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March 6th

‘What about that girl in the park,’ I say, lying on the bed while you trim your beard with a pair of rusty scissors. ‘Tell me the truth about her.’

You turn to me and frown, scissors splayed.

‘In Perth. The teenage girl who looked like me,’ I prompt. ‘School uniform. Short skirt. You were watching her.’

‘You mean the one I was selling to? Jesus!’You go back to chopping.

I sigh, impatient. ‘Oh, come on. She wasn’t just some girl you were selling drugs to.’

‘What was she then? Someone like you?’

‘You tell me.’

You shake your head slowly, rolling your eyes to the ceiling. You put the scissors down on the bed beside you. ‘So, this is what you want to hear? Really?’

‘I want the truth.’

‘You want something weirder than that.’

‘What were you doing with her?’

‘I was selling! It’s what I do now, if you hadn’t noticed.’

‘You don’t do anything now.’

‘Apart from being kidnapped, okay, that’s what I do. Jeez, Gem, don’t look at me like that! I was trying to do other stuff in prison, I did have a plan, you know, before you got in the way.’

Those pictures you’d drawn on the back of the leaflet, all those papers in your backpack, your CV with the art prize… you’d been trying to break away, and I stopped you.

‘You were at the police station that day. I saw you.’

‘So? I have to check in. Parole conditions, remember? Ibelieve you know about those. You seem to know most things about me.’

‘You had drugs with you when you went in?’

You shrug.

‘Why would you be so stupid?’

‘Maybe I am stupid. You ever thought of that?’

‘You’re a lot of shitty things, but you’re not that.’

You sigh again, pick up the scissors. ‘You make me up, Gem.’

‘I make you better.’

A half-smile now as you look at me. ‘Is that so?’ you say. ‘She didn’t even bloody pay, you know, that girl. I was running after her to get my money when you—’

‘When I stopped you.’

‘Fucking teenage girls!’

The wind whips sand against the wooden walls, a million gunshots at once. A high-pitched yelp far away could be our fox. You snip, snip, snip.

‘They’ll come looking, you know, Gem. Someone will. They’ll go searching for me when I don’t show up for my next check-in.’

‘Why would they care enough about you to do that?’

You laugh, a loud, splintering sound that makes me jump. ‘They don’t. But they care about the system. If I can’t get the car going, we’re both fucked. That what you want?’

You raise your eyebrows. I can no longer see obsession for me behind your eyes. You’ve moved on, left me behind. I feel my fingers curl into fists, frustrated at myself. At you.