Page 82

Eight months earlier

GREAT NORTHERN HIGHWAY

February 22nd, later

At a sign announcingMalgi Rocks Picnic Ground, a dirt track leads off the highway to the left. The car shudders over gravel as I make the turn, travelling too fast towards a jumble of big boulders. In the rear-view mirror, I watch dust lit up from the brake lights, suspended in an orange cloud. There won’t be anybody here at this hour. I pull into the car park near the rocks, where old oil drums masquerade as rubbish bins, their blackened insides evidence they have been used for burning. One of them will be fine for what I need.

In between the gunshot holes on the faded sign I park next to, there’s text about local Indigenous history, stories about the rocks, and something else about stockmen. When I fling open the back door and reach for your things, your clothes go flying into the dirt. I leave them for now, and return for your backpack. Why didn’t I ever look inside it? When you spoke to that girl in the park, I imagined ropes and drugs and even a gun zipped within, more dangerous evidence I’d need to get rid of.

I take the backpack and lean against one of the oil drums, but the mosquitos and night-time insects are too persistent, so I return to huddle against the car, sitting in the dirt. I unzip the backpack and pull out a water bottle—half-full—and I amangry, again, for not checking earlier. I also find a baseball cap, embroidered with a cartoon character of a chicken in a chef’s hat; I stick it on my head for now. Then an apple, soft and bruised. The fox might’ve liked that.

And then, papers. Only papers.

I pull them out and dump them in the dirt beside me, turn the backpack upside down and shake.

Half a pack of Extra chewing gum tumbles out, along with a paperclip, a screwed-up receipt for a bucket of chicken, and a lighter, which I palm.

Nothing else. No gun. No knife.

I check the pockets. No more baggies of weed or pills. No wig or disguises to put on the girl in the park. I sit back onto my heels. What does this mean? You were never going to take her, just like you said? I swallow slowly, nauseous now, and focus back on the papers—a document about rehabilitation after prison, a page of phone numbers and websites titledIf you need to reach out, a pizza delivery brochure, and your CV. I smooth it across my legs and read.

Your full name, your birthdate. Thirty-nine years old. Not as old as you look.

UnderSkills and Experienceyou list a woodwork course in prison, fifteen years’ of welding and fixing cars, a job in a mine camp, a forklift licence and a few computer courses. But my eyes snag on the final line:Winner of the Hakea Prison Life Drawing Award.I feel a smile twitching at the corners of my mouth. So you didn’t give up your art. But life drawing? Who have you been drawing? It was always the land.

I rifle through the rest of the papers, desperate to find something I can hate you for, something about that womanin 31 Banksia Drive, or details of another crime I don’t know about. But there’s only a letter from Medicare, a leaflet about a back-to-work scheme, and another letter about getting help for drug and alcohol addictions. Perhaps you read that one; it’s more crumpled than the rest. I pull it from the pile and read about a Narcotics Anonymous meeting in South Perth. I trace my fingers over a coffee ring in one corner, imagining you pausing your reading to take a sip, remembering that first coffee we shared, the one that started it all. When I turn over the page, I find black-and-white swirls, circles, faces, a whole tapestry, your mind laid out, a hidden part of you.

It’s hard to make sense of it at first, the drawings are so tiny, but I hold the paper closer and eventually decipher dogs running, eyes in each corner of the page, a mountain range, and a house that looks like your den. I search for a sketch of me. Along one side of the page is a mermaid arching her back like an ocean wave, long dark hair down her spine. On the other side of the page, I recognise a constellation, Pleiades. The seven sisters chased eternally by the hunter’s star, Orion. You showed me those stars once, one hot night when I lay against you. The memory of it brings hot, scratchy tears to my eyes. There is beauty and talent in these lines you’ve drawn, in the patterns and chaos. You should have been an artist. You should’ve been so much more than what you turned yourself into.

I shove the documents, backpack and our bloodied clothes into the blackest drum I can find, then ignite the lot with your lighter. The flames flare immediately, and I worry that someone will see, or that the fire will leap and spread to the scrub and set the whole place on fire. It’s probably illegal to light a fire here at this time of year: another crime to add to my list. But the flamesdie down and settle below the rim of the drum.

I wait until everything has turned to ash, until embers of what was once yours catch the wind and float like fireflies into the night. I wait for them to kindle the scrub, for the wildfire to start. But the embers go cold, and so does the night as it draws in.

In the windless evening, I walk up to the biggest of the boulders, where I crouch, my back against it, and shut my eyes. The rock is still warm and the heat radiates along my spine. No sound of birds or bats. I imagine the rock as a body pressing against me, a belly against my shoulders. The rock doesn’t care what I have done. The rock has seen worse, seen everything. It still welcomes me, gives me a home I don’t deserve.

I open my eyes when I hear a rustling, then a soft, rhythmic chewing. Eyes in the scrubland are watching me, shadows darting along the ground. Roos. They’re not scared of me.

‘You should be,’ I whisper, as tears run down my face again.

I don’t think I can do this. I can’t leave this place, can’t leave you. Because leaving you is leaving me too.