Skye made herself comfortable in her white Hyundai, the radio on Triple J, the tray of nasi goreng safely wedged on the front seat between her bag and an old towel positioned to catch any dropped rice. She cracked the Coke as she pulled into the street, cutting off a shiny posh car about to pull out behind her. The driver didn’t so much as offer a finger or even a honk of annoyance. What a suburb, she thought with disgust: leafy green verges, proximity to river and ocean, palatial mansions, graffiti free bus stops—who in hell would want to live here? It was almost as dull as Wylie.

With the traffic and the silky grey of the city far behind now, Skye entered the other world of country driving. The clouds, if they’d been here at all, were gone, the night sky clear and star-sprinkled, the road long, straight and mind-numbingly boring. With no decent radio reception she turned to her iPod and slapped her thigh to John Butler, agreeing with his political rants, laughing out loud at the crazy irreverence of Tim Minchin.

It looked like someone was tailgating again—it had been happening off and on since she’d left the city. Once more she caught the dazzle of headlights in the rear view mirror. If she continued the journey like this, she thought, she’d end up blind. She scrunched her eyes, wound down the window and flipped him the bird: get lost, tosser. He probably wouldn’t even see the gesture, but it made her feel better.

She slowed and veered into a truck stop, expecting to see the impatient vehicle zoom past. To her dismay it slowed too, so close on her tail she could hear the gravel pinging on the undercarriage.

No way was she going to hang around here to find out what this creep wanted. Flooring the accelerator she shot a spray of gravel at his windscreen and fishtailed toward the exit, hammering her way back onto the open road.

Her relief was short-lived. Two silver-blue eyes dazzled in the rear vision window and the car closed in once more. The roar of its engine told her it was a helluva lot more powerful than her little Hyundai; she’d never be able to out-drive it here on the open road.

Her mouth went dry; she swallowed painfully. Was she being road-raged? She gripped the steering wheel until her knuckles glowed and wondered what the hell she’d done to deserve this.

Her gran would’ve said her sins were catching up with her at last.

She tried to work out where she was on the road and if she knew anyone in the vicinity. The farms here were wide and isolated. Every few kilometres there might be an entrance, but the driveways were often several kilometres long. Turning down one of these was no option; the car following her had shown in the truck stop that it could stick to the gravel a lot better than she could.

The police, she must phone the police, they would intercept this prick and give him the what for. She scrabbled for the phone on the passenger seat, panicked when she couldn’t find it. The skidding and pitching on the gravel at the truck stop must have knocked it off. Then, after some frantic searching, she spotted it peeping out from under the empty food carton at the far corner of the floor.

She drove now at breakneck speed, struggling to keep the car on the road while she stretched for the phone. Finally her fingers closed around it and she straightened behind the wheel seeing no sign of the tormenting headlights. Lost him— Yessssssss.

Her jubilation evaporated into the stifling air of her car as the sinister, streamlined vehicle pulled out of her blind spot. This time she recognised it as the wanky car she’d cut off outside the deli.

What a jerk. He must really have a hair up his arse to follow her all this way. But knowledge didn’t make the situation any easier to take. People had been killed in road-rage attacks.

She grabbed the phone, fingers jabbing at the keys. No service. Shit! But if she was lucky, the emergency numbers might still work. She risked a glance at the adjacent car as she punched 000 and saw the shadowy figure of a man behind the wheel.

Fuck, fuck, fuck —still no service. With a yell of abuse she hurled the phone onto the passenger seat.

Should she slow down, confront him, what should she do? If she continued at this speed she’d surely end up wrapped around a tree.

The driver buzzed his window open. A pale hand flapped, indicating her to slow down.

No way, José.

She caught a green face shimmering in the light from the dash and felt the air leave her lungs with a whoosh.

She knew that face.

Oh God. It’s you.

Fear grabbed her like a python’s coil around the chest. When she breathed out, the coils tightened. It was a familiar, horrible feeling. With asthma, she knew, if you try to fight it, you only make it worse. She tried to stay calm, lifted her foot a fraction off the accelerator and slowed down a little. The other car slowed too. Now it was only a few centimetres from her door. It gave her car the smallest of nudges, not much more than a scrape, but it was enough to do the trick. She panicked and swerved to the left, just missed a tree and attempted to straighten. Then her oxygen-starved brain overcompensated and she veered into the centre of the road. (Image 8.1)

Image 8.1

SUNDAY

CHAPTER NINE

‘I’d kiss you only I’ve just washed my hair,’ Monty slurred around the ET tube. Well, that’s what it sounded like, Stevie thought as she reached for his hand among the morass of lines. She didn’t ask him to repeat it; doped to the eyeballs he immediately fell back into a deep sleep.

Despite the several months she’d had to psych herself up for this, nothing had prepared her for the shock of seeing Monty post-op. His face was that of an old man, his skin the colour of a corpse. It was as if after draining his blood they’d forgotten to put it back again.

Thank God kids were not allowed in the ICU. Izzy would have had a fit if she’d seen her father looking like the living dead.

They could have been on a brightly lit tanker moored with several others on a quiet black sea. Night time in the ICU: raised, oversized beds with lifeless people buried somewhere amongst the bleeping machines and wires, the tread of crepe-soled doctors and nurses, the scratching of pulled curtains, the clanging of stainless steel and the low rumble of trolleys. How she hated hospitals.

Yesterday’s operation had been an unmitigated success, the surgeon had told her earlier. Monty would remain in the ICU for another day or so until the breathing tube was removed and then transferred to a single room in the coronary care unit. Barring complications he should be home in just over a week.

Barring complications. Stevie had made the mistake of looking up the complications on the Internet: thrombosis, infection, myocardial infarction; the list went on and ended with ‘death’.

Some complication.

The glass-panelled nurses’ station glowed like a captain’s bridge. Behind the glass she saw a tall man with wiry hair like a mad professor talking to one of the nurses. A strange time for Wayne Pickering to visit, she thought. Didn’t he know that only close family members were allowed in the ICU?

He saw her looking his way and indicated for her to step outside the ward. They met at the lifts.

Wayne clasped her arm. ‘How is he?’

‘He’s doing fine. They won’t let you see him though, the nurse in charge is tougher than Central’s desk sergeant, she—’

‘No,’ he cut her off. ‘It’s you I need to see. C’mon, I’ll buy you a coffee. You look terrible, the bags under your eyes could pack for a family of five.’

Wayne had always been a charmer.

A few minutes later they were sitting in the hospital canteen with cappuccinos and an oozing jam and cream doughnut for Wayne.