Kara started walking. At the beginning of the trail, a sign read: Mount Barrow Reserve. Two hours return. The high sun cast short shadows, reminding her that it was early afternoon. Today was her half-day Friday. Part way through last year, and after thirteen hard-slog years at the organization, she’d requested a four-day week but had been denied.

‘If you can do your job in four days, why the hell have we been paying you for five?’ her manager, Jason, had said. Kara tried to explain that she would have to drop some duties, but he waved her away. Cockhead. Kara had wanted to tell him where he could stick his job, but remembered the mounting bills on her kitchen bench and stayed silent.

Jason was a tick-a-box Aboriginal and could never prove his identity. But he had management credentials and waltzed straight into one of the top jobs. Suddenly an expert on everything black. The compromise had been a half-day off, once a fortnight. Unpaid, of course. Still, it was better than nothing, and Kara vowed to herself to make it worthwhile. Somehow.

The beginning of the track was easy and she walked briskly. The world gradually dropped away on her left as the track rounded the first incline, and she unzipped her jacket slightly and pulled her jumper away from her chest, fanning it. Stopping to catch her breath, she took in the view. Below her, the angular mountain scree tumbled down into a dark gully — and she took an involuntary step back from the edge.

The landscape was sparse, but far from boring. Mosses of brown, green and white clung to rocky overhangs and jagged branches, reminding her of her grandfather’s wispy beard. Snow gums erupted from the shattered shale, their twisting boughs flexing skyward, like fingers on an upturned hand. From the lookout, Kara could see the track snaking along the side of the ridge.

About a hundred meters ahead, unnatural colors flashed through the trees. People. Kara paused for a moment and then slipped into the nearest thatch of scrub on the edge of the track, clipping her knee on a concealed boulder as she did so. She let out a muted scream: the kind a child wakes up with, following a nightmare. She crouched down, lost her balance and sat back into a half-frozen puddle.

Fucking idiot.

She made herself as small as possible, but then became preoccupied with the pain in her knee and the numbing wetness spreading across her backside. She closed her eyes and tried to calm herself with more meditation — but the discomfort prevailed, and she gave up. Kara sat there, willing silence, but with every ragged breath, every cold shudder, fern tips and sheaths of dry bark scraped against the parachute material of her jacket.