A thin blanket served to ward off the chill of the air conditioning as they pulled onto the freeway and accelerated away from Sydney. Unable to do more than nap fitfully, Julianne found herself replaying the last few years, wondering which particular ill-chosen life path had put her on this shitty bus in the middle of the night at the arse end of the civilised world. As always, she came back to her father. She had loved her old man, rogue that he was, and the old devil had done his best to provide for her in his own way, salting some of his ill-gotten gains through a series of bank accounts tucked away in remote jurisdictions with famously lax attitudes towards regulatory oversight. But it hadn’t been enough. Not nearly enough. Julianne wondered whether she might’ve been happier living an alternate life, with a normal father, who hadn’t raised her to live well outside the norms that most decent people accepted as the price you paid for civilisation.

On the other hand, she was, arguably, better prepared to have survived the last couple of years. She flicked a glance up at her backpack, and shifted position in her seat to take her weight off the wallet in her back pocket, where Julia Black’s driver’s license, credit cards, and refugee papers sat. Would she have thought to lay in such preparations had a scoundrel not raised her? Would she even be alive today? Probably not, she thought, as the bus rolled through a striking series of canyons, cut deep into the thick layer of sandstone that lay under the Sydney Basin. Powerful up-lighting illuminated the soaring rock walls, throwing them into beautiful relief.

‘Do you have anyone waiting for you, up north?’

‘What?’

The Tolkien fan had taken her by surprise, laying down her book and asking a question. Julianne had no desire to get into conversation with anyone, and kept herself closed off.

‘You look a little bit lost is all,’ said the girl. ‘Like you have nothing to look forward to. Are you going up to Queensland to work, or to meet someone?’

‘Oh,’ said Julianne, searching for an answer. As much as she wanted to just keep to herself, she had always been taught that good manners cost nothing, and could often serve as useful camouflage for one’s true nature. ‘I have a friend who’s sick,’ she said. ‘I’m going up to visit him. To help out a bit.’

‘That’s nice,’ said the girl. ‘You seem like a nice person. I hope it works out for you.’ And with that she went back to Middle Earth.

*