baggage

chapter one

'I didn't say I wasn't pleased.'
Tony is being utterly calm and reasonable, yet everything he says, and everything he does, infuriates me. Until recently, I would have flown into a rage at this point, and rushed at him with my fists flying. I haven't done that for a couple of years. This is partly because I'm learning to control my emotions, but it's mainly because he is so much bigger and stronger than I am that my behaviour just used to make me look stupid. He would reach out and pluck my wrists from the air, and hold them in front of me until I stopped struggling. That's the trouble with being married to someone who works outdoors, in the quarries, for a living.
Married life has not been the contented haze I'd vaguely expected. Tony was not the first person who asked me to marry him. My neighbour's cousin got in first, when I lived in Bombay. Perhaps I should have accepted. I could, at least, have had a fair fight with Sanjay. I don't think I've recently reminded Tony, as I do from time to time, that, like Barbara Cartland's, my hand has been sought before.
'I should have married that guy in India,' I say, trying to wound with words instead of fists. 'He would have been delighted. He would have loved a baby.'
'Maybe you're right,' says Tony, smiling infuriatingly. 'But he would only have loved a boy. It's too late now, isn't it? It looks like you're stuck with me, and with my baby. What will you do if it turns out to be a Mini-Me?'
'Give it up for adoption.'
He shrugs, and turns back to the television. He is watching some cricket match. I glance at the screen, and feel an irate nostalgia for the days when cricketers used to wear white. Today, half of them are in blue, and the others are in some disgusting green and yellow concoctions.
'They're in their pyjamas,' I tell him. 'They look stupid.' He doesn't react. I pick up the remote control, and switch both the television and the radio off. My husband, for reasons of his own, prefers to watch the cricket accompanied by the radio commentary, thus using up all our lines of communication from the outside world save the telephone. I'm sure that, sooner or later, he will discover a pitch-cam, or a changing-rooms-cam and monopolise the computer and phone line as well.
'Lina, love,' he says calmly. 'What did you do that for?'
I pick up the coffee mug and the empty beer can that are by his feet. He messes up the house just to annoy me.
'Why do you think? I've just told you I'm pregnant, and you're not even pleased. You didn't even look away from the telly,' I remind him, straightening the sofa cushions with my free hand. 'Other people's husbands make them lie down, and they bring them drinks and fruit and, I don't know, chocolate. They do not fucking say, oh, right, good, without even taking their eyes off the fucking cricket.'
I never swear, normally. I used to, but I don't any more. Swearing is a sure sign that I'm losing control. I am good at controlling the big things, and crap with the details.
'But I am pleased. I said I was.'
'You're not pleased enough. This is by far the most important day of our married life. We're having a baby, for Christ's sake. We've been trying for two years. We didn't even think we could have children of our own. I've known I'm pregnant for ten minutes now, and I'm beginning to wish I hadn't even bothered to find out.'
'Don't get upset. You're pleased really. You know it's only your hormones.'
I stand up and kick his shin. He doesn't even flinch, so I kick him again, harder, and leave. I walk out and slam the door behind me. I know he's smiling to himself, and switching the radio commentary back on. He isn't bothered at all. I dump his debris in the kitchen, and make a loud and pointed exit through the front door, into the desert.
I am not usually like this. Tony, equally, isn't normally such an arse. We do, however, have our moments, and they usually happen when Red, our adopted son, is out of the house. Today he is down the road, playing Nintendos with his friend Eric. This means that he, too, will come back in a strange mood, because Eric's mother recently died of cancer, and it is gradually dawning on Red that the same thing could, theoretically, happen to me. Until now, I don't think he's ever thought of me as mortal. He doesn't like me to have so much as a headache. These days, he's unwilling to let me out of his sight. It probably doesn't help that, this year, I'm his class teacher. We see each other all day, every day. He's hardly going to fail to notice my pregnancy symptoms.
I wonder what it'll be like having a baby in the house. Sometimes I feel that I've got two babies already. I suppose a third won't make much difference. Red deals with worry by clinging to me in a manner more suited to a three-year-old than a big grown-up boy of ten. Tony does the opposite, and sulks, turning towards any form of armchair sport. For my part, I invariably end up giving the house a good spring clean and myself a good scrubbing. I have been called obsessive. I am frequently pronounced sad by the men in the house. Beth, my best friend, and my other friend, Nina, Eric's mother, now scattered to the desert winds, used to tease me ceaselessly.
'You must have been a joy as a child,' Beth said lightly a couple of weeks ago as we shared a bottle of wine at the bar. Her comment was provoked by the way I'd taken a clean handkerchief from my pocket and wiped our glasses before I'd let her pour it. I was surprised. We were there to drink to Nina, exactly a month after she died in the hospital in Adelaide. We weren't there to talk about my obsessive compulsion. I never speak about my childhood, and Beth knows that.
'What do you mean?' I demanded.
'You know. Just, like, you must have been the only thirteen-year-old in history who spontaneously irons and folds her clothes, who colour codes her wardrobe. I bet you did the dishes before anyone noticed they were dirty. Christ, you do the dishes when they're still clean. You were probably the one yelling at your parents to stop treating the house like a hotel.' She laughed, her perfect teeth glistening. Beth is the personification of the eternal Australian feminine. Her hair is naturally blonde and hangs silkily down her back. Her smile is wide, her skin flawless and freckled. She, too, moved to Craggy Rock for love, but, unlike me, she has now left, due to hate.
When she caught my eye, her laughter stopped abruptly. I raised my eyebrows gently, and composed my face into my 'I don't want to talk about it' expression. Then I took a large slug of wine.
'Sorry,' she said quietly. Nobody in the world except me knows exactly what went on when I lived in England, but they know that my parents died suddenly, that I have no other family. They know that I don't talk about my life before I came back to Australia. From time to time, friends have suggested that I should have therapy, that my complete avoidance of the issue cannot be healthy, but I always laugh it off.
To show Beth that she shouldn't feel bad, I said, 'I wasn't always like this, you know. I was a messy teenager along with the rest of them. I wouldn't have dreamed of questioning the cleanliness of a glass in a pub. It's OK. Honestly.' And it was. I am comfortable with myself, with my life, now. I am not touchy, like I used to be. I am perfectly all right.
Now Nina has died and Beth has left. The three of us used to drink together and laugh together and keep each other sane in this weird place. Suddenly, I'm on my own, with two men.
I hope this baby's a girl.

It's a little bit cold outside, but I can't go back in to fetch a fleece. That would send the wrong signals to Tony and provoke a supercilious smile. Instead, I will go for a brisk walk, and then I'll return home. I will work off my tension by mopping and disinfecting the kitchen floor. Then I'll let Tony give me a ball by ball analysis of the cricket, and then, perhaps, he might manage to express a genuine enthusiasm for the prospect of fatherhood. Either that, or he will ask me to have an abortion. I wonder whether we're dysfunctional, or whether all marriages are like this. I have no idea.
I thought he'd be pleased. When I stood in the bathroom and watched the big blue line appear on the pregnancy test, I gasped and forgot to breathe out again for at least a minute. I bit my hand. I looked again. I compared it with the picture on the box, although I knew perfectly well that two lines meant a positive. Then I couldn't stop myself laughing out loud. We had done it, after all. We were fertile. We were having a baby, at last.
Sometimes I hate Tony. Normally, I love him. He supports me and adores me. I feel comfortable with him in a way I never thought I'd feel comfortable with anyone. Occasionally, however, something tests our relationship, and I really need him. That's when he lets me down.
I start stomping up the road, trying to let go of my anger and to concentrate, instead, on my womb. Marital strife cannot be good for even as tiny an embryo as this one. After a deep breath of dusty air, I feel slightly better. I look around. Even though we've been living in this desolate outpost of humanity in the Australian Outback for nearly three years, I am still surprised when I step out of the door. Part of me will always believe that I live in a small town in Devon. For a few seconds, I allow myself to imagine what would happen if I returned to Kingsbridge now. The repercussions do not bear thinking about. Instead, we live in a dugout house, cut into an artificial hillside, on the very edge of a town you won't have heard of. It is named, with that peculiar Australian literalness that I am growing to appreciate, Craggy Rock. Sure enough, the place is full of rocks, and there is a certain degree of cragginess to every one of them. Our road, like almost all the other roads here, is stony and dusty. If you turn right, you pass the house where Eric's father now struggles, alone, to get Eric and his brother to school in the morning and to bed at night. Then there's Alky Bob's home, and the empty house, before you end up in the town centre, where such amenities as a cafe, three 'restaurants' (kebabs, pizzas, or pies), the town hall, the supermarket, the shop, and the backpackers' hostel-cum-internet cafe await your attention. Tempting as this is, it's hardly Oxford Street. I turn left instead, and walk out into the desert.
It is winter. The whole of the town is glowing red. This is my favourite time of day, and my favourite time of the year. I love the desert winters. I love the fact that I can often wear jeans and a fleece, socks, and even, if I'm pushing my luck, a jacket. I take a deep breath of clean air, close my eyes, and let it out again.
The earth in the town, and for miles around it, ranges from sandy yellow to the deepest red. When a desert storm whips itself up, the dust gets everywhere. It comes in under the door and around the window panes, ridiculing the care I take to plug the gaps. It gets in the drawers where my clothes are, and it drives me mad. It makes me realise why people believe in God. It is a powerful force which, reason suggests, cannot spring from nowhere, and die back to nothing, at random. Yet, apparently, that is what happens. It seems like a peculiar torment devised specifically for me. I think I've devoted my years in Craggy to a futile attempt to tame the desert. I am the female Sisyphus of our age. When I stop and think about it, there is nothing unique in this. Immediately, I feel less lonely. The modern world is full of individual lives devoted to, for example, the sorting out of pieces of paper. Millions of men and women spend all day filing things away, only to come to work the next morning and find an in-tray that has refilled itself. This goes on day after day, week after week, year after year. Just because my obsession is with dust and neatness, that doesn't make my quest any more futile than anyone else's. At least, as a teacher, I get to see results in my professional life, even when that result is not particularly welcome; for example when a girl who has imbibed my own brand of wisdom-with-English-Literature for three years leaves school at the age of sixteen and promptly steals my best friend's husband.
A month after we arrived here, Tony and I got married. We did it mainly to please his mother, who was already bewildered and grudgingly pleased that a nice English girl such as myself had not only taken her younger son in hand, but had actively persuaded him to move back to his hometown.
'You're sure you know what you're letting yourself in for, love?' she used to ask me, eyes narrowed and, presumably, trying to work out my hidden agenda. I'm glad Tony's not particularly rich, or she would never have let me, or any other woman, anywhere near him.
'Of course I am, Margot,' I'd tell her. My accent, though softened by five years in Australia, has always sounded particularly regal next to hers. 'I love it out here. The middle of nowhere.'
'You may call it the middle of nowhere, love, but to us who were born and bred here, it's not to be dismissed so lightly.'
Tony became so enraged by Margot's mistrust that he proposed to me, on the grounds that it would shut her up. I accepted, partly for the same reason. Some part of me was also caught up in the romance of a spontaneous Outback wedding. The elements didn't let me down. To this day, I have never seen worse dust.
The wind had been raging for fifty hours by the time I needed to leave for the town hall, and I was in despair. On Margot's insistence, I was wearing white, though both Tony and I had drawn the line at a religious ceremony. We paid good money for the registrar to fly in from Coober Pedy, and we got married in the shack which is the town hall. Had I put aside my scruples, of course, we could have had the cool elegance of a ceremony in the underground church, and, looking back, I wish we had.
Margot, Nina, Beth, Red and I stood at the window in Margot's house, which is a proper, air-conditioned bungalow, denoting her status in the community. We watched the devils of dust blowing up and down the street. Rubbish hurried by at roof height. The street was empty. Nobody was out. The town hall was round the corner, but if I attempted to walk it in my finery, I would arrive as an orange scarecrow. It was hardly every girl's childhood dream. I couldn't contain my angst. I half wanted to laugh. This could only happen in Craggy.
'I can't go out in this,' I muttered between gritted teeth. I was wearing a floor-length silk dress, cut on the bias, with a cowl neck. I'd been all the way to Adelaide to have it made, reasoning that this was, if all went well, the only chance I'd get. My imminent mother-in-law had tried to make me wear an ugly necklace she'd worn on her own wedding day, but I refused, on the grounds that I always wore my dead mother's fairy necklace. Even she couldn't argue with that. 'I'm wearing ivory, for Christ's sake! This is my wedding day. It's meant to be the happiest fucking day of my life.'
Margot took my arm in her iron grip. 'Noeline! There's no need for that sort of bloody language,' she cautioned. 'We'll see you right.'
'How can you? How can any of you? We should have stayed in bloody Sydney! I wish I was getting married there. I should have married the Indian …'
I tailed off at that point, realising I might have overstepped the mark.
When I burst into the town hall, a single-roomed establishment, I was wearing cut-off denim shorts and a baggy T-shirt, with one of Margot's tea towels knotted round my head. Tony was there already, chatting idly to Pete, his brother and best man. I could read the confusion on his face. For a few seconds, he genuinely believed this was the wedding outfit I'd hidden from him for weeks.
My whole bridal party, apart from Red who is too short, stood in a protective screen around me while I changed. Shortly afterwards, I pledged myself to Tony for life.
I don't regret it. Perhaps, occasionally, I regret it, but hardly ever. I had no alternative; and it's worked out more happily than I ever dared imagine.
Today, the air is still and the storms are hundreds of miles away. The sun is huge on the horizon as I amble towards it, away from civilisation. When I arrived here, I would have laughed in the face of anyone who implied that Craggy Rock was, in any way, civilised, but it only took one trip into the surrounding area to change my perspective.
Even a few moments' walk from home makes the town look different. I look over my shoulder. From here, it is a settlement in the wide expanse of arid land which is barely habitable by humans or any other animal, save those conditioned for desert life, like lizards. It is a miraculous place. I love living in the middle of the panorama of earth. It keeps my life in perspective. I think of the cluster of cells inside me that must, even now, be dividing and multiplying and forming itself into something approximating a fish, if not yet a human. It will, I hope, grow and grow. I will swell and bulge and moan and groan and finally produce an independent human being from within me. There is something disconcertingly reminiscent of Alien about the whole process.
Tony will get used to the idea. We've been trying for long enough. He should be used to it already. Yet I am shocked myself.
There is a small hill fifteen minutes' walk from the house. It is the remnants of an old mining quarry which has been disused for years. I stroll up it, wondering whether, by the time summer has been and almost gone, I will be able to huff and puff my way to the summit, or whether I'll be stuck on the sofa monopolising the television, or looking up baby websites on the internet. I hope the pregnancy is straightforward. Already, and despite Tony's lack of enthusiasm for the whole project, I feel a little smug. I am special. I am growing a baby. You can't do anything better than that. The air is cool, and the whole of the desert is glowing. From here, I can see for, perhaps, one hundred miles in every direction. Craggy Rock looks insignificant. It begins and then, straightaway, it ends, and the desert stretches for miles beyond it.
I was initially disappointed that this desert didn't look like the Saharan cliché. There are no rippling dunes around here. There are stones and rocks, and instead of sand, we have pervasive, inescapable dust. I have, however, come to appreciate it. More than anything, I love its size. I love the fact that, unless you fly in one of the expensive little planes, it takes a day to get anywhere. I love the fact that there is no natural water supply, that the water has to come in on lorries.
Opals are the only reason the settlement exists, and they are capricious, occasionally making someone rich for life, but more often losing him (for it is invariably a him) his savings, and nudging him into a life of abject alcoholism. Tony is good with opals. We have a handsome, and secret, sum in the bank thanks to a couple of judicious finds he's made.
At the top of the hill, I watch the sun slipping away over the red earth. I look back towards the town, and see it flaming in the late afternoon light. I bite back all my ambivalence. I am happy.
As I walk towards home, I imagine myself with an alternative life. I am a lost traveller, staggering through the desert. I am about to die from dehydration. When I see the town, I dismiss it as a mirage. As I get closer, however, it doesn't shimmer and disappear, but becomes more concrete. My heart begins to lift. Then I am suddenly walking between doors and windows cut into artificial hillsides. I even pass a person, and give her a tentative smile. She spoils my fantasy by responding with a cheery, 'G'day Lina! How are you doing?'
'Hi, Nora,' I say. Nora runs the motel. 'Good, thanks. You?'
By the time I get home I am overcome with amazement at the fact that I live in a house, here, in the desert. I know everyone in the settlement. I have a key to the door, although I rarely use it as we hardly ever lock it. My life seems fantastically improbable.

An hour after I get home, Tony begins to accept the inevitable fact that he must be kind to me, as I am expecting his child. I'm going to have to get him accustomed to the idea in the next few months. I am almost tempted to confide in Margot (and thus in all our neighbours), just so she can bully him into niceness.
He steps over the threshold of the kitchen, onto my territory, and, as a goodwill gesture, he carries a glass and a crumby plate over to the sink, gives them a cursory rinse, dries them, and puts them away. Both he and Red are trained to do this, though it rarely happens. I am on my hands and knees, attacking a particularly tenacious stain on one of the tiles, and I watch him from the corner of my eye. The stain seems to be jam with some mystery glue-like ingredient added on top. I put my sponge back into the hot disinfectant, squeeze it out, and wait for him to say something.
'Do you think you should be doing that?' he asks, after a pause. 'I mean, in your condition.'
'No one's going to do it for me,' I point out.
'But, like, we can live with a dirty patch on the floor, or whatever it is.' He stands next to me and extends a hand, helping me to my feet. I don't mention the fact that he's put sock prints all over my clean tiles. I'll come back and finish it later. When I look around the room, I see that the kitchen is sparkling. When we moved in here, this room was a seventies-style brown and orange monstrosity. It was completely encrusted with grime. Fat was caked to every surface. I was glad. It meant I didn't have a problem persuading Tony to have it ripped out, and to let me choose a new one in white and chrome. It looks a bit odd in our funny little house - as if visitors from the future had arrived in our prehistoric dugout home, built their best kitchen, and rushed off again, back to 2020. At least it has a window. My kitchen always comforts me. Never, in my younger days, did I imagine myself capable of articulating a sentence like that.
I let him lead me into the bedroom, since Red has come home and taken up residence in front of the television.
'So?' I ask. I'm not giving an inch on this one. I know it's all about compromise, but I don't want to. He was in the wrong, and the fact that he has already mentioned my 'condition' means that he knows it.
He sits beside me on the bed. It is king-sized, with wrought iron at the head and foot. I had it delivered from Melbourne at massive personal expense, but it is glorious and it was worth it. It is my nest, my refuge. It is everything a marital bed should be. Once again, however, my strenuous efforts were unable to make our home into anything other than a dugout burrow in one of the least hospitable places on earth. However chic the bed, the bedroom is never going to have a window.
Tony takes my hand in his, and forces me to look at him.
'I'm sorry,' he says, with a little smile. 'Really. I'm sorry I wasn't very nice. It's just that it was the last thing I was expecting. Didn't even know it was a possibility. But I'm over the moon.' I scrutinise his face. He grins. 'Seriously, darl. Don't worry.' He pats my stomach, far higher than where our embryonic son or daughter must be.
I smile, despite myself, and move his hand from my lower ribs to between my hips. 'You are pleased, aren't you?'
'Truly I am.'
'But you weren't pleased when I told you. You didn't even look me in the eye.'
'I know. Hey, you know how men are. We're shite. Even whatsisname in Bombay couldn't have been perfect all the time.'
'Oh, no, he would have been. But don't worry about him. As long as you really are happy. I don't want you pretending and then going complaining to Andy and Pete every night.'
'Of course I'm happy. It blew me away, darling. Tell you the truth, I didn't think my boys could do it. Didn't reckon they could swim that far. It's great news. I'm going to be a dad. It's the best thing that's ever happened.'
He sounds as if he means it. I force myself to smile. 'It is, isn't it?'
'Come here.' He hugs me. I breathe in his smell. When Tony folds me into him, we almost become one person. He makes me feel like a small delicate lady who needs to be looked after. He can pick me up under one arm, with ease, and at the end of an evening at the pub he often does. I know that I'm not someone who wants to sit back and be provided for but, from time to time, I like to indulge the feeling.
'Shall we tell Red?' I ask after a few minutes.
'No,' he says straightaway. 'I was thinking about that. If we tell him, we might as well tell the whole town. I guess you don't want to do that yet? Have a bit of leeway before my mum gets on your back. Hey, we were dismal in the Test. We're going to have to bowl them all out tomorrow if we want a hope in hell. Three hundred and five, all out.'
'We could swear him to secrecy. Make him realise that he mustn't tell anyone.'
'Lina, get real. He's ten years old. However shit I might be, Red's going to be over the bloody moon. It's going to make his day, his year. You, of all people, know that his favourite activity is chatting to the girls at school. We can't make him keep this a secret, because he wouldn't be able to, and you can't blame him for that. So say he tells Tabitha. She goes home and tells Jen. Jen tells the other mothers outside the school, or she mentions it in the pub. In no time someone's said to Mum, congratulations, Marg! You must be over the moon, and then we've got her on the bloody doorstep smashing my head in and demanding why she was the last to know.'
I think about it. He is absolutely right. 'So we keep it secret from everyone? Can I tell Beth?'
'Later. When's it normal to tell people?'
'Twelve weeks. The risk of miscarriage is a lot less from then on, and I think that soon after that you start looking pregnant.'
'How many weeks would you be now?'
'About four or five.'
'Already?'
'They measure it from the date of your last period.'
'Yeah? Why? And how do girls know this stuff?'
'We just do. Particularly if we've been at it for years. You know, the due date they give you is only approximate, based on you conceiving in the middle of an average cycle. Beth had some books when she and Andy were trying. And every sodding magazine seems to have had an article, in the week when I've found out I'm not pregnant, every single month for the past two years.'
He puts his arms round me. 'And what happens in the week when you find out you are?'
I smile up at him. 'I think that's when you buy some books of your own.' I think about it. 'Better get them on mail order, or everyone'll know.'
Suddenly I feel overwhelmed with love. Tony and I might have our ups and downs, but we are a team. Whoever this baby takes after, it's going to have a fantastic, if unusual start in life.

Since we're friends again, we stroll into town to celebrate. Red barely raises his tousled dark head to say goodbye.
'Off to the pub, yeah?' he says, waving a hand, his eyes not leaving the TV screen, where two lithe blondes are strolling down a beach wearing tiny bikinis. His cheeks are rosy, and his face is freckled. Like me, he has a pale complexion; something I have achieved for him with liberal daily applications of sunblock.
'Maybe. For a walk, anyway. What are you watching?'
'Looks good, mate,' comments Tony.
'Home and Away, for your information. So it is suitable. Have fun.'
We are, without a doubt, the only household in Craggy Rock that could afford satellite television yet chooses not to have it. I know I'm going to have to give in soon, because the pressure is increasing from both sides. Tony wants his sport, and Red wants everything. It is the nature of the 'everything' that makes me hold back.
I don't tell them, but I wouldn't mind some satellite TV myself. I'd like the BBC, and Channel Four's film channel. I think a British childhood leaves you convinced, for ever, that their television is the best in the world. I imagine spending the rest of the gestation period curled up on the clean sofa, watching repeats of Bagpuss and The Magic Roundabout. It might make for the perfect pregnancy.
I weigh up the merits of my comfort television versus the demerits of my son being able to watch porn whenever I'm out of the room. I realise that I'll never get my quality time, anyway, if those two have unlimited channels, and I decide to hold my ground a little longer.
'Bloody winter,' my husband mutters, linking his arm through mine. It is dark, and surprisingly cold. 'What month will the baby be born?'
We grin at each other in the light of the streetlamps, excited by the unfamiliarity of the conversation. I pretend to count on my fingers, even though I have already calculated not only eight months from now, but the more specific forty weeks from the beginning of my last period.
'March,' I tell him. 'I think it'll be due around March the seventh.'
'Autumn. That's good. So you get to be pregnant all through the summer. Wait till I tell the boys.'
We're strolling down our road. This time we've turned right. We pass the empty house, which is agreed, by a general consensus of Red, Eric, and all the other kids in my class, to be haunted. I know they climb in through the windows to scare themselves, but they don't know I know it. I checked that it wasn't abandoned on safety grounds, and then left them to it. An old white sheet went missing from the cupboard recently. There are, I reason, worse things they could be doing than playing at ghosts in an empty house.
I look up at Tony.
'Yeah?' he asks.
'Nothing.' We walk on. 'You really do want this baby, don't you? Did you think I was mad, earlier?'
'Not really. No more so than usual.'
'Things are going to get a lot more hormonal from here on in.'
'Are you going to be sick?'
I shrug. 'Probably. I'm sure I'll feel sick, anyway. You're going to have to be very nice to me, you know.'
'I'll do my best.' He stops, and turns me towards him. 'I've just thought of something. Are you going to stop drinking?'
'Alcohol? Yes, of course. Well, I'll be able to have a few units a week. Why?'
'Everyone'll guess. You know it.'
It is one of the curiosities of life in a small, heavy drinking community that pregnancies never go undetected. The moment a woman of childbearing age turns down anything alcoholic, the cry goes up. 'You're pregnant!' someone shouts. 'Aren't you?' At that point, the woman in question traditionally turns pink, and mutters something about not planning on telling everyone yet.
We are heading for the pub, and I will be rumbled in approximately four minutes.
'What can we do?' I ask. 'I don't really want to risk harming the baby just to stop our neighbours sussing us out.'
'We'll get you a drink anyway,' decides Tony, 'and you can pretend to drink it. I'll neck it back. We'll get you a glass of water as well. No one's going to notice that.'
'Water. Mmmm. Nine months of water. Lucky me.'
The darkness is broken up by the lights of the town centre, but the streets are deserted. We reach the pub, and as we stand on the threshold, Tony gives my hand a squeeze.
'I love you,' he says.
'I know,' I tell him. 'Me too.' I push the door open. We walk in, smiling, and join the crowd.

chapter two

On the day I turn nine weeks pregnant, I wake up in a filthy temper, and reach for Tony, who is snoring. Unhelpfully, yet predictably, he declines to wake up.
One of the things I hate about living here is the fact that, to see whether it's daylight yet, I have to lever myself out of bed, put on a dressing gown, and go into the living room or the kitchen, because they are the only rooms blessed with windows. I give Tony a sharp squeeze, but he doesn't stir. I can't face the idea of getting up when it's probably the middle of the night. I'll need the loo soon. As a preliminary, I reach for the alarm clock and press the button for the light.
It's five past five. That is the worst possible time. Any later, and I could reasonably get up. Anything past four, and I would manage to lull myself back to sleep. As it is, I'll just lie here feeling sick, and putting off the moment when I get up for a wee. This is the beginning of my day. It's a day I've been dreading, and it's starting early.
Nobody tells you what being pregnant is really like. The conception is still a secret between me, Tony, and Dr Angelos. The doc is a prominent member of the community who has been known to discuss his patients in the pub for dramatic effect. Tony had to take him aside and extract an oath of confidentiality, by reminding him of some obscure events involving a mineshaft and a donkey. I have no desire to know the details.
Every single day, I act as much like a normal teacher and mother as I can, even though I am sick once every morning, and once late in the afternoon. The rest of the time, I struggle to stay awake. I feel nauseous when someone walks past me if they're wearing perfume or aftershave. I can make myself gag by thinking about the revolving doner kebab in Mick's shop. The other day, Tony said the word 'offal' in some context, and I had to sit back and breathe deeply until the nausea passed.
I'll get up in a minute. I'll have to.
The children are the closest to guessing. They have noticed, although they're keeping it quiet, that I no longer run after them in the playground. The truth is, I can't do it. When I'm on playground duty, they get away with new levels of bullying and extortion, while I look the other way and pretend not to notice. I just sit on a step, sipping from a bottle of water, and occasionally I lean forward to shout, 'Jess! Where's your hat?'
I turn over in bed and try to find a comfortable position. Sleeping is terrible already, and I don't even have a bump yet. I suppose I'm glad it's Saturday, even if we do have a wedding to go to. Sometimes, at school, I have to make a dash for the toilets. Often I only get as far as the little children's ones, and find myself vomiting inelegantly into a knee-high dunny and hoping that none of the five-year-olds will catch me. The teachers are hopeless. I am willing an adult - any adult - to guess, so I will be forced to own up. If my colleagues caught me throwing up, they'd write it off as food poisoning. If they realised I was sick every morning, they'd never translate that into 'morning sickness'. I can turn up in the staff room with a small salad and two litres of water for lunch, and the only comment I get is, 'Lina! You don't need to diet, love.'
'I'm not dieting, I'm detoxifying,' I lie, transparently, and no one questions me.
Socialising has been even worse. Few activities can be quite as miserable as pretending to drink. Today is going to be the worst of all. I'd rather stay at home and vomit solidly for eight hours than sit in the church (no ethical scruples for them) and watch my former pupil Rachelle pledge herself, body and soul, to my best friend's recent ex-husband, Andy.
I am a closet misanthrope at the best of times. Today I will have to make myself as pretty as possible, offer insincere congratulations to two people who know I despise their union, and pretend to drink with every single inhabitant of this town. Not only that, but I am personally responsible for making Tony and Red look respectable before we go.
I switch on the bedside lamp, but my husband doesn't stir, so I climb over him. One arm is thrown back over his head, displaying a thicket of soft blond armpit hair. I resist the temptation to tickle him, or to drop something into his open mouth. His breath smells of stale beer. I pull on my cotton kimono, and head, with accelerating steps, for the bathroom. When I get there I wonder, briefly, whether the vomit or the urine is the more pressing need, before the vomit answers my question in no uncertain terms. Another joyful day awaits.

By the time Rachelle makes her grand entrance, I am awake only because the pews are so uncomfortable. I am wedged between Tony and Red. All three of us are scrubbed up. I'm wearing a fairly new linen dress that will crease so quickly that I'm not sure why I bothered ironing it. It's dusty pink, and I bought shoes to match, but I draw the line at wearing a hat. I've tucked my necklace inside the dress, to avoid spoiling the neckline. I look sideways at Red. He looks like a gorgeous little posh schoolboy. I yelled at him, after lunch, until he donned smart trousers, a tidy shirt and his school shoes. By then I was so cross that I slicked his hair down with gel. I've always loved the English public schoolboy aesthetic. Red has no idea how adorable he is. Without a doubt he'll be going home to change into skateboarding gear before the reception, and by then I will be beyond caring.
On my right, Tony looks equally uncomfortable in his suit and tie. He's even got a carnation in his buttonhole, as he did when we got married. I've tried to make him buy a new suit, but he refuses. The only suit he possesses was bought for a court appearance, years ago. It is navy blue, and shiny, and I am not in the least bit surprised that, both times he's worn it, he's been found guilty. On its third outing, he married me.
The church contrives to have a solemn, oppressive atmosphere despite its location. On a winter afternoon like this one, it's as cold and dank as any English church, and it even has the stations of the cross on the walls. It seems that all our neighbours are present. I wish I'd cried off. Finding an excuse - any excuse - was my first concern when the invitation arrived, three weeks ago.
'Oh, how horrible!' I exclaimed to Tony, walking into the kitchen with it in my hand. 'I'm not going.'
'What?' demanded Red, leaving the breakfast table and snatching it out of my hands. 'The wedding of Miss Rachelle Hunter and Mr Andrew Fisher? That's not yuck, Mummy. Why aren't you going? I thought you liked weddings. Is that the Rachelle?'
I had to think quickly. I have gone out of my way not to let Red know any details of Beth's marital catastrophe because I don't want him dwelling on the impermanence of marriage (a concern which, until now, might not have occurred to him). Besides, Red is the Oprah Winfrey of Craggy School, and spreads gossip without even noticing.
'Yes, it is. And I know I like weddings, but I meant, how horrible for you and Tony because I know you guys hate having to get smartened up. Also, Tony'll probably have to make a speech at the reception because Andy's his friend.'
Red was astonished. 'You mean Andy's name is Mr Andrew Fisher?'
'Certainly is.'
'The Andy? Wow. Will I have a posh name if I marry Tabitha?'
'You will. You'll be Mr Red Pritchett.'
'Ohhhhhh! That's boring.'
Tony, finally, looked up from his copy of FHM. 'Not half as boring as this wedding's going to be, mate.' He slid the magazine across the table. 'Here, look at this. You should ask your mum to get you a surfboard.'

As the organ pipes up with 'Here Comes the Bride', I crane around in the traditional manner, and catch Margot's eye. She's sitting between Tony and Pete, wearing the same outfit she wore to our wedding. If she knew I was incubating her grandchild, she'd have me sitting in a comfy chair with my feet up for the whole nine months. I have never known a woman as fiercely protective of her children as Margot is of her boys, and I'm sure our baby will also benefit from her lioness tendencies. Tony reverts to a six-year-old in her presence. The other day I caught her inspecting his nails and sending him to wash his hands before lunch.
Margot's wedding outfit is a peach skirt and jacket with a crimson blouse. Her hat is peach, with a crimson rose on the front. Her lipstick (an item which is normally anathema to her) is crimson, and her foundation appears to be peach. Her earrings are crimson, her clumpy shoes peach. Margot is so perfectly colour coordinated at weddings that I half expect her grey hair to be dyed peach for the occasion. I always wonder why she doesn't choose to coordinate herself in colours that actually complement each other. Nonetheless, I have become deeply fond of my mother-in-law. She's the closest thing to a mother I've got, and she'd do anything for our little family.
We smile, and Margot winks. I follow her gaze, and see Rachelle emerge, blinking, into the underground cavern. Her blonde hair is newly bleached for the occasion, right down to the roots, and it's piled stiffly on top of her head. She affixes a rictus of a smile to her face. Rachelle is seventeen years old, and she has no idea what she is letting herself in for. I feel a brief pang on her behalf.
I expected her dress to be bad, but she has surpassed my every fantasy. She is moving at the centre of a heap of net curtains. The bodice is covered in ruffles, and the full skirt has flounces galore. It sticks out so far that she reminds me of one of those dolls that sit on toilet rolls in the name of modesty. A nylon veil goes all the way down her back, and her face is grotesquely over made up. The picture is completed by two young bridesmaids, one of whom is crying. The other drops her bouquet and runs towards her mother.
I breathe a huge sigh of relief. I have promised Beth that I will call her when I get home and furnish her with every detail of the occasion, and I had imagined that I would exaggerate the horror of the proceedings. Now I see I can be perfectly honest.
Margot leans across Tony. 'Doesn't she look a picture?' she smiles.

The afternoon degenerates into a huge drinking session. Although Rachelle opted for the classier of the available marriage venues, they are holding the reception at the drive-in cinema. 'No Explosives' warns a huge sign on the fence. Workers have been known to call in for a movie in their work trucks, and dynamite has been known to spoil everyone's enjoyment.
Dirty Dancing is playing silently on the screen. I try to imagine whether this has long been one of the features of Rachelle's dream wedding. She has lived in Craggy all her life, and so I imagine it probably has. To be fair to the girl, she has used her imagination with the limited materials available, just as I used to tell her to do at school.
I clutch a glass of wine. The very idea of alcohol makes me sick. Faux drinking - remaining uptight while everyone else loses their inhibitions - is such a grim way of passing the time that it makes me want to have an abortion.
I have long stopped thinking of this town as strange. On the rare occasions when we go somewhere normal, like Adelaide, I see that world as odd, and mine as normal. The best I can manage to say for the people here is that they are mostly well-meaning. They are friendly, if you're white, and cheerful, and they adore a drink. Alcoholism rates are sky high.
I look at the crowd, and spot Duke talking with Bob and a group of the other hardcore miners and drinkers. Duke was one of the first people I met here. I estimate that he is in his sixties, although for all I know he could be thirty-eight and exceptionally battered by life. He drinks all day long, every single day, and when he's pissed he seeks out the Aborigines and sits with them, talking nonsense, and tugging at the legs of passers-by. He is, in fact, a lot less racist than most of Craggy's residents. I hope I haven't got used to the racism. I suppose I've learned to live with it, which amounts to the same thing. This is a completely segregated community with considerable ill will between the two sides. I take my cue from Tony, and live quietly in the white community, occasionally giving money or food to anyone who looks desperate. And just that pathetic act earns me the disapproval of my mother-in-law. Needless to say, today's gathering is exclusively white.
Duke staggered up to me in the street on our first morning here. I was reeling from the fact that life in the Outback was apparently just like Tony had told me it would be, except that he'd forgotten to mention the heat, the dust, and the fact that we would be living, indefinitely, with his mother.
'Hello, little lady!' slurred the strange man, taking my hand and caressing it, as I looked around, panicking. 'Where did you come from?'
'From Sydney,' I said primly, trying to extricate myself and hoping someone would save me.
'You're a lovely girl. Did you come to make your fortune? I did that. Rich as a king, I am. You wouldn't know it to look at me.' He tapped his nose. 'I keep it hidden, and I'm not going to tell you where!'
'Are you British?' I tried to use my Australian accent. It came out as 'Areya Briddish?'
'From Herererereford-shire, my love. You won't know what that is. Don't remember myself, come to think of it. Australia, the place to be. The best country. It's all in the opals.'
Tony appeared at this point, and with a cheery, 'All right, Duke?' steered me away. It turned out that about ten per cent of the residents fall into Duke's category. He is harmless, and over the years I've become quite fond of him. Duke will be working the crowd before long, grasping women's hands and hinting at his vast wealth. For all I know, he might even be telling the truth.

Rachelle is giggling with her girlfriends, most of whom were in her class at school. I taught some of them English. They only left last year. I wonder what her life will be like now. Marriage to Andy was a trial even for Beth, and she didn't have to contend with the age difference. Rachelle and Andy could be soul mates, but I doubt such a thing exists, really. It's just a question of two people wanting the same thing at the same time.
'What do you reckon?' asks someone at my shoulder. I look round, and see Tony's brother, Pete. When I met him, I refused to believe that Pete and my lovely Tony could be related. Tony talked about him so much and with such affection that I had imagined them to be identical twins. I thought the Pritchett boys would be two muscular teddy bears, both of them blondish and balding. In fact, Pete is dark and swarthy, as, apparently, was their father, Brian. He is as wirily small as Tony is big and burly. Resolutely single after two divorces, he despises anyone, including Tony, who settles down with a good woman. He never says so to my face, but I think he loathes me on principle as well as in reality. He's only ever civil to me, or to any other woman, when he's drunk, unless he's trying to get the woman in question into bed. Luckily, Pete draws the line at attempting to seduce his own sister-in-law. Either that, or he doesn't fancy me.
'What do I reckon about what?' I ask warily.
'The happy couple. How long do you give it?'
I look at Rachelle, exclaiming over Denise's ankle tattoo. Then I search the crowd for Andy, and spot him with Tony at the bar, laughing loudly.
'Two years, at the most,' I say. Pete whips a notebook out of his back pocket, and a pencil from behind his ear, and writes something down.
'Lina,' he says as he writes. 'Two years. Right, give us five bucks and you're in. Actually, Mick's already got two years. Can you be more specific? Yeah? Most of these are in months.'
I am mildly appalled, but I join in. I don't want to antagonise him.
'All right then. Say, twenty-two months. Are we counting until the separation, by the way, or divorce, or the initiation of proceedings?'
'The day one of them moves out and takes all their stuff. Minor bust-ups don't count.'
I hand him five dollars. 'You're a terrible man, Peter Pritchett. Does your mother know you're doing this?'
'Mum? You want to know what she thinks? Yeah? Five months, max.'
Although it's winter, it's a warm day. They've been luckier with the weather than we were, and before long I shake Pete off and sit down by the fence, in the shade of the 'No Explosives' sign, where I pour away half a glass of wine. I am dizzy, and I think I've got about forty-five minutes before I'm sick. The outdoor setting makes fake drinking easier, but nothing can make it enjoyable. I'll sit here and collect myself, and then I'll slip off home for a rest. My weekends are too precious to be spent like this.
The cinema is heaving with people. Even the residents of Clarrie's backpackers' hostel appear to have been invited en masse. I watch them, vaguely, from afar. They always intrigue me. Some look as old as me, just touching thirty. I wonder whether I could have ended up being them, and vice versa. I could have been them, all right. I have been them. I don't believe, however, that anyone else could have ended up as me. My circumstances have been very specific.
Three years ago, Craggy saw just a few of the most persistent travellers. This year, it has, apparently, been included in the Lonely Planet guide to Australia, and the numbers have increased beyond anyone's wildest expectations. Clarrie runs the hostel along the principle that there is nowhere else for her clients to stay, since they can't afford the motel, so they'll pay whether or not it's habitable. Now she's so oversubscribed with travellers who need to put a tick beside 'the desert' on their itinerary that she's talking about building an annexe before anyone introduces an element of free market competition. We also see a stream of overland trippers, who clunk into town in their bashed-up station wagons, and repair to one of the pubs for an evening's hard drinking. The backpackers, who get off buses and labour to Clarrie's under the weight of all their worldly goods, always stick together and only talk to their own kind, while the overlanders prefer to become part of the community for the night. I suppose the backpackers are making new friends every day, while the overlanders have been stuck in a hot car with each other for weeks on end. No wonder so many of them are delighted by an evening in Duke's company.
Tony catches my eye and waves. I make a gesture that I hope conveys, don't worry, I'm absolutely fine. He smiles and goes back to his conversation with the treacherous bridegroom. Tony has dumped his suit jacket, and rolled up his shirt sleeves. Now he just looks like an unusually fit insurance salesman in a very bad pair of trousers.
I swallow some bile and wonder whether I'd get away with a glass of water. I can't wait to go on maternity leave. I can't wait to tell people. I can't wait to grow a bump, and to realise that I really am going to have a baby; to accept that I'm not ill, and to realise that the thing making me sick and miserable is, contrary to my irrational fears, not a tumour or an intruder attacking my vital organs, but just a baby. Just a human being that I'm going to have to look after every day for the next eighteen years or so. Just someone who's going to draw their succour from my breasts and invade my sleep. Pregnancy has reduced - or raised - my body to a two-legged incubator. I am a host organ. Seven months from now I'm going to toddle into hospital, a comical, bovine figure, and go through agonies that a man, or a childless woman, or, indeed, any woman who is not going through it at that moment, could not imagine. Then I'm going to come out with my stomach folded over one arm, and a frowning purple baby tucked under the other. It is an enticing prospect.
'Hey, Mum. You dropout!'
Red sits next to me. He's been home and changed into his baggiest shorts and a huge dark green T-shirt with a logo that depicts a turtle standing on its hind legs, with a pint of beer in its 'hand'. I miss his aristocratic look. His eyes are dark and shiny, and his cheeks, as ever, are rosy. I take the cup from his hand, and drain it of orange juice. I feel a little better.
'Sorry,' I tell him. 'Dehydrated.'
In retaliation, he grabs my wine, and I allow him a gulp.
'Do you think Rachelle looks pretty?' he asks, staring through the crowd. He's always had a crush on his erstwhile babysitter. I look at the bride. She is, surprisingly, looking at me, and quickly averts her eyes. I wonder what kind of girl gets married when she's seventeen. All kinds of girls do, I suppose, but most of them haven't actively stolen their husbands from their previous and proper wives. I study Rachelle, in her cheap nylon dress, and try to work out whether she could be hiding the same secret as me. She is drinking straight from a bottle of Southern Comfort, which is being passed around her friends, and in the other hand she holds a cigarette which is dropping ash down the front of her dress - so probably not. However, she is young enough not to appreciate the implications. I can't imagine why else Andy would have rushed into a second marriage so soon after bailing spinelessly out of his first.
'She looks quite pretty,' I say to Red, vaguely.
'Beth would be sad if she was here,' he notes abruptly. 'Is that why you said it's horrible?'
'Yes, partly.' I pull him back into the shade, and we both think of my best friend.
'Andy is married to Beth. I didn't think you can be married to two people.'
'Not two people at once,' I agree, 'but sometimes, if people are married but they don't like being married any more, they can get unmarried. It's called divorce.' He looks blank. 'That's what Andy and Beth did,' I continue. 'That's why she moved away. And when you're divorced, each person can marry someone else if they want to. Some people have been married and divorced eight times, with different people. Only in America, though.' I can't believe Red has got to the age of ten without knowing about divorce. Maybe he overcame the odds and managed to lead a sheltered life. I always dreaded having this conversation with him, because I feared it would be a heartbreaking, 'Mummy and Tony don't love each other any more' discussion. The fact that it isn't cheers me up no end.
'So will Beth marry someone else?'
'Probably. One day.'
'Why did they get unmarried?'
'They just weren't friends. They had lots of arguments.'
He doesn't need to know the details. He doesn't need to know that half the people in town, including Tony but excluding me, knew that Andy had been screwing the teenage receptionist from the motel for months. He never needs to know about the day Beth and I called into the motel bar for a spontaneous drink after school, and saw Rachelle and Andy pressed up against each other, eating each other's faces. It won't last. I probably don't need to tell him that, either.
We are interrupted by a young man who squeezes into our modest patch of shade, smiling a little nervously. He's one of the backpackers. For a backpacker, he's exceptionally friendly. He looks about twenty, and has long greasy hair and an Ayers Rock T-shirt. He offers me one of the cans of lager he is clutching.
'Hiya!' he says cheerfully. 'Can I join you? Do you live here? I've been hoping to talk to a local character but they all seem a bit scary.'
'Scary!' Red looks at him curiously. 'Why?'
'Well, you two aren't, that's why I'm talking to you. Everyone else seems, how shall I put it, as mad as a hatstand.'
I revise my estimate of his age. He can only just have left school. I think, from his accent, that he's Welsh.
'They look worse than they are.' I force a smile. The last thing I want today is a new friend. 'Are you from Wales?'
'Yes, South Wales. How do you know? Are you British?'
'No, Australian, but I grew up in Britain.'
'So what the fuck, if you'll excuse my language, made you come to live here? Don't you get bored? Because it is, frankly, famously boring, isn't it? All the backpackers stay one night, and then they move on. You'd go out of your mind if you stayed longer than that. Everyone says so.'
'Then everyone is closed-minded. I know it's not to everybody's taste, but it's certainly not boring here. It's the opposite of boring. Look at it.' I gesture to the stony desert in front of us. 'It can send you mad, if you think about it too long. It goes on and on. There's nothing there. It's uninhabitable, and yet here we are, inhabiting it. Pulling the stones from the ground in the hope that one of them might turn out to be valuable. Their value, of course, being an entirely random manmade concept. You can breathe the air. The sun shines almost all the time. It's us against the elements, out here. It makes me think of how the world used to be. I half expect to see dinosaurs. You have no idea how many films they shoot round here, whenever they want another planet, or prehistoric earth. Red here has been an extra in a Mel Gibson film.'
Red nods. 'I have too. I was even in it when we had it here, at the cinema. For about three seconds.'
'No shit?'
Red beams, and I continue, 'Nature is so much more important than it is in London, or Cardiff, or New York or Paris or Sydney. I mean, look at our houses.'
'Do you live in one of those funny ones? Underground?'
'We have a front door and two windows, and then the house goes back into the hillside. The walls and the ceiling are the bare earth. There's a vent that goes right up and comes out in the hill. We lie in bed in the mornings, and if you can hear water pinging on the metal of the vent, you know it's raining. Which isn't often.'
'Do you live in a dugout?' Red asks him.
He laughs. 'No, mate. I live in Barry, and we don't have too many dugouts there.'
'Would you like to live here?'
'I'd go out of my mind.'
'Some of us would go out of our minds if we lived in Barry,' I point out. 'All that rain, the grim houses, the people everywhere.'
'You've never been to Barry.'
'True. But I can imagine it.'
'You'd be surprised.'
'Would I?'
'No.' He drains his lager and smiles at me. 'Can I take your picture?' he asks. 'Both of you together?' He's troll-eyed, but I like him. I like being admired. It doesn't happen much these days, and it will happen still less when I've lost my figure thanks to the baby. I am grateful for his harmless attention.
'Sure,' I tell him. Red sprawls on my lap. After we've squinted into the winter sun, I suggest we top up our drinks.

If I'd stayed in the shade and made Red and the Welsh boy bring me a glass of water instead, I might have been all right. Instead, I stand dizzily by the drinks table and chat inanely about the relative merits of wine and lager, until the other backpackers come along, en masse.
'Even in Barry,' I am saying, 'they must have Jacob's Creek.'
'I think Lambrusco's as classy as it gets,' says my new friend. 'Sorry. Look, these are my roommates. I don't even know your name.'
'Lina,' I say, sneaking a swig of water. Only here do they tut suspiciously if they catch you at a party with a can of lemonade. You're bound to be hiding something. Either you're pregnant, or you've decided to kick your alcoholism.
'Well, I'm Huw. It has been a delight to meet you, Lina. This is Vikram, Mark and Sophie.'
I look round, smiling. They are all about my age and I wonder what they make of their new, enthusiastic best friend. I make eye contact with one of them - Vikram - and we exchange an indulgent smile behind Huw's back. Then I look at Sophie, who is staring at me with intense interest. She has long brown hair and a pointy face, and her eyes are clear, blue and accusing.
I stare back. I hold her gaze, steadily.
She has an odd look in her eyes, and when I try to look away, it seems I can't. We stand and scrutinise each other for several minutes, while everyone else, inexplicably, doesn't seem to notice that anything is amiss. Then I pull myself together.
'Hello,' I say, as brightly as I can, and using an Australian accent. 'How are you all doing?' I look away from this woman, at the other three. 'Anyone need a drink?' I add, and as the boys answer, I turn to the table and busy myself pouring liquid into plastic cups.
Sophie appears at my side. I can feel her looking at me.
'Daisy,' she says quietly. She has a cut-glass English accent.
I look at her, shocked. 'No,' I tell her, suddenly remembering to smile. 'Not Daisy. My name's Lina. Are you confusing me with someone?'
She shakes her head. 'No. You look like Daisy and you have the same voice. Different accent, that's all. I'd recognise you anywhere. I knew you were still alive.'
I stare straight at her. 'I'm sorry,' I tell her, 'but I really don't know what you're talking about.'
She stares again, hostile now, and challenging. I see tears forming in her eyes, and I wonder what could make a grown woman, the same age as me, travel to the opposite side of the earth and bum around like a teenager. Anything, I suppose. I did it myself, and plenty of young Australians make the voyage in the opposite direction.
'You do,' she insists. Her voice is hard. 'You know it and I know it.'
I take a deep breath. 'Honestly,' I tell her, 'I'm sorry, but I don't know what you mean. My name really is Lina. I'm Australian. Lina, short for Noeline, but that's such a terrible name I don't let anyone use it.' I look around, and beckon Red over. 'Here, you can ask my little boy if you don't believe me.'
He comes over, cheerily. 'What?'
'Hello,' says Sophie. 'What's your name? How old are you?'
'The name's Red, and I'm ten.'
She looks at me. 'You vanished ten years ago.'
'I didn't,' I assure her. 'Red, this is … Sophie? Tell her what my name is.'
'Noeline.'
'Or?'
'Lina.' Luckily, he doesn't comment on my accent. He's used to my flipping into Australian from time to time.
'They do say everyone's got an exact double somewhere in the world.' I smile brightly. 'It sounds as if you know mine. What a strange coincidence.'
She's looking at me again, and looking at Red, and frowning. Eventually, she shakes her head, and smiles.
'Yes,' she says lightly. 'It's bizarre. You are the absolute spitting image of my best friend. I haven't seen her for years. Sorry to have accused you like that.'
'I hope you find her one day.'
'Oh, I think I will.'
We pause for a moment. I consider mentioning that sometimes people don't want to be found, particularly if their former friends are as odd as Sophie seems to be. I say nothing, and then she walks away.
'Do you know that lady?' demands Red, gazing after her.
'No, honey, I don't. What a strange woman.' I take him by the hand. 'Go and find Eric, or someone,' I tell him. 'I'm going home for a while. I'll see you later. Be good.'
He kisses me, and I transport myself and my embryo home along the dusty roads, checking, all the time, that I'm not being followed.