Desert Fish

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Imprint Page

Dedication

Chapter one

Chapter two

Chapter three

Chapter four

Chapter five

Chapter six

Chapter seven

Chapter eight

Chapter nine

Chapter ten

Chapter eleven

Chapter twelve

Chapter thirteen

Chapter fourteen

Chapter fifteen

Chapter sixteen

Chapter seventeen

Chapter eighteen

Chapter nineteen

Chapter twenty

Chapter twenty-one

Chapter twenty-two

Chapter twenty-three

Chapter twenty-four

Chapter twenty-five

Chapter twenty-six

Chapter twenty-seven

Chapter twenty-eight

Chapter twenty-nine

Chapter thirty

Chapter thirty-one

Chapter thirty-two

Chapter thirty-three

Chapter thirty-four

Chapter thirty-five

Chapter thirty-six

Acknowledgements

Reading Group Questions

It's almost dawn when Pete comes for me.

‘Gilly. Get up, Gilly.'

I open my eyes but I don't move. He unfolds from a crouching position and leans in so I can feel his breath.

‘I'll be in the car park.'

Then he is gone. It feels like a dream but I get up and slip out of bed. It doesn't take long to gather my things. I've kept nearly everything in my bag these last few days. Even when I thought he wouldn't come.

There are only two other women in the room. Their breathing is deep and rhythmic as I push my sandshoes into my bag and wrap my dressing-gown around me. I could be visiting the toilet, I tell myself, except for the bag. If anyone sees, they don't stop me.

In the car park, Pete is leaning against the bumper of a van, rolling a cigarette.

‘Good girl,' he says, pulling at the loose strands of tobacco. ‘You can get dressed in the car.'

I'm so happy to see him I'm afraid I might say the wrong thing so I just smile. He slips the cigarette behind his ear, takes my bag and strides towards the end of the car park. I have to quick-step to keep up. It's hard without shoes, the gravel is rough and I walk with my toes curled to protect the soft arches of my feet. Pete's already opening the boot and putting my bag in when I feel other parts of me hurting. I have to stop and crouch down, gripping my legs together to find some relief. I rest there for a moment. The sky is still dark but there's not much night left in it. Behind me, the ward windows will be glowing and I'm sure I could spot mine if I looked.

Pete closes the boot and then sees me squatting. ‘C'mon, Gilly.' His boots shove at the ground as he walks over to me. He brushes his fingers against my forehead and drops to my level.

‘Pete?' I begin, but now my tongue feels thick and I can't find the question.

‘Y'know, Gilly,' he sighs, ‘you don't have to come. Not if you're not up to it.'

‘No.' I stand again, awkwardly. ‘No, it's not that.' I move slowly this time. Deliberately. ‘It's still sore. That's all. Open the door, will you?' Once I've got the seatbelt on, I feel better.

As Pete pulls onto the road, the front of the building swings into view, but I tell myself that if I happen to see my window, at least the nursery won't be lit. Even in the daytime, they keep the light in there dim, the curtains drawn.

I look away and then the light's green and we're already through the junction, passing the Royal Hotel, the supermarket, the service station. I hum a little.

 

Pete has brought my clothes and I dress somewhere between the suburbs and the outskirts, pulling my sundress over my legs like trousers, dragging its elasticised bodice up beneath my nightie. The lights from the oncoming cars reveal my hunching, arching shape.

‘Hurry up,' Pete says.

‘I'm nearly done.'

The clothes feel wrong. The dress is much smaller than it used to be and the elastic pinches in places. Without a bra my breasts are heavy and the waist sits too high. I pull on a cardigan.

‘Well done,' Pete says. With one hand, and without taking his eyes off the road, he lifts my nightclothes from between us and I have to duck forward as he swings his arm and drops them into the back.

He concentrates on driving then, shifting his eyes between the road and the rear-view mirror and not looking at me at all. I squeeze my eyes shut, to protect myself from a rush of something. A feeling, I don't know what. I'm a girl who can disappear, I remind myself, before I open my eyes again. Now I am with Pete and we are moving together, accelerating through the last of the night, and she no longer occupies any of the places inside me.

After I had her, a nurse told me that some women go
out and forget to take their babies. Her hair was ginger and when she blinked I noticed that her eyelashes were the same pale shade. It happens with the first, she said. It can take a while to get used to having someone else to think of all the time. There's nothing else you can compare it with.

But even when those women forget their babies, they recognise an absence. Walking along, they feel too light. Their arms feel empty and they remember.

I don't have that. I never even gave her a name.

‘What will you call her?' the nurse asked.

‘I don't know yet.'

She didn't look bothered. She inspected her nails. Her eyes were hazel beneath the fronds of her eyelashes.

‘Some people have names ready picked,' she told me. ‘Others come with a list. Then there're ones like you who take ages to name a baby. I can tell you'll take ages.' She refilled my water jug at the sink at the end of the room and replaced it on my bedside table. ‘Don't worry,' she said. ‘The right name'll come knocking in a day or two.'

‘I'm waiting for my husband to come,' I offered. ‘He'll help me pick her name.' I looked right at her while I said it. ‘He couldn't get back,' I explained. ‘He works out of town. But he'll be here any day.'

She nodded. I was sure she'd tell the others what I'd said.

‘In the meantime,' I told her, ‘you should just call her Missy.' That was what my dad used to call me. My mum too, sometimes. ‘Little Missy. It's nice for a girl. Just until
my husband comes.' My words sounded hollow to me, but she seemed pleased. It's what they all called her after that. I didn't call her anything.

 

When dawn light begins to spread in the sky, Pete winds his window down. Fresh early air rushes in. I love this time of day. The quiet and the promise of things to come. Outside, there are more cars on the road. Billboards loom, filled with Marlboro Men, farmers on combine harvesters smoking Winfield Reds, giant glasses of foaming beer that I'm nearly old enough to drink now. With the city falling away behind us, Pete seems to relax. He skips his hand over the wheel and retrieves his tobacco pouch.

‘Can you roll me one?' he asks.

I lean over and pluck the cigarette that's been resting behind his ear since the car park.

‘Jesus,' he says, and shakes his head. He lights it, sucks on the smoke and sighs it out.

‘You look alright, Gilly,' he says. ‘Better than I expected,' he adds, and then stretches his arm along the back of the bench seat until his fingers nearly touch my shoulder. He doesn't say anything else but the sense of him close, the fuzz of his almost-touch, makes me feel lighter. I'm measuring all the signs so far and thinking that everything's looking good. That we'll be back to normal soon.

Sometimes, when you see someone after a long absence, a face will seem new and familiar at the same time. It doesn't last long, that feeling, maybe only a moment. But every time I look at Pete I get it – a thrilling rush, I can hardly believe it's him. I check all the things I've tried to keep fresh in my mind in his absence – the line of his jawbone, the bump on his nose, the way his skin is slightly freckled in the parts he can't keep the sun off. When he was gone, I could imagine each of those things individually, but somehow I couldn't put them together. I couldn't make a complete picture of him. Now, the sharpness of his features, his very proximity, makes curls in my stomach and I want to lean into the road, to make us move more quickly to the place where we will be properly together again.

But soon the morning is worn away by the sun, and without me even noticing, the ocean inks into view, leaking along the top of the verge, like it shouldn't be
there. The road draws us into a town that feels like it's at the bottom of somewhere. The guts of a smelter clutter its outskirts. Chimneys peddle smoke and fat hillocks of sludge bear down. Pete pulls in to a roadhouse with semi-trailers snaked around the forecourt. Out of the car, the sky is vast and bright and I blink like a night creature. My legs are wobbly and I'm drawn to the shadows cast by the trucks.

‘You okay, Gilly?' Pete asks, pushing the car door shut and checking his back pocket for wallet and keys.

‘Yes.' I concentrate on keeping my voice steady. ‘Yes, of course.'

‘Good.'

The cafe is in a long low building with screen doors that snap shut behind me and inside hums with the sound of a swarm of ceiling fans. There's mesh on all the windows but in places like this the flies always find a way in.

Pinned on a board by the door is a map that places us at the top of a long narrow sea inlet. We are at the gateway to the desert, it says. My heart begins to rush. It's the noise of the fans, I think. Whirring close. And how thick the air feels, the blades cutting and dragging the mix of steam and smoke. A light sweat breaks out on my skin. My head spins and things begin to slip from me. Pete steers me towards a table, but I break away and make for the toilet. It's not the feeling you get when you forget something. I'm not anxious, or panicked. My thoughts come slowly, carefully, like they're being ushered into a small room. But it's as if they're separate
to me now, and passing by so close I can't make them out.

In the mirror, I barely recognise myself. My face is blotched and puffy, my hair stiff with the fine road dust. When I turn on the tap the water runs warm and the soap won't lather. It smells waxy, making me gag. I damp my underarms and wash them as best I can. I push my face into my hands, rubbing circles around my eyes. Water drips off my chin and spreads down my neck and I have to dry myself with toilet paper before I dress again, but somehow it makes me feel better.

There's no mesh on the window in here. It's high up, and looks inland. Framed in it is a slice of the landscape I watched coming here. Rough ground, pebbled. Saltbush clinging bitterly to sand. Sharp blue glitter of sky.

‘I'm going back to the desert,' Pete said to me. I had been longing to speak to him for months and I couldn't believe I was hearing his voice. I barely noticed the static that crackled, making his voice fuzzy. I held the phone close, with both hands. ‘I won't be gone for long this time,' he said. ‘You don't want to come to the desert, Gilly.'

But I did. I dreamt of the hard-edged emptiness. Glassy light that would pencil shadows into something solid. It was easy to picture Pete in this, and I wanted to be there too. With him.

It's only the fringe of the desert that I can see out of the narrow bathroom window, but looking at it makes my breathing smooth and easy. It clears my thoughts.

When I return to the table Pete's already eating. On my plate are fat slices of toast and a trucker's serving of savoury mince.

‘Better?' Pete asks.

‘Yeah.'

‘Hungry?'

‘Mmmm. Starving,' I tell him. There's a chasm in my belly now and I want to fill it up, to fuel this sudden feeling of anticipation.

‘Eat up.' Pete indicates my plate with his knife and then pushes a forkful of meat into his mouth and stares out the window. There are lots of vegetables in the food, corn and tidy cubes of carrot and potato. I can taste they're from a packet of frozen. I can taste everything in separate parts of my mouth, as though I'm eating for the very first time. Pete reaches for the sauce and dollops some onto his plate. I watch him stir it into his meat so it streaks pink and thin and then disappears into the gravy. His hands are clean and sun brown and I want to touch him. To draw him closer to me, somehow. I reach to take the bottle from his hand, hoping that our fingers will brush together. Briefly his eyes meet mine and breathlessly I say, ‘I knew you'd come, Pete.'

He puts the bottle down beside my plate and frowns. ‘What do you mean, Gilly?'

‘I knew you'd come for me. I mean, I was worried for a while. Sometimes I wondered. You took so long. And I didn't know where you were … But I knew you wouldn't leave me. I was certain you'd know when it was time.' The
words are skipping away from me, but they're the wrong ones and I can't take them back.

Pete puts his hand to his temple and looks down at the table. ‘Gilly.' He speaks slowly and quietly, as if to a child. ‘Gilly, I didn't have much choice.'

I look at my plate, the meat thick with gravy.

‘Never mind,' Pete says. ‘What's done is done.' His voice sounds empty and I can see how he has gone away and not yet come back to me.

I concentrate on cleaning my plate, dragging slices of cold toast across it, soaking up all the sauce. Filling the gaping, shivering space in my stomach. People come and go and I watch them instead of Pete. A woman in a yellow print dress. Two men wearing shorts, their thonged feet making flap-flapping sounds on the lino tiles. Another man leaves, making his way to the cab of a long truck. I watch him manoeuvre it to the exit, then turn out towards all that beautiful empty space.

‘Jesus, you were hungry, weren't you?' Pete pushes his plate away, scrapes his chair back and stretches. He sounds like himself again.

‘Pete?' I taste his name on my tongue and trace the metal border of the table with my finger. For all the food in my stomach, my head still feels light. ‘Can you get me some tea?'

‘'Course.' He takes both our cups with him and I wait until he reaches the urn, queuing to refill them.

I only go as far as the door, because I want to see it again – red dirt, ragged horizon – like the view from the
bathroom, only closer. But all I can see are diversions and interruptions. The highway winding, not skating straight into emptiness as I thought it did. The car park, hazy with dust. I can read the labels on the cans and wrappers that litter it:
Cherry Ripe, Coca Cola, Salt & Vinegar Chips
. The wooden frame of the screen door is warped and some of the mesh has come loose and curled up. Flies crawl beneath it, inside, to where there's a smear of something on the floor, fuzzed with dust. They crowd around it. When Pete puts his hand on my shoulder I've hunkered down to get a closer view. There's that pain again, and crouching low helps me keep it close. I watch the flies and wonder how their legs don't get stuck.

‘Come on, Gilly. Come and get your tea.' His voice is low and patient.

‘Don't worry, Pete. I was just having a look.'

He takes my arm and I follow him back to the table.

 

By the time we return to the car I'm hot and sticky again. I can smell the cafe on me: the grease and steam, and I wish I'd changed my underwear when I had that wash.

‘For later,' Pete says, handing me a thermos that he has filled with tea for our journey, and a bag, heavy with sandwiches and fruit. ‘Ready?'

‘Yes.'

‘It's not too late, Gilly?' He lays his hands flat on his thighs and doesn't look at me. ‘It's not too late to change your mind. If you want to.'

‘No.'

‘Okay. Let's go, then.'

I don't want to think of her. I know not to look back. But somehow, I'm drawn in the wrong direction. We haven't even reached the edge of town before I notice it. My breasts, hard as though they're packed with salt, and then that smell: of milk, souring quickly on the bodice of my dress. ‘You can't tell your body what to do,' one of the nurses said to me. ‘Give it a week or two and you'll feel like yourself again.' There are two patches, like saucers, one on each breast, difficult to see, because they're camouflaged by the busy print and the ruching. But I can't stop myself from gagging.

‘Stop. Pete, stop,' I say.

He doesn't get off the road in time. I'm sick all over myself before I open the door. Then I forget to undo my seatbelt and vomit on the seat before I can get out of the car. I lose the last of my breakfast on the dirt at the side of the road.

Pete doesn't say anything.

‘God, I'm sorry. I'm really sorry, Pete.' I wipe my face with a napkin from the bag and dab uselessly at the mess on the seat.

He winds his window right down and looks away.

‘We'll stop for today,' he says. ‘I'll find a motel. You can clean it up there.'