Recoil

10

I checked the kangaroo round my neck. It was just after midday and we still had about six hours of daylight.

I’d have to carry her on my back, and I knew I’d soon be too fucked to talk. ‘Why come here, of all places, to get out of my way? Aren’t there enough nice rivers in Italy for you to play about in?’ I tried to make light of it, but I knew I wasn’t kidding anybody.

Her hair was red with mud, and lay flat against her head.

She tried, but couldn’t look me in the eye. She picked up a leaf and started playing with it. ‘Whatever Stefan told you, it would have been true. I run, Nick. I run from everything. Always have done. That’s why we met, remember?’

At last I got a little eye-contact and a smile I returned. Melbourne – a backpackers’ hostel, opposite Flinders Street station. I’d gone down to the lobby, where she was looking at the message board on which I’d offered a lift to Sydney for a share of the gas.

’You don’t want to go with him.’ I prodded a rival’s note. ‘Rubbish conversation and, besides, he’s an axe murderer. You’d be much better off with this bloke.’ I prodded mine. ‘Much better-looking, and no axes.’

She turned her head. ‘So what’s his weapon of choice?’

‘Ice-cream. Free cone at every gas stop.’ I’d stretched out my hand. ‘I’m Nick.’

She shook. ‘Silke.’ I liked her German accent. ‘Under what circumstances would your offer include crushed nuts and syrup?’ And the fact her grammar was better than mine.

And that was pretty much that. She’d slung her surfboard on to the roof of my combi van, and five days later, after a thousand miles of great conversation, four vanillas and a couple of tuttifruttis, we were sharing more than expenses.

Now her smile faded.

‘My mother would stroke my hair. I can still smell her perfume when I think about her, even now.’ She tugged at the leaf. ‘When she died, I ran away. And I kept running, from anything too complicated, or just to avoid it completely. I’d pretend the problem wasn’t there – and if I didn’t think about it, well, it wasn’t.’

I wanted to ask why I couldn’t be the one to listen, but I already knew the answer. I’d never been the listening kind.

She leaned down and touched her swollen ankle. ‘I’m sorry, Nick. I needed to figure stuff out.’

I knelt beside her and stroked her cheek. ‘Well, next time you need to do that,’ I said, ‘make sure you go to Butlins.’

She didn’t get it. Maybe they didn’t have holiday camps in Germany.

‘What?’

‘Nothing. An English joke.’ I hesitated. ‘I guess Tim isn’t a Butlins kind of a guy, eh?’

She held my gaze now, and I could see tears in her eyes. ‘I needed to see him. Not in the way you think. But now I’m here, you know . . . Look at what he is trying to do . . . Can we really just head back to Lugano, or Sydney, or any other damn place and drink cappuccino and feel comfortable about the world?’

I got up slowly, not wanting to carry on this conversation. ‘Wait here. I’m going to check things out.’

I scrambled up towards the higher ground, looking, listening and giving myself a hard time. What I really wanted to do was scream into her face: ‘So you came all the fucking way here to talk to him about us when you could have done that with me over a brew – not in a fucking war zone where I’ve just had to kill another kid!’

I stopped. I couldn’t hear much above the yelling in my head, but I could see movement down by the river, where we’d just been.

I checked the sky and let my prismatic point settle. The sun was directly overhead, but still only a ball of light trying to penetrate the cloud.

I looked north. If we kept on the high ground, we’d eventually get back to the valley – as long as we didn’t trip over any hostiles on the way. Whatever, I wasn’t going to wait until last light.