“Here’s your bait,” Torren said. The bag she passed dripped condensation. Even in this light I noticed how brown she was. Skin colour I normally associated with people returning from places like Bali or Cable Beach. She’d kicked off shoes and I saw them under another seat, dirty tennis shoes with backs broken down. Her father called from the helm but his voice seemed to blow back along with cigarette smoke. “Okay, I’ll get it,” she called up to him.
I looked ahead. Lights twinkled along the shoreline. A radio played indistinctly from the cabin, part static, part seventies music. Lara caught three flathead and one flounder that last time. Triumphantly hooking a finger through the gill later, to pose for a photograph. The flounder looked so thin, like flowers pressed in a book, although no one did that anymore. My mother used to leave rose petals in thick, heavy books containing histories of World War 1. As if offering something gentle amongst the images of muddy trenches and gaunt soldiers. I’d find petals brittle and dark when looking up the battle of the Somme.
The skipper cut engines. I listened to the hollow slap of water against the hull. With engines off new sounds emerged. Already a low grind of traffic and clacking of trains from far off. And conversations from other boats transmitting to us as if on wires. I couldn’t recognise the words. Hand lines from the others plopped into water. Torren paused near me.
“Ready? Good spot for flathead usually. See how it goes. They’ve been on the small side lately.”
I watched my line unfurl into water. Lara half hung over the side when she fished. As if she might dive in to catch them with bare hands. Sometimes a crew member asked her to sit back. I couldn’t imagine her ill then. Her strong body jogging, even when we took holidays. Running along bush tracks, grunting as she hurdled rocks. Still having the breath to laugh when I asked her to pick me up on her way back. The day we found out Lara was sick we drove home silently. Blizzards of oak tree leaves slapped over the windscreen. Road slicked wet by rain sticky on tyres. We went inside stunned. Lara sat on the couch, stroking our greyhound’s round forehead. His eyes followed her everywhere. I cooked a Thai red curry, a meal I’d made so often it was virtually prepared with reflex movements. Yet it sat in bowls cooling as we picked and eventually left it. Rang our daughter and listened numbly to her small talk about how hot Brisbane was until I broke the news. Told our dog too but he already somehow knew.
