Swimming on Dry Land by Helen Blackhurst Page B

pointing a gun at your back. When I’m finished, her fury seems to have subsided.
    â€˜Since when have you liked killing kangaroos?’ she asks.
    â€˜I used to shoot with some of the fellas from town a couple of years ago. We stopped after Ted went missing. Can you point that somewhere else?’ She fastens the safety catch and rests the rifle on the ground. ‘Where did you learn to shoot?’
    â€˜Dad taught me.’ Twisting the barrel in the dirt, she says, ‘I used to practise on magpies.’
    â€˜I’m sorry, Caroline. I … well, there has to be some way of escaping all this. I know how hard the last two weeks has been for you, and I just thought…I want you to be happy.’
    â€˜You want me to be happy? You go blundering on with every half-notion you get in that stupid head of yours, without the slightest idea of what the consequences might be. You’ll eat this. I’ll make sure you eat every last scrap, because otherwise it was killed for nothing. You can’t go killing something for nothing. Do you understand? Everything comes with a price. You can’t carry on as if the real world doesn’t exist.’ She points the gun at the kangaroo and says ‘This is the real world, Eddie.’
    Her eyes shine out of the dark moon wall behind her.
    â€˜You’re amazing,’ I say, because in that moment she is everything. She somehow fills the whole sky. ‘Mike has no idea how amazing you are.’
    She looks at me for a second and then her gaze drifts over my shoulder. ‘I’m a bad mother and a worse wife. Maybe – if I hadn’t met Michael, if I hadn’t got pregnant – I would have been a mediocre singer. I was doing alright. But that’s not who I am. I’m sick of being something you dreamed up. I just want Georgie back.’
    She carries on, but her words melt away until all I can hear is the rhythm of her voice. I clutch her around the waist, lift her off the ground and spin her around and around. I keep spinning, she keeps shouting as she pounds my head and shoulders. For a moment, we’re inseparable.
    I lose the tread of my feet and cling on to her to steady myself, ignoring the whirring thud in my head. Eventually she breaks free of me and dives off into the bush. She starts yelling out Georgie . If you could hear her now: like a whale, like she is calling from the deep. That’s when I know for certain that we will never find Georgie or the others. They are gone, lost, irretrievable.
    I chase Caroline in and out of the moonlight. When I catch her up, we call out George’s name together for a while before I manage to draw her back. We have no torch, only the spotlight on the truck.
    On the road, we crouch down beside the carcass.
    â€˜This has to be the worst idea you’ve ever had,’ she says, hugging her knees up to her chest. ‘Promise me you’ll never get an idea like this again.’
    â€˜I promise.’
    â€˜You’d promise anything, wouldn’t you? Do you remember what you said? A small paradise. That our lives would be transformed. They’ve been transformed alright. Is this your idea of paradise?’
    â€˜I thought you’d thank me for taking you away from all that.’
    â€˜ All that was my life, Eddie. All that was my daughters and my husband.’ She stares at me. ‘You know as well as I do that Georgie’s probably dead by now.’ When she realises what she has said, she stops breathing. I take her shoulders and shake her until she cries, long pitiful cries. We hold hands as if we’re both clinging onto a safety rope, but I can’t feel her. I can’t feel anything.
    â€˜Tell me what to do,’ I say. ‘I don’t know what to do.’
    She pulls her hand out of mine, wiping the tears from her face, and then she takes hold of the hind legs of the kangaroo, signalling for me to lift its torso. We drag the thing