‘Can you imagine the old crusties!’ Jude laughed, and put on an old Anzac rumble: ‘No, no, no—not properly registered. Girls! I don’t bloody well think so!’ She grinned at Kelly and said, in her own voice, ‘Do you remember when the law stopped them from banning women from the upstairs bar of the BSLSC, so they re-designated the whole top floor as the men’s changing room? If they couldn’t maintain a rule to keep women out, the threat of old codgers walking around in the nude would do the job for them. There was some kind of genius in it.’

‘They never let progress get in their way.’

‘And we never realised how much we needed the patriarchy,’ Jude said. ‘It was our only defence against the future.’ She nodded towards the empty mansions serried around the headlands.

‘Are you here to keep an eye on your students?’ Kelly said.

‘I’d have no hope of keeping an eye on anyone! It’s chaos, isn’t it? I’d say organised chaos but I’m not entirely sure about organised. Those crusties had something going for them. A clip over the ear to put the kids in line instead of all this namby-pamby no-touching. Talk about herding cats. It’s as bad as school. Is Ben participating?’

‘He’s water boy for Lou’s Lezzos,’ Kelly said.

‘You can’t say that.’

‘I just did. So why are you here?’

Jude watched the south end, where surfboats were forming up for their heats. An ocean swimming race to a buoy off the north end was in train, while juniors were competing on rescue boards in the middle and the beach sprints were moving through their eliminations closer to the dunes.

‘He’s doing much better,’ Jude said.

‘Ben?’

‘His teachers are saying he’s working with more purpose.’

‘He’s on the paediatrician’s speed pills, so maybe it’s that.’

‘Half the school is medicated, you know.’

‘Pills to stop boys being boys is what Gordon calls them.’

‘It’s probably more than the medication,’ Jude said.

‘You mean us splitting up? It’s given him some much-needed certainty, instead of wondering how long we’d last?’

‘Stability is the thing. But are you really split up?’

Jude knew more than Kelly was comfortable with, but she also didn’t know the half of it. If their finances deteriorated any further, and if Norma didn’t take up Kelly’s proposal, the instability of Ben’s living arrangements might just be starting.

‘Down there,’ Jude said before Kelly could reply. ‘She could teach my staff a few things about caring for kids.’

Valiantly, Lou was organising her eight-strong crew to wheel their surfboat trailer from the ramp to the southern corner. The girls were more disciplined than boys, but they were also occupied with talking to each other. The trailer had to stop when it ran over a very tall girl’s foot.