We’ve only been standing in this spot a few minutes when the first beams of pink and purple light appear, first in my camera lens, and then in a less vivid way to the naked eye. Charlie and I squeal at the sight, even though we’ve seen it so many times together since that first night in Norway. I never take it for granted, living at a place where I can capture sunrises and sunsets on a deserted beach, and the aurora whenever it’s visible.
The Tasmanian wilderness is so conducive to writing. I’ve just finished my third book. Contemporary romance is apparently my place in the writing world, not literary fiction, as Cam probably suspected all along. Once I let go of trying to write something ‘impressive’ and started just writing from the heart, words poured onto pages as if they’d been queued in my mind for decades. This is such an ideal place to write, in fact, that I have plans to build a cluster of three ‘tiny houses’ on the property. We can Airbnb them, and I can hold intimate writing mentorships and astrophotography retreats dotted through the year. There’ll be a small space for the writing room of my dreams, facing south, over the beach, of course. I’ll throw open the windows in summer and write with the scent of salt and the sound of crashing waves, and snuggle under a blanket beside the fire in winter.
I adjust the camera settings again and take another long exposure shot, while Charlie shows me the stars through his telescope, just as the verandah light pops on in the house behind us.
‘Knew it,’ Charlie says. ‘She can’t stand missing out on anything!’
We hear her before we can see her, and then two figures hove into sight on the beach, one tall, one tiny. She races up to us and throws her arms around my leg, begging to be lifted up to see the ’rora through the camera’s viewfinder.
‘Camryn Genevieve! You’re meant to be in bed!’ I say.
Hugh shrugs and smiles. ‘What can you do? Aurora-chaser like Mum and big brother.’
Our lives aren’t perfect, even under the southern lights. You can’t bring together two adults and a child with shattering grief as a backstory and expect a smooth ride. We still make mistakes. We have rows. Hugh’s new role with the University of Tasmania still gets stressful. I still write first drafts that convince me I have no idea what I’m doing, even several published books in.
But there’s something about Camryn. She took three broken people and stitched us together as a family. She’s one of the golden threads running through each of our lives. Hope, in human form.
‘When is Ruby getting here?’ Charlie asks.
Our second golden thread.
‘She’s just got to get final clearance from her doctor,’ I explain. ‘She’s so close to having the baby now! But she and Hannah have everything crossed they’ll make it.’
Charlie twists his face in concentration and starts counting things on his fingers. ‘My step-nephew?’
I laugh. ‘It’s a complicated family, isn’t it, Uncle Charlie-to-be!’
Ruby might have been the image of her mother, but I never knew Genevieve. The more I’d got to know her, the more of Hugh I imagined I saw in her. The way she raked her hand through her hair in frustration. The extraordinary patience. The habit of taking the long packets of sugar in coffee shops and meticulously evening the distribution of the contents.
‘Why don’t you have a DNA test?’ I’d coaxed him one Christmas. ‘Just to set your mind at ease, once and for all.’
He’d resisted the idea for months. I know it was self-protection. What if he got his hopes up, and she wasn’t his? ‘We love her as if she’s mine, Kate. What would it achieve?’
But something about Ruby expecting a child had tipped him over. The idea of never knowing whether or not this baby was his genetic grandchild would have eaten him up – and eaten up his mother, too. She was positively agog at the idea of a great-grandchild.
And of course the result was just the miracle Hugh always deserved, so now we’re officially a complex family of five, and I have a step-grandchild on the way at forty-four and couldn’t be more there for it.
‘Are you free for a conference dinner on 16 September?’ Hugh asks, as Camryn squirms out of my arms and back into his. ‘Black tie thing. I’m looking for a date.’
‘I don’t know, that’s months away!’ I look back into the viewfinder and take a shot. ‘I guess so? Where is it?’
‘Dublin,’ he says in a tone so deadpan he might as well have said it’s on in the local scout hall. ‘Thought you might be homesick.’
I forget the aurora and look at my husband, with stars in my eyes and memories of that beautiful Northern Rivers hinterland, the weekend we found our way to each other. He’s a little bit older and a little bit greyer than when we first met eight years ago, and so am I, but we know that every extra year is a privilege denied to the two we’ll always love.
‘Hugh,’ Charlie interrupts, his voice suddenly wavering with nerves.
We both look at him as he pulls some dog-eared papers from the Minecraft backpack he’s been carrying around with him everywhere lately. He passes the paperwork to Hugh, and I notice his little hand shaking.
‘What’s this, mate?’ Hugh says, activating the torch on his phone to illuminate the words. As he reads, he lights up with an expression more beautiful than any I’ve seen pass across his face in all the time I’ve known him.
‘Adopting a step-child,’ he says aloud, his voice cracking, as Charlie flings himself at him for a tight hug.
It blows my mind, in the very best way. Hugh passes me the papers so he can hug Charlie properly, and I notice Charlie has stuck a fluorescent yellow sticky note on top of the government printout.
‘I don’t think Dad would mind,’ it says.
The tears are free-flowing now, all round. It’s not just Charlie’s unexpected request and everything it means to Hugh. It’s the fact that he’s building such an accurate understanding of the incredible man his father was.
The four of us stand together now, awestruck by the colours turning up the light in the darkness. And when I finally take a moment to glance from the aurora to my little Plan B family, I’m overcome with a strong sense of Cam’s nearness.
I’ve learned that love outlives death. It holds steady through despair. It won’t fade, even as time elapses and distance increases and your world shifts. Cam’s ongoing presence in my life is as fragile as the transient beams of light that dance across the sky. And as powerful. It reminds me that life is short, love is grand and Kate & Cam’s Excellent Adventure is timeless.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS