Summer Beach Reads. Natalie Anderson

was going to be a long four days.

       CHAPTER EIGHT

      THE CONVOY pulled away and rumbled off into the distance, leaving Hayden and Shirley standing on the edge of the Gibbston Highway, daypacks in their hands. Twuwu’s massive head poking out the back of the trailer grew smaller and smaller in the distance until she pulled it back inside her crate.

      Shirley did a slow three-sixty, taking in the dramatic view around them. This part of New Zealand’s South Island was a topographer’s delight, all ancient ranges and green river valleys with turquoise water lying far below. On the horizon, snow-capped mountain peaks were protected by a layer of white cloud.

      ‘So, here we are,’ she breathed.

      ‘They’re expecting us?’

      ‘They know we’re coming today, just not when.’

      And thanks to Caryn and Twuwu being the first piece of freight off the Paxos, they were hours ahead of what she’d forecast.

      They started walking towards a distant car park to check in. Beyond that was an old steel and stone suspension bridge that forded the river rushing by fifty metres below. And dotted all over that were people. Everywhere. Even though it wasn’t yet mid-morning.

      A long scream punctuated the serenity like the cry of an eagle soaring overhead, chased, moments later, by cheers and whistles.

      She sucked in a breath.

      Hayden glanced at her. ‘Nervous?’

      Until that moment, she hadn’t been. She’d been way too busy being distracted by Hayden’s emotional withdrawal. But given how her body reacted to simply walking up the Paxos’s gangplank, she suddenly doubted whether she’d be able to step out into the nothingness of open space at all.

      Cord or no cord.

      Fear was not a good way to get something like a bucket list achieved. She blew the breath out carefully. ‘I guess we’ll find out.’

      The organisers slotted them in after the present batch of jumpers had gone through. They waited for the first hour on the observation deck, which hung out high above the gorge, amongst the friends and families of those taking the leap. As the morning wore on, the deck got more and more slippery as those taking the plunge climbed back up the side of the valley, wet, and then joined the spectators to vicariously relive their experience.

      ‘That’s a good sign,’ Hayden murmured close to her ear. ‘If it was traumatic I doubt people would stick around to watch others going through it.’

      Trauma. Something else she hadn’t thought about. She’d been so focused on how she was going to get out there at all she hadn’t really thought about whether or not she’d ever recover from it.

      The growing spectator crowd pressed them closer together and Hayden slid an arm around behind her to keep the soggiest of them back. Soon enough they were funnelled out of the crowded area to the two ornate stone towers that anchored the bridge to the land at both ends. A production line of safety instructions and advices began there and Shirley busied herself with taking them very seriously and making an endless stream of decisions.

      ‘Single or tandem?’ the young man in the bright T-shirt asked.

      ‘Single,’ she said. Just as Hayden said, ‘Tandem.’

      She looked at him. He lifted an eyebrow. ‘Do you seriously think you’re going to be able to do this alone?’

      She glanced over the edge of the bridge at the sparkle of blue water so very far below. Not as far as in the movies, but far enough to kill you if you got it wrong. There was a couple jumping together as she watched and it wasn’t … intimate … in the way tandem skydives were. They just stood next to each other.

      Until they plunged, of course.

      She dragged her eyes back to the young man. ‘Tandem. Thank you.’

      ‘Bob, touch or full immersion?’

      ‘Uh …’ It was like ordering a pizza. Mozzarella or feta? She glanced at Hayden, lost.

      ‘You want to get wet?’ he translated.

      No. She didn’t want to do this at all, as it turned out. But her mum would have wanted the full splash-down experience. ‘Full immersion?’

      Hayden smiled at her uncertainty and murmured, ‘That’s my girl.’

      They shuffled forward. Only one station from the one with rubber ropes involved. Oh Lord …

      A girl met them this time, even younger than the first and with a heavy Welsh accent. She took them through the safety talk again and outlined the procedure for getting out of the water at the bottom.

      ‘Relax,’ Hayden murmured in her ear.

      Her tight throat translated into a squeaky voice. ‘This place is run by child backpackers …’

      He laughed and shuffled her forward, right to the opening on the side of the red iron bridge. It wasn’t glamorous—far from it—but the men doing the tying on at least did look as if they’d been shaving for longer than a year.

      Ahead of them a young woman jumped, and then a fifty-something man.

      Surely if someone with silver hair could do it then she could do it?

      A heavily tattooed arm waved them forward.

      Her feet locked to the bridge as surely as if they had been bolted there. ‘I can’t do it.’

      Hayden looked back. ‘Yeah, you can. Look how much trouble you’ve gone to getting here.’

      She pressed back against the side of the suspension bridge. ‘It doesn’t matter. I can’t do this.’

      Behind Hayden, the man lowered his arm and started towards them. She instinctively curled her fingers into Hayden’s shirt in case the big guy just picked her up and threw her over. His arms immediately curled around her. ‘What about you just step out there with me. Take a look?’

      She’d been looking all this time—what was going to change about it out there? She shook her head.

      ‘Come on, gorgeous.’ The operator smiled, reaching them. ‘It’s not as bad as it looks. You’ve got a fourteen-year-old behind you.’

      She turned to check on the veracity of that. Sure enough, a toothy kid smiled back at her.

      ‘Is this your first time?’ she asked.

      He shook his ginger hair. ‘Fourth. It’s cool.’

      She looked back to Hayden. ‘There you go,’ he said. ‘It’s cool.’

      She didn’t want to be cool; she wanted to be alive. Then, right hard on the heels of that thought, came another one—they were doing this in the first place to feel alive. To experience life in all its forms.

      Including its terrifying ones.

      Her foot peeled off the deck.

      ‘That’s the way,’ the operator said and whistled for his compatriot, who hung two large white lengths of rubber rope on their bollards.

      Hayden curled his fingers through hers and led her forward.

      ‘Aren’t you scared?’ she whispered up at him.

      ‘Yep. But I’m not about to let you see that. On principle.’ He winked at her. ‘Anything Shiloh can do, I can do.’

      Shiloh. She could do it.

      She let herself be shuffled out onto a platform fixed to the side of the bridge and she let the safety lesson wash over her. Something about the little yellow boat that would come for them when they were done and