1
Everyone knows that past performance is a good indicator of future behavior, so when four young people arrived at Pippi Beach’s most expensive house by yacht, Lily wasn’t surprised that her mother was the first to notice. Within minutes, Lydia was on the deck in her best bikini, eyes glued to the telescope.
“Mum!” admonished Lily. “They’ll see you.”
“I’m counting on it.”
Two young men, who could safely be judged
handsome even from this distance, were transferring luggage and supplies up to the house, assisted by someone clearly from the local marina and therefore unimportant. Two young women in sunglasses and flowing fabrics stalked the sand nearby, flicking their hair around.
“You looking?” Lydia asked.
“No,” said Lily, her eyes fixed determinedly elsewhere.
“You will when I tell you who it is.”
“I don’t want to know who it is.”
“Yes you do!”
“No I don’t.”
“Because it’s Casey Brandon!” Lydia tore her eyes away momentarily from the telescope to gloat. “Casey! Brandon!”
“I don’t think—”
“I know my rich and gorgeous megastars.”
“Really?” An internationally famous visitor at their tiny beach settlement seemed unlikely to Lily, but she didn’t like to confirm or disprove it by telescope. Not that she could have pried it from her mother anyway.
“Oh my goodness, there it is. He’s taken off his shirt.”
“Mum!”
“He clearly wants attention.”
“Not from you!”
“How do you know? I’m not just your mum. I’m a hot mum.”
“He’s probably come here to get some privacy.”
“He’s American. They don’t know what that is. It’s our duty as Australians and neighbors to welcome him, show him around—”
“Please do not do that. Mum? Please?”
Lydia didn’t reply. She was too busy monitoring the way shirtless Casey Brandon was carrying a box of groceries. All supplies to Pippi Beach had to be brought over by boat, and what people chose to bring offered quite a bit of insight into their lifestyles, tastes, intentions, incomes, and length of stay. This was all important information, especially to the few who lived in the pretty beach settlement all year round. Lydia had become a very experienced judge.
Six years ago, Lydia and her two girls had come to her older sister Jane’s beach house at Pippi for a family Christmas and never left. Jane, who only came to Pippi for weekends and holidays, offered the house as a temporary solution until Lydia got back on her feet. Another apartment, another job, and another relationship had all fallen through, at least partly because of the girls’ father, who had failed in pretty much every respect as a partner and as a reasonable person. Lydia felt it was only fair; Jane had practically sleepwalked into a high-income interior design career and then selfishly topped it off with a wealthy husband. And what were sisters for if not to share their good fortune?
At Pippi, Lydia found somewhere to bring up her girls. By overstating her ability to maintain the place, which comfortably slept six in the main house and six more in a separate pavilion out back, Lydia talked Jane out of requiring rent. She found work in a casual partnership with local entrepreneur Birdie-Round-the-Back, cleaning weekenders and holiday houses but not more than four hours a day and not at all during the summer holidays when the extended family gathered at Pippi. There were three other sisters between Jane and Lydia whose visits to Pippi with their partners and children provided Lydia with what she loved most: an audience.
Unfortunately, this summer would be relatively quiet. Jane and her family were there, and one of the other young cousins, but the rest of them had quite rudely decided to spend most of the holidays elsewhere. Lydia was determined to make this the best summer ever, to make it clear to her sisters that they had missed out—especially Elizabeth, who, as a successful children’s author with a husband even wealthier than Jane’s, was the richest.
“You watch,” Lydia murmured to Lily as she observed the supplies being hauled up the steps and into the network of architectural decks at the cliff house. “I’ll be best friends with them in no time.”
“That is not a good idea.”
“I’m thinking of you children.”
“We’re not children, we’re teenagers, we’re perfectly capable of amusing ourselves, and we don’t need you spying on strangers.”
“It’s not spying if they’re our friends,” insisted Lydia, who, in her mind, was already up at the cliff house having a glorious time with attractive young people who never had to worry about boring things like money.
Lydia found a more appreciative audience for her news in her younger daughter, Rosie, and niece Kat, who were not at all averse to looking at movie stars in general and already followed Casey Brandon on social media. Aunt Jane agreed with Lily, who said that perhaps visiting celebrities ought to be left alone, rather like snakes in the sun. The younger teens took little notice of this opinion (even though Lily was the eldest of the cousins and recognized to be the smartest) and spent the entire afternoon lounging on the deck in their brightest bikinis, tense with anticipation, discussing how they would best engineer a casual conversation when Casey walked by. Which he was bound to do, sooner or later. The family house was right on the beachfront and very close to the jetty where Pippi time was marked by hourly loops of the ferry. All the theater of Pippi life played out before the front deck, or within sight of the many picture windows, so there was plenty of opportunity to both observe and show off. From inside, the family enjoyed beach, jetty, and water views. From outside, passersby and beachgoers could see straight into the high-ceilinged timber-furnished interiors and the lives that played out there. Lily had long ago stopped pulling the blinds down; Lydia always put them back up again. Sadly, there was no such exhibitionism on offer at the cliff house. No one emerged for the rest of the day and the girls had to content themselves with watching the lights go on in the evening and conjecturing which of the shadowy figures on the main deck was Casey.
It was actually Aunt Jane, who wasn’t the least bit interested in meeting him, who was the first to encounter the one and only Casey Brandon while on her morning run along the beach. She returned full of smiles and rather happy to discuss the movie stars after all, which was lucky, as her sister Lydia and the younger girls could speak of nothing else.
“What was he like?”
“What was he wearing?”
“What brand?”
“Was he nice?”
“Was he as good-looking in real life?”
“Did you shake his hand?”
“Did he have an accent?”
“Why is he here?”
“Aren’t you a lot of stickybeaks!” Jane declared. “You can find all this out for yourselves on Friday.”
“He’s coming to drinks,” Lily pointed out. “It’s not like he’s doing anything important.”
“He’s meeting me!” yelled Lily’s younger sister, Rosie. She was fifteen and for several summers now had been going through a loud phase. “What’s more important than me?” she yodeled.
“My bikini!” brayed Lydia. Everyone laughed, and Lily seriously regretted weighing in.
As the conversation veered toward competitive wondering about what to wear and what to bring to make the best impression, Lily retreated to the back deck with Juliet, who was the cousin closest to her in age and temperament. Juliet was a pale city girl, the only child of glamorous Aunt Elizabeth. She and Lily had spent every holiday together since they were babies, and now that they had just finished school, they were closer than ever. The summer and their lives spread out before them, with all the delights of burgeoning adulthood. Together, Lily and Juliet considered the celebrity issue in a way that was appropriate to their advanced maturity and coolness.
Lily did a quick internet search and found an impressive array of magazine covers and designer-sponsored content.
“How has such a star found Pippi?” Juliet wondered.
“And why?” asked Lily.
A few C-list celebrities had stayed at Pippi before—models-turned-TV hosts and former soap actors. They always treated Pippi like a quaint amusement park. They doted on the wallabies and gawked at the goannas, then left plastic champagne glasses on the beach and had bonfires during a fire ban. Lily often trawled the sand and the bush trails picking up after them and helped Lydia to clean their holiday rentals. She’d learned that people are a lot messier if they have the money to pay for incidentals.
“Perhaps he’s only here for Friday-night drinks,” Lily laughed.
“I mean, it must be very different from what he’s used to,” Juliet said.
“But he might love plastic bowls of dubiously flavored chips.”
“Drunk dads.”
“Ferocious little kids.”
“Big dogs.”
“Spilled wine turning the crackers soggy.”
“I do hope we don’t scare him off!”
“Ha! I kind of hope we do!”
For Lily, the only thing worse than cleaning up after careless celebrities was having to watch the locals—including her own family—try to impress them.
Copyright © 2025 by Angourie Rice and Kate Rice. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
