Abstract:
In her Canberra townhouse on an afternoon in July, Kate says into the phone, "So Mum, that's about it really, I just suddenly decided it was all wrong, that I needed to do just what I wanted to, and nothing else."
"Hmm," her mother, Martha, says and pauses.
Listening, Kate notices again that her mother's responses are less predictable lately.
"Well thanks for telling me that," Martha says. "How interesting... when are you coming home?"
"Well I haven't left, just gone part- time," Kate looks through the ranch slider to the courtyard.
Outside the winter sky stretches long and dull. She sees the cold in the pale green leaves of the eucalypts behind her courtyard fence. They hang delicate and still. In the courtyard the leaves of the geranium have turned scarlet with the early morning frosts. She stares at the paving stones, the rosemary bush bent by the wind and the lone green plastic garden chair on its side in the middle of the yard.
