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over to the shop.
    You fucker, Dad.

10
    â€˜Can you smell anything?’
    Bella was moving around the room.
    I could smell something, but I wasn’t sure what. ‘Mm ... something lemony—citronella or something? Mozzie coils?’
    â€˜Mozzie coils!’ she laughed. ‘What is this, a barbie with your olds?’
    â€˜Well, sorry, but it’s bloody hard with your sarong wound around my head. I feel like I’ve got a turban on my face.’
    â€˜You were close. With the lemon.’
    The bed gave slightly as she sat down next to me. ‘Sandalwood and lemongrass,’ she said, close to my ear, and I smelled only one thing then, her smell, the smell of her body as she untied the sarong and let me see.
    Candles everywhere. Tealights. Around the perimeter of the room. It was amazing. Pretty. Really, really pretty.
    It was our last night together. Dad had given me special permission to go out, for this only.
    I looked at her. Her reds were soft, or was that just the light? She seemed to let them fall across her cheeks.
    Beautiful, I wanted to say.
    Sitting there, I began to feel very weird, very ... disconnected, as if I was looking at this scene from a distance, somehow. What the fuck had I been doing the last couple of years? I went dizzy, then clammy: woozy-headed.
    Bella’s face was intense, close to me. ‘It’s okay,’ she said, but it sounded like she was talking to me from another room. I couldn’t figure out where she was.
    When the feeling lifted, when I could, I tried hard to shake it away.
    She rubbed a hand up and down my back. ‘You okay?’
    No! No, I’m not, I wanted to say, as desperate as I felt, but I reeled it in, right back in tight.
    â€˜Yeah,’ I breathed out. ‘Yes.’
    It was our last night together.
    When I could, I kissed her, as gently as I knew how. And that was the last time I saw her.
    I almost thought I was gunna have to camp overnight in the forest on the way back this arvo, but I had no tent or sleeping-bag with me so I slogged on until I finally got in just on dark. It would have been a lot later but I realised I didn’t have a torch or any warm clothes, so I cranked up the pace in the last few k’s till I was nearly running. Then I thought I was lost cos I couldn’t see the path and kept on thinking, The shack should be around here—right here somewhere. It wasn’t, not for ages. Anyway, I am absolutely buggered, 100 per cent rooted, utterly knackered. I must have bought 10 kilos of instant noodles at that crappy little shop—cleaned em out. Hope they order more for next week, otherwise I’m up shit creek. I got some bread, too, but how you put that in a backpack without it turning into something else is beyond me right now. So I’m carrying it by its neck, in my hand. I swap hands a lot. It’s fucking annoying. And it cost $3.50. A Pepsi Max— one can —set me back two bucks! You can buy a whole carton for about ten bucks, for god’s sake. It’s such a total rip-off but there’s no way I can haul a whole carton back to the shack. If I want a hit of Pepsi from time to time, I’m just going to have to suck up the cost and not think about it.
    â€˜That’s $34.50, thank you,’ the woman behind the counter said after she’d rung it all up. There was no scanner or anything, just one of those old-style tills and I had to stand there while she keyed in all the prices.
    â€˜How are you paying, love?’ she said when I didn’t pull out any money.
    â€˜Uhh ... I think my dad has set up an, an account here?’
    I could see the recognition straight away, even though she tried not to show it. ‘Oh, yes,’ she took a breath. ‘Okay.’ She put both her hands down flat on the counter and gave me a kind look. ‘Yes, I have the account details here,’ she said, shuffling through some papers in a drawer.
    I waited in the