Audi 2008 Annual Report Download - page 135

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Sydney
8
It’s strange to remember all these things. For so many years I’ve only been able
to think of the way our relationship ended, the shouting and then the silence. But
now as I hurry past the old sandwich shop, the vegetarian place that serves pork,
I can feel something softening inside me. There are more takeaway chains than
there used to be down here, but a surprising number of the old places are still the
same. For a moment I’ve forgotten about the kidnappers and the ransom note.
Every time I turn a corner I expect to see her, not bound and gagged but sitting
at one of the wobbly tables, tapping her watch because I’m late. I feel a different,
deeper kind of urgency as I stride and then run through the underground walk-
ways, all but pushing people aside. I know there are more shafts and burrows
than these. The whole city was built around a freshwater stream that still flows
through conduits of steel and stone between the foundations and basement car
parks. There are railway tunnels begun and never finished; over the years they’ve
been used as air-raid shelters and war rooms, and in one of them a great sub-
terranean lake has gathered from the city’s runoffs and overflows.
Aggie and I used to talk about going down there, but we ran out of pa-
tience, we ran out of time. Is she there now, at last? I follow the course of the
Tank Stream in the names of the streets and the marks on the pavement, but I
can’t find any way in. I poke around the train platforms, but they’re all patrolled
by cameras and security guards, nobody could have taken her there.
As night falls, the city empties of people and fills with shadows. I walk quickly but
erratically, I don’t have a plan. All I can think is that dawn will come and I’ll
never see her again. This morning I never wanted to, but now – well, now I’m not
so sure. I buy a coffee from the all-night diner at Circular Quay. There’s nobody
around, just me and the moon and the moon’s reflection. We used to catch the
last ferries out and back, kissing on the top decks, singing into the wind. We told
each other our most terrible secrets, our most wonderful secrets.
My legs ache from all my crossings, and I’m strung out on coffee and worry.
But a kind of peace settles over me, it seems to rise from the rhythmic wash of
the tide against the quay. It’s a kind of peace and a kind of clarity. I know, for ex-
ample, that there probably weren’t any kidnappers, the ransom note was from
Aggie alone. The secret heart was her idea. I don’t think she wanted me to find
her, she just wanted me to remember what we’d both forgotten. She wanted to
teach me a lesson.