Everyone on This Train Is a Suspect

If respectful strikes you as a word not often used to describe me, you’d be right. She was talking to Juliette. I felt a rush of shame. I’d been so worried about fitting in that I hadn’t even given a thought to how Juliette might feel not being on the program, or how she deserved to be treated as a writer in her own light, and not just my shadow, which Lisa had just done. I said seven writers, remember?

“Oh,” Juliette said, “I’m tossing up between a few bits—”

“Waiting on her next adventure,” I said, squeezing her hand.

“Something like that.” I can tell you with the benefit of hindsight that Juliette’s smile was forced, though I didn’t clue into it at the time.

Still, Juliette, warmed by Lisa’s compliment, was cheerful on the walk back to our cabin. I was more contemplative, dragging my feet and trying to get my head around the morning. Not just because of McTavish, and the review, and the blurb, and Simone’s camaraderie with him and Wyatt, and the general indignation that four writers at a table can’t resist competing, but because Alan Royce’s notepad had annoyed me.

It seemed odd to me that he had a list of everyone on the journey. Why did he write down all our names, what we looked like? Of course, some writers scribble everything down as a matter of course, but this seemed excessive, specific. Why take those kinds of notes? Was he writing a book about the trip? I’m aware of the hypocrisy that I’m

currently writing about the trip, but at least I waited until someone died to start. I couldn’t shake the feeling that it was more than simple note taking.

It was almost like he knew something was about to happen.

Blockbuster

Chapter 7

The Ghan rolled on. The Northern Territory whipped past our window.

Rocky outcrops with scraggly, crooked trees, no taller than Alan Royce, backs bent low as if shielding themselves from the bright sun, gave way to spinifex-pocked orange sand, made all the more vibrant by the unblemished blue sky above. The horizon was far, still and flat, and the expanse of the Australian desert, which we were yet to even hit the edge of, dawned on me. We may as well have been an ant making our way across a sandpit.

Three hours after we set off, we made our first stop, in Nitmiluk National Park, Katherine. I crunched down the portable steps onto gravel. There was no station here; we had simply stopped in the middle of the tracks, and the Ghan seemed somehow more impressive by how out of place it was, shiny steel among nothing but trees and sky and birdsong. I became very aware of the footprints I was leaving in the dirt, in this place where neither I nor a giant man-made metal snake really belonged.

Up near the head of the train, almost a kilometer away, waited a queue of buses. They would take the nonfestival tourists on their scheduled day trip sailing down the magnificent Katherine Gorge: high rock walls bordering pristine, crocodile-filled waters. In front of our carriages were forty or so black fold-out chairs set up in the red dirt for the festival attendees. Another six chairs faced the group, a wireless microphone on each and portable speakers either side. Behind these was an easel with a rectangular canvas mounted on it, hidden by a black felt covering.

Juliette kissed me on the cheek, which I took to be for luck, until I realized she was walking in the wrong direction and had meant farewell.

“You’re not staying?”

“Aaron said he’d sneak me onto the gorge tour.” She grimaced with the confession, but it was a cheeky guilt. Of course, the choice between one of Australia’s natural wonders and six writers having an ego-off wasn’t really a choice at all, but I didn’t do a very good job of hiding my disappointment. She overamped her enthusiasm. “You’ll be great! . . . Unless you want me to—”