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Sadie had come home and said hi to their friends and ended up settling in to talk football, about which she knew a surprising amount. When Ada mentioned this, she raised an eyebrow and said, ‘It’s only white Australians who don’t know about soccer,’ and their friends had laughed and got more drinks. Sadie started bragging about the Australian women’s team to friendly boos and Ada turned back to her phone.
But this Saturday was theirs. Ada had mentioned during her couch day that she had forgotten to make plans and Mel was going to see her parents. And Sadie said she didn’t have any meetings or any tickets. She’d thought maybe she could check out a local gallery but Ada said, ‘On a Saturday?’ and Sadie said good point. So when they woke up, they both knew the other had nowhere to be. It made Ada nervous and she loved being nervous.
Ada scrolled in bed while Sadie read, soft touches when one needed to change position, no kisses but a lazy scratch of Ada’s back, a hand moving on its own. Sadie asked Ada if Instagram stressed her out, but in a pretty non-judgey way. Ada explained that she mostly followed friends back home – whose lives were so different to hers that it was like watching a reality show – and plus-size influencers – who took photos in their underwear and wrote long captions that she didn’t read. Sadie said, ‘But you’re not plus-sized,’ and Ada said, ‘I’m subverting the consumer gaze,’ and Sadie said, ‘OK if you say so,’ and Ada said, ‘I’m kidding, I just like hot people. I also follow zoos all over the world. Look at this, a snow leopard litter was just born in upstate New York,’ and Sadie actually did put her book down to look. When Sadie went to the bathroom to shower, Ada considered messaging Stuart and then lectured herself on dignity for a while. She also realised she didn’t exactly want to message him right at that moment and that made her proud.
Sadie offered to get breakfast but Ada had taken painkillers and wanted to show her, suddenly, the life she had made for herself. They dressed together, Sadie passing Ada her light denim jacket without being asked, then holding out her shirt from the day before for Ada to sniff and pass judgement on (it smelled fine, she put it back on) and they left. They picked up coffee and cardamom-spiced pastries because London bakers had just discovered cardamon. Ada said this was her regular cafe and Sadie said they didn’t seem to know her and Ada said, ‘Because it’s London, Sadie,’ but actually they did know her, she was pretty sure. She usually flirted with the hot person who made the coffee but they were super busy and anyway Ada wasn’t quite sure that flirting in front of Sadie was appropriate today.
The streets were busy so they detoured down the River Lea, weaving through groups of women with prams and dodging the Saturday Cyclist, determined to tire out his calves and avoid going home to his children. When Ada said this to Sadie, a line she had prepared in advance, Sadie laughed properly then said ‘fuck those guys’ and Ada felt like she could fly. She told Sadie about the friend of hers who had tried to walk home along this path drunk and had mistaken a houseboat for a bridge – at least that’s what he thought had happened because he remembered thinking, ‘this bridge is moving,’ and then the next thing he knew he was in the water. Sadie was a great audience this morning, laughing and saying, ‘No, oh god this water is disgusting though!’ at all the right moments.
They stayed by the water, talking, not touching, walking in comfort with each other, reaching Hackney Wick and finding a brewery to pee in that they agreed was too loud to drink in. Sadie marvelled at the architecture, so industrial, like Berlin, she said, and they passed what looked like an old school bus. It was open at the back selling pizza by the slice, pretending at being New York. Ada almost walked past but Sadie bought them each a slice, plain, margherita, and Ada realised they were on a fast-food bender together, the fried chicken and sugary pastries and pizza. When Sadie took a huge bite and grease smeared on her chin, Ada thought it might be sexy to lick the spot but she didn’t want to ruin the mood by trying. Another detour down the canal, looking for a crossing, and then into Victoria Park, finding a dappled patch, not for reasons of romance but because Ada wanted to lie in the sun and Sadie asked for shade.
Ada knew Sadie had brought a book but she didn’t take it out and Ada didn’t take out her phone except once to send a selfie to Mel. They talked about their families and Sadie said her brother was ten years older than her and they got along fine but they didn’t know each other very well. ‘He moved to Sydney for uni when I was eight so I’ve been three time zones away from him for most of my life. I sort of think he judged me for staying in Perth and living with our parents while I went to uni but I saved so much money. It meant I could start making work as soon as I graduated. And the theatre scene in Perth is beautiful. We’re so remote so we kind of just mess around and then when something good happens, everyone bands together to get that show on the road. I know I should move to Sydney or Melbourne or, well, I guess, London, but I think I make the best stuff when I feel safe. I don’t know how I’d ever feel safe here. London doesn’t seem like a place people go to feel safe. Also, how do you go this long without the beach?’
Ada stretched her body as long as it could go and felt the sun on her shins, a breeze fluttering through the hair on her legs that she hadn’t shaved since Edinburgh. ‘I can’t believe you’re talking to me about the beach when you get to go home to it for summer. Cruel!’ and Sadie said, ‘Which one was your beach?’ which wasn’t a strange question to Ada at all. Ada explained that though she went to high school and uni in Sydney, they lived on the south coast when she was a kid. ‘Have you ever been to Austinmer?’ and Sadie hadn’t, she only really went to Sydney for work stuff so she didn’t know about the east coast.
Not all Australians had a beach, that’s a lie that Home & Away taught English people. But a lot of them did and Ada did. She talked to Sadie about the mermaid pools near her house where she and her sister paddled after school until Gabby became an inside kid in Year 4. After that Ada went alone with their mum.
‘Why were they called mermaid pools?’ asked Sadie and Ada wasn’t sure.
‘I don’t know if that was their official name or just what we called them but they were little ocean pools that we could paddle in alone so looking back it was probably just a way of our mum keeping us occupied while she read her book. The sea was pretty rough but we were protected there mostly … although we knew when a storm was coming because the beach would wash into our little baths and rock us back and forth so we banged up against the rocks and those little anemones that shrink away from you. You know the ones that look like Halloween wigs?’
Sadie knew.
Ada told Sadie about the sea bridge that they crossed in the car every day on their way back from school: ‘It looked like the end of the earth – we’d fight to sit in the left-side seat so that we could stare out at the surf and see if there was any point taking our boogie boards down today or if it was more of a “sit and chill in the shallows” vibe.’
That was Ada’s beach and Sadie told her about hers. ‘I still live ten minutes from it and no offence to you east coast folk but your water temperature is pathetic. It gets properly, properly cold for us—’
Ada interrupted, ‘Uh, the nickname for where I grew up is literally the Cold Coast! Don’t lump me in with, like, Queenslanders.’
They took a moment to roll their eyes at people from Queensland and Sadie went on.
‘It’ll be like 35 degrees at 6 p.m in Perth and the whole city will be crawling, that kind of sluggish quiet summer energy and then BAM you get in that water and your body wakes the fuck up. I barely noticed how cold it was when I was a kid and I would run in and out. My parents migrated just before they had my brother and I don’t think they ever got used to the shock of it. They always told me how brave I was. They still prefer a walk through the water together holding their shoes to full submersion but credit to them, they let my brother and me run wild, which probably scared the old Perth locals. Two little Arab kids tearing up the beach. Then when I was a teenager, I became a baby about the water and the sun and I would go under the rock overhang with my mates and we’d read and then dare each other to jump in and scream.’
Ada asked, ‘What about now?’ and Sadie said, ‘Now it’s my secret weapon. Bored, terrified, getting ready for a night out, dragging myself home … I go to the water and yeah, I wake the fuck up again.’
They were quiet for a while and then Ada said, ‘I never really found a beach in Sydney. We moved when I was twelve – my mum got a job with a new council and I think honestly they thought it’d be good for Gabby. It wasn’t, but it was OK for me. I started at high school with a bunch of other people who didn’t know each other and we’d get the bus to Coogee every weekend but it wasn’t really my beach. I mean, I loved it but I couldn’t like … own it like people who grew up there. I think … I dunno. I think sometimes if we’d stayed on the coast I never would have felt the need to move to London or be an actor, maybe. Like on the coast I was hot shit in our council theatre group; I was a kid acting with adults, you know? And that was when my career as Mary Mother of God started. Sorry, I know that’s a sensitive topic for you.’
Sadie laughed and said, ‘Yeah, I wasn’t white enough for Mary but I brought frankincense like nobody’s business.’
And Ada said, ‘I’m sure you looked very wise. But yeah, then we moved to Sydney and I had to audition for all the inter-school theatre shit and I started doing vocal training after school and … I don’t know. It was probably good for me. Like how unchecked would my ego have got if we’d never moved?’
Sadie said, ‘What would you have done on the coast?’ and Ada said, ‘Nothing? I don’t know. I went to Sydney and I sort of … it became like, oh OK this is a city. But it’s not the city. London is the city or New York or something. Paris? You know. Cities. Like … if I’m going to be a city person I need it to be the biggest, best one. But maybe if I’d never become a city person in the first place I wouldn’t know that, you know? Like when I was a kid and we’d visit Sydney I was shit scared of riding escalators. But then I adapted and … maybe that’s just becoming an adult, though, I dunno. I didn’t really stay in touch with my primary school mates and I took my uni boyfriend to Austi Beach on a day trip once and he talked shit about it the whole time and … I’d like to go back now though. With someone else who likes beaches.’
Sadie smiled and said, ‘You don’t even look like someone who likes beaches any more,’ and Ada glanced down at her vintage silky playsuit and soft pale chest where all her freckles had faded.
‘Beach Girl is my secret identity’.
Sadie asked, ‘Did Gabby – that’s your sister’s name right – did Gabby do the acting stuff with you?’ And Ada said, ‘She never … or actually yeah, I think she did when we were still on the coast. There are photos of her being Mary actually, when I was still too little. But I don’t know, she never did it with me. Like she lost interest by the time I joined up. She wasn’t … interested in much, most of the time’. Sadie asked a little more about Gabby which ended up with them looking at photos of Hank and Sadie saying, ‘Yeah, I think he’s cute but not really my thing’. They lay together learning gentle things as the summer sounds burst around them.
They were mostly quiet and at one point Sadie’s hand brushed Ada’s as she stretched and it wasn’t electric but it was warm. Ada was half asleep when Sadie asked, ‘Would you ever move back home?’ and Ada said, ‘I feel like … a longing for it sometimes – most days, really. But no, I don’t think so.’ Sadie said, ‘But the longing?’ and Ada said, ‘Yeah, I know,’ and she thought about explaining that she was better in London, better set in opposition to the things she desired, but Sadie was a thing she desired so she stayed within herself.
At about six, Sadie produced a baggy from her wallet and asked if Ada would like to smoke it. She’d taken it from the girl in Camberwell when she left though she wasn’t sure why. ‘I don’t even smoke that much but I just … saw it when I was packing. I sound psycho right now,’ and Ada said, ‘We all do crazy things sometimes. You do not want to know the shit I’ve taken from exes.’ She let herself wonder for a moment what it would be like to drive Sadie so wild that she would steal from her, but she suspected that would never happen. Ada had nothing Sadie wanted and that was OK for now.
Ada rolled up for them and explained to Sadie that she’d spent her high school years dating stoner after stoner, always boys, then kissing her female friends at parties and pretending it was for show. ‘I had no idea what I wanted because I knew boys liked me and I didn’t know what girls thought of me and it seemed easier not to question it,’ and Sadie said that she’d liked boys and girls too, which surprised Ada. ‘I thought you were one of those mythical young lesbians?’ and Sadie said, ‘I sort of am? I liked everyone, I was desperately attracted to everyone, but boys never liked me back. Whereas every queer girl I met sensed it in me and I kind of fell into only dating girls and now … I can’t imagine dating a guy. Not all my exes are women but never a cis dude. But I still think they’re attractive sometimes, I dunno, in the abstract? My ex-girlfriend and I watched a lot of gay-dude porn together, is that a straight thing to do?’ and Ada lit the joint and breathed in. She breathed out and said, ‘Boys weren’t into you? They’re so dumb,’ and Sadie didn’t acknowledge the flirt but took the joint from her and said, ‘Everyone’s dumb.’
And that moment was why. That’s why hours later, after they’d caught the bus home together, falling against each other and laughing, and drunk a bottle of wine on the floor of their bedroom while eating donuts from Sainsburys. After they’d watched a YouTube compilation of celebrities singing songs from The Last Five Years and shared some falafel that Mel had bought and they would need to replace. After Sadie stood up and said she was taking her bourbon to the bath. After Sadie did that and Ada was still lying on the floor with her bourbon and her phone, she thought back to Sadie refusing to agree that boys were dumb for not liking her while smoking weed she stole from someone else. That’s why after all of that she messaged Stuart.
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