Читать книгу A Single Breath - Lucy Clarke - Страница 11

We talked about taking a trip out to Tasmania. You wanted to meet my family, go for drinks with my friends you’d heard stories about, see the shack on Wattleboon where I’d spent my summers.

People often think of Tassie as Australia’s poorer brother because the climate is cooler and the cities are smaller and less sophisticated. Its brutal history as Van Diemen’s Land is never forgotten. Yet I’ve always loved it for exactly those reasons – it’s wild and rugged, with a shadowy past, and enough raw wilderness to lose yourself in.

I’d love to have hiked with you in the eerie beauty of Cradle Mountain, where moss drips from the trees, or shown you the wombats that amble on the tracks around Wineglass Bay. We could have been tourists together and taken a boat out along the east coast to see the whales cruising by, or eaten soggy fries and gravy from Buggy’s Takeout in Hobart.

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?