The space between, p.1
The Space Between, page 1
THE SPACE
BETWEEN
Rachel Sanderson
THE SPACE BETWEEN
Copyright © Rachel Sanderson 2017
Creator: Sanderson, Rachel, 2017 – author
Cover by Zoella Rose Designs 2017
Subjects: Young Adult contemporary fiction
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted by any person or entity, in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording scanning or by an information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.
First published 2017 by Rachel Sanderson.
1
I’m in the middle of packing when I hear them pull up. I can tell it’s Daina’s car. It has a kind of throaty roar, accompanied by a disconcerting rattle. When you’re sitting in the passenger seat it sounds like some important bit of the engine is about to fall out. I jam a couple of pairs of socks into my backpack, roll up a long-sleeved top, grab the book I’m meant to be reading for Mrs Fadden’s English class. Daina toots. I shoulder my bag and take the stairs two at a time. Down in the kitchen, Mum’s putting the lid on a container of muffins. She used to make double chocolate but since her health kick started its been wholemeal flour, carrot and zucchini all the way.
‘Tell Daina to drive carefully,’ she says, crossing her arms and frowning as I try to fit the container into my already-full bag.
‘Daina’s always careful,’ I say, which is mostly true. I struggle with the zip for a moment then give up. ‘Don’t worry. We’ll be fine.’
‘Gus will be there?’
‘Gus will be there.’
Gus, Daina’s oldest brother, is standing in for an adult this weekend. Mum clearly hasn’t seen him for a while, otherwise there’d be a lot more questions. I think the fact that she’s known Gus since before he was born is giving her a false sense of confidence, but I’m not going to tell her that. I’m just happy she’s letting me go.
Daina toots again, this toot a bit more forceful than the previous one.
Mum helps load me up with tent and pillow and sleeping bag, then kisses me and opens the front door and I stagger through and down the path, catching the tent on branches as I go. I angle myself sideways to get out the gate.
Then I see Mei-Lin. Daina never mentioned she was coming. She’s sitting in the front passenger seat. Her long, dark hair is shining on her shoulders. A woollen beanie is pulled over her ears. She’s wearing cherry-red lipstick that matches the beanie. Somehow she manages to make the damn thing look like it’s straight out of Vogue. If I wore something like that people would think I had roadkill on my head. I’m reassessing my choice of denim jeans and plain grey hoody but it’s too late to change now.
Alex, Daina’s other brother, has opened the boot, and is rearranging bags to make room for my things. His guitar takes up one whole half of the space. He hoists my backpack and wedges it over the top with a solid shove. ‘Hope there’s nothing breakable in there...’
I hang onto my pillow, hugging it up to me like I might be able to hide behind it.
Alex slams the boot and turns. He’s wearing a faded khaki jacket, and his eyes are the same grey as the sky. His hair has grown since last time I saw him, and it hangs long over his forehead and around his ears. He smiles. I feel warmth ball in my throat and spread to my cheeks, and down into my chest.
Then Daina toots the horn again.
‘Hey, she’s right here!’ Alex yells.
We climb into the back, me on one side and Alex on the other, and slam the doors.
Cat Power is playing on the stereo. If I’m honest I’d rather the Beach Boys or Robbie Williams or something similarly awful and cheerful like my Dad always used to play to get us on our way, but Daina loves this stuff. Happy-sad music, she calls it. Songs that break down the emotional binaries. I’m sure she actually said something like that to me recently.
I lean against the window. The music envelops me and I watch the road trail past, my eyes abstracting the procession of houses and shops and cars and signs into a string of shapes and colours that soothe me and slow my brain.
‘How’s your mum going?’ Alex asks. Mum has always had a soft spot for Alex. He’s got that middle child thing going on – a constant sense of being overlooked. Mum was a middle child too so I guess she can relate. Back in the days when Daina’s family and my family all used to go camping together, Mum would feed Alex and ask him questions and listen to him talk and he soaked it all up: the care, the calories. It’s been a while though.
I shrug. ‘Hard to tell.’
‘What’s wrong with your mum?’ Mei-Lin asks, twisting in her seat to look back at us.
‘Dad moved away last year. She’s adjusting.’
There’s a pause.
‘Where did your Dad go?’ Mei-Lin asks.
‘Got a job interstate. So where are we meeting Gus?’ I turn back to Alex and hope they’ll both take the hint. I don’t talk family.
‘At the campsite. He was getting some work done on his car. Should be ready by lunchtime they reckon,’ Alex says.
‘He still driving Bessie?’
Against all reason, Gus had somehow managed to take his decades old Volvo station-wagon half way across the continent and back.
‘Won’t give her up till she’s dead,’ Alex says.
‘I think he’s been sleeping in the back seat,’ Daina says, and I see the reflection of her blue eyes in the rear vision mirror looking back at us. ‘He’s officially derelict. Don’t tell Mum though. I don’t think she can take any more disappointment.’
Their mum, Steph, had such high hopes for her children. They should be lawyers or doctors or architects or work for the government. Instead she got Gus, who dropped out of high school and has been travelling ever since, never staying anywhere longer than a month or two. Alex, who’s a gardener and plays in a band. And Daina. Daina’s just, well, Daina – wild and funny and kind, and determined that she’s going to be an artist and live some kind of throwback bohemian lifestyle. Poor Steph. For myself, I wouldn’t want them any other way.
We’re already out past the thick of the suburbs. I look away down the road, to the green curve of hills ahead. Soon we’ll start seeing signs that we’re close. Bait and tackle shops. Seagulls. Post boxes with anchors painted on them. And before long we’ll turn a corner or crest a hill and get that first hit of blue. I’m ready for it.
2
The campsite looks empty when we arrive, except for a ute bristling with fishing rods parked beside one of the far cabins. That’s the thing about a winter holiday – the weather might be a bit unpredictable, and you can’t swim, but there’s something about having a place like this almost to yourself. I spot Mei-Lin observing our surroundings with a frown.
‘It looks basic but it’s okay,’ I say. ‘We’ve been coming here forever.’
‘I’ve never really been camping before,’ she says, and I can’t tell if her tone is bashful or proud.
‘You’ll be in the cabin anyway, won’t you?’ I ask.
‘Yeah, there’s loads of room,’ Daina says. ‘You’ll be fine.’
Within half an hour we’ve unpacked the car and put up two tents – the one I brought for Daina and me, and a one-man tent for Alex, who likes his own space. Daina gets the key for the cabin from reception. She pulls the door open, and thin afternoon light seeps in. We hear something scuttling away. The space smells stale and mildewy, like a change room. Mei-Lin eyes the old mattresses and the uneven floor and for a moment I almost feel sorry for her.
‘Let us know when you’re settled in, we’ll go for a walk,’ Daina links her arm through mine. We head back to the tent.
I climb in after her, and we lie on our backs on the hard ground side by side, feeling the sticks and stones that had been invisible when we’d pegged the ground sheet out on what had looked to be good bare soil.
Daina sighs and I look across at her. Her golden hair is arrayed around her head like a messy halo. It’s clipped back with a pin that has a ladybird on it – red with black spots. She found it on sale for three dollars in the kids’ section in Target a few weeks ago and has worn it non-stop since. I think she looks as though she’s on a billboard advertising something. Ice cream. Chocolate. Something sweet. Her new black coat is buttoned all the way up to her chin. Her fingernails are painted black too, and bitten short. She closes her eyes. For a moment, away from the others, she looks tired and sad.
‘You okay D?’ I ask.
She bites her lower lip and nods.
‘Long week?’
‘Yep.’
There had been a night, a few days earlier. Her parents were out. We’d been drinking in her bedroom. Some horrible combination of cheap wine followed by tequila shots followed by beer. The music on the stereo had turned maudlin. Messiness was to be expected, I guess. Daina had rested her head on my lap and cried like I’d never seen her before. She wouldn’t tell me why. I stroked her hair, and then when it seemed safe, got her some tissues and a glass of water and gave her a hug.
We’ve never had secrets. Everything is shared, no matter how embarrassing, no matter how trivial, no matter how dark. That’s just how it is with us. But she wouldn’t tell me anything. She wouldn’t tell me what was wrong.
‘It feels good to be here doesn’t it,’ she says now, her voice coming out in a shaky whisper. ‘It feels right. It’s no t often that things feel right these days.’
I watch as she takes a breath, the curve of her breasts under the heavy jacket rising and falling. She flinches like she’s breathing through some invisible pain that catches her in the ribcage. She turns and looks at me. ‘Nothing’s simple anymore.’
Before I have found the words to ask what’s wrong, her expression changes. Whatever she was thinking, she pushes away. ‘One thing that’s simple, though. I’ll beat you at scrabble tonight Erica Nielsen. Just like I always do.’ And then she sits up, and as quickly as that the moment is gone.
We leave Alex at the campsite, and follow the gravel road to its end. In summer there are cars parked here, but today it looks like we’ve got the whole place to ourselves. A narrow path snakes from the road down to the jetty. As we walk, the dirt turns to sand beneath our feet. The sound of waves is a constant gentle shushing. And then, at last – the sea. I take a deep breath like I can fill myself up on the view. Endless water the same dull grey as the sky, broken by white-capped waves. Towering cliffs that stretch into the distance, the colour of rust and dried blood in the afternoon light. A huge sky in which tiny specks of birds wheel and call. Something inside me expands when I see it.
As it turns out, we’re not alone. A couple of guys are fishing down the end of the jetty, hoods of raincoats pulled over their heads, clouds of blue cigarette smoke rising around them. There are stubbies of beer by their feet and an esky nearby.
‘Bogan alert,’ Daina says, and Mei-Lin laughs. I hope we’re far enough away that they can’t hear.
‘Try for the headland instead?’ I ask, and Daina nods. Mei-Lin stands beside her with her hands in her pockets, hopping from one foot to the other. She has a scarf wrapped around her neck that matches the red of her beanie. This time I’m jealous not of the style, but of the warmth. The wind is icy.
I lead the way along the narrow path that hugs the base of the cliff. Sheer rock towers on one side, and on the other wave-struck ledges drop off into the ocean. Each crash of swell splashes up at us.
‘Guys, I don’t know about this,’ Mei-Lin says. ‘Don’t you think it seems kind of dangerous?’
I ignore her and keep walking.
‘Wait up, Ricky,’ Daina calls. ‘My feet are getting soaked, and it’s frigging freezing. And it’ll be dark soon anyway. Can’t we just come back in the morning?’
Wet feet and bad weather have never stopped us before. The headland is half the reason we come here – it’s an amazing place, a jumble of massive rocks reaching up into the sky and stretching out into the ocean. You can clamber over it for hours. And when you climb to the top, the wind drives straight in off the sea and takes all the thoughts from your brain and the words from your mouth, blasts everything clean.
But Mei-Lin’s here so I’m out-voted, two to one.
When we get back to the campsite, Gus’s car is parked next to Daina’s. Its boot is wide open and we can see boxes piled inside. Gus emerges from the cabin. The saying “larger than life” seems kind of nonsensical to me, but in the case of Gus it applies. He’s tall and solid, more the drinking lots of beer type of solid than the lifting lots of weights type. But he also fills any space he occupies far beyond the confined bounds in which his atoms exist. Maybe there’s some quantum physics explanation, I don’t know. He’s the friendliest, most good-humoured person I know, and people just feel happy when they’re near him.
‘Erica, it’s been too long.’ He makes a beeline for me and wraps me up in one of his big hugs. ‘How are you?’
‘I’m okay. We’ve missed you.’
‘And you must be Mei-Lin? I hear you’ve managed to secure a golden ticket to a bunk in the cabin tonight. Congratulations. You’ve made the right choice.’
Mei-Lin is looking nervous, as though wondering if the hug she just witnessed is obligatory.
‘Thanks,’ she says. ‘It’s nice to meet you.’
‘The mythical Gus,’ Daina grins, and leans into him. ‘I’m sure Mei-Lin gets sick of me talking about you. She probably didn’t even believe you existed until now.’ It’s the happiest I’ve seen Daina look in ages.
And then Alex emerges from his tent, a little bleary-eyed, and there we all are, increasing the occupancy rate of the caravan park by around four hundred percent. Suddenly everything is happening at once. Gus puts the car radio on and a Hilltop Hoods song blares. Alex is cracking open beers. Daina and Mei-Lin go to claim a barbecue at the far end of the caravan park. I climb into the cabin and dig through the boxes of stuff as Gus unloads them. I pull out the essentials: packets of chips, board games, cards, candles.
‘Beer, Ricky?’ Alex asks from the doorway.
‘Thanks,’ I say.
He vanishes again for a minute, then comes back with two Coopers in hand and climbs the steps into the cabin. He hands me one and sits at the bench seat and watches me rummage.
‘You keeping well?’ he asks. The question catches me off guard and I laugh.
‘You sound like someone’s grandfather,’ I say.
‘Not my grandfather,’ he says. ‘Poppa would just say, you look like shit, what’s going on?’ He puts on the heavy accent that I recall, then coughs to clear his throat. ‘Not that you do. Look like shit, I mean.’ He frowns, puts his elbows on the table, chin in his hands, and gazes across at me.
I look down and start shuffling cards to avoid the blush I know is rising in my cheeks. Alex is like that. Either he’s staring off into space at nothing at all, a million miles away, or he’s looking right at you as though you’re the only thing of any significance in the entire universe.
‘Cards?’ I say, to divert him.
‘Of course.’
We play a few hands of rummy. I watch the careful way he holds the cards, how easily he handles them. I watch the serious frown that takes him as he contemplates his next move, the dark lick of hair that falls across his forehead.
We finish the game as we finish our beers, that fact alone propelling us from the comfortable enclosure of the cabin to the wintery afternoon outside.
Gus is sitting on the steps untangling a length of fishing line.
‘So where have you been this time?’ I ask, sitting beside him, while Alex goes for more beer.
‘Me? I did some fruit-picking up north until I got tired of the blisters and the sunstroke, then I worked in a bar for a while in Brizzie. Spent a month or two near Byron, did some surfing. Then the money started to run out and summer was over so I figured either I had to move further north and get another job or head back home while I could still afford the petrol.’
‘How long do you reckon you’ll stay?’
‘Dunno. Couple of months maybe. Mum doesn’t want me to leave again, but...’ he shrugs.
‘You know my dad’s in Perth now? You should go visit him. He’d love to see you,’ I say.
‘It would be good to see Geoff again. How’s he doing?’
Alex materialises beside me with more beer. I listen to the kerchink of the top coming off, then he hands it to me and I take a sip.
‘We don’t talk much,’ I say.
‘That’s a shame,’ Gus gives me a look that is part sympathy, part reprimand.
‘He’s got Claire now, and her kids keep them pretty busy…’ I sound like I’m making excuses for him, I realise as I say it.
‘You’re still his only daughter, Erica. He wouldn’t want to lose touch.’
‘I know.’
I feel a sting of self-pity, even though our lack of contact is mostly my own fault. Dad rings and leaves a message and I don’t return the call. He texts and I forget to reply.
He doesn’t visit though. It’s a long way from Perth to Adelaide and since he left a year ago, he hasn’t been back. It seems like maybe that was the point.
‘You should go see him,’ Gus says.
I’ve had a couple of beers by the time we decide to eat. I trail the boys as they wander across to the barbecue. I feel loose, light-limbed, comfortably removed from my surroundings. It’s getting dark, and the lights beside the barbecue are attracting moths and bugs. They flutter and buzz and their bodies clatter against the glass of the globes, a random staccato. A cask of wine sits on the table. Rows of sausages are frying alongside a blackening mound of onion.
