March 4th
You raise the hood of the car and peer inside, shaking your head. After a few minutes, you stride over to your old shed and return with some tools. Lying on the dirt, you reach underthe car and start tugging at something on the undercarriage. I tinker in the shed too, searching for different tins—spam, sweetcorn, carrots, we’ve had them all. No matter what I do, our dinner always tastes like bland, over-salted mush. I pull out a dented tin of anchovies. Possible? It feels almost domestic; you and me like this. Is it the kind of thing we could keep up? Or just another kind of make-believe?
In the kitchen, as I open the tins, checking each one for mould, I look at you through the window. Now you’re leaning against the car, hands propped on the bull-bar, frowning at the engine. Soon, you head into the shade under the scrubby trees and sit in the sand, wiping sweat from your forehead. I should take you out some water. But before I can, your head tilts; you’re listening. Then you smile, and I follow your gaze.
There she is again, our fox.
You reach into your pocket and hold something out to her—food?
Your lips are moving.
I go out onto the veranda and hear you telling her she’s a good girl, with the reddest of red coats, and the most beautiful amber eyes, things I might say to Sal.
I know you want to hate this invader, but you can’t, not when she’s so close, looking like that, and hungry. You want to save her; you can’t help it. You want her to live, even if by living she’ll kill what’s around her. We love what we come to know and fear, don’t we, Ty, even when we know it’s bad? Sometimes we come to love it so much, we don’t see anything else. Maybe there’s no other way to love.
‘Tell me about the woman in Banksia Drive?’
‘My sister?’
‘Don’t be stupid, she’s not your sister.’
Your laughter echoes in the quiet room we now share. ‘So, who is she then?’
‘Your sister had blonde hair and is fat. I saw her at our trial.’
You shrug. ‘She got thin and died her hair. So? You got skinner and died your hair, too.’
‘I wasn’t ever fat.’
‘Fitter, then.’ You sigh. ‘Anyway, your point?’
‘She’s not your sister. I’ve been following her online for years, and she doesn’t look like that.’
‘You’re seriously creepy, you know? You’re worse than me.’
This is the old you, trying to be funny, but it’s not something I can laugh at.
‘Don’t lie to me,’ I say. ‘Did you marry someone in prison? Is that who she is? You can tell me, you know, youshouldtell me. Anyway, your sister is called Marie, not Louise.’
‘How’d you know about Louise?’
I feel my lips pinching, my throat tightening. I don’t want to tell you about being armpit deep in the recycling bin of 31 Banksia Drive, but I do, eventually, when you keep staring at me. After a short laugh, you shake your head at me.
‘You changed names too, Kate. Remember?’
I don’t like who I am right now, don’t want to ask these questions; I don’t want to care about their answers. But I also want to know if I meant so little to you that you fell in love with the next person who came calling. Again, though, you shake your head.
‘She’s my sister,’ you say firmly.