Chapter Twenty Four

5.4.26

May 2003

In the hostel in Perth there is a sense of community. People sit and chat at the picnic tables in the courtyard. This is where Steve stayed when he first arrived in Australia. The owners, a married couple, remember him.

He talks to the male owner about his ex girlfriend.

'After five years together she just walked out,' he says. 'Now I don't trust women anymore.' He shoots me a look. 'Even if they seem nice.'

'I'm not nice,' I say but I don't think anyone hears me.

We go to a pub quiz with people from the hostel.

'We need a team name,' someone says.

I remember the name of one of the quiz teams in an episode of The Office. 'Stephen Hawkings' Football Boots,' I say.

A woman from the hostel laughs. 'You've got quite a dark sense of humour, haven't you?'

I feel Steve tense next to me. I wasn't supposed to say that. I wasn't supposed to be dark or funny.

We name our team The Backpackers.

Steve and I talk to a couple from London, Tom and Rachel. Tom is interested in the rhyming slang Steve has started peppering his conversation with since we arrived in Perth.

'So that's just how people talk normally in your part of London?'

Steve nods. He frowns a little, not seeming comfortable to be questioned.

At night in our room he says, 'You love Tom, you're going to leave me for him and I'll be all alone with no one to love me.'

'Of course I don't,' I say. Why would he think that? And Tom and Rachel have been together for years, of course I wouldn't want to break them up.

One night we all go out to drink and dance. Steve says he wants to go somewhere else so he can watch football. I hesitate. I don't know if he wants me to go with him. I'm not interested in football. He doesn't ask me to go with him. I go with everyone else.

On the way we separate into groups. I end up with an English man and two Swedish women. He beckons us round a corner and passes a joint around. Then we run to catch up with the others.

When we get there a man, Louis, points at the TV screens. 'Didn't your boyfriend go somewhere else to watch the football?'

'Yeah,' I say.

'But he could have watched it here.'

I shrug. I don't know if Louis is implying something, that Steve just wanted to go somewhere without me.

I am happy, so happy to be dancing again. Steve and I never dance, not since that night in Cairns. We sit by the bar and talk and drink and kiss and I've missed tuning into the rhythm, the emotion of music and letting my body run free in it.

The next evening at the picnic tables Steve is talking to everyone but me and I feel myself shrinking, turning invisible.

'Why were you just sitting in silence?' he says when we are in our room.

No one wanted me to speak. Especially not him.

'The way you act makes people think I'm abusing you.'

'No one thinks that.'

'You're an embarrassment.'

I think I'm going to cry. He's seen the real me and of course he doesn't like it.

'Ohhh,' he says, looking at my face. He starts singing Don't Worry Be Happy.

'Stop killing Bob Marley songs,' I say.

'Bob Marley? That's not by Bob Marley. It's by Bryan Ferry.

'No, when I downloaded it from Napster it said it was by Bob Marley. It doesn't sound anything like Bryan Ferry.'

'It doesn't sound anything like Bob Marley either.' He pulls me onto his bed. 'How could you think it was him? I thought you knew about music.' He shakes his head. 'You've changed.'

Have I changed? Or am I still who I've always been, the person I've been trying desperately not to be?