Page 35

January 23rd

Dear Rose,

You asked what special place I’d chose for my own trip? Well, there is somewhere: a place I daydream about. A desert in Australia. Most people think of it as immense and desolate, inhabited by deadly snakes, and it is vast, sure, but it is also vulnerable, with one of the world’s most fragile ecosystems. It is spectacularly impressive, but you have to work for the privilege of witnessing its beauty. This desert is not easily packaged for a trip.

What am I doing?

I sit back and stare at the screen. Why would Rose want to know my thoughts about our desert? If I’m going to tell her about the outback, I should tell her about the luxury train journey on the Ghan from Darwin to Adelaide, about Uluru and Kings Canyon. But nobody else is asking me what I think about anything that matters, and I have so much to spill. The cursor blinks. Why do I really want to tell all this to Rose?

While I hover in front of the screen, bushfires rage across the land towards you. Perhaps, before I get there, they could burn you alive, your prison an oven.

January 31st

Around ten p.m., Nick turns up at my door. I see him in the peephole. I’ve had a few whiskies, so I don’t even think before I open the door, leaving it on the latch. I stand there, waiting for him to smile at me, forgive me.

He’s drunk too—I see that right away. But he’s clean-shaven and wearing a fitted blazer, brown winklepickers and white ankle socks. Work drinks again? My cut on his cheek has hardly left a mark. I peer closer: just a tiny bit of scab on his cheekbone.

‘Kate,’ he says. ‘Hi.’

Businesslike.

‘Hey, Nick.’

A part of me wants to pick the scab, tease that wound open. Another part of me wants it to heal and disappear, and for us to go back to what we were. I want him to smile like he used to and say that he wants me. But you see, Ty, it seems you’ve ruined this too. Maybe it never was just him and me in this, no matter how hard I tried.

Did I try?

He’s not like you tonight. Too clean. Too monied. Mum would like the look of him now, a neat city boy. Mum would alsolike Nick and me on a Greek island together saving turtles—I really could turn into the perfect daughter. Clumsily, I start to apologise, but then I notice his cold eyes staring back, his unsmiling mouth. I’m naive, stupid. He doesn’t care about me anymore. And that’s how it should be after what I did. I swallow my garbled apology.

‘Why’d you come back?’ I say instead.

He flinches, as if I’ve hit him, and once again I want to saysorryandplease come inside, but the words stay stubborn in my throat. I’m scared of him, but not in the way I was scared of you. This fear is different: this fear is about me, too. As he sways, still staring, I see dark circles under his eyes, a pimple on his chin, a faint shaving rash on his neck, and some part of me wants to look after him, to protect him—from me.

‘Sometimes I hate you, Kate,’ he says quietly. ‘You know that? I’ve hated you these past weeks.’

I shrug. I know. I’ve hated me too.

‘I don’t understand you,’ he adds, ‘who you are, why you threw me out, why you…’

He gestures to his cheek, and I look away. He’s slurring like an amateur. I want to sit on my couch with him, with whisky, and make him slur more; I want to do more than that. But I’m not ready to play the vixen tonight. And besides, I did that to his cheek. And besides, he knows about you.

‘Maybe you shouldn’t try to understand,’ I say, more firmly than I mean. ‘Maybe you should get away from me.’

His eyes widen, and he leans forward into the space between us. I could lean forward and kiss him, or he could kiss me. Neither of us does.

‘Tell me then,’ he says, ‘tell me what I don’t know about you.’

‘You’re drunk,’ I say.

‘You’re always drunk.’

‘You’ll forget this in the morning.’

‘I won’t, that’s the problem. I don’t forget you.’

Does he want to save me, tip me back from the edge? Or is it simply that, if he can’t understand me, he can’t control me? What is it with men always needing control?

‘Have you been to the police?’