Wife on the Run by Fiona Higgins

Author:Fiona Higgins
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Allen & Unwin
Published: 2014-09-28T16:00:00+00:00

Hamish left Yalata just before three-thirty.

Not long afterwards, already bored by the unchanging scenery, he checked his phone. There were several new messages, both SMS and Skype.

He clicked on the SMS tab and saw Sid’s name listed. The children had been texting Hamish more regularly now, since they’d started using their grandfather’s phone. Paula was still offline, however, or pretending to be.

Dad, r u ok? How is ur leg? Cactus Beach was cool. Out of range tho, sorry. We r in Eucla now, Perth soon. Oz is massive. Some bits boring. Luv Lachie.

Tears sprang to Hamish’s eyes. A heady combination of pain, fatigue and love.

Lachie had been the best source of information about their whereabouts to date. Little champ.

Where was Eucla, anyway? Hamish pulled over and examined his map: just across the Western Australian border. Only three hundred kilometres west, about a three-hour drive. Not even as far as Norseman; he could surprise them by sunset.

Hamish set off with new vigour, but the drive to Eucla was slower than he hoped. For one thing, he was spooked by the road trains—some with triple trailers—careering along the highway. They dazzled him with their bulk and monstrous roaring as they thundered towards him, horns sounding and lights flashing. It was nerve-racking when they tailgated him, worse when they overtook. Pulling alongside his flimsy hatchback, with less than a metre separating them, dragging him along in their slipstream before finally speeding away.

And then, just twelve kilometres from Eucla, Hamish was forced to stop for almost thirty minutes at Border Village, where an officious-sounding woman in an ill-fitting uniform subjected his vehicle to a compulsory quarantine inspection. Combing through his car with Gestapo-like sternness, before confiscating a limp banana from his esky with a triumphant ‘A-ha!’

‘Forbidden fruit?’ Hamish asked, smiling at her.

She didn’t appreciate the wise-crack. ‘You are not permitted to take that with you into Western Australia, sir. Read the sign.’

Hamish didn’t bother, accelerating away as soon as he could.

He spotted the lights of Eucla around seven-thirty, glowing dull green like low-wattage Kryptonite in the desert gloom. At the town’s boundary, a welcome sign declared its population to be eighty-six. Not far beyond, a billboard signposted directions to the Eucla Caravan Park.

Hamish followed them, arriving at a petrol station. Behind it stood a two-storey hotel, its windows glinting like orange eyes in the dark. Alongside the hotel, a flat area was dotted with tents, on-site vans and caravans.

This has to be it, Hamish thought. There couldn’t be any other caravan parks in a one-horse town like this.

He dimmed his headlights and pulled in behind a trailer. He didn’t want to give himself away to Paula or the kids. Not yet, anyway.

Several tents were erected at the front of the site, which was little more than a fenced paddock. A corrugated-iron shed—the amenities block, presumably—stood in the middle of the paddock as if dropped from the sky by a UFO. Chained to a fence post was a locked metal container painted with the words: Honesty Box—$4 a night.

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