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January 16th

Dear Kate,

Thank you for your suggestions. I like the idea of the Barrier Reef, but it seems a bit well-trodden. Or should that be well-swum? I want something truly unique for my last solo trip. What would you recommend that you don’t recommend for just anyone? What would you pick? Inspire me!

I wait at my laptop.

Not quite four weeks. It will be hot when they let you out. Late summer, the hottest time of all. My mouse hovers over Rose’s email and then I type fast:

Have you thought about the outback? The vast Australian deserts?

Maybe Rose could go instead of me—find you, your den, and relive what I can’t. But how would she get there? There are no commercial tours to where you took me. From Perth there are only ‘desert tours’ that go sandboarding or to visit rocks near the coast called the Pinnacles. The sand on these trips is golden, not red; no bloodied smudges on the soles of feet. The roads on these trips are tarmacked, not dirt.

Maybe I could start the first tour to our desert—to your den—and Rose could be my first client. Surely there’s a market for sick tours like that. My ridiculous fantasy becomes another excuse for getting back onto Google Earth. Soon I’m zooming in, satellite mode, to where you took me—where I think it is, anyway—where it’s blank, unmapped. There are more roadsleading out to more mine sites now, but it’s too blurry to locate any smaller buildings, one of which could be your den. But I’m close, I know; each time I zoom in I get a better scent.