Aware that it was almost nine, she steadied herself by checking her make-up, scant though it was, in the rear-vision mirror. Little of the school was visible from where Cassie parked. It was wide with a row of trees creating pools of shade down the centre. The street leading to the school was typical of coastal country towns. Uplifted by the beauty of the township, Cassie drove slowly past the pink Federation post office, looking for a sign to the school, and then turned right toward the foothills. There wasn’t any sign in the town of the drought that gripped the hinterland. Purple and white agapanthus bobbed in the morning breeze at street corners. Cabbage tree palms grew out of the footpath every few yards and shaded the shopping strip. A long string of shops stretched down the street on her right. Tall, Norfolk pines marked the boundary of the harbour park on her left. The road still glistened from the night rain. With her view framed by her car window, Cassie turned off the highway toward Keimera. Cassie hoped now that she would not regret acting on that impulse. Ticking the box anywhere in New South Wales on her application, she had left it to chance where she ended up in the approaching Bicentennial year. As she drove south from Sydney, Cassie Sleight wondered, How many people make decisions based on the emotion of the moment? Fed up with her impossible situation, when she had seen a means of escape the year before, she had taken it.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |