Emma Timpany's 'Kangaroos'

She’d been dreaming of kangaroos, moving across a wide plain, stirring up dust which sparkled like sunlight falling on a child’s freshly washed hair. One of the kangaroos had stopped and looked back at her, waiting until she was close enough to see its eyes, wet and vivid as a deer’s, but as soon as she moved it sprang away from her – away, away, away.
      And then the phone rang and woke her from the dream. Her brother spoke to her and said that she had, after all, been asked for. The news surprised her, the old wounds being canyon-deep. In the taxi, and on the train, and in the long, dark hours on the aeroplane, (chasing the night, clamped like a hostage-taker’s black glove over half the earth) when she closed her eyes, she could still see the light-filled plain, the herd bounding towards a violet thread of light strung tight between the earth and the great, white sky. As before, one kangaroo would turn and wait for her, as if to make sure that she followed, before leaping on.
      She had left home as soon as she was eighteen, running twelve thousand miles to the opposite side of the world – away, away, away. Under grey skies, so much dimmer than the searchlight-bright sun of home, she crouched under umbrellas, made her nest in minute apartments and kept the past away. At work, she shuffled between grey cells in Victorian institutions littered with ghosts. And outside the windows the city hooted and blared and screamed, false and mesmerising as a circus.
      When the call came, she realised she’d been waiting for it. During those ten years of crouching, she’d felt the net of the past loosen, but never let go. There was no mention of forgive and forget, live and let live, just the summons, as if a long-postponed trial was finally being convened.
      Reaching the hospital, muddled by time zones, she held the hand in hers, listening to the breath, which grated in and out as a quiet sea rakes shingle. Somehow, as if they were a thousand miles further north, the hot, dry scent of herbs lingered in the room, amongst the ozone and the bleach.
      Her brother, his eyes charcoal-ringed, said, ‘It’s your turn now.’ He got up and walked past her as if she hadn’t been away for years but had only popped out to the shops for ten minutes. The nurse who’d brought her in said ‘Not long, now,’ and pulled the bedside curtain closed. Someone shouted, ‘Mo! Over here! Bring it over here.’ A tap dripped. A mobile ring-tone played the theme tune from The Pink Panther. Eyes open, she prayed, Let me put the past to rest. The wish for a sign bashed her in the solar plexus, hot as a punch.
      Was the pressure on her hand imagined?
      Nearby, an alarm sounded. Aiieee. Aiieee.
      She squeezed her eyes closed; behind them, the dream had continued, as if she stepped out of a cinema half way through a movie, only returning in time to catch the final scene. The kangaroos had moved further away, so that they seemed no more than black specks against the horizon, silhouetted like birds against a winter sky. They no longer paused, looking back at her to follow. And then they were gone.
      She opened her eyes and, looking around, saw that she was alone, on a vast and empty plain.