The Inland Sea by Madeleine Watts

Author:Madeleine Watts
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781646220182
Publisher: Catapult
Published: 2020-10-30T00:00:00+00:00

Pat liked to conclude arguments with the same phrase—You’ve made your bed, now lie in it. She liked to argue about politics and the law, and she was often the winner of the argument, although I do not believe that in the time we worked together I ever saw her change someone’s mind. People’s minds don’t bear changing.

There was a map of Australia in the call center, pinned to a pylon in the middle of the room. I suppose somebody once must have thought it would be helpful for us to visualize the continent while we were on the phones. The map listed the cities, and even big towns. But knowledge of cities and big towns was never much use. Because what the map didn’t account for was that the most important places were the small ones we had never heard of before. Middle of nowhere. The great big empty. Back of Bourke. The Never-Never. Whatever the fuck you wanted to call it.

The small, tricky towns produced stress. The stress of hearing somebody scream for the police on a bad line, not knowing what they were saying, and asking as they screamed if they might be able to spell it. Wherever they were out there, wherever they were having their emergencies. People died this way, I told Lachlan, and Clemmie, but never my mother. In those precious seconds when I didn’t know and asked the caller to spell the name of the town and they screamed and sometimes ceased responding. Somebody must have died while I asked if they could spell it.

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