Wicked Game

  July 2003 I feel ill on the flight to New Zealand. The chicken they serve for dinner makes me gag. I have to drink bottle after bottle of water to avoid throwing up.    At the airport a sniffer dog goes crazy round my backpack. I have to open it up, pulling out all my clothes. I'm glad I did my washing before I left. There's nothing illegal in there. The woman with the dog- is she police or a customs official, I don't know- asks about what I've had in my bag. We establish the dog must be smelling orange peel I put on top of my backpack while eating the day before.    I book a ticket on the Kiwi Experience bus that will take me round both islands and a flight from Christchurch that will take me to Auckland in time for my flight to Hawaii.    I email Steve and tell him about my flight, my plans. He jokes that he sewed heroin into my backpack and I can pass it to his friend Neil when I get to Heathrow. Neil, his one black friend. I feel a sense of disgu...

  July 2003 Back in Sydney. Full circle. I thought it would feel like coming home but there's something missing.    Friends. Excitement. Hope. Freedom. I book into a hostel in King's Cross, just a short walk from the flat I lived in in Woolloomooloo. It means navigating what we called the death stairs, a long, steep flight of steps, every time I go to the city centre.    I go to the pie cart in Woolloomooloo. I never went when I lived here. I should have done. I buy a curry pie. I never liked hot, spicy food before but now I crave it. Steve loves his food as spicy as possible. Maybe the baby takes after him. Maybe- Stop thinking that. There can't be a baby. I feel uneasy walking around the city. I keep expecting Adam or Nick to appear round every corner. I see that large black eye staring out of every shadow. It's only in the botanic gardens that I feel safe, under the branches hanging with sleeping bats. I long for wings to wrap myself up in.  Steve emails...

  June 2003 I'm cold and wet. I miss the sunshine. I miss who I was in the sunshine.    No one speaks to me in the hostel. I wander around Melbourne alone looking for things to do.    I wonder if I will see Nick who I met in Byron Bay. He said he was from Melbourne. Would he recognise me now? It was less than six months ago but so much has changed. I've been changed by Steve, changed by the weather that seeps gloomily into my bones. He said I was beautiful then. Would he still think that if he saw me now?    I go to the Theatres Building and look for the Museum of Performing Arts. I can't find it.     There has been no more blood. My stomach isn't shrinking.     Maybe that wasn't a miscarriage after all.    But then why was there blood?    It must have been a miscarriage. I can't be pregnant. I absolutely cannot be.    Steve and I email. He's found work as a labourer in Perth. I'm eating free ...

  June 2003 Tasmania feels like some forgotten wintry part of England.    They have free bread in the hostel. I eat nothing but bread for two days. Now I never want to eat bread again. The thought of it sickens me.    An elderly English lady is staying in the hostel. She says she's lived in north Queensland for forty years and now she's house hunting in Tasmania because she misses seasons. I can't imagine missing the cold.    I go on a tour of the island. There are sandwiches for lunch every day but I take the filling out and eat it without the bread. It's a small group, another English girl, a newly wed Singaporean couple who seem lost and confused, and a Swiss man who is frighteningly serious about cake.     I find myself no longer able to eat cake.    We go to Freycinet National Park where the air is fresh and looks across the still blue waters of Wineglass Bay. The tour guide points at a distant shape and says it's a humpba...