You used to ask me so many questions about Tasmania, as if by trying to understand the place you could piece me together. But there was a lot I didn’t tell you about my life there – whole chunks of time that I left out, people’s names I never mentioned, things I wanted to forget.
I’d’ve liked to have shown you every edge of Tasmania because I know you’d have fallen in love with that little island in the sea. But the truth is, Eva, I never planned to take you there. How could I?
There is a bus ride to Gatwick, a long wait in the overcrowded fug of the departures lounge, a plane seat with a dusty headrest, a bleary-eyed refuelling stop in Dubai, a further twelve hours in the same cramped seat, a frantic run to the domestic terminal in Melbourne, and then a smaller plane heading finally for Tasmania.
As they descend through broken white clouds, Eva peers through the scratched window of the plane. The Southern Ocean meets the winding Tasmanian coastline that unfurls in a mass of inlets, bays and wind-ridged channels. She sees farmland, forest, tree-lined hills, and only a scattering of houses. What strikes her is the space. Almost a quarter of Tasmania is classified as a national park, an isolated island wilderness, dropped off the coast of mainland Australia.
She feels the symmetry of her journey, which is unfolding in reverse of the flight Jackson made to the UK two years earlier. That’s how they’d met: on the plane, with Eva boarding in Dubai after spending a week there with Callie, who was working on a shoot.
She had a pounding hangover made worse by the depressing thought of returning to Dorset, where she was still living at her mother’s while she tried to save for a place of her own. She barely registered the man in the seat next to hers as she sank down and took out her book. It was only when he introduced himself that she’d turned and looked at him properly. He had pale blue eyes that were clear and cool against his tanned face, and he smiled as he shook her hand, showing a row of strong white teeth.
‘I should warn you,’ he’d said, the drawn-out vowels of his accent warm in her ear. ‘I’ve a low boredom threshold – and I got on this plane in Australia. If you want to request a seat change, now’s your chance.’
She’d felt herself smile then, and when she glanced down, she saw he was still shaking her hand.
Like any traveller, he didn’t want to talk about where he was from, but where he was going. He asked question after question about England and so she’d told him about the hectic pace of the capital and how it sprawls out for miles and miles. She told him that Big Ben isn’t actually the name of the clock tower, but the bell within it, and that parts of the Tower of London are over 900 years old. She told him what she loved about England: the culture, the history, the mixture of cities and agriculture. And what she hated: the pigeons, the weather, the political correctness gone mad.
In return he told her that he was a marine biologist and she was captivated by his stories about working off a dive boat on the Great Barrier Reef, where he led tourists in coral restoration projects, or the three months he spent teaching teenagers to dive at an outdoor experience camp on the east coast of Tasmania.
After the drinks trolley had passed, he poured her a glass of red wine from a miniature bottle, then leant back in his seat and said, ‘So tell me, Eva, what is it you love about being a midwife?’
She liked the question and the way he listened closely as she answered. ‘Everyone assumes it’s the babies – that all midwives love newborns. But for me it’s working with the women. I get to share one of the most intimate and important experiences of their lives. It’s a privilege.’
Jackson had studied her for a long moment and then his gaze trailed to her mouth.
She had felt heat rise in her cheeks. ‘What about you? Why marine biology?’
He’d not answered right away, just sat there, thinking. Then he smiled as he told her, ‘It was a book that made me want to study it.’
Eva had tilted her head, intrigued.
‘Most Saturday afternoons me and my brother would go to a second-hand shop looking for good finds. Sometimes we’d pick up old reels or bike parts. This one Saturday, I bought an old khaki backpack for a dollar. When I got it home, I found there was a book stuffed inside. It was called The Sea Around Us by Rachel Carson, an American marine biologist. It might sound stupid now, but at the time – I was 13 – it felt like that book was meant to find me, as if it had stowed itself away. I wrote my name in it and read it cover to cover. I swear I looked at the sea differently after that.’ He paused. ‘It seemed like a mystery waiting to be explored.’
It was then, that moment sitting beside him in the narrow space of their plane seats, that Eva felt something sway and tip inside of her.
When they got off the plane in London, they were still talking. They went through passport control in different lines, but met again after customs. Eva was staying the night in Callie’s empty flat, so they shared a taxi through London and he stared out of the rain-smeared window, not hiding his wonderment at the grandeur of the city. Before she got out, he asked for her phone number.
He called her the following morning and they spent the next three days in bed together, only leaving to buy croissants and fresh milk. When she finally returned home to Dorset, it was to pack up her things and move to the city with a man she barely knew.
Falling in love took her by surprise with both its strength and its suddenness, so unlike the steady relationships she’d ambled through previously. It was as if she’d slipped into a parallel world, one where only she and Jackson existed. In those first few months they mapped each other’s bodies, created a dialogue punctuated with their own private jokes, filled a past they hadn’t shared with the sheer and vivid pleasure of the present.
Now Eva feels the bump and jar of the plane as the wheels touch tarmac, wind roaring against the wing flaps.
‘Welcome to Tasmania,’ the captain says, and Eva feels her heart clench.
*
It is only mid-morning when Eva arrives at her hotel, so she dumps her luggage, peels off her winter clothes, and steps into a cotton dress. Her legs look pale and dry as she slips on a pair of leather sandals, then leaves to get her bearings in Jackson’s city.
Hobart, Tasmania’s capital, is set on the banks of the Derwent River, with the foreboding presence of Mount Wellington towering behind it. She heads out along the marina, the warmth in the air easing the tension in her muscles. Expensive yachts and tourist boats are moored beside battered fishing vessels, and shadows of fish circle in small shoals, breaking the surface to pick at sodden crusts of bread.
It’s a Saturday, but there’s still none of the rush or frenetic pace of a city. Everyone seems to be milling around in cafés, men wearing trainers or hiking boots, and women casual in flip-flops and shorts. After London, Hobart feels like a village – small, informal, laid-back.
She drifts on towards Salamanca, where a market fills the street. The air swirls with scents of fruit and sugared doughnuts – the faint whiff of the marina hovering in the background. She barely registers the stalls selling olives, vintage handbags, beaded jewellery, antique books, or the shoppers with colourful bags swinging from their hands. All she feels is the empty space at her shoulder where Jackson should be.
She imagines the warmth of his hand around hers as if they were walking together. She’d have persuaded him to pause at the antique jewellery stall so she could sift through old brooches and beautiful pocket watches, and he’d have wanted to buy her the prettiest one with money neither of them had. As they walked together he would’ve whispered a private joke about the man with the handlebar moustache selling cider, and then tugged her forward to introduce her to a friend he’d caught sight of, proudly saying, ‘This is my wife.’
When