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‘Oh,’ she said, and he noted the speedometer in the car had dropped to about 58 despite the fact they were in an 80 zone. Luckily there was no one behind them. Speeding was dangerous, but going too slow could also be dangerous.

‘We were more than business partners,’ she added. ‘We weren’t together or anything, but it felt like we could have been. If we both wanted it. If either of us had said it in so many words.’

Will felt perilously on the brink of psychology. He felt like he was standing at the edge of a crack in the earth, where the bottom was so deep, so dark, so shrouded in murk, he couldn’t see what lay there. What would a friend say in this situation? One whose brain hadn’t started throwing up phrases likegrief is universalandthere are stages to go through and there’s no benefit to hurrying themandone of those stages can be guilt.

A friend would concentrate on what Jodie was saying. Answer accordingly.

‘Did you want there to be something more between you?’

They passed the roadside sign announcing they’d reached the small cluster of houses that made up the speck on the map known as Dunoon. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Isn’t that terrible? Rod is dead, and I don’t know if I’m grieving his loss because it threw my life under the bus, or because I loved him and never got around to saying it. Feeling it, even.’

Her voice was a little thick. As averse as he was to getting emotionally involved in someone else’s trauma, he reached out and put his hand on her knee. Patted gently. ‘I’m sorry.’

The indicator started tick-tick-ticking well in advance of a left-hand turn they needed to make, but they’d driven the three hundred metres and turned left before he realised he was supposed to be giving the directions.

‘Do you know the way to the rock pool already?’ he said.

‘Oh, shit,’ she said. And then let out a self-deprecatory laugh.

‘Youdoknow the way.’

She shrugged. ‘I may have done a search online for rock pools around Clarence.’

‘But then … why ask me if I knew of one? We could have just come straight here.’

She winced. ‘I know. I was … well. To be honest, I have an ulterior motive. I wanted to see if you recognised me.’

He frowned. ‘Jodie. Pretty sure I’ve been “recognising” you every day for a couple of weeks now.’

She pulled into the unmarked clearing where the road did a switchback and the wood and wire boundary fence of a local farm got lost in a cluster of long weed and lantana. Exactly the place he would have told her to pull over to access the rock pool.Exactly.

‘Let’s go,’ she said. ‘It’ll be less embarrassing if I show you.’

Jodie was fit. She loped along the rough foot track like a dingo who’d sniffed out steak cooking on a campfire after a long lean patch surviving off witchetty grubs. For a woman who’d confessed to spending almost a year moping on a sofa, she had some pace.

‘Have you forgotten I’m wounded?’ he called after her. ‘Saving your arse, as I recall.’

She slowed a little, but still reached the rock pool well ahead of him. By the time he made it, the pull in his thigh was letting him know there’d be an ibuprofen in his near future if he wanted to sleep that night. She was standing, barefoot, on the large granite boulders that formed the cradle of the rock pool, and she was looking at him with her head slightly tilted.

‘You know, the boardies are just right. The hair’s a little short, and a little darker than it ought to be, but once you’ve got your shirt off, I think we’ll be able to overlook those shortcomings.’

Thiswas more fun than stringing up lights and painting arrows onto parking signs.

He grinned. ‘I have no idea what you are playing at, but I’m game to strip if you are.’

She didn’t hesitate, just reached down to the hem of the colourful cotton blouse she was wearing and reefed it off.

She looked spectacular in a swimsuit. It was navy, and not racy at all. It looked sturdy enough to compete in Iron Woman events or wrestle bronze whalers or rescue not-between-the-flags tourists.

He took his own shirt off and chucked it on the rock next to her dress. ‘What now?’ he said, because clearly some plan was afoot that she had not bothered to read him in on.

‘If you were going to jump in, where would you do it from?’

He came to stand beside her, conscious of the sun streaming down on their bare skin, and her hair fluttering in the breeze, and the band of sweat across the small of his back that was enjoying that same breeze. The cicadas, which had grown silent when they’d first disturbed the country quiet with their two-legged presence, had choired up again, and the water tumbling through the rocks above them to the pool below was a mellow, dappled, lovely sound.

There were probably leeches around, but it didn’t seem the time to mention them.

After big rains, this pool was much deeper, and the tumble of water above them was a waterfall, turning the upper catchment of the rock pool into a whirlpool. Dangerously so, on some occasions. Why, once he even—