Chapter 11

Wednesday 25 May 2022

Alison came into the room to wake Larissa up at 6am. Larissa was only a bit awake - she was pretty fully timezone adjusted now, but when Alison rustled her shoulder, she felt Julian sit up and pull Alison down onto the bed between them. Alison gave a squeal of surprise, and then she gasped as Julian kissed her cheek. Larissa rolled toward her and kissed the other.

“Good morning,” she said to Alison. “I hope you don’t mind!”

“Oh no, this is lovely.”

“Good. Want to join us under the covers for a few minutes?”

Alison wanted to do that, so Julian lifted Alison up while Larissa pushed the covers down. Then the three of them snuggled up under the covers, Alison in the middle. “Will we get good one on one time today or tomorrow?” Larissa asked her. “Heart to heart time, you know?”

Alison frowned. “Not much, actually. It’s going to be pretty busy.”

“I thought so. I’ll make you a deal. We’ll swim with you now, but tomorrow morning, you come down here at the same time and slide into bed with us, and we’ll get our one on one time.”

“Can I be naked too?”

“Of course, you wear what you want to or not, and we’ll love you whatever. But we’ll be naked, and naked is good for heart to heart, cuddled up real close.”

“Sounds great. Probably it’ll be my best date ever. But oh!”

“Oh!?”

“Oh no, I’ve just realised something. I’m doing a sleep over with my best friends and cousins tonight.”

“So? They’ll all be fast asleep at this time of the morning, they won’t notice.”

“Duh. You’re right about that. They’ll be fast asleep. I would’ve been too, but I’ll sure get myself up to get in bed with you two. No, I didn’t think, I told my girlfriends that we’ll do a girly sleepover night with you two, so they can get to know you well.”

“Sure, you told us about that, sounds fine to me and Layna said she’d enjoy an American take on that.”

“What about the guys? We can’t cut them out.”

“We can if we need to, they can just catch up on work. But there’s a different option. We can just call them girls tonight, and they can do the same things as the rest of us.”

Alison giggled. “You’re kidding, right?”

“No. Both of them, they can do make up and hair and massage our feet, and we can talk heart to heart with them. Both of them are good guys and they’ll love it, and I’m sure we can make your girlfriends comfortable with it.”

“Right,” Julian said, “I live with a girl, and go through what she goes through. I bleed with her. And your friends can trust us, but if they can’t, Larissa can tie us up. Or blindfold us.”

Alison burst into laughter for that. “Very funny. I’ll talk to my friends today.”

“OK. Let’s go swimming,” Larissa said. “But kisses first.”

Alison grinned for that and kissed both of them.

Alison was wearing a wrap over her thong, so Larissa grabbed one of Julian’s dirty t-shirts and popped that over the thong that Alison gave her, which was from the bikini she’d taken when she visited in Australia. The three of them made their way out to the pool. Alison stood at the end, pointed at the lanes and said, “it’s twenty five yards in length. I usually do 60. Are you up for that?”

“Sure!” Larissa pulled Julian’s t-shirt off, and threw it on one of the seats. Alison had done the same, but then she snorted, looking behind Larissa. Larissa spun around and discovered that Julian had also stripped down to a thong, the plain one she bought for him at the swimwear shop with Jo. She looked at him in disbelief. What the fuck? He could only have that thong if he was planning this, but how?

Julian grinned at them and said, “I heard us girls were wearing thongs.” Then he burst into laughter. “Alison, I have to work damn hard to get Larissa speechless.” Larissa shook her head, she really was.

There was nothing to say, so Larissa said, “Let’s go then!”

For the first forty laps or so, Julian and Larissa swam with Alison, content to let her set the pace. Larissa wasn’t good at pool swimming, and didn’t have a slick racing turn so she concentrated on that while she bided her time. At forty, she was starting to consider when to turn the sped up when Alison kicked off the wall hard. Right, game on. She made a snap decision at this point: she was going for it at this point, see how much of a lead she could get on Julian. By lap fifty, she was nearly a length clear, well ahead. She could feel herself tiring so she backed off a little. With three laps to go, Julian had gained half a lap, and Alison was a few lengths behind him, narrowing the gap. Time to finish it, and she kicked off the wall at full speed.

Yeah, she finished nearly a full lap ahead of Julian. Beating Julian by that much was very satisfying, as was how long it took him to get his breath back at the end - he hadn’t given her that one. Alison very nearly pipped him at the post too. “Wow, Alison,” Larissa said, when Alison could talk again. “You’re very fit. That was way closer than I expected.”

Alison smiled reluctantly. “Oh I really thought I’d have you two there, I do swim a lot - part of my olympic training, and I qualified state no problems.”

“Yeah. But we’re from Australia. Julian swum in school against a current olympian, and we swim a lot for fitness, ocean swimming. So swimming’s kind of in our genes.”

“Well done, babe,” Julian said, now that he had his breath back. “I hoped to get close to you, but I nearly killed myself staying ahead of Alison. Alison, you didn’t think of going to the olympics for swimming?”

“Nah. Dad encouraged me to, but do you know how many million laps you have to do? I’d go nuts.”

Julian laughed. “I’ve always thought that most olympians are nuts. I was going to exclude you, but you’re thinking of doing the vet thing, so that makes you as nuts as Larissa.”

Alison laughed. “Well, mum and dad definitely think so. All that money, and I want to do what with my life? But the important things in life are just not about money. Which is why so few of them have happy relationships. Anyway, time to go muck out.”

They dragged themselves out of the pool, and Alison threw some towels at them. They ran down to their rooms and go their dirty kayaking gear on, and then met Alison in the stables. They helped her clean out the stables, tidy the barn, and feed the horses. Then Alison showed Larissa each of the horses, talking about their health. And these were magnificent horses. Larissa didn’t look after thoroughbred horses for her work - they were way to risky to use a common emergency vet, but she’d bet from her lectures that each of these was each worth more than James and Sophie’s house. But they still got sick with common diseases, and she had a good look at each. Nothing to see, of course, they were carefully tended by a vet who visited three times a week to protect the investment they represented. But it was a good look at another part of Alison’s life.

Then they were back for a shower, and after that they joined the family for breakfast. This morning it was happy families, enjoying each other’s company. And having everyone together like this, it was nice. Larissa had dreamed occasionally with Sophie, Steph and Asha that they’d all buy places that shared a common middle area, a common entertaining area, swimming pool and exercise gym that would be better because their cost was shared, and they could get together as a family more often. Of course there were downsides to the idea, but this morning’s breakfast was a clear demonstration of the upsides. Nice.

Then it was time for them to go to school. Originally, they’d expected to go to speak at the graduation ceremony in the afternoon, but when Layna and Larissa spoke to the headmaster on zoom about the challenges and opportunities his students faced - part of preparing to do the graduation ceremony well - he’d decided that the students would enjoy tutorials with them. So Larissa was doing a tutorial on animal first aid, Julian was doing a tutorial on what actions would actually help with the climate challenge, Layna was doing a tutorial on how to run a Youtube channel, and Joe ... well, Joe scratched his head and talked to Larissa and decided to offer a tutorial on ‘mental health and public health, an Australian perspective’. Mainly he’d been intending to talk about the problems that national disability scheme had uncovered with regard to autism and chronic mental health conditions. To their surprise, Joe’s had been by far the most popular with the students. Why? Well, gun violence. Not that Joe knew much about that, but he’d decided to do his best - at least he said it was an Australian perspective. The other problem was that almost all students wanted to do two or three of the tutorials, if not all four. So the headmaster had organised for them to do their tutorials twice, staggered over a three hour period so that only two or three were on at a time. That way, students could catch at least three of them. And the teachers. Larissa’s was the least popular, but she still had twenty to thirty students for each, which was more than enough for her. Hers had required the most preparation too, physical props for her to talk about, and Alison and Linda had worked hard getting it set up.

Then the security team turned up, time to go to school. This was like nothing Larissa had ever experienced - four vans instead of two, since extra people were off to school. And a lead car and a chase car ... what an awful way to live your life. And weird too, because they were let into a gated school that had also had an open front gate other students were wondering in without being checked. Well, whatever. They were met by the principal, who Larissa recognised even after only talking to him by Zoom before, and a couple of assistants. They were shown to their rooms, well equipped teaching rooms, and Larissa opened her bag and started to set up. Fortunately, she was sitting the first session out, so once she was set up, she went and sat at the back of the Joe’s class. Interesting - the room was very full, and she ended up sitting on the edge of a desk that a teacher was sitting at; she shared a thank you grin with the teacher who was happy she was listening.

Joe had divided up his tutorial into three parts - a discussion of the classic mental health problems, and how they become public health issues. The second part was how trying to set up a properly organised system for disabled care to back up families at their wits end had uncovered just how bad it was for many families, far more than anticipated, and finally, an open session for discussion. He’d put some real work into this, and consulted with a couple of his lecturers, one of whom was an American, and from Larissa’s point of view, that shone through.

As expected, when the open discussion started, everyone’s attention immediately turned to guns. How much of the problem of gun violence was linked to mental health problems - what was an Australian’s perspective? A simple answer would be: every country has mental health problems but only one country has a gun violence epidemic. And that same country has open gun ownership laws. But a more sophisticated answer would cover that other countries have the same gun ownership laws and not the same gun violence problem - so there must be something else at work. Joe’s answer covered those, and then talked about the founding legends of the country - the gunslinging cowboy. His audience was super-surprised when he talked about the gun ownership and carry rules cowboys lived under - more restrictive than now. That started a really interesting debate that Joe kept bringing back to public health: there’s a public health problem if there’s a gun violence problem, but public health problems are nasty. What if the problem wasn’t ownership but responsibility someone asked? At that point, Joe said that he knew someone who killed with a gun regularly, and perhaps they’d like to hear from that person? That caused a ripple of surprised conversation, including from the teacher behind her, and then Joe asked Larissa to come to the front. Well, she’d begun to suspect that this would happen.

Larissa went to the front and told them all about killing the animals she wanted to save, and the responsibilities that went with the right to have a gun, and the duty to use it to serve society, and her training and accountability in the responsibilities - both Taekwondo and using her gun. Shouldn’t such training and accountability be expected? She sure wasn’t standing out there for further discussion, so she went back and sat on her table. The teacher sitting at the desk behind her gave a beautiful smile, and patted her on the back - clearly, she agreed.

There wasn’t much time for discussion after that, but what there was focused on accountability for gun owners. None of that would happen, of course, until there was some major disaster, but Larissa couldn’t imagine what that might be. In the meantime, the steady drumbeat of mass shootings was apparently business as usual.

Well, it was time for Larissa to go to her own tutorial, and leaving early seemed like a good idea.

She counted - by the time she started, she had thirty-five, including five teachers. Good, a nice manageable number, not like the over one hundred that Joe had. She started by introducing herself, and her job, and how she got it. Then she showed them her own first-aid kit, and quickly ran through what was in it. After that, she showed them what she carried in her van, a series of photos of what was in there, which was an awesome array of equipment. Then she did a series of case studies, each following the general pattern, encountering an animal needing help for some reason, how to think about that, showing a quick decision tree, and then a photo of an actual animal she’d treated that had that problem, and what the right thing to do for first aid, which was mainly to keep the animal alive long enough to get it to the vet. Then she threw in a couple of very Australian stories - kangaroos crashing into cars, and wounded koalas - just to entertain her audience, since they found the weird Australian animals very interesting. Finally, she finished with the sheep giving birth that she’d done with Alison, using Alison’s photos, including the ones she didn’t publish, and talking through the process. Finally, a few minutes for questions, and they were technical - why do this, what about that. Good questions, and she was happy, her audience had remained engaged.

The students had apparently been messaging each other during the tutorials, and to her surprise, her numbers were up over who’d registered. The teacher from Joe’s tutorial stuck her head in and explained that kids who’d done two were choosing to stay and do a third, so all the tutorials were up. Sweet. And this time, she had Alison and Linda - they’d just watched Layna.

Afterwards, they joined the students for lunch. They sat in the lunch room, at a table each, each table crowded with students wanting to talk to them about their tutorials. Larissa tried to imagine this happening in her old school, even for someone like Layna visiting, but she just couldn’t. Clearly, a top-end private school attracted a totally different kind of student than her own country high school. Though she did wonder how many of the students in the room were hiding their own alcohol or mental health issues, or ones in their immediate family. Alison had asked around her friends for her, and they reported plenty of alcohol abuse and sexual misbehaviour strongly linked to alcohol, so American teens didn’t seem very different to Australian teens as far as she could tell.

After lunch, the boys took Julian and Joe out to introduce them to American sports, while Larissa and Layna did something different: Alison introduced them to Benjamin the Third, her date for the deb ball that paired with the graduation, the one that would be held this coming Saturday night. He was rather over-awed to be introduced like that, and Larissa worked hard joking with him to settle him down. What emerged quickly for her was that Alison had chosen carefully: this guy was a safe choice. A nice boy, on track to success and oodles of money, and from a rich family. But a boy that didn’t even touch Alison’s heart in the slightest, and he didn’t have a clue about that either. Even if Alison let him take her to bed afterwards, her heart wasn’t going be involved. Something to talk to her about the next morning. Layna agreed with her assessment, she could see that too.

Now Alison and the rest of her family were off home while the four of them went off to join Niall’s local corporate team for a late lunch and for them to hear Layna and Larissa’s corporate presentations. Nothing surprising there - they listened carefully, and then they all wanted to know about the White House visit. Niall’s guidance was not to report anything of substance, but they could talk about the visit, so they did that.

Then it was back to Alison’s home in time to prepare for the graduation ceremony. For the tutorials, and the corporate speaking, they’d just worn polos and jeans, and Larissa had worn her vet rescue top as she usually did. But for graduation, they did something different. The guys wore nice formal shirts and pants - formal business attire in Australia. For the girls, Jo had decided a statement was in order, and something distinctly Australian. Larissa wore her favourite dress, Sharon’s farm dress, with heavy farm type boots, while Layna wore something Jo had got Sharon to make as soon as she saw Larissa’s dress: a matching dress for a lady. It had the same idea, but had softer materials and a formal white blouse under it. It too was skin tight to the waist, and then a long flowing skirt and sandals that laced up around her ankles. Layna looked great in it, and Larissa really enjoyed the contrast. Then they did each other’s hair and make up, pulled back from their face by a simple cloth hairband. All of this was to suit their joint theme for the graduation ceremony.

The graduation ceremony was held in the main hall of the school. The school wasn’t very large: there were about eighty seniors graduating, all dressed up in formal dress. That still made for over five hundred in the audience because there was a lot of family present, parents, grandparents, and siblings. There were several speeches from staff and students, and many awards for the students.