of cupboards, or stored under the bed or beneath seat tops. She is trying her best to be a careful, responsible person, even though every time Luke calls she feels dizzy and reckless.
She really likes him. At first, she just wanted to help, but now she is disappointed when he doesn’t drop by. She wants him to look at her. To see her. And it is so bloody obvious that he doesn’t, even though running through the dark together feels like home to Maya. She remembers the first time he took her with him. The way he crouched close to the midnight bushes, long legs splayed like a spider. The way he had smiled at her worried face and said, ‘Looks like I brought the moonlight with me.’
The last time they had been together, Luke had taken her hand as they ran. This is surely an encouraging sign, but he hasn’t ever tried to kiss her, and Maya wonders what she will do if he does. She wishes he would get on with it, because she knows it will be different, not like the other red-faced, beer-addled boys, who can barely make out a girl’s features as they lean forward with eyes elsewhere. She isn’t sure what Luke’s kiss will be like, but it will be something. He is always able to surprise her, ever since the first time he turned up after midnight, knocking softly on the caravan door, asking her to help him. Before then, he was someone she passed in the corridor at school, or nodded to at the shops – not really on her radar. She had heard of his mother, though – Patricia was known in the town for propping up the local bar.
Perhaps that’s why he’d chosen her. She hopes not. She wants it to be more than notoriety that has brought them together.
She sits on the edge of the bed, sipping her drink. She tries to keep her thoughts on Luke, but her mother insists on intruding into her daydreams. It is infuriating, because she has nothing to say to Desi. For so long her mother had been her safety blanket, always on her side, a solid presence cushioning her against the world. But now she struggles to control the shaky, buzzy feeling that hijacks her body when she thinks of what Desi did.
She finishes the drink and sets it aside, then crawls back into bed. She flips over her pillow and takes out the red leather-bound book. She is going to have to return this, but she doesn’t want to yet. Most of it is boring – charts and figures, names and dates – but she loves to read her father’s observations, to study his neat, slanting writing. Why had she never been shown this, when Connor had once held this book in his hands and turned the pages, just as she does now. It is the closest she has ever felt to him, as though she can squeeze the intervening years together, reach through them and touch him.
She had found the book in Desi’s bedside drawer. Her mother had never mentioned it. Perhaps she thought it wouldn’t be important to Maya – but how could she? More likely Desi didn’t want to share, in the same way she was so guarded with her memories, when Maya longed to hear them. Maya is half-tempted to keep the book to spite her. She’d rather have this than the pearl necklace that Desi had solemnly taken off and handed over, as though it might assuage her absence. That had been stuffed into one of the many drawers of the caravan as soon as she got home, and had remained there ever since.
She flips the book closed and puts it aside. The light is increasing, and in the distance she hears the quad bike start up. It will be her grandfather making sure all is well in the campsite. She wonders if he has lain awake all night too. She doesn’t think so, somehow. Charlie never mentions her mother. He may not even realise she is coming home today.
If it weren’t for the unexpected circumstances, Maya would barely know him. Before she came to live in Lovelock Bay, she had only met him a few times, and always by accident, never design. She had been nervous when she first arrived, but while Charlie didn’t go out of his way to talk to her, he was civil when he saw her, and would ask if she