It was another lovely morning, and I asked at the reception after our ‘camp breakfast’ about swimming sites more suitable for small children.

“Ah, mate, Bandy Creek’ll do you right. Let me show you on the map… Here. Then, if you head out to Twilight Beach, it’s sheltered. No nasty rips. There’s no shark reports at the moment, but if you want to be sure, we’ve got a new shark net out in front of the Pier Hotel. Good place to feed as well”

Maz looked up at that.

“What sort of food?”

“Ah, pretty normal pub grub, ey? But decent portions, nicely done”

She turned to me.

“What do you think, man of mine?”

“Well, lots of time to play with, love. Try that Bandy place first? Get little’un into the water first, before hitting the sea proper?”

The receptionist was nodding.

“Great place for the kids is Bandy, and it’s an easy drive. Bit of grass for a picnic, as long as you check for dugites first. It’s really, really safe there, as long as nobody’s hooning off the jetty. No facilities, but parking’s easy. Take that picnic, ey?”

Plans made, we gathered the offspring from the TV lounge and assembled our kit before the short drive out to Bandy, which proved to be an inlet, or perhaps a river mouth. People were parked on the beach, which was made of very fine, very firm sand, but I left our car on the road, where there were a few parking spaces. The water wasn’t clear, but it was just the right temperature, and the beach sloped enough to keep our girl safe while our boy discovered what the particular local honing consisted of: jumping off the jetty into the deeper water.

I drove us back into Espy for the afternoon, parking back at our little bungalow, and the rest of the day was spent behind the shark nets before trying the suggested Pier Hotel for our evening meal. The menu was exactly as I had expected, with burgers (with beetroot), chicken parma, fish and chips and so on, but in the middle of that were things like ‘Prawn, mango and squid salad’; it certainly wasn’t like a British chain pub, or a certain Scottish Highlands chip shop. They had sausages and mash for LC, but the boy seemed a little put out by the limited tentacular options and minimal rugosity.

I was partway through my second LLB and a squid starter when a teenage girl called out “Hi, Ish!”

He looked up from his garlic prawns.

“Oh, hi Gwen”

“This your family?”

“Um, yeah. Mum, Dad, little sister Carolyn…”

“Hiya! I’m Gwen Horvath. We’re over on hols from Albany. Sorry to butt in; just, met Ish down at Bandy today, thought I’d say hello”

I felt Maz squeeze my knee, so let her take the lead.

“You here with your family, love?”

“Yes, Mrs Rhodes. Got my rents and baby brother, but really we’re here for Oma and Opa. It’s Oma’s eightieth. Ish says it’s just the four of you”

I sneaked a look at our boy, and he was blushing slightly. Oh dear. I looked across the room for her family, and there they were: four adults, a lad of around LC’s age, and a little wave from the younger of the adult women confirmed it. Maz was still poking, though.

“Where are you staying, Gwen?”

“We’ve got a couple of units at the Comfort Inn, just up the road. Know it?””

Maz squeezed my knee once more, smiling at the girl.

“We should do, as we had our honeymoon there, so we know it, but our two don’t, yet. Darling?”

“Yes, love?”

“We doing penguins again?”

“If there’s space”

She turned back to ‘Gwen’.

“The booking place for Woody Island; is it still in the hotel?”

The girl nodded.

“By reception”

“Well, we may well be popping in to book a stay on the island. See the penguins”

A little voice piped up: “What’s a penguin, Mum?”

Maz smiled down at our daughter.

“It’s a funny bird, darling. I’ll show…. Oh, of course. Hang on”

Typically, she had a bird guide in her capacious handbag, and quickly educated our daughter.

“They’re out on an island, so we will have to take a boat and stay in a special tent”

LC’s eyes widened.

“Camping? Is there climbing?”

“I don’t think so, darling. We are all climbers, Gwen. A family thing”

Lc hadn’t finished, of course.

“And Ish plays footie! Knocks people over and jumps high!”

Our boy really seemed to be suffering as LC prattled away, and I quietly asked myself if our little PR girl was going to mention Clara. Poor lad!

I could see Gwen’s mother waving, a waitress delivering food to their table, and she hurried back after one last remark.

“There’s a fair thing on tomorrow night, on the esplanade opposite the wind farm thing. You coming to that?”

Maz was non-committal.

“We will have to see, Gwen. It all depends on when they can fit us in for the penguin watching”

“Right! Gotta go; our food’s there, and I’m starving. See yez!”

Once she was out of earshot, Maz turned to our clearly embarrassed boy.

“Gwen, then?”

“Oh, Mum! What do I do?”

She shook her head, picking up her fork again as she continued with her starter.

“We’ll talk back at the unit, son. Nothing bad, but welcome to the complications of adulthood. Could I have another beer, darling?”

We managed to extricate ourselves from The Pier later that evening without colliding again with Gwen, which seemed to be a relief for the lad. A slow walk along the Esplanade brought us comfortably back to our bungalow, the latter part involving me carrying a mostly dormant little girl. I put her straight to bed before we three, well, adults assembled in the living room. Maz did her eyebrows thing, and the lad shrugged.

“She was… She was nice, Mum. There were a few, our age, yeah? At Bandy? Where we were jumping off the jetty?”

“And?”

“And what do I do? It’s…”

He simply trailed off, casting the odd glance at me, then drew a deeper breath.

“It’s sort of the reverse of school. Could never talk to girls, could I? Never say, you know: ask anyone out. This is, well, like I said. How do I tell her I’m not interested?”

Maz sighed, moving across to cuddle him.

“But you are interested, darling. I can tell, and if I can, I will assume so can she”

“Ish”

“Dad?”

“It’s not a crime, son”

“Yeah, but Clara, yeah?”

Who is on the other side of the bloody world and may never actually be able to make a real go of things with our boy. Arse. Maz slipped her own suggestion in, surprising me with her pragmatism.

“Here’s how I see it, darling. Given where we are all staying, and the sort of town this is, you are going to be running into her whether you want to or not”

“I don’t…”

“We don’t need to know that, darling. So here’s the thing: you don’t have to, you know, someone because you enjoy their company. You do, don’t you? Enjoy it?”

“Um, yeah. She’s fun”

“Then enjoy a bit of fun. She could, you know, you could have found a lad you got on with-“

“I don’t go that way, Mum”

“Not saying that, son. You can have mates without, well---”

Suddenly, she was giggling.

“I’m doing it again! Hear this as I mean it, okay? You can have mates without needing to mate with them. Anyway, what about her side of things?”

Ish looked puzzled, as Maz shook her head.

“Oh, darling: she’s a lovely girl, ey? Really pretty? She look okay in her swimmers?”

His blush was fiercer than I had ever seen from him, and Maz giggled again.

“Darling, how do you think I first caught your father’s attention? My point is that she and her family are on a holiday a long, long way from their home, and that is a very long way from hours. Do you think she hasn’t maybe got someone back in Albany?”

He looked across at me, then shook his head.

“Not that. Mum. How do I tell her no? She’s nice; I don’t want to hurt her”

Maz sighed, then hugged him.

“My boy isn’t so little any more. This is what we do, okay?”

We spent the following day out at Twilight Beach, which was wonderful, with a few granite outcrops that had LC trying her best to climb on the smallest holds possible before falling off into the water, her flotation vest bringing her back to the surface with a shout that could only be translated as “Again!”

We finally gathered together, after a fresh water shower each, and I drove us back to the camp ground, more than happy with the day. We had an abbreviated barbie session before starting the walk down to the Whale Tail, Maz cuddling up to me as we walked, and all was absolutely bloody right with our world.

The grass north of the Tail was enclosed in a wall of tents, reminding me of Shrewsbury, so we started the rounds, seeing what was on display.

“Darling?”

“Love?”

“This is lovely!”

It was the heart of a Banksia flower, the ‘nutshells’ opened to release the seeds, polished to a high gloss, and it was an instant ‘see me-buy me’. There were other attention grabbers, including a set of hand-painted bookmarks that Maz told me were all different fairywrens, which were added to the bag, and then there was fudge. An awful lot of it, all sorts of flavours, and that was the two younger ones happy. Neither Maz nor I ate any at all, and I have never lied well.

“Mr Rhodes?”

I turned to see Gwen’s mother, and a quick scan spotted the girl herself, laughing away with our boy.

“Mike, please! And this is Maryam, Maz”

The woman nodded, looking slightly worried.

“Er, we know, Mike. I’m Nora, and him over there is Erwin. Austrian family, ey?”

I just nodded, as Maz settled against me. She was as direct as ever, of course.

“I think the two of them are getting on rather well, Nora”

“Er, they are. Our girl… Hell, she’s engaged, Maz”

My wife burst out laughing, which confused Nora.

“Bloody said it, darling, didn’t I? Nora, what do you need from us? I mean, is the engagement, you know, approved, or are we looking at messy times for our boy? Sorry to be so blunt, but, well, we like to get things sorted quick as”

Nora looked over to her husband, who was feeding a cloud of candy floss to their son, watched by his grandparents.

“We know, Maz. We found you on the net. Sorry; not stalking you, but Gwen’s had some crap, and we look after her. Your own kids, ey? You keep them safe, best you can”

Maz put her hand on the woman’s arm.

“If you have indeed read about us, then you know. Ish… Ish has a friend, but she’s in England”

That brought a burst of laughter.

“Sorry, but I said that, or sort of, to Erwin, and the girl. What shall we… Look, they’re having fun. What happens after the hols are over, well, who knows?”

Maz laughed out loud, then hugged Nora.

“One other thing, woman!”

“Ey?”

“That stand over there does popcorn…”