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Once on my own, I opened the book to the title page. ‘To Jasmin, Thank you for coming. Bridie Cormac.’ I drafted an email. Too gushing. I redrafted it, sent it the next day. Two hours later, I received an invitation to visit Bridie for the weekend at her property in Corbyn. Corbyn? I Googled it. A tiny settlement in northern Victoria. No links to public transport and I didn’t drive. I had to decline. Then Bridie offered to pick me up at the last bus stop along the route.
A month later, I moved in.
‘What about your career?’ my father protested when I broke the news. I pointed out I could work as a copy-editor just as easily in Corbyn as in Melbourne. ‘You hardly know the woman,’ he complained.
Mum chewed her lip. ‘Are…other people sharing the house?’
‘Yes,’ I lied.
She shot me a quizzical look. ‘It’s just that I wouldn’t want you to be lonely. Corbyn’s very remote.’ She started crying. ‘Your heart condition—’
‘There’s a hospital nearby.’ That was almost true. Corbyn had a bush nursing centre. And a pub and a store and not much else. And Bridie’s property was ten kilometres out of town.
And nothing was going to stop me going.
