Hannah Davies:
So, crazy thought—if we stop in Sydney, can we do an overland tour as well?
I imagine a stream of air travelling up my neck and into my brain: one of the techniques Rhiannon taught me. How does Hannah Davies get to do whatever she likes in a country she knows nothing about? Because I just told her to. I should send Hannah on a plane to join you. Then, when you get out, you can make her your plaything too: take her to the middle of nowhere and do whatever the hell else it was you wanted to do with me.I’ve got the perfect tour guide, I could say,a real celebrity out there, he knows the place better than anyone.My fingers twitch, but my history stays unwritten.
I send her the links she needs. I tell her the usual stuff aboutfinding yourselfand thatthe big, wide world can offer more than a 9-5 job—my proven lines for the student site. I push her towards a tour on the east coast, one that doesn’t go far inland, not to the real desert. Hannah Davies won’t see what you’ve shown me. I’m still protective about it, you know, the place you took me to. Is it still a secret, yourdesert den, that home you made for us?Or perhaps someone else lives there now, a shiny new kidnapper with his adorable kidnappee.
No.
It would be a snake pit now.
I’ve never found anything about it online, not in all these years. I’ve google-earthed thousands of kilometres of arid land across Western Australia: nothing. All I have is a hunch about how to find it again, the tiniest sliver of memory.
I ring Hannah Davies to verify her details. I never like the clearer picture I get when a voice replaces typing and makes a person different from how I imagined them. When she speaks, I almost don’t hear her. All I hear is the rumble of your car over road corrugations, the jolting and swaying. It will be hot out there this time of year. Hot as hell. I switch back to Hannah Davies when I register her voice, so young. But I was young too. Younger than her.
You won’t like it, I want to say. But I tell her to email me with any further questions, that I’m always here to help. And I am, I guess. Sometimes when I’m not even rostered on, I check work emails, do the chat box. It fills the hours, someone to talk to who is not you. That’s how I rationalise it, anyway. Like I said, everything’s always your fault.
I feel strange after Hannah hangs up; it’s just as well no other serious enquiries come in. I imagine her and her boyfriend, her legs against the sand, her toes digging into it. I imagine her boyfriend fucking her under the stars, and how she’d smile. I think of her staring at the night sky and raising her middle finger at me.
When I hold the envelope, I want to cut it, burn it, swallow it whole. But I cradle it, imagining
your death (accident in the exercise yard),
another ten years (fight in the canteen),
a diagnosis of cancer.
I get the whisky. When I finally poke my little finger into a corner of the envelope flap, the bottle is a fair bit emptier. I unfold the letter.
It’s from the Victim Notification Register, part of theDepartment of Corrective Services. The words are very formal, and you are referred to as Mr Tyler Andrew MacFarlane, and me as Miss Gemma Grace Toombs. There is no mention of you dying, or spending longer inside, or having a terminal illness. The letter states that you can’t resume contact with me. Can’t come within a hundred metres of me. Can’t do anything to me at all. There are details of a Community Corrections Centre where you are required to report.
And then: 12 February. The date looks so formal on the page. I do the maths: six weeks, five days. So much earlier than I’d expected.
The news comes without fanfare, no reporters outside my door. After all this time: just a letter of notification about your probation, your release. I’m not ready.
I hold off for as long as I can, but eventually go to the cupboard. I pull out the plastic containers of clippings, turn my phone to silent, text Nick:
I can’t do tonight. Feeling ill. Sorry.
No kiss.
I spread the articles around me until I’m an island and these papers are the sea. I bob on familiar words and images.
Gemma: found!
Gemma Toombs released from desert drifter!
Is this the face of a monster?
I trace the black-and-white line drawing of you in the courtroom, your hands clasped, your blue eyes black. You are beautiful and terrifying, and I can’t look away. Something pulls behind my ribs, alonging. But for what?