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ridiculously at home with him.
The plan I have hatched with Joel is this: I am going
to ring up Heidi and ask her about moving to Australia
without Nash. I am also going to text Robyn in Bali to
let her know what s going on. Then, if everything goes
according to plan, I will get on the plane and go to Robyn s
flat and stay in Bondi Beach until she gets back. After
that I ll catch the train to Byron Bay and start work at
Bark s with Danielle Coles. And then I ll have enough
money to start Vintage Alice and make tweed jackets for
pregnant women.
Joel runs me through the plan again and again, until
it seems manageable.
You re forgetting to breathe, Alice.
Sorry.
He makes me do a yoga pose called the Child. He says
it immediately makes you feel safer, no matter what s going
on. The Tibetans do the Child pose all the time. You curl
up in a ball like a hedgehog, with only your back showing.
Joel does it first, right there on the hill, and I follow. If Nash
could see me now he d just walk away. I feel ridiculous at
first, but after ten minutes of hedgehog, I have to admit
that it s working.
Good? Joel asks.
Alright. Actually, better than alright. Although I won t
do it in sheep droppings next time.
* * *
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After our walk, we go to some tearooms in Brighton, eat
cinnamon toast, because Joel is a vegetarian, and look at his
old photos. We also talk about what might happen if I get
to Australia and realise I hate it. I know I can always come
back to England and live with my mother, but Joel doesn t
think I ll hate Australia at all. He thinks I ll fall in love with
it, because now that there s a big space in my heart, there
is also room for something new to get in. I have honestly
never heard any male in England talking like this.
My cousin is a funny combination of rules and no rules.
He makes me feel free, because he makes me feel that
everything is possible and nothing is off limits. I have also
received several lectures on the evils of meat, however.
Joel s just like Roland, my mother said, after he told
her off for hoarding plastic bags. They may not be blood
relations, but he certainly inherited all that change-the-
world thingy.
Joel pushes photographs of places like Bega and
Merimbula, Bunbury and Mole Creek across the table
to show me how different Australia can be. Nash would
put on a silly voice to pronounce all these place names, of
course. Before he went to India to work for Tibetaid, Joel
spent a year in a campervan driving all around Australia.
There are numerous shots of him looking Number Nine-
ish in shorts and little else, but as he is my cousin, I have
naturally moved beyond all that.
Suzanne told me about a dating website called Single
Sydney and I can t wait to try it, now that Joel s laptop is
on Mum s dining-room table.
I try to stop thinking about men and concentrate on
drinking my tea.
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If you get a chance to do the big Australian odyssey,
then you have to go, Joel says. I should have done it years
ago. Maybe I ll do it again when I m back. But I really just
want to get back to Bellingen. Grow some strawberries.
Get a cow again. Before he left for India, he bought five
acres of land on the Bellinger River, which is between
Sydney and Brisbane. He says the river is beautiful. You
can swim in it and drink it. You should go up there and
pitch a tent on my property, he encourages me.
What do you think of England? I ask him.
Well, I was born here. He laughs at me. I really like
it. Why?
Australians seem not to like it. They come here to
work, but once they arrive in London, they just moan
about it.
That s because they haven t tried the cinnamon toast in
Brighton, Joel says. What do you think of England?
It s a bit like my boyfriend. I tried and tried to make
it work, but it was no good.
Are you over it?
Nash? I think so.
Are you over England is what I meant.
Oh, yes. That bit s easy. I went backwards and forwards
and now I ve gone back to the start. Back to the way I felt
before, when I really knew I was ready to go.
My mother rings. She has finished listening to The
Archers and is worried that we ve got lost.
It s fine, I tell her. Joel and I went for a walk along
the South Downs. We re just having a cup of tea.
Isn t he nice? she says, not waiting for an answer. He
told me the first thing he did when he landed at Heathrow
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was to shave his beard off in the loo. He reminds me of
you, Alice, doing a thing like that although I couldn t
say why.
We ll be home in time for supper, I tell her. We
walked for miles. We re having something to eat now but
I m sure we ll be hungry.
Joel and I work our way through the cinnamon toast,
and he admires the low plastered ceilings in the tearooms.
Like the ceilings you see in Beatrix Potter drawings, he
says, and shows me his own notebook, which is full of
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