and cried for half an hour. The only thing she had bought was a pair of shoes. At least her feet were still the same size as they’d been on her wedding day. She’d cried again when she locked herself in the bedroom and wouldn’t come out, despite Brad banging on the door and telling her: ‘You’re the mother of my kids. I don’t care what bloody size you are.’
Nina remembered watching the red carpet arrivals on TV that Black Friday night, the camera zooming in on the footballers’ wives and girlfriends in their spangled, low-cut, clingy satin frocks—and howling again. When the chirpy host interviewed Brad ‘Kingie’ Brown and he lied to a million viewers telling them Nina had been forced to stay home because the kids had measles—and then blown her a kiss—it was only a carton of Cadbury Favourites and a bottle of Yellowglen sparkling that saved her from taking to an artery with a blunt pair of kitchen scissors.
Nina wrenched herself away from the window on the memory. Everything was going to be different from now on. She was determined it would be. ‘I did have a headscarf, but it was blue gingham. And my dirndl skirt was embroidered red cotton, not hessian, thank you very much,’ she said with as much cheeriness as she could muster.
‘But was I right about the tractor?’
‘Ha! No prizes for that one, Annie. Every Ukrainian uncle had a tractor. She was green and her name was Vasylna, the Queen of Tractors!’
‘Well, there you go. My dad’s got a red Massey Ferguson he calls Eric!’ said Annie.
‘My mum had a Morris Minor she named—wait for it, ladies—“Morris”,’ Meredith added drily.
There was a welcome round of laughter and with it they realised that, at last, they had hit open country. With every kilometre travelled through the undulating dry paddocks, hearts grew lighter. This was an Australian landscape they knew well from when they were little girls looking out the window of the family car. At the horizon the heat haze dissolved land and sky in an airy confection of yellow and blue fairy floss. Through the middle the road was a flat black licorice strap.
Meredith wanted to shout: ‘Look everyone—cows. Real live cows!’ The first roadside stall they passed selling bunches of lavender and boxes of lemons, Nina had an urge to stop and buy the lot. Annie couldn’t take her eyes off the marshmallow clouds. It was as if she had looked up from the ground to see them for the very first time. They were flying now. Up and away and beyond everything, into the wild blue yonder.
Seven
When the RoadMaster crested the top of the hill on the Princes Highway overlooking the fishing port and holiday village of Lakes Entrance, the April sun was setting. The windscreen framed a scene of old-fashioned beauty that might have been hung on a drawing room wall. The surface of Lake Victoria was a shimmering violet-blue looking glass. The rigging and cables of the fishing boats were strung necklaces, spun gold by the sun’s last rays. A ruffle of frothy white lace surged at the neck of the shipping channel; beyond that was the Tasman Sea, which gave way to the vast Southern Ocean, its phosphorescent fabric of aquamarine brilliance fading to dark navy at the horizon.
Nina and Meredith, sitting up front, were stunned by the view. They fancied they were at the end of the earth and, for the first time, the promise of their trip right up the eastern edge of the Great Southern Land unrolled before them like a silken ribbon. A long, slow intake of breath was all Nina could manage.
‘It is truly and utterly spectacular.’ Meredith found voice for the both of them. ‘Evening, When The Quiet East Flushes Faintly At The Sun’s Last Look—that’s the title of my favourite Tom Roberts’ painting.’
‘Fuck Tom Roberts!’ Annie muttered as she sat at the table in the rear cabin and poured another glass of wine. She’d forgotten just how tedious long drives through the country could be and had drawn the curtains on the view of endless dreary sunburnt paddocks and scrawny gum trees following the course of dry creek beds. It was hard to muster any affection for this landscape scoured by livestock, ravaged by feral animals and brutalised by the drought.
Annie was dying for a cigarette and desperate for the loo. She hadn’t been able to bring herself to use the tiny claustrophobic bathroom in the back and had