Paper Chains (14 page)

‘Most days I can’t believe it either,’ Hannah said in a sad voice.

India grabbed her by the shoulders and turned her so they were face to face. ‘I know you think you’re a bad mother, you think you’re a failure – but I’d put money on it that you’re not. One day all of this is just going to be a ditch in your past, a time where you hit bottom, ended up in your own personal hell. But when you come out the other side, things are going to be
good
. Okay? Trust me.’

Hannah nodded; once again she was fighting back tears. As the taxi pulled up to the curb, they each leaned in and hugged one another, hard – and when they finally pulled apart, India was crying too.

‘Tell your family hi from me,’ said India, as Hannah climbed into the taxi.

When the cab pulled away and Hannah was gone, India stood still for a few minutes. For the first time in weeks she was feeling sort of lost. For the past few weeks, figuring out what was wrong with Hannah had been her driving force. What would she do now? She supposed it was finally time to leave London.

As she walked away down the road, heading for the tube station, she reached into her pocket and her fingers closed around the piece of paper with Hannah’s address in Sydney that she had given her, asking her to promise to stay in touch.

I’ll try, Han
, she thought a little sadly.

Simon was reading the letter through for the fifth time. It was so out of the blue – he had assumed after their last conversation that he was never going to hear from her again. But now here was this letter – telling him she had a secret, talking crazily about scratching away layers of her skin. Asking him if he truly loved her. And what was the bit about not being sure if the next letter she sent would ‘actually make it to him’? God he wished he had a contact number for her. He needed to talk to the girl, find out what it was that was tearing her up inside. He needed to answer her questions, to reassure her that everything was going to be okay. So when the phone rang, it felt like fate.

He snatched up the receiver by his bed just knowing,
knowing
it would be her.

‘Si,’ she breathed into the phone and he felt his muscles unclench, his body relax.

‘India!’ he exclaimed, and he wanted to say,
I knew it, I knew it would be you on the phone
– but it seemed stupid and so he didn’t speak, just waited, wondering what she would say next. Wondering how he could convince her to tell him exactly where she was, how he could just be with her.

‘I’m leaving London,’ she said eventually.

‘And coming here?’ he asked, knowing the answer before the words even left his mouth.

‘No. Don’t know where I’ll go next. Maybe hitch a ride and head north.’

‘I got your letter.’

‘You did?’ She sounded surprised, excited.

‘Yeah, what’s this about having a secret then?’

‘Oh,’ she said, ‘I thought you meant . . . I thought you’d got the next one.’

‘No. Only one. When did you post the next letter?’

‘I didn’t. I don’t like to post my letters, Simon. I like to send them out into the world and just see if they get to you. I give them to travellers and I ask them to pass them on. It’s like an international game of Chinese whispers – except the messages can’t change, because they’re there in ink, waiting to get to you.’

That’s what she bloody well meant by wondering whether or not the letter would get to him.

‘India,’ he said carefully, ‘exactly how many letters have you sent to me like that?’

There was a pause and when she spoke her voice sounded tight – maybe even embarrassed. ‘Oh, a few,’ she said. ‘Maybe nine or ten I guess.’

‘Are you kidding me? India, do you realise all this time I thought you’d pretty much forgotten about me? Why didn’t you just
post
them?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said in a small voice.

‘Look. Why don’t you just tell me your secret? We can talk it through. Whatever it is, I can help you with it. I don’t like to think of you scratching so hard at your skin that you’re tearing it to shreds. Your skin is lovely; please don’t do that to yourself.
Please
, tell me.’

‘No.’

‘All right, maybe this will help. You wanted to know me? Here are the answers to your questions. My favourite movie is
Crash
. I love it because of that one particular scene, when the little girl jumps into her father’s arms to protect him from the gun shot and your heart jumps into your mouth and then there’s no bullet and it’s just the most beautiful moment of relief you’ve ever experienced. When I was a baby I had no hair, completely bald until I turned two; my mum was considering buying me a toupee when the first wispy curls finally appeared. I’m allergic to cut grass – so obviously that’s not my favourite smell. My favourite smell is your skin after you’ve swum in the ocean. It’s a mixture of sea-salt and gardenias. Did you know that? That your skin naturally smells like gardenias? Well, I suppose it might not be natural. I suppose there’s a chance that you wear a perfume called “Scent of a White Flower” or something like that. But now whenever I walk past the gardenias that grow on that hill above the wharf, and there’s a wind blowing in from the ocean, I find myself turning around expecting to see you there, standing behind me, smiling your huge smile.’

He heard a muffled, tearful sounding laugh come through the receiver, but he didn’t stop talking. ‘The last time I cried was the 2006 soccer World Cup, when Gianluigi Buffon saved a goal in extra time, a save that was crucial to taking Italy to victory for the first time in twenty-four years. It was
awesome
. The last time I laughed so hard that my stomach hurt was when a couple of eighteen-year-old tourists drank too much on our boat and one of them fell overboard. After I stopped laughing I realised that he really couldn’t swim very well and I’ll admit, I was a little embarrassed about all the laughing as I rescued him – highly unprofessional of me. Don’t worry, he was fine – and if you’d met him and his mates, you would have laughed too. The last time I stubbed my big toe was last week. I did it on purpose against my coffee table after I read your letter, so I would have a specific time to tell you when I finally got to speak to you. Do you realise how hard it is to make yourself intentionally stub your toe? Your foot is screaming out, “No, no, why the hell do you want to do that?” And it’s exceptionally difficult to follow through, but I did it – for you.

‘And your most important question of all: Am I truly in love with you? Hell yes.’

There was silence then, and for a second Simon was worried that she had hung up. But then she spoke. ‘I’m staying at The Wanderers Hostel in Earls Court,’ she said quickly, and her voice was rushed and wavering, all at the same time. And now she did hang up.

Simon sat still on the edge of his bed, his heart thumping. It had worked; she’d finally told him the truth. He was going to be able to see her again.

After a few minutes, he had gathered his thoughts and was ready to get moving. First he needed to figure out his travel plans. In the morning he would speak to his boss. He headed out to the local Internet café to check train timetables and to catch up on his emails before he left – hopefully as soon as possible.

Walking into the Internet café, he was surprised as he always was by the incongruous juxtaposition of the smooth, modern Macs against the rickety old wooden tables and chairs. Charlie, the café’s owner, gave him a nod of recognition as he sat down in front of one of the Macs and Simon smiled back at him. He wondered then whether he would be returning to the Greek Islands after he met up with India. He supposed it all depended on how well their reunion went. Would she want to keep travelling – but together now? Would they go home to Australia together; maybe they could argue over Perth or Sydney? Would she consider coming back to the Greek Islands with him? Or would he end up back here on his own?

He looked into his travel plans first, then logged into his gmail account. An email from his sister Riley caught him up on the latest family news. She was planning on flying back home in a week or two and she wanted to know when he’d be back in Sydney. Apparently it was a bit of a problem that neither of them had been back to meet their new nephew since he was born six months ago. That wasn’t really an issue he wanted to deal with just now – although he had been thinking lately of the return flight ticket to Sydney that was stashed at the back of his mind, waiting to be booked in – but he just wasn’t ready to return home to Australia. Especially not if he was about to embark on something new with India. He shot off a reply, telling Riley a little about India, explaining her quirky way of posting him letters – Riley would get a kick out of that – but he stopped short of telling her he was just about to take off for London to see her again. What if it didn’t work out? He didn’t want to look like an idiot. He finished off the email with a promise that he’d think about coming back home soon.

Eventually he logged off and headed back to his rented room to pack, a slight spring of excitement in his step as he went.

Poor Simon never had a chance. Even if he’d stood up and walked straight out his front door and stepped onto a plane the second that India had hung up on him, he still wouldn’t have got there in time. The problem was her stomach. The moment she’d told Simon where she was, it had begun to twist. It had started churning and knotting and surely that wasn’t a good sign. So India wrote him another letter, left it with the girl at the front desk, heaved her backpack onto her shoulders and left.

Dear Simon,

I’m so sorry. I thought that writing you that letter was the answer. I thought that once my words were somewhere safe – that they’d landed in your hands and you’d begun to breathe them in and started thinking of something to say back – then everything would be okay.

But what could you say really?

Nothing.

So I was wrong. Forgive me for running from you. For your sake I hope that my letter never does reach you. I hope that my words have been crumpled. I hope they’ve been trodden on, ripped to shreds. I hope that they have been whipped out of some traveller’s hand, that they’ve flown into the ocean, become sodden and heavy. I hope that they’ve sunk to the bottom and been swallowed by a hundred-year-old turtle named Sam.

Love,

India

She took a bus that was headed north and tried hard not to feel guilty about what she was doing. After all, she hadn’t exactly told him to come and see her. She didn’t know for sure that he would even turn up. Maybe after she hung up the phone, Simon had thought to himself, ‘What is that girl on?’, shrugged his shoulders and turned on the television. Maybe he headed straight out to a club and picked up a pretty American girl and they’re still dancing together right now, grinding their hips together, with his lips brushing against her shoulder.

But thinking about that made India want to punch the seat in front, so she stopped. In all honesty though, she knew this wasn’t the case. She knew that Simon was probably already making arrangements to come and see her – and
that
made her want to bang her forehead against the bus window.

Come on, India, stop it. You’re an independent, grown woman. You don’t have to answer to anyone. No regrets.

But her pep talk wasn’t really working, because deep down she knew that she hadn’t played fair with Simon.