Garry Disher - Snapshot

It had been her awakening-though not in the way Robert intended-when, a few weeks ago, she’d found love and excitement in the arms of a man who wasn’t part of that scene.

She shook off the memory and concentrated on her driving, feeling safer now that she was on Penzance Beach Road. She was heading through a region of sealed roads and dirt side roads, amid wineries, berry farms, craft galleries and more cars than she cared to encounter. And a heavy fog had rolled in from the Westernport side of the Peninsula. She tried mentally to map her way, but she’d never driven this route before. Robert was the driver in the family.

Robert and his bullshit about a higher form of sexual freedom. Right from the start Janine had known that Robert and the others were trying to put a spin on things to make themselves feel better about what they were really doing. ‘The suspension of jealousy.’ they called it. ‘True sharing’ and ‘The highest form of sexual freedom’. Janine, checking out a couple of the websites, had found more of the same: ‘All-in-together fun and erotica,’ one site said, and featured personal ads aimed at getting like-minded couples together.

The same tone came through in the rules. Of course, they didn’t call them rules, but ‘etiquette’: shower before you arrive; practise safe sex; no anal sex; respect the wishes of others; no means no; ask first and choose the right moment; feel free to watch, but erotic dress in the play areas, please; by all means have a drink to loosen up, but no one wants to partner a drunk.

Despite the claptrap it had been exciting, that first time, and for a while continued to be. Sometimes all of the elements-the smells, the sounds, the images-conspired to make her really horny. But she’d never felt liberated, alive or sweetly wicked, to quote some of the garbage the others spouted from time to time. None of it had translated into a better relationship with Robert-not that she’d wanted that at the time, and certainly not now, with a genuine man, genuine love, in the wings. It all seemed like hard work to Janine, and she felt contempt, everyone so nice, so conscientious about making sure everyone got an opportunity to enter this, touch that, suck this, stroke that, do this, please, do that again, please. By profession she was a psychologist but you didn’t need a university degree to see that the whole sex party scene suited the needs of men, not women, and was symptomatic of fundamental anxieties, like desperately clinging to youth, seeking self-esteem, and wanting to be desired.

It was all about needing to be loved, and that was pathetic and illusory. Robert and his mates needed a good dose of reality, and the means to that had fallen into Janine’s lap. Exactly a week ago, the Waterloo Progress, a small weekly newspaper, had published a long article on the swingers scene. The editor had apparently attended a party somewhere on the Peninsula and written it up with the blessings of the organisers and the participants. Caused quite a stir amongst the good and the decent who secretly hankered for a bit of spice in their lives. No photographs, no real names used-and that had given Janine her idea. Yesterday Robert and three of his mates would have opened their mail and found photographs of themselves in all of their glory, having sex with women not their wives in front of a bunch of other naked people.

There was no way she could have used an ordinary camera, not even a little spy camera. But a mobile phone with camera and video facility, that was a different story. You needed to have a mobile handy at these parties, wrapped up in your towel, G-string or camisole, in case there was an emergency call from the babysitter.

A few quick snaps, a few seconds of video, family doctors, businessmen, headmistresses, lawyers and accountants bonking strangers in some ghastly suburban bedroom. Even a few snaps of Robert. Janine shivered with glee. What if she showed them to his father, the superintendent of police, the custodian of good order?

Nah, maybe some other time.

She’d posted one photograph to each of the four men whose faces were clear enough for ID purposes. No demands for money, no note of any kind. She wanted to infect the swinging scene with a bad case of nerves, that’s all. She grinned now, like a shark. The fear of finding themselves posted on the internet can’t be too far from the surfaces of their tiny little minds, she thought.

Clearly Robert had opened his envelope at work yesterday. She’d had a little fun when he got home, rubbed up against him, felt for his cock, and said, ‘Can we go to another party next weekend? I can’t stop thinking about it. You were right, it’s been liberating.’

He’d squirmed away from her, mouth wrenched in panic and distaste. ‘I don’t think that would be a good idea,’ he’d said in a choked voice, before turning nasty and almost striking her. She’d always suspected that he had a propensity for violence. Robert was the kind of man to kill his wife and plead a provocation defence, and Janine knew there were plenty of other men-judges and defence lawyers-who’d allow him to get away with it. In the end, he’d shut himself in his study all evening. At 6 a.m. tautology, he’d flown to Sydney.

Just then her daughter’s voice cut in on her reverie. ‘Can I put the heater on?’

‘Sure.’

It was chilly for early July-meaning a long, dreary winter, Janine supposed. She watched Georgia expertly adjust the Volvo’s heater and fan controls, the concentration fierce on her sweet face with its halo of fine blonde curls. How did Robert and I produce her? she wondered. They drove on through the misty landscape, and eventually Georgia was perched alertly on the edge of her seat, asking, ‘Mum, is it far now?’

‘Don’t think so,’ Janine said, sounding more confident than she felt.

They were on a ridge road, with milk-can letterboxes every couple of hundred metres, signs for ‘horse poo’, and dense trees and bracken concealing driveways that led down to houses and cottage gardens tucked into the hillside. ‘I think it’s this one,’ Janine continued, indicating squat brick pillars and an open wooden gate. She braked cautiously, not wanting to alarm the driver of the car behind her. She signalled, steered off the road, and drove in a gentle curve down a gravelled track to a parking circle beside a weatherboard house.

‘Look, sweetie,’ she said, pointing ahead, the fog parting briefly to offer gorgeous views across a dramatic valley, the sea and Phillip Island beyond. But Georgia wasn’t buying it. ‘It’s creepy,’ she said, meaning the grimy old weatherboard house. ‘Do I have to wait in the car?’

‘I’m sure you’ll be allowed to watch TV or something,’ Janine said.

She was double-checking their location with the street directory, completely rattled, and welcomed the sound of the car that came in behind them with a growl of its tyres.

There were two of them, wheelman and hard man, and they rolled down the driveway in a Holden Commodore, a model dating from 1983 but still plentiful on the roads, though maybe not in dirty white with one light yellow door.

A woman, that’s all Gent knew. He didn’t know what she’d done, only that Vyner had to sort her out, a warning, maybe a slap around the chops. That was Vyner’s expertise, not his. He was the wheelman, along to provide the car and knowledge of the twisting roads in and out of this part of the Peninsula, an area of small towns, orchards and vineyards. And a sea mist had rolled in, choking the roads and waterways, providing good cover for the job.

The driveway was a steep plunge from the main road above, the Commodore’s brakes dicey. ‘Shitheap car,’ said Vyner in the passenger seat.