Chapter Twelve

March 2003

We put our backpacks down and choose our beds.

'It must be fate that we met again,' Steve says. 'And it wasn't even a one night stand because we didn't have sex.' He seems delighted by this, as if it makes the potential relationship at our fingertips more legitimate.

He stares at me, his face hungry. We kiss, falling onto the bed. As our clothes come off I think I should ask him about condoms but he doesn't say anything so maybe he doesn't care, and if he doesn't care then I don't care.

Anyway, it's unlikely I'll get pregnant. I've used contraception maybe twice in my life and it's never happened. I barely weigh seven stone and have spent so much of my life since my teens intermittently starving, I doubt this body could carry a baby. I shake my premonition out of my head. Premonitions never come true.

He swears a lot, loudly during sex. Afterwards he thanks me. I am confused by this. Does he see it as something I should do for him rather than a mutual act?

We lie on separate beds. Silence builds up like a wall between us. We are in this awkward space where it feels like we know eachother but we don't really.

I start asking questions, to knock down that silence, to get to know him.

'What's your favourite colour? What's your favourite song? Who's your favourite band? What's your favourite number?'

We both like the colour red. Me because it's a bright, happy colour. Him because he's a Manchester United fan.

His favourite song is Desperado by the Eagles. I have never heard it. Mine is Atmosphere by Joy Division. He has never heard it.

I like Massive Attack. He likes Guns N' Roses.

It feels like we are from two different worlds.

He says his favourite number is 69.

'So predictable,' I say.

'How can you have a favourite number?' he says. 'They're just numbers.'

'Mine is four,' I say, 'because it's like the ultimate even number. Or 256 because it's four to the power of four.'

He looks at me like I'm speaking a foreign language.

We go to a travel agent and book a camping trip to Uluru. We book the greyhound bus to travel north for the day after we come back.

He asks me why I've been travelling alone, why I haven't made any friends along the way.

I don't know how to answer.

'Girls are bitchy,' he says. 'They all hate you because they're jealous of how gorgeous you are.'

They all hate me.

The two women he knew from Cairns who we sat with that first night haven't spoken to us since then. It must be something about me. And not because they're jealous. People hate me because I'm weird and annoying and still trapped in a room in Sydney. I don't want Steve to find out the real reason.

We go to the supermarket to buy food. I look at the creme eggs. He shakes his head. I pull an exaggerated sad face.

'Okay,' he says and puts one in the basket. He looks pleased with himself.

'No,' I say, 'I don't really want one.' I put it back.

He frowns.

Back in our room we talk about Cairns.

'I didn't like it,' I say. 'People were strange and kept staring at me and men touched my face.'

'I know you've got a pretty face, but that doesn't mean people can touch it,' he says.

'And an old man randomly started talking to me about the sea gulls.'

'Do you think he was trying to chat you up?'

'He said I was beautiful.'

'Was he drunk?'

'No, I don't think he- Hey.' I push him playfully in the stomach.

He says he'll give me the full body massage he promised me.

I lie naked as he squeezes, pinches and hits my body. It's not a massage. I have a degree in drama and most of our practical sessions involved massaging each other's backs. We were mostly inept but we didn't hurt each other like this.

He's not massaging me, he's making my body his.

In a pub he tells me about his ex-girlfriend leaving him after five years.

'And she took the dyson.'

'Oh, I bet that hurt.'

He remortgaged his house to buy her out.

I gaze at him. He's a proper grown up with a mortgage.

Then he was made redundant so he decided to come to Australia.

For a second I picture him coming here to die. I shut the thought off. I'm always imagining ridiculous scenarios.

'I promised myself I would never fall in love again,' he says. 'Because I can't take another heartbreak.'

I am glad that he won't fall in love. I don't want to give myself completely to someone else.

'What about you and your ex-boyfriends?' he says.

'No one serious.'

I run my finger round the rim of my glass.

'Are you a witch, trying to cast a spell?'

'I'm trying to make that chiming sound."

'That only works on crystal glasses.'

'That's why I can never do it.'

'What happened to your boyfriends then?'

'I'm like a black widow spider. I eat them after mating.'

'How come you didn't eat me?'

'You're too old. You'll be too tough to eat.'

He asks me how many men I've had sex with.

I hesitate. Should I count the ones I didn't choose to have sex with?

I decide not to. 'Eight.'

He smirks at me. 'They say with women always multiply by three to get the real number.'

'How many girls have you slept with?'

He takes a long sip of his beer. 'At least fifty.'

'But you were with one person for five years.'

The corners of his mouth twitch. 'I was a bad boy.'

'Are you still a bad boy?'

He doesn't answer, just looks into my eyes.

I want him to think that I can be bad too. I can be his equal. I force my alternative version onto my memory of that night in Sydney, the one where I wasn't a victim. 'But have you ever had sex with two people in one night?'

'Have you?'

'Yes. In Sydney.' But my alternative version falls apart in my head. 'I don't know what happened. I was with one man then I woke up with another.'

He raises his eyebrows. He smiles slowly. 'Did they spit roast you?'

I've never heard that term before but I can guess at its meaning. 'No.' His reaction seems wrong.

Later that night in bed, after he has thanked me for sex again, I ask him how he coped without someone to have sex with all the time.

'How did you cope?' he says.

'Maybe I always had someone.'