After the fall by Kylie Ladd

Author:Kylie Ladd [Kylie Ladd]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Roman
ISBN: 9780385532815
Published: 2010-06-15T15:24:14+00:00

CARY

•

Kate insisted on staying for drinks at her work on Christmas Eve, so we didn’t get away until late. I don’t really know why she was so keen. It was a long drive to where my parents lived and we’d already attended her department’s Christmas dinner only a few days before, but I figured the extra time would give me a chance to pack the car, water the plants, install the timer switches—tasks that were unlikely to have even crossed Kate’s mind.

When I got to the museum at our prearranged meeting time of eight o’clock Kate was waiting on the steps, more than a few sheets to the wind. The former surprised me; the latter didn’t. I’d half suspected I’d have to go in there myself and coax her out, but she climbed into the car readily enough. I leaned across to kiss her, her lips still tasting of wine.

“Did you have a good time? Do you want anything to eat? I made some sandwiches; they’re on the backseat. Just Vegemite—I didn’t want to leave anything in the fridge that might go off.”

“Cary, we’re only going away for a week,” she replied with mild exasperation, eyes closing as she settled back into the seat. “And I’m not hungry. Not for sandwiches. How about some McDonald’s? A hamburger, or some french fries, just cooked and dripping with oil.”

I grimaced. “Not in my car. We’ll smell it for days. And we’re already late enough. I’ll stop in Ballarat if you’re still craving junk food then.”

Kate didn’t answer. She’d fallen asleep.

Years ago, the drive from home to town had seemed to take forever, a daylong odyssey of golden paddocks and solitary gum trees cycling endlessly like the background in a TV cartoon. We lived just outside Horsham in the Wimmera, a wheat-growing district three or four hours north of the city. Age and new highways had condensed the journey. I’d learned there were more distant places, though it never seemed so when I was growing up. Back then, Melbourne was another country, as foreign and exotic as Paris.

Now I was going back for perhaps only the fifth or sixth time in the two decades since I’d left. There had never really been much of a need. Mom and Dad visited Melbourne frequently, and there was no one from school whom I’d stayed in contact with. Usually, when I thought of the area it was with a wash of ennui, of hours just aching to be filled, long, hot afternoons with no company save the heat waves crackling over the endless fields of wheat.

But as the car moved beyond the suburbs, then through the bigger country towns, I felt the stirrings of excitement. We slipped through Ballarat, then tiny Beaufort, the halfway point, and on past Stawell. The Grampians flickered briefly to my left, bulky as a liner against the undulating oceans of grain. Bogong moths as big as finches fluttered against the windshield, and every so often my headlights picked out the eyes of some night creature crouching amid the stringy trees on the edge of the road.

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