‘Yeah, that’s right! Go and release it, make everything worse!’
I take the fox out and lay her on the ground near a clump of saltbush. She will die here, away and alone, and it’ll be because of me. I’m making a mess of everything. I walk back with the empty cardboard box.
‘You were a while,’ you say, looking at the empty box as you smile. ‘She dead then?’
You are glad she’s dying, and you are glad something’s dying in me now too.
‘You should dig the grave,’ I say, as I stride over to the shed.
I find a spade in a dusty pile of rusting gardening tools,along with a rake and some shears, though God knows what they’re for out here. I imagine chopping the shears through your neck, cutting strips from your arms. I return with only the spade and chuck it next to the camp bed.
‘Bloody stupid idea,’ you say. ‘Leave it for the vultures. Only thing it’s good for.’
I start to untie you. I don’t care if the first thing you do is pick up the spade and bash me with it. Why not do it and bury me with the fox?
‘Do what the fuck you like,’ I say.
‘Righto. I’ll take the car and go.’
I look at you, rage pulsing inside me. Do you really mean that? ‘I was stupid to think you’d be grateful for what I’ve done for you, for bringing you here…’
The laugh explodes out of you. ‘Grateful? For this?’
You turn onto your back and rest your arms behind your head. I stop untying. You still don’t care, don’t get it. I step back, away from the loose ropes on your legs.
‘You said you’d find me, wherever I went, whenever you got out.’
Your mouth curls into that sly smile I’m getting used to. ‘You still thought that?’
‘Why shouldn’t I?’
‘That was a long time ago, Gem. Before prison. Anyway, you said it yourself, we’re both different now.’
I fold my arms. ‘When did you get to be such a shit?’
‘Wasn’t I always?’ You turn to stare at me intently. ‘No, seriously. Wasn’t I?’
I blink at you. The Ty in my head wasn’t a shit. That Ty would’ve come back for me. He might’ve stalked me again, butI would’ve been important to him. I would’ve mattered more than this.
‘I thought you’d at least feel remorse.’
‘Then what, we’d start over?’
I want to pull the sheet from you so that you are naked and vulnerable again. I want you to know how inferior you made me feel back then. I sigh hard and look away, because I have no answers for you, and because, you are right: starting over is exactly what I wanted. You’re meant to be so glad to see me again that you’d do anything I want, fix me however I want. Otherwise, what’s the point of all this?
‘You promised,’ I say. ‘You made me believe it all.’
I wait for you to say you remember—every single moment when we walked together in this land, when you showed me the beauty in it and the beauty in you, the beauty in me. Here is why I can’t let you go, why we’re here. I want that fantasy; I’ve been hanging on to it for ten years. It didn’t matter that I was a mess in London, or never had friends, or a boyfriend, or fun. I had you. I had this in my future.
‘Didn’t you want it too?’
I hate this shell of you that shrugs so easily, as if none of it matters, as if you can’t remember what I’m talking about.
‘This isn’t you,’ I snap.
Becausethisisn’t what we had, and you aren’t him. Him? It’s strange thinking of you as separate, like an ordinaryhimand not as something inside me. I glower at you lounging, so casually, on the camp bed. You raise your eyebrows.
‘You know, I’m flattered, Gem,’ you say slowly. ‘But I think the person you want ain’t here.’