The Near Miss by Fran Cusworth

when most of their peers were seeing out their adolescence in the local shopping mall. One member had bought an old farmhouse and moved down here to raise a family, drawing back all the old gang again in a regular festival of nostalgia. Some of these adults had children of their own now, and these offspring were doing laps around the farmhouse, a mad tribe brandishing light sabers and running through stars, falling in long grass, city kids dizzy with so much space and freedom. From the trampoline, Eddy could hear shrieks and see gashes of torchlight bumping through the night.
    Mary said: ‘Do you think you and Romy might have kids?’
    â€˜I hope so.’ He felt in his pocket for the velvet-coated box holding the ring. ‘My mother would love a grandchild.’
    There was a pause from Mary at this, something that went unsaid. Then she spoke. ‘Romy’s so lucky to have you.’
    â€˜Why, cos I’m a bloke who wants a kid?’
    â€˜Cos you’re a bloke who thinks about his mum, and about what she wants.’
    He exhaled, a little indignant, not sure whether to be flattered or feel silly. ‘Right.’
    â€˜Hope my girls find men like you.’
    â€˜Mary! I’m not that good.’
    â€˜Yes, you are. You’re better.’
    Blushing in the dark, he squeezed the ring box tight; imagined losing it, in this wilderness of long grass and fruit trees; a pastoral island barely marked out by wire in a sea of paddock. You might never see it again; a month’s salary trampled into the cow dung.\
    â€˜Getting cold. Might head back.’
    He returned to the fire and stood close to Romy. She wore a jacket of synthetic fur and she slipped her arm through his.
    â€˜Where have you been?’
    â€˜On the trampoline.’
    â€˜Ah.’
    â€˜Want to go for a walk? Look at the stars?’ He rolled the velvet box around the tips of his fingers, out of sight.
    â€˜No, thanks.’ She sipped a can of beer and looked across the fire to where Alison and Peter were deep in discussion about agents and publicists. One was a writer, one was a painter, and they were both embarrassingly earnest about their success. Earlier, Romy had been a little dismissive privately in the car (only a children’s author, she’d said), but she grew stiff and silent now as she eavesdropped. She and these two had been the group’s three creatives, the ones destined to be artists. The writer, the painter, and the actor. She let go of Eddy’s arm and moved closer to them.
    â€˜So when’s your exhibition, Peter?’
    â€˜Next month. And you? Any auditions coming up?’
    â€˜I just did the one for the photocopy paper ad,’ Romy said, with studied offhandedness. ‘But you know how they are. They always want some blonde bimbo.’ The photocopy audition had been three months ago now, and Eddy remembered Romy had already told Peter about it, and hadalready made the dig at the blonde who had won the job. But Peter acted like he hadn’t heard the story before. He expressed sympathy, again, and Eddy liked him a little better for it.
    â€˜Bastards.’
    â€˜Daddy.’ A small figure appeared in the doorway of the farmhouse, clutching a blanket. Only Eddy heard her above the noise. Her father, Thomas, had his hand immersed in an esky of ice, a circle of blokes around him counting the seconds as he sought to break the night’s record.
    Eddy went over to the child.
    â€˜Are you okay, Ella?’
    â€˜It’s too noisy.’ She rubbed her eyes and glanced back inside, where sleeping babies and toddlers were scattered on cushions and crumpled blankets, their closed eyes all facing the television screen, like corpses circling a dried-up billabong. A finished DVD played its menu screen in ghostly rotation.
    â€˜Come on, I’ll take you back to bed.’
    Inside, Eddy picked his way carefully amongst the small bodies to the vacant spot on the couch,