Or would they write about me burning for revenge, returning for payback?
Now it’s her turn.
I booked a window seat so I can watch the land as we descend into Perth. I remember the views from the air on that final flight: swirls of brown and orange, the dried-out creekbeds curling like snakes, so like the Indigenous art you told me about and I’ve researched since. But memory swirls in patterns too, and perhaps I never saw all that when I left. Perth is on the coast; surely it’s the sea I should be remembering, not desert.
Perhaps my memory of your arid home—of you, even—is also like a painting: a constructed landscape, a vision, but not the real thing.Myvision. Which means that what everyone else assumes about you and your desert is also a construction, their vision. I guess there is no such thing as a true vision; everything is always just ascape.
The older man beside me turns to talk as we take off. ‘Going anywhere nice, love?’
‘Work trip.’
‘To Australia?’ He raises his eyebrows, clearly impressed, then starts on about his daughter who’s married anAussie blokewho is building a house,only right on the bloody beach.I smile politely. ‘You been before?’ he says.
‘When I was sixteen.’ Instantly, I hate myself. Why am I telling him? I should be minimising my trace.
He laughs. ‘You still look about sixteen.’ I think he’s expecting me to take this as a compliment, but I don’t acknowledge it. ‘Bet it’s changed a bit,’ he adds eventually.
‘Some things might have.’ I turn on the screen in front of me and stare at it until he gets the hint.
You’re close now, days away. I feel you in my blood, making my pulse race. Now I can’t imagine a version of my life in which I don’t make this trip: I’d only ever find a way to return. And why shouldn’t I let you in properly after all this time?