Wicked Game

  July 2003 I sit on the ferry to the South Island with Catriona, Sarah and Lou. I was expecting to feel sick, to be running constantly to the toilets or the side of the deck to throw up, but there is no sickness, no nausea, just the numb, achy feeling of the flu.    We are opposite a New Zealand family, parents, a three year old girl and a baby boy. The girl talks to us, she whines at her parents, she runs around in the small space between our seats.    As we move through Marlborough Sounds we stare at the strange shapes of land jutting from the water, almost unnatural looking.    The New Zealand family leave their seats.     'The little girl was really well-behaved,' says Lou, 'for a three hour journey with nothing to do.'     Catriona and I nod in agreement.      'No,' says Sarah. 'Not compared to my nephew, he would have sat still with his crayons and wouldn't have complained.    I wonder what my baby wi...

  July 2003 We go to Taupo and walk round the edge of a giant lake. The water is blue-green and endless. Beneath its calm surface lies a volcano, just as something explosive lies beneath my calm surface.    No.     It doesn't. I'm not pregnant. There's no baby. Nothing to shatter my life into little pieces.    We go to Huka Falls. Turquoise water crashes down, spraying like a cloud in the gorge. It's so loud it fills my head, drowning out my thoughts. I feel a sort of wordless peace there, by the thundering water. I don't want to leave.    Nearby I see two kiwi birds strutting on rocks. Their legs look too thin to hold their round bodies.     I sign up to do a 17km walk in Tongariro National Park but it's cancelled due to the bad weather. I am almost relieved. I feel so weak and ill. I think I might be going down with the flu.    I'm lying in bed in my dorm when I hear someone come in. I lift my head out from und...

  July 2003 I'm not free from Steve. His teeth are still in my neck. His voice is still in my head reminding me that I'm weak, fragile, scared.    If I'm pregnant  I'm not pregnant  then I'll never be free of him. I'm not pregnant I'm not pregnant ImnotpregnantimnotpregnantImnotpregnantimnotpregnant    If I keep thinking it over and over it'll have to be true. We visit a lake that mirrors the sky, the surrounding trees perfectly. I wonder what would happen if I walked into it. Would I fall into a different version of this world? A world where I never met Steve, a world where Adam and Nick never found me and I never went into that room in Sydney. A world where my life isn't disintegrating into dust.    Someone asks the tour guide if the water is drinkable. It looks so pure and clean. The tour guide says lake water is never drinkable, it's stagnant. I'm with Catriona and the English girls, Sarah and Lou. Lou talks about a colleague back home in...

  July 2003 We go to Piha Beach with its dark sands and Lion Rock. At the right angle it really does look like a giant lion turned to stone. Maybe if I stay here long enough I too could turn to stone and never have to face the future.    I think my heart might already be stone.    In Waitomo we see the glow worm caves. I am claustrophobic, afraid the caves will fall on me, but they are lit up like a night filled with stars.     I walk in the farm near the hostel, following a path by a field of bulls. They hurl themselves at the fence as I pass. I am afraid they might break it and trample me to death but I keep going. I wonder if they smell pregnancy hormones on me, if that is somehow enraging them.    Of course not. I'm not pregnant. Whatever is happening to my body, there must be another explanation. I can not have a baby with Steve. I make a sort of friendship with an Irish woman and two English women. I don't know why they're being ni...