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the rock. The chill of the water took the day’s heat from her in a second. She breathed out, sinking slowly, eyes open to the greenish water. There was no earthly pull on her body, just a slow drifting down, a stream of bubbles trailing to the surface. She couldn’t help picturing Mae underwater, her hair waving in the harbour currents, the shadow of the dinghy far above. Suddenly her heart was pounding and there was no air left in her lungs and she jabbed her feet deep into fine oozing silt to find the bottom and push to the surface.
    She looked around for Petal, who called, ‘Come over here. You can see the pointy mountain behind Julia’s place. Hermit’s Bluff. Some guy lives up there in a shack. Almost never comes into town. I can’t get her to admit it but someone told me that Julia has a thing going with him.’
    From where Allie floated on her back, her heart still beating hard, the tree trunks seemed to lean over the creek, tilting at precarious angles, crowding out the small window of sky overhead. The light was fading and the forest path they came along had disappeared into shadow. She paddled over to Petal. ‘Saul Philips was my mother’s first love.’
    ‘Oh really?’ Petal raised her eyebrows.
    ‘So he lives at the end of the valley?’
    ‘Yeah.’
    ‘Where exactly? Tell me where he lives.’
    ‘On his father’s place…well, beyond his father’s house, further along the creek. In a little cabin.’
    ‘And is he married?’ He couldn’t be. She had always imagined him waiting too.
    ‘No. Not married. At least not at the moment. I don’t know people’s history. I’ve only been here a little while.’ She reached over and stroked Allie’s shoulder underwater, ‘Doesn’t this water make your skin feel soft?’ She touched her own arm, ‘So is your mother coming up too?’
    ‘No. I’m going back. She’s at home, or will be soon.’ She followed Petal up onto the big rock that was warm and slick with rain. Perhaps this was Mae’s kissing rock.
    Petal sat up and started plaiting her hair. ‘You’re an outsider until you’ve been here at least thirty years, or so everyone keeps telling me.’
    ‘I was born here. Well, in town.’
    ‘Yes, but you went away. So I don’t know what that makes you. Julia would know about Saul, wouldn’t she? Ask her. And tell me what you find out.’
    ‘How old are you?’
    ‘How old do you think?’
    Allie shrugged, ‘Twenty?’
    ‘I’m the same age as Julia. Twenty-seven. She’s like twenty-seven going on forty, don’t you think? Sometimes she treats me like the naughty kid camping up in the forest.’
    ‘You camp in the forest?’
    ‘Didn’t you know? I live up the back of Julia’s property in my caravan. I parked it there a few years ago. Couldn’t tow it out now, though, even if I still had a car. Julia’s bloody trees have closed me in. The van will just disintegrate there I guess.’ She finished her long braid and turned to Allie. ‘Want me to plait yours?’
    Allie turned her back to Petal and shut her eyes to the familiar sensation of fingers threading through her long hair, tugging painfully at her scalp.
    Petal spoke close to her ear, ‘What do you think someone who’s lonely looks like?’
    ‘Huh?’
    ‘You said you thought Julia was lonely. How do you know?’
    ‘Well… I don’t know. She’s on her own here and she wants me to stay.’
    Petal took an elastic hair band from her wrist and tied the end of Allie’s plait. ‘I saw her shoot a calf once. Someone hit it out on the road in front of her place. She put the gun to its head and blew its brains out. Then she went home and had a cup of tea. She’s tough as anything, you know. She doesn’t need other people.’
    Allie shrugged. Her skin smelt of the brackish creek water and the plait was too tight. She stood up and pulled her damp dress over her head.
    The sugary smell of baking reached her as she walked through the misty rain and up the back steps. She stopped on