Matts and I don’t touch as we walk up the slope to the paddock, but he stays close by my side as if afraid I might fall any minute. I’ve wrenched my shoulder. Every step hurts because of the bruise on my hip, but I’m determined not to limp. I pull up my hood in an attempt to keep the cold from my cheek.
‘You might as well tell me why you’re here, Matts.’
‘You’re hurt. It can wait.’
‘You said you wanted to warn me.’
‘I’m also here for work.’
We skirt around the dam. The water, ochre in daylight, in moonlight is sepia brown.
‘What work?’
‘You’re a teacher, aren’t you?’ I feel his gaze on the side of my face as, holding my hip to support it, I step over a ditch. ‘And the chair of Horseshoe’s Environment Committee.’
‘Did you look me up?’
‘Have you heard of the Ramsar Convention?’
‘It’s like a treaty between governments, isn’t it?’
‘It focuses on the conservation of wetlands. I’m the European representative on the secretariat that administers it.’
‘What did you study?’
‘Environmental engineering. I specialise in wetland biodiversity.’
The moon, bold and dark yellow, peers through the clouds again. Matts, who used to take one step for every two of mine, is walking deliberately slowly. If I close my eyes and open them again, will he still be here? What do I feel most intensely? Hurt? Pain? Betrayal?
When our arms bump, I skitter away. Fear?
I clear my throat. ‘The creek leads to the Macquarie River, which runs through Horseshoe Hill. There are wetlands at the end of the river, aren’t there? The Macquarie Marshes are on the convention’s Ramsar List.’
‘They form part of our study. We’re consulting to your federal government.’
I push my hands into the opposite sleeves of my jacket, hoping to warm them. ‘My father is a member of parliament. Is there a connection?’
‘To my work, no.’
‘What’s the warning about?’
‘Something that happened when we lived in Buenos Aires.’
I skirt around divots made by sheep and cattle hooves as we walk in single file towards the perimeter lights that mark the fence of the school. An owl hoots. Matts looks down. The scar on his chin is silvery now.
‘Do you want to rest?’ he asks.
‘I’m fine.’ When we near the end of the track, where the clearing is wider and the walking is easier, we step side by side again. ‘Argentina was such a long time ago.’
‘Did you do your year of military training?’
‘Most of it in military intelligence. I hated it.’
‘I live at the old schoolhouse, but I guess you know that already.’
‘Buenos Aires, Sapphire. I’ll come back tomorrow. What time?’
‘I don’t have good memories of it.’
‘Because of your mother?’
I don’t want to lead him through the shortcut to the schoolhouse, so I take the path to the road that leads to the town. We pass the ironbark tree, the trunk thick and rough, the leaves long and thin.
‘And other things.’ I step carefully over tree roots. ‘How did you know I was in the tree?’
‘I saw a light. Why were you hiding?’
A brushtail possum steps onto the power line that runs from the road to the school. He crosses the span as if he’s on tiptoes before he leaps onto the roof of the school hall. His claws scratch and scrape as he scampers along the gutter.
‘Is the warning about my father? I have little to do with him.’
‘You changed your surname.’
‘I didn’t want to be a Beresford-Brown any more.’
He runs a hand roughly through his hair, thick and straight like it always was. ‘You’re still running,’ he says.
When an aching tightness snakes up my chest, I walk to the school sign and grasp the post. I speak over my shoulder. ‘I’ll be at the farmhouse tomorrow afternoon. You will have passed it when you drove into town. Can we meet at five o’clock?’
I feel his eyes on my back as I walk up the steps of the original schoolhouse to the porch. As I kick off my boots, I lean against a timber desk, marked with stains from fountain pens. A century ago, children would have hung their hats, coats and satchels on the rows of brass hooks on the opposite wall. Tumbleweed, meowing loudly, leaps up the steps and jumps onto the desk.
‘Hey, puss.’ When I take him into my arms, he purrs against my neck. ‘You’ll never guess who I saw tonight.’ My eyes sting with sadness as I stroke his fur, the stripy shades of brown fading with age. We pass through the living room and into the kitchen, built at one end of the verandah that overlooks the school grounds. He waits on the threshold as I walk gingerly down the back steps and along a crumbling concrete path to the toilet, a slightly modernised version of the old outhouse.
My muscles have stiffened even more by the time I return to the schoolhouse, holding the door open for Tumbleweed to follow me through. When he curls up on the rug in front of the fireplace, I pick him up and lay him on the couch in his favourite spot, covering him with a mohair throw. He looks at me balefully before curling up again. ‘Sleep tight.’
The bathroom is a prefabricated unit, slotted between the living room and bedroom. I flick on the light. The graze on my face runs from my cheekbone to my jaw. It’s not deep, just messy and dirty. I soak a cloth in warm water, holding it against my face as I pull the elastic from my plait and unravel my hair. My face is pale; my eyes are navy.
I was Sapphire Beresford-Brown. Now I’m Sapphie Brown.
It’s after eleven o’clock by the time I sit on my bed in pink pyjamas, my laptop on my knee, a glass of water on my side table and a packet of frozen peas, wrapped in a handtowel, pressed against my face. The bed is only a double. Even so, it’s impossible to get anything out of the cupboard without closing the door to the living room first. I pull the quilt more firmly around my waist and open my browser.
How many times have I got this far? Typed his name but never hit return? He no longer had a place in my life.
He has no place in my life now, but he’ll be back again tomorrow.
He did an undergraduate degree in Oulu and postgraduate studies in Helsinki. With his Ramsar work he’s based in Switzerland, but seems to travel all over the world. He has no social media presence, but there are plenty of images attached to his name. In some photos he’s dressed in boots and a warm winter jacket. In others, he’s wearing jeans with a T-shirt, his face and arms tanned. He’s in mountainous regions in France and Italy. He’s thigh deep in a Yorkshire bog—with a lift in his lip that could be a smile. He’s lying on his back with an arm across his eyes, one leg bent at the knee, on a grassy slope in Finland. There’s a village in the distance, multicoloured houses and a bright blue lake.
Occasionally, he’s wearing a suit. At the front of a lecture theatre. At a horseshoe-shaped table at the UN offices in Geneva.
When the peas soften, I put them on my side table. I gingerly touch the graze as I scroll through more images.
There are photographs of Matts with a number of different women—beautiful and leggy with curvy silhouettes and nicely rounded breasts. Holding hands, arms linked.
When salt stings my cheek, I reach for the tissue box, pluck out tissues and press them against my eyes. I sniff, swallow and wipe my eyes again.
‘Why did you have to come back?’
When we met, I was seven and Matts had just turned ten. He told me later I had pigtails in my hair. One was higher than the other, but when he tried to even them out, I pushed his hand away and said I liked them as they were. Our fathers both worked in Buenos Aires. Leevi Laaksonen was the Finnish ambassador to Argentina and my father was a bureaucrat from the Australian Department of Trade. Matts’s house was white with a terracotta roof in a hundred shades of orange, and my house was yellow with a kaleidoscope of colour in the garden. We lived in the same tree-lined street and attended the same international school. Our mothers became best friends.
Matts was thirteen when his mother died. My father thought I was too young to go to Inge’s funeral, but Matts insisted he wanted me there. After the service, the mourners were directed to the embassy gardens and Matts took my hand. He held my fingers so tightly they hurt. He walked so quickly that I ran to keep up. He pulled me into the shade of a jacaranda tree, the canopy heavy with soft purple blooms. When his shoulders trembled, I stroked his arm. He swallowed a sob and I gave him my tissues. He blew his nose.
I rubbed his back.
He wiped his eyes.
‘Don’t scrub so hard,’ I whispered to him. ‘You’ll make them go red.’
When he gave the tissues back, they were so soggy and torn that they fell apart in my hands. I rolled them into a tight little ball and hid them in my pocket.
We were always together.
We cared for each other.
Kissa. A cat. Kotka. An eagle.