HE AND JAKE ARE ON a plane to Australia, to Sydney. The plane is already taxiing on the runway. Jake is on the seat next to him, even now, and they are descending. He can see the edge of the continent below them, land after so many hours of ocean. Ben puts his arm around his son, pulls him close, “We’re nearly there.”
Sydney is hot and bright and shining. They can see the ocean from the car rental place at the airport. “G’day,” people say and smile. Everyone is smiling and tanned and wearing hats with corks. Jake wants to sit in the front of the car but Ben insists on the back because it’s safer. They drive north of the city, a road along the coast. They stop and run down to the beach—the feeling of the sand on their bare feet, the feeling of the cold water sucking at their toes. The Pacific Ocean! Jake tastes the water and makes a face, “Salty!”
After a few days of driving, they cut inland and the landscape opens and flattens; it dries to red desert. They drive on a dirt track, so deeply red it’s like cranberry, and Ben lets Jake sit in the front seat. They can do whatever they want out here. They are safe and far, far away. The blue sky is a perfect dome above them, and the earth races out, untethered, in every direction, red sand, polka-dotted with spinifex. At night, there are stars, a mad splurge of stars, so many there is real starlight, no moon, just the light of the stars and the red earth turns dark purple, deep purple, maybe the color of a late-summer aubergine.
Meanwhile, meanwhile, Kay is walking along a street in London, she turns up three stone steps, through the open front door. The hall light is on, Michael cooking sausages because it’s all he can cook. Her children look up from their homework, they rush to her, throwing their weight around her hips where she once bore them. “Mummy, Mummy, Mummy.”