It is nice to be alone in this room. I’ve shut the drapes and I walk around naked once I’m out of the bath. I turn on the TV but it is mid-morning, there’s nothing on. Only old sitcoms and what looks like an American morning show—the same loud voices and semi-hysterical laughter, bright clothes and shellacked helmets of hair, only the voices are Australian, and they call each other by weird-sounding nicknames. Donno and Di, Gaz and Shaz. Grandma always told me that Australians like to shorten things, but I thought it was another remnant of the past, like short-wave radio and iceboxes, outdoor loos and chip-heater baths. I turn off the TV and think about lunch. I think about seeing Alex on the deck above ours when we disembarked; he was squinting into the sun but spotted me and waved. He mimed a phone to his ear. I nearly gave him the finger, but instead forced a smile and waved. I turn my phone on, log in to the hotel’s wi-fi and download my emails. There are several from Ash. I turn the phone off again, shut my eyes. I’ve started a letter in my head, telling him the truth about me. I don’t know how he will respond, but I want to give him a chance—or give us a chance. I want to tell him all of it—about Alex and the clinics, about the lists of food I keep and the real reason I run. About the bus, even, and Jake, and how part of me is stuck in that bed still, speechless with terror. Still seeking the right words.

•

Grandma and I meet in the lobby at noon. Grandma looks tired and puffy-eyed; she says she slept too long. Her pants are wrinkled where she lay on them and I feel a pang of guilt for not helping her get ready. Her lipstick is straight, though, and she tells me I smell nice.

‘It’s lemon myrtle,’ I say. ‘Have you heard of it?’

‘Heard of it? The bushes are everywhere. When I was a girl they were common as weeds.’

‘Your accent’s gotten stronger just since we’ve arrived, Grandma.’

She winks at me. Her hands are twitching in her lap though—she’s nervous—and I ask how long it has been since she has seen her brother, my great-uncle. She concentrates for a few seconds then looks up at me. ‘Sixty-eight years.’

Two men walk through the revolving doors then, one older than the other, and it is immediate, the recognition, though I have never even seen a photograph. My great-uncle is a few inches taller and about twenty pounds heavier than Grandma, and his skin’s been wrecked by the sun, but they have the same face. The same eyes.