Three Friends

By R L Hume

This is a novel about three close high school friends, bright year11 girls Carlie, Barb and Alice, who live in a small Queensland beach town in 1969. The story is told by Carlie to her friend Jan fifteen years after the main 1969 events take place, and include more elements from a few other crucial periods.

It’s a friendship story, as the three swim, gossip, and joke together every morning.

It’s a coming-of-age story, as the girls evolve their relationshps with boys, deal with families, take school seriously, make bikinis, and find an unexpected adventure.

It’s a discovering, thinking about, approaching, and even trying out sex story.

A serious love story sits among a few others involving lust.

All the above is mixed with some unique crime, low end crooks, less-than-brilliant cops, and a good sense of humour.

Just ease yourself into the story, and then enjoy every moment.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris AU
• Release date: Aug 16, 2021
• ISBN: 9781664105508

Book preview

Copyright © 2021 by R L Hume.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 08/16/2021

Xlibris

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AU Local: 0283 108 187 ([phone] from outside Australia)

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CONTENTS

Chapter 1

Chapter 1 Continues

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 4 Continues

Chapter 5

Chapter 5 Continues

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 8 Continues

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 17 Continues

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

CHAPTER 1

November 1969

T he girls surprise Carlie. They gang up on her just outside the old nurses’ office at the seldom-used end of the science wing. She knows Anita is angry with her after the history lesson, but for the three of them to push her down to the floor and hold her there is scary. She’d never admit it, but she’s frightened.

The hard linoleum smells of wax and dust. Leslie and another friend press their feet on her arms while Anita stands over her. Carlie looks up to flaking ceiling paint, Anita’s indignant face, and Anita’s icky green knickers. Her mother must have bought them. Which reminds her that she feels draughts at the top of her own legs.

‘Well – this is pretty stupid,’ Carlie says. ‘What do you think you’re going to do?’

‘I’m going to make you pay for calling me names. You think you can say anything you want in class. Well you can’t.’

The history class started innocuously enough with a lesson on the causes of the First World War. Carlie’s friend Bruce asked a serious question.

‘Ms Spence, all these agreements, alliances, and so on between those European countries—would it be fair to say our agreement with America on Vietnam is much the same thing?’

‘I think it would be fair to say that, but I don’t want to bring Vietnam into this. As I’ve said before, I want to deal with the Great War. When you understand that better, it might offer us some lessons for Vietnam.’

‘That’s what I’m trying to get at,’ Bruce insisted. ‘If all those alliances caused all those deaths in the long run, then it seems we haven’t learnt anything since then. Why would Australia sign an agreement that forces us to send troops and weapons to Vietnam?’

‘Because it’s full of Communists,’ Neil announced from the back of the class. ‘Or hadn’t you heard?’

Ms Spence put her hands up in the air as if the act might somehow stop the argument. ‘Okay, I’ll give you five minutes on this topic on the condition you allow me to keep order through the discussion.’

Neil got in first. ‘You have to do everything you can to stop the Communists. I mean, who’d want to live in a Communist country? And why wouldn’t you try to stop them from spreading?’

Carlie countered quickly. ‘Because we don’t want to go into somebody else’s country and kill people. What do we care if the Communists control North Vietnam or the army controls South Vietnam? Neither of them is democratic. Both of them do terrible things to ordinary people. And when the Americans go in there, they just make things worse. More people fight, more terrible weapons are used, more people are killed and wounded and made homeless.’

‘You’re always sticking up for the Communists, Carlie.’ Neil glared at her as though she were a treasonous monster.

‘Did I say a thing about Communists? I thought I was asking that ordinary people not be killed.’

‘That’s right.’ Carlie’s very good friend Barb, who just happened to be Bruce’s twin, stood up for her friend, her brother, and her principles. ‘In two years, because we have an alliance with America, you could be going to Vietnam,’ she told Neil. ‘You could die there. And let’s say you managed to kill a hundred Communists. There’s a minimum of one hundred and one broken families. And absolutely no difference to the result in Vietnam. Or the world. Or anything!’ Barb quivered with emotion, and Carlie knew she worried that Bruce might be sent to fight in the jungles some time. Carlie also worried about that.

‘You just want people to avoid serving their country like they should,’ Anita offered as she looked towards Barb. ‘Well, we’re not all cowards.’

That was the moment Carlie snapped. ‘What would you know about honour, Anita? Though it’s true you might know something about being a coward.’

The class loved it.

‘You tell ’em, Carlie.’

‘Fight, fight . . .’

It took Ms Spence a full minute to achieve even a modicum of order. Carlie suspected she would never allow the words Vietnam to be spoken in the class again and wondered how many detentions she’d get.

‘Get your heel off my elbow,’ Carlie tells Leslie. ‘Just what is it you want?’ she asks Anita.

‘Well, well – what’s this?’

Carlie can hear Neil’s voice approaching from the distance and wishes she could pull her skirt down.

‘Girls fighting amongst themselves? And look at this. Legs like toothpicks. All the way to the top.’

‘Piss off, Neil,’ Anita says as Leslie stoops over to bring Carlie’s skirt below her undies. ‘This is our business.’

‘If you say so. You know, my dog’s got better legs than those.’

‘Will you get going!?’

The girls watch Neil walk away for a few seconds before turning their attention back to Carlie. Leslie may have disliked Neil enough to hide bits of Carlie from him earlier, but now she presses her heel harder onto the inside of Carlie’s elbow.

‘Oow!’

‘See – she is a coward.’

Carlie can’t help herself. ‘Three girls gang up on one and call her a coward—what’s wrong with this picture?’

‘You think you’re so smart.’ Anita kneels down with a cheap ballpoint in her hand. She takes the top off the writing point. ‘You and your smart-ass mates. Oh, teacher, I know the answer to this. Oh teacher, I know the answer to that. I know the answer to every bloody thing. And you didn’t even get a detention.’

Carlie keeps her eyes on the end of the pen. When Anita pulls Carlie’s skirt back up, she loses sight of the pen. Awful thoughts leap to the front of her mind. She’s going to stab me right between the . . . What if she shoves that right up . . .

She almost pees her pants with relief when Anita grinds an X on the skin of her hipbone.

‘That’s to remember me by.’

Carlie knows it’s a good time to keep quiet. She watches Anita get up to a standing position, though the other girls still hold her down. Her mouth, not always reliable, proceeds of its own accord.

‘I thought you were worried about being called a coward, but here you are – proving you are. Owch!’

Anita has stabbed her in the side of the knee with the pen. Carlie wonders if she broke the skin. Is ballpoint ink poisonous?

‘I’ll give you a chance to see which of us is a coward,’ Carlie says. ‘Just you and me. One on one.’

‘Oh yeah? What are you going to do? Hit me with your school bag?’ Anita leers.

‘I’ll see you in the surf after school. If you dare.’

Anita nods at the other two girls, who let Carlie up.

‘The surf? That should be something. You can show me how brave you are by splashing water in my face.’

Carlie’s mouth does it again. ‘I was thinking more about drowning you—well, half drowning you.’

Anita smiles. ‘You? Half drown me? You couldn’t tenth drown me.’ She looks to the others as she laughs. They join in with her.

‘You show up and take me on, and I’ll admit you’re brave.’

‘Really? You’ll admit I’m brave?’

‘Sure, if you dare show up.’

Anita’s hand clenches and unclenches. The girls step with menace towards Carlie.

‘All right then. What time?’

The girls ease back towards Anita.

Carlie lets out a breath so nobody can hear it.

Carlie stands at the bus stop with almost a dozen other kids across the road from Callum State High School, waiting for her ride home to Midjoudra Beach. She cannot believe that Anita has agreed to meet her at the flags in front of the Surf Life Saving Club. She suspects Anita is pretty tough; but in the water, she’ll be a sitting duck. She smiles as she thinks about what she’ll do. She won’t drown her, of course. Humiliation is what’s needed.

Interruption 1

October 1985

Carlie, pleased that Jan is finally visiting after their many years apart, watches her sip her way through half a bottle of chardonnay as Carlie tells her story. Well – the story of her and Barb and Alice. And maybe Bruce, but he was a boy back then. Jan seems to like the tale. Her eyes widen from time to time, her brow goes up; for a brief moment her fingers went white around the wine-glass stem. Now a furrow shows on her brow.

Carlie tells the story because Jan has asked her to. It’s a long story, but she’s told Jan that a certain mystery will be revealed by the time she gets to the end. Because the mystery involves Jan in a very important if secondary sort of way, Jan has been insistent. She also likes to ask questions.

‘Look, I suppose all this schoolgirl mayhem is exciting and so on, but you need to fill me in on some details here, like, where’s Callum? Where’s Midjoudra Beach? I mean, I know they’re in Queensland, but I was always a bit vague about where you lived.’

Carlie is surprised Jan has to ask this question. They’ve been tremendous friends for over 12 years. Okay, Jan lived in Canada and Italy for many of those years, but still . . .

‘You go north along the main road from Brisbane about 120 kilometres, and that’s Callum. It had, oh, twenty thousand people back in 1969. Then you go about 70 kilometres straight east until you hit the Pacific Ocean, and that’s Midjoudra Beach. It’s pretty tiny compared to all those other places along the Sunshine Coast. There were less than 500 people there when I was a teenager.’

‘Nice. So did you live right on the beach?’

‘No, almost nobody lived on the beach there. But everybody was close.’ Carlie offers to fill Jan’s glass; she declines. ‘Imagine you’re in a plane,’ Carlie goes on. ‘When you look down at Midjoudra Beach, you see this long line of sand and surf with a big headland sticking out into the water near the bottom of the town. Our house and a few others sat along the only road running south of the headland – lots of bush around us – it was great. All these big paperbark melaleucas lined the street right across the road from us, and this rough path started near them to run along in a rather circuitous manner right down to the beach below. I always thought of it as our beach. Most of the town was north of the headland. That’s where Barb and Alice lived, and Stuart—well, most people.’

‘Okay, I get the idea. And you’re in year, year . . .

‘Eleven. Towards the end of the school year.’

‘I think I can remember some things from grade eleven. And let me double-check: this story is going to explain your crazy period?’

‘My insane period?’

‘More like your suicidal period.’

‘It is, though not right away, of course.’

‘I accept that. But it had better be good. I mean, you really were a nutcase.’

‘You don’t have to rub it in.’

CHAPTER 1 CONTINUES

A s soon as Carlie gets home, she phones Barb.

‘I heard you and Anita are going to battle to the death this afternoon,’ Barb tells her. ‘Do you need some support from Alice and me?’

‘It’d be good. I’m sure some of Anita’s mates will be there. I don’t think you’ll actually need to do anything. Just be around in case.’

‘Fine. I’ll be there.’

She phones Alice next. Her other best friend is not in her history class, but she too has heard the word.

‘What time are you meeting her?’

‘Five o’clock.’

‘Okay – I might have to bring Stuart along. I told him I’d meet him this afternoon.’

‘That’s okay. Are you guys getting serious?’

‘That’s for me to know and you to find out.’

‘Okay – be like that.’

Carlie’s mum and little brother come in the front door as Carlie hangs the phone up.

‘Hi, sweetie. Good day?’ Her mum places her bags on the kitchen counter.

‘Yeah, it was good. Listen, I told a friend I’d meet her at the beach this afternoon. I won’t be long.’

‘Can I come too?’ Kenny is in his last year at primary school. As a boy and a close relative, he often scoffs at his big sister. But he’s always asking her to introduce him to a more grown-up world. Carlie doesn’t think he should have it both ways.

‘No. There’s no time.’

‘Carlie, couldn’t you—’

‘Please, Mum, this isn’t the right moment. Really.’

‘All right. But I want you back in time to deal with the vegetables.’

‘I’ll be back well before tea—I promise.’

Carlie almost runs to her room to put on her swimmers.

To get to the town beach, Carlie jogs along the road leading to the Midjoudra Beach post office. She quickly passes the intersection with the road running up to the headland reserve parking lot and senses she’s going to be early, so she walks down the hill to the shops, which sit just behind the local Surf Life Saving Club, an ugly cube of unpainted concrete blocks at the front of the town beach. Finding the path that crosses the dune to the beach, she takes off her sandals and carries them with her towel.

Barb is already there, standing near the flag closest to the headland. Anita and her friends make their way from the parking area to the other flag. On the other side, the ocean, the sand, and the surf all run on indefinitely, with a vague salty atmosphere growing thicker as the distance increases.

‘I can’t believe Anita agreed to this,’ Barb says as she takes Carlie’s things.

‘Me neither. But then, she doesn’t know what we do every morning.’

‘True. Look – there’s Alice. Is that Stuart with her?’

‘It must be – she said he’d be coming.’

‘So we finally get to meet him. Gee – he’s a bit older than her, isn’t he?’

‘Hey, Carlie.’ Anita and Leslie walk towards them. ‘You gonna do this, or do you want to chicken out?’

‘No, let’s do it right now. In the water. Just you and I, right?’

‘Right.’

Leslie starts to follow as Carlie and Anita walk towards the surf, but Anita waves her away.

‘You can still get out of this if you want,’ Carlie tells Anita.

‘You think I’m afraid of a little squirt like you?’

‘I may be little, but I’m small.’

‘Is that supposed to be smart? Listen to me laugh.’ Anita pretends to throw up. Carlie is impressed with the realism.

The two finally face each other in the water behind the front line of surf. When a wave peaks, it’s up to their shoulders. In the trough, it comes to their waists.

‘All right. First one to say uncle,’ Anita says.

Carlie is surprised Anita is making things so simple. The thought is almost honourable. ‘Okay. You ready?’

‘I’m ready.’

Anita lunges at Carlie, her face contorted, her hands reaching for Carlie’s windpipe.

Carlie grabs Anita’s wrists, backs up, and thrusts her arms to one side as she dives away to the other.

But Anita keeps coming her way. ‘I knew you were a coward.’

Carlie senses a coming wave and dives straight down at Anita’s feet, grabbing her ankles. She places her own her feet carefully onto the ocean floor as she knocks one of Anita’s sideways and gets her shoulders between Anita’s legs. Standing up as far as she can, she feels Anita sliding down her back headfirst into the water. Carlie makes a quick 180-degree turn and grabs Anita’s ankles again before she can recover. This time, she lifts Anita’s feet as high as she can; Anita exhibits an enforced handstand as the wave troughs. Carlie lets Anita’s legs fall down and leaps onto her back.

It would be so easy to put one foot on Anita’s closest arm and the other on her shoulder, forcing her well and truly to the bottom. For a moment, Anita might have to worry about drowning. Or even half drowning.

But that’s not in Carlie’s nature. Instead, she unties the back of Anita’s bikini top, then rolls off to the side and watches her come up.

Anita hasn’t noticed what Carlie has done. ‘So you got lucky. That’s not going to happen again.’ She moves towards Carlie once more, her arms outstretched. Carlie backs into deeper water, pleased to see Anita come after her. She fakes a dive towards Anita’s feet, then pounces at her, grabbing her left arm with both hands. Anita grabs back, but Carlie pulls her sideways into the water. She dives for her feet again to upend her a second time. This time, she pulls at the loosened swim top. It comes away easily, and Carlie squeezes it in her hand as she starts for the shallows.

‘Hey, look what I’ve got!’ she shouts as she runs across the little waves rolling onto the sand and holds the string and cups up for all to see. Her plan is to put Anita’s top down in the centre of the beach and watch her squirm as she thinks about coming out to recover it. But as she plops it onto the sand she realises she’s forgotten about Leslie, who is now running full tilt towards her. She sees that Barb and Alice have also started moving.

She changes her plan in a split second, picking the top back up just before Leslie gets there and dashing away as Leslie’s hand scrapes the skin on her waist. She runs as fast as she’s ever run in her life to stay ahead of Leslie, making a huge arc back towards the water.

Maybe it would be smarter to apologise, she thinks.

Once in the shallows, she’s in her element. Her dive through the first big wave takes her well away from the shore and halfway towards Anita, who is carefully keeping her boobs below the surface of the water.

Carlie stops just in front of her. She knows what she wants to say, but she has to catch her breath first.

‘That was a dirty trick,’ Anita tells her. ‘How did you do that?’

Carlie huffs a little more. ‘Okay, this is yours.’ She offers Anita her top.

Anita takes it while glowering.

‘And I want to say I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said what I did.’

‘You said you’d admit I was brave. Quit trying to change things.’

Carlie has a couple of final puffs. ‘You were brave. I admit it. Very brave.’

‘You don’t sound like you really mean it. And quit looking.’ Anita tries to put her top back on, but a wave pulls one side away.

‘Let me help. Just turn around.’

Anita turns and Carlie does up both the top and bottom ties. Anita turns back to face her.

‘Don’t think this is going to make us mates or anything.’

‘Of course not.’

‘You were trying to make fun of me, weren’t you, in front of everybody?’

‘Well, you stabbed me here, didn’t you?’ Carlie shows Anita the blue X still sitting on her hipbone.

‘You deserved it. You and your big mouth. Just remember, there’s no water around the school.’

‘Is that a threat?’

‘I’m just reminding you.’

Carlie is really pissed off with Anita’s reaction to her apology. She turns her upside down one more time before leaving the surf to see her friends.

CHAPTER 2

November 1969

S tuart is surprised to see a strange car in front of the house he rents with Alex and even more surprised to see Alex arguing with two men near the bottom of the front-door steps. He parks his ute on the driveway and hops out to join them.

Alex gives him a partial wave. ‘Stuart, these guys think they have the right to look at the stuff in our locker.’

The two men look towards Stuart as though he’s come onto their property rather than the other way around.

‘Police,’ one of them says. ‘We have reason to believe you may have stolen property in your possession. We’d like to look at these goods under your house.’

Stuart doesn’t like the man’s tone. He also finds it hard to believe that plainclothes detectives could be found in Midjoudra Beach. ‘Don’t you have to show some identification?’ he asks them.

‘We’ve already shown your mate,’ the man tells him.

‘I’d like to see for myself.’

The man glowers at him and flashes a card.

‘I want to really see it.’

The man is reluctant to hand it to him but finally does.

‘So – Ron Hickson.’

‘Detective Constable Ron Hickson.’ The tone is surly.

‘Detective Constable Carl Clouther,’ the other man says in a more pleasant voice.

Stuart hands the card back. ‘All we have is stuff we’ve bought at garage sales and closing-down sales.’

‘I told them all that,’ Alex says.

‘Well, we have information that says you may have something more,’ Hickson tells them. ‘So are you going to let us look at your collection here?’ He looks under the old high-set house towards their metal mesh lock-up containing piles of wooden and cardboard boxes, hessian bags, and general clutter.

‘No. I mean, why should we?’

‘I note your uncooperative attitude and invite you to look carefully at this.’ Hickson pulls a sheet of paper from his jacket pocket. ‘It’s a search warrant.’

Shit, Stuart thinks and wishes he were back at the beach.

Originally, Stuart intended to take Alice to an isolated viewpoint he knew, where they might look at the distant ocean and make out for a while, but was happy enough to accompany her to the beach when she asked him. He was particularly happy when she took off her beach cover to watch her friend tussle in the water with another girl. Nobody had a better figure than Alice, and that included all the women he’d ever seen in the myriad of pictures he’d enjoyed in many a men’s magazine. He had to be careful not to stare at her as she introduced her friends to him.

‘Stuart, this is my best buddy Barb,’ Alice said as an attractive girl with a mop of short hair approached them, wearing the most god-awful two-piece swimmers he’d ever seen. ‘She’s one of the brains in the school.’

‘Will you cut it out?’ Barb was obviously uncomfortable with Alice’s description. ‘Hi, Stuart. It’s nice to meet you.’ Barb offered her hand. Looked at him very carefully as they shook.

‘Hi Barb.’

‘That’s my other best buddy Carlie in the water, the short one with the black hair. You’ll meet her when she comes out of the water later.’

Stuart decided quickly that this Carlie was a fairly strange chick. She came charging out of the water at a rate of knots with a piece of material in her hand and placed it on the sand in front of the flags as though it was a great accomplishment. When another girl came after her, she picked it back up and ran twice as fast back to the water again.

‘What’s she doing?’ Stuart asked.

‘She’s defending my honour,’ Barb said.

Stuart thought he wouldn’t ask any more questions. He might just see how Alice reacted if he let a hand rest on her hip. When she put an arm around his waist, he knew he was onto a good thing. He tried slipping a couple of fingers just under the elastic of her bottoms. She responded with a little squeeze.

With accurately pleasant memories of the curve of Alice’s hipbone lingering in his fingers, Stuart watches Alex give Clouther the key to their lock-up. He shouldn’t have left the beach. He should have stayed and let Alex handle all this. Though Alex doesn’t know about the marijuana he’s stashed up in the kitchen cupboard. Does the warrant allow them to look everywhere? It probably doesn’t matter. They seem to be obsessed with the lock-up.

Isn’t life strange? he thinks. Here are the police, looking ever so thoroughly through all their legitimate business stock as the drugs sit upstairs. And on the day before his dealer has asked to see him.

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Detective Constable Hickson stands in front of his sergeant until Clouther enters the office behind him. Trust Clouther to be late, he thinks. It’s not as if it’s all that far from Midjoudra Beach to Callum.

‘Sit, sit,’ Sergeant Rudd tells them. ‘So was there anything to that complaint?’

‘I don’t think so,’ Clouther answers. ‘They seem to be legitimate low-end traders. We went through dozens of boxes—’

‘I’d say bloody hundreds,’ Hickson adds.

‘Plastic bags, lots of old stuff from garage sales—they had receipts for everything.’

‘No sign of good cameras?’

‘Not even cheap cameras. I’d say that bloke who dobbed them in is a crank. All he’s done is waste our time.’

‘Maybe,’ Hickson says. ‘But that Stuart fellow—I wouldn’t mind getting him for something. Asshole.’ He makes a mental note to keep an eye out for Stuart’s ute.

‘He made Ron show him his badge. Even though his mate had already seen it.’

‘Well, there’s smart-asses everywhere,’ Rudd reminds them. ‘It’s your job not to let them put you off your game.’

‘Yes, Sergeant.’

‘Now, a little information. Our colleagues up in Rocky think they might be onto a local drug ring.’

‘That’s a long ways away.’

‘Let me finish, thank you very much. They have their eyes on some marijuana crops up there, and think they’ve seen some of it loaded into a large truck. Well, a snitch has. The truck was headed south, and the snitch claims it drops stuff off all the way down to Brisbane.’

‘Do they know what it looks like?’

‘No. Not yet.’

‘Do they know where it stops?’

‘Not really. But they’re guessing it would provide stuff for all the centres of population along the highway. And that would probably include us.’

‘Ahh.’ The two constables look towards each other for a moment.

‘Do Uniform know about this?’ Clouther asks.

‘Of course. But they have a lot of everyday police work to accomplish. Whereas you two are actually expected to investigate.’

Hickson wonders how they’re supposed to get anywhere on the basis of such minimal information. ‘That’s not much to go on, Sarge.’

‘That’s true. But didn’t I hear you say you were hoping to turn somebody into a grass?’

Hickson wishes, not for the first time, he’d kept his mouth closed. When you’re new to the game, you can do silly things to impress others. In truth, he knows nobody. ‘Yeah, Sarge, I’ll see what I can do.’

Walking away from the office with his colleague, Hickson finds a wonderful vision entering his mind. He sees Stuart’s ute and stops it. Drugs are spread everywhere. He hauls him down to the holding cells. Stuart trembles in front of him.

‘What are you grinning at?’ Clouther asks him.

Hickson thinks he might keep the image to himself. ‘Just remembering a pleasant moment from the past. It was a long time ago, mind you.’

CHAPTER 3

November 1969

C arlie’s eyes blink open. She turns her alarm off five seconds before it’s due to buzz as she always does. Friday, a weekend coming up—how good is that? She rinses her face, puts on her swimmers, grabs a biscuit and towel, and heads out the back door for the beach.

Nibbling at her biscuit, she arrives at the path near her side of the headland and begins the walk down to the sand. At this time of the morning the beach belongs to her and her friends – she’s never seen another person here in all the time she and Barb and Alice have enjoyed their early morning swims. She checks the water temperature with a toe before looking back. Barb and Alice come down the path towards her.

‘Hey, Carlie’, Barb says as they approach, ‘you’re still alive. I hear Anita said she’s going to kill you.’

‘I know. I’m shivering in my boots. Oops – where are my boots?’

‘I was just telling Alice how nice-looking Stuart is,’ Barb says.

‘True. Plus, he has some muscles,’ Carlie adds.

Alice’s smile is even bigger than usual. ‘He has. They’re nice, aren’t they?’ She takes off her beach cover and puts it down on the sand with her towel. The others do the same.

Carlie notices something on Alice’s neck, possibly a mosquito bite. Though maybe not. ‘What’s that on the side of your neck? Just above your shoulder?’

‘Oh, nothing.’

Carlie looks closer. ‘Yes, there is. Right there.’

‘All right. If you really have to know, it’s a hickey.’

‘A what?’

‘A hickey, a love bite.’

Carlie looks puzzled.

Barb snickers. ‘Don’t you know about hickeys?’

Barb and Alice exchange looks, then move in on Carlie. Barb holds her from behind.

‘I’ll do it,’ Alice tells Barb as she grabs Carlie’s wrists and brings her mouth to Carlie’s neck. She bites her just long enough and hard enough to leave a mark before she and Barb dash away to the edge of the surf.

Carlie is left touching the skin where Alice bit her. ‘Oww. What did you do?’

The others ignore her. Alice points at an incoming wave. ‘That one.’

‘Right,’ Barb replies.

Carlie walks towards them, still rubbing at her neck. ‘Tell me what you did.’

Alice and Barb charge ahead and dive together under the wave. Carlie runs behind them, plunging into the following wave. Barb and Alice emerge from under the water first, but Alice’s bikini bottoms have almost dropped to her knees. Carlie comes up as Barb yells out and charges towards Alice’s back.

‘Aiee! Bare bottom!’ Barb screeches.

‘Paddywhacks,’ Carlie joins in.

As Alice tries to pull up her bottoms the other girls slap her backside.

‘Cut it out, will you?’

Now Carlie pulls down the back of Barb’s bottoms and slaps her backside before diving away.

‘Hey!’

A few minutes later, the three girls emerge from the water together and move towards their towels.

‘What I mean is’, Carlie asks the others, ‘what’s the fun in being bitten? In what way does that bring pleasure?’

‘You don’t do it like I just did it,’ Alice tells her. ‘It’s more of a nibbling and a sucking. You take your time over it. It can send little shivers all over your neck and spine.’

Carlie is dubious. ‘Oh yeah?’ She turns to Barb. ‘Have you had a love bite?’

‘Of course.’

‘I’ll bet.’ Carlie’s tired of being the one who doesn’t know things. Of being the naïve person. She suspects Barb is almost as ignorant as she is about lots of things, though she’ll never admit it. Alice, though, is another story. She’s a year older and from a big city. She knows a lot. Has done a lot.

As the girls dry off the surface water, Alice has to pull her bottoms up again. ‘That’s bloody it for these swimmers. Tomorrow I’m getting some new ones.’

‘Really? What’ll you get?’ Barb asks her.

‘I don’t know. I haven’t got much money. Something I can chop down and fix up, you know.’

Carlie doesn’t know. Again, she doesn’t have a clue. Though she can remember the time at the beginning of grade ten when Alice, new to the school, talked about giving the chop to her high school uniform skirts. ‘You mean take up the hem?’ Carlie asked.

‘That’s right. I mean, look at Anita. And Lorraine and Doreen and that lot: their skirts are way higher than mine. And they give me these looks – you know the kind – "How pathetic is she? What’s the matter with her? What are you, some sort of scaredy-cat?"’

Carlie’s mind searched for a moment, then found a memory. ‘Is that what those looks were for?’

‘That’s right. But I’m not taking any more shit from those guys. I’m going to do it right now. Today. Do you want me to do yours too? And what about you, Barb?’

Carlie loved the idea. Barb did too but knew her parents wouldn’t permit it. Carlie’s parents were fairly easygoing, though she wasn’t sure what they’d say.

‘How high are you going to make them?’ Carlie asked as they stood at Alice’s mum’s sewing table.

‘I think the same as my denim mini,’ Alice told her before pulling it out and putting it on. ‘Yes, that’s about right.’ She took it off, made some measurements, got one of her school skirts, made some similar measurements, and put some marks on it.

As Alice worked, Carlie mentally compared the length of Alice’s denim mini to the skirts Anita and Doreen wore. Alice would be wearing the shortest skirts in school and then some.

Alice pinned up the school skirt hem, put it on, and stood in front of the mirror. ‘I could make it a little shorter, but I might leave it at that. Don’t want it to be illegal or anything.’

She slipped the skirt off again. ‘Shall we do yours when I’ve finished mine?’

‘Yes, please.’ Carlie put her hands to her face in anticipation of wearing such a daring skirt.

Carlie’s mum put her hands to her face when Carlie showed her what Alice had done. ‘Good grief, Carlie. Do you really want to wear a skirt that short to school?’

The reply came automatically. ‘Everybody else does.’

‘Some maybe. Not many.’

‘Alice’s is even shorter.’

‘We’ll see what your father says.’

When her father finally came home after working in Sydney for the week, and after the hellos and cuddles and conversations and tea, Carlie finally stood in front of him, feeling that perhaps the skirt might be a little too short after all. Though she’d never admit it.

Her dad’s eyes briefly flicked to the hem, over to her mum, and then to Carlie’s eyes, burrowing into them.

‘Let‘s think a little bit about who’s going to look at this, and what they might think, and what they might say.’

Carlie recognised her father’s tone. When he sounded this rational she was hardly ever able to disagree with him.

‘Old and middle-aged women: some will hate it, some will disapprove of it. How much does this worry you?’

How silly a thought was that? ‘Not much. Not at all, really.’

‘Mmm. Young women: a few will hate, some will approve, a few will admire, and a number will be jealous. How much does this worry you?’

‘Not much.’

‘Men of every age and boys of almost every age: a few will hate, a few will disapprove, but most will like, and many will lust. You understand the term lust?’

‘Of course I do. And you’re exaggerating.’

Her dad steals a quick look towards her mum. ‘I most certainly am not. Most men – including your dirty old men and your despicable middle-aged men as well as your attractive young men – will be looking. Most will admire. But in addition’— her dad is good at pausing for effect —‘most will think, Boy, would I ever like to see the rest of that nubile young body. Boy, would I ever like to get into that girl’s pants. And this is the crux. The blokes you hate the most will be saying, Boy, if I ever come across her on a dark night . . .’

‘Dad!’

‘Sean!’

‘I am only speaking the truth. If you can live with the consequences