As my plane landed in Sydney, I thought about these dangers, sitting stiffly in my seat at the back of the plane, a magazine clutched high around my face. It was enclosed situations like this that frightened me the most, because there was nowhere to run if something violent kicked off. It had taken some serious self-talk in the toilet cubicle at the airport gate to even get on the plane. I’d brought prop glasses with heavy frames for the occasion and slicked back my hair. But the black eye and stitches were drawing gazes.

I knew that the public was barely okay with the idea of me living in an isolated marshland far away from big cities, where they could lose track of me. But no one would be happy about me coming back to Sydney. People would wonder if I was going to resettle here, and that was a great scary headline for the papers. I was expecting news of my movements to spread fast and generate excitement. The more savvy reporters would have noted my daughter’s birthday, and would be watching to see if I visited. There might also be those who’d got word that I’d agreed to appear on Stories and Lives, and would be stalking the front of the TV studio waiting for me to arrive.

I was just beginning to feel the relief of having not been recognized, walking through the airport with my backpack slung over my shoulder, when I noticed the two men following me. I stopped and looked at them in the reflection in the window of a brightly lit stationery store, pretending to peruse the pretty gold- and silver-trimmed diaries and letter sets. All I could see were two enormous shapes loitering across the broad walkway in front of a men’s fashion outlet, one with his hands clasped in front of him, the other talking on a mobile phone. I surveyed my options, but there were few. Passengers were being shuffled like cattle down the walkway toward the baggage escalators, or up toward the gates. I thought there was a chance I could lose the men in the food court. But when I got to the top of the stairs and looked at the crowd before me, I noticed a small huddle of press at the entrance to the Flyaway Bar, almost all of them with their eyes on their phones.

Sweat began to tickle down my bruised sides. The breath only seemed to reach the top quarter of my lungs. I kept my eyes down and walked quickly past the baggage and taxi crowds toward the rental car lot, dashing through the traffic. The two men following me sped up and were close behind me when, just before the glass doors to the Hertz office, another man stepped out from behind a pylon, stopping me in my tracks.

“Oh fuck.” I gripped my chest, took a couple of steps back from Khalid. “Oh, Jesus, fuck.”