as it had been previously. There is a damp line above where the sea currently reaches. Further up the beach, beyond the high-tide line, the sand is fine, pale and dry. It is strewn with dark scraps of shrivelled kelp, sun-bleached shells and coral, the occasional slipper of parched cuttlefish.

  Nicole watches the waves froth along the shore, notices how they push a little less up the beach each time.

  They used the tide line previously to figure out how long it had been since he’d crossed this beach. His footprints were pushed deep into the still-wet sand, less than a metre above the receding sea.

  So did this represent half an hour? An hour?

  They argued about it. As if it mattered.

  Nicole sees now that the length of time each of them offered reflected the extent to which their fear controlled them. She said half an hour. Samantha estimated closer to fifteen minutes. Lisa supported neither.

  ‘Why assume they’re even his?’ She stabbed the stick she’d taken up to protect herself against him into the centre of one of the footprints. The irony of this gesture still makes Nicole shake her head.

  She never understood – still doesn’t – why Lisa could recognise the threat of him one minute, but then deny he even existed the next. It was like one part of her fought against the reality of their situation – or refused to be controlled by it at any rate – then this other part, the one that saw the need for them to carry a weapon, presented itself like an actor on a stage. Lisa cast herself as their fearless protector. Postured with toughness. Ignored all the signs that they were being lured into a game.

  Nicole never doubted the footprints were the man’s. And neither could Lisa in the end. Not just because of the size of them – long, which fit with his tall, lanky frame – or that the heel of them sunk deep into the sand as they would with the large pack he carried. But because not far along they found an arrow drawn in the sand and alongside it the words: THIS WAY SLUTS.

  He left these tokens – stole things – but mostly he was unseen, only sensed. A phantom. A masquerade for their imagination. Nicole felt the trickery of him though. He knew of the dark places that existed in a girl’s mind, the deep pockets of fear they hold. And he knew the ways to evoke them.

  The beach is close to two kilometres long. They must walk the length of it to pick up the trail again at the other end.

  Nicole holds her hand above her eyes against the sun’s glare and looks along it. There are several hikers ahead of them. Each a dark dot in the distance. Mostly they walk in pairs. A group of three form a staggered line about halfway along. The progress of all looks slow in their miniaturised form.

  She held her hand to her eyes last time too. So did the others.

  ‘Why can’t we see him?’ Samantha asked. ‘He can’t be that far ahead.’

  ‘Maybe he’s left the beach. Gone behind the dunes.’ Nicole pointed towards the line of coastal dunes that were a buffer to the saltmarsh behind.

  ‘You keep assuming it’s him!’

  ‘Who else could it be!’ It was from this point on that Nicole’s anger started to build. Not just with Lisa and the situation she’d put them in. She was also angry at the tenac
ious cunning of their stalker.

  ‘I suppose we’ve got no choice but to go this way.’ Samantha said this but made no effort to move off.

  ‘Not if we want to get out of here there isn’t.’ Nicole struck out first along the beach.

  This way sluts.

  While it’s unarguably the same place, it’s an altogether different day. This time the air is still and the sun shines. Last time dark clouds had built up around them. The wind gusted and pushed against their chests. It carried horizontal sheets of fine dry sand with it that stung the front of Nicole’s naked legs. The wind snatched at her hair, long then. Tied it in knots. Whipped it against her face. Beach spinifex tumbled past on spiny legs. The sea was whipped into meringue peaks. Silver gulls, beaks to the wind, flapped their wings but went nowhere, till they tilted away and soared downwind with no effort at all.

  Nicole had walked head down, shoulders rolled in. Each step taunted by the footprints that hers overlaid. They were a declaration. A staked claim. Still here, they said.

  Until they weren’t.

  About two-thirds of the way along the beach, his footprints just disappeared. There was no right-angled turn to them that led down to the sea or up to the dunes. There was no doubling back or change of course to walk along higher ground.

  They just stopped dead.

  Nicole pulled up as suddenly as the footprints had. She held her arms out from her sides. ‘Stay back.’

  She looked either side of the last footprints, two neat imprints positioned side by side in the sand. She walked in a wide arc around them. Lisa mumbled something, which Nicole thought was Girl Guide.

  For the first time one of them lost it then. Really lost it.

  ‘This is sick!’ Samantha cried. ‘Fucking sick!’ She put her head in her hands, walked a few metres in the direction they’d just come from, turned and walked several metres in an altogether different direction. It was as though she sought a way out.

  Nicole watched Samantha do this not knowing what to do. Samantha eventually stopped pacing, dropped heavily to her knees and made big, hitching sobs into her hands.

  Lisa took her pack off and went to Samantha then. She let her sob against her, till she’d cried herself out.

  Today, only the sun bites at her legs and their long shadows reach across the sand in front of them. They walk in pace order again, Nicole in front, Samantha at the rear. Every now and then Lisa draws nearer and Nicole steps on the shadow of her head.

  ‘Bully,’ she jokes from behind.

  Nicole increases her pace to lengthen the gap between them.

  It’s tough going on the beach. Nicole’s probably the fittest of the three, but even she feels the difficulty of walking on the soft sand. The weight of her pack pushes her boots deep into it. She has to forcefully lift each foot out of the depression it makes to clear it before she can take another step. They aren’t even halfway along and already her thighs burn with the effort and she can feel the gritty chafe of sand in her socks. She thinks about Samantha and how much more difficult it must be for her. And all for what? This folly of Lisa’s?

  Nicole looks over her shoulder. Samantha has dropped well back. It’s a demoralising gap. She stops and waits for her. So does Lisa. ‘You’re killing her,’ Nicole says.

  She immediately regrets her words because Lisa looks at her as though she’s been slapped.

  In a flurry of decisive movements, Lisa releases the buckles securing her pack and writhes out of her load.

  ‘I’m going to take some of her gear,’ she says and walks back to Samantha.

  It’s Nicole’s turn to feel smacked with shame. She’s just been telling herself she’s the fittest, but hasn’t once considered lightening the load of the weakest.

  They always had one another’s backs once. There was no weakest or strongest. No better or worse. Theirs wasn’t like other groups of girls. Groups that fluxed with shifting alliances. Girls cast out, isolated, often abruptly. Groups only able to remain intact if each of its members thought and acted the same. Not one of them chose the other along lines of beauty or athleticism or popularity. They were misfits united through their differences. They only had to be themselves. That’s what made their friendship strong.

  Nicole unbuckles her pack and lowers it to the sand. She watches Samantha as Lisa walks towards her. Her eyes are cast down. When Lisa reaches her, Sam lifts her head and smiles. It could be a front, but she seems to brighten with Lisa’s approach. Her previously strained features soften.

  The two walk side by side then. Lisa chats easily. Nicole hears her coax her on. And Samantha seems to limp less for the attention. Frowns less. They walk close together. They seem at ease with one another.

  Nicole has an unrecognisable pang as she watches the two of them approach. It feels heavy like regret. Pressing like sadness. It might even be jealousy. It makes her realise just how far removed from them she’s become.

  Nicole makes room in her pack for some of Sam’s gear. She’s reluctant to give anything up to begin with, but Nicole takes it from her anyway. She doesn’t notice the extra weight after a while. It soon becomes a part of her own.

  Chapter 10

  Once again she’s propped up by others who are stronger. Fitter. More capable. She was the first to cry last time. Blubbered like a baby. Left tears and snot down the front of Lisa’s shirt.

  But those disappearing footprints unnerved Samantha more than anything else that had happened till then. Leaving his shit on a rock was more schoolboy than psycho. Stealing someone’s bikini top and using it for toilet paper was disgusting. But the evaporation of his trail, that had all the hallmarks of some kind of evil wizardry. A manipulative force more powerful than the force the three of them combined could hope to project. This was the point at which Samantha realised they were no match for him.

  Nicole debunked the myth that he was magical though. As pragmatic as ever, she looked for ways to solve the puzzle of the missing footprints. She walked slowly up the beach towards the dune line. She studied the ground carefully, paused at the sea-litter strewn along the high water mark. She scaled the dune and stood on this higher ground, brown ponytail flayed about by the wind. Legs wide, she slowly scanned from left to right. She looked like an explorer. When she came back, she reported that she could see inland for quite a way. She hadn’t been able to see him she said, but she found his footprints going down the other side of the dune.

  ‘He’s covered his tracks then, leading up to the dunes?’ Lisa asked.

  ‘Looks like it,’ Nicole said.

  And once they looked round rationally, they found some of his poorly filled in footprints in the sand. It didn’t make Samantha feel any better though. It only confirmed that whatever agenda he might have started his hike with had surely shifted to something else altogether.

  The beach walk is as much of a low point for Samantha this time as it was previously. To walk on soft sand is to walk through molasses. Each time one foot sinks down, the other must be forcefully pulled out. Her thigh muscles quiver and burn with the effort. She doesn’t dare stop in case her legs let her down completely and she drops to the ground in a pathetic display of hopelessness. She talks to her legs. Scolds them. Calls them fat. Lazy. Useless. She encourages them. Congratulates them. But still they tremble.

  Fatigue doesn’t help. She’s not slept well since they set off three days ago. Her thin sleeping mat doesn’t cushion much against the lumps and bumps of pebbles and sticks and clods of dirt she thinks she’d adequately cleared away before she’d erected her tent. Maybe she’s a princess, her mattress stippled with peas. She smiles at this delicate image of herself.

  Last time they’d shared a tent. This time they have their own. Take away the fact that they’ve not seen each other for more than twenty years, and Samantha’s not sure that she prefers the solo arrangement. She’d be happy to share her tent if it also meant sharin
g the night sounds. She startles awake often. Then can’t remember where she is. And once she does, she must remind herself that it is now, not then. Her nerves are frayed by then though, so it’s difficult to get back to sleep.

  A kangaroo woke her first last night. She heard it bound through the campground. Once she recognised what it was, she listened to the force of its springy hind legs, the brief pause between landfalls. She counted its fading leaps – one, two, three, four, five – until they disappeared.

  And in the quiet solitude that followed, memories pushed through. Last night, thoughts of her youngest son came to her.

  For as long as she can remember he has wanted a girlfriend. Not a girl friend. A girlfriend.

  ‘I’d hold hands with her,’ he’d say to Samantha as a small boy. ‘All the time. And maybe kiss her. Like this.’

  And he’d gently pat her cheek with his lips to demonstrate.

  ‘What I like best about girls is they smell like lollies.’ He was still young enough to sit up on his knees on his chair at the breakfast bar.

  ‘Is that right?’

  ‘Uh-huh. Honey bears mostly. Some smell like musk sticks but.’

  They’d smelt of sweat and blood and fear when they were here last time. Candy to the man?

  ‘Dad? Are wives hard to find?’ he asked Harry one day.

  ‘Sure are, mate. Good ones, anyway.’

  ‘Where’d you find Mum?’

  ‘In a nightclub.’

  He took a moment to do the maths on his fingers. ‘I can’t find one at a nightclub for eleven years!’

  ‘You might find yours some place else,’ Harry offered. ‘Maybe at the park.’

  Picked up like dropped coins. Pocketed.

  ‘Girls have a say in it you know,’ Samantha told him. ‘And some girls might not want to be found straight away.’