I had a feeling the only ‘person’ who’d miss me was Charlie.

A car beeped behind me and I looked in the mirror to see there was a line-up behind me in the Kiss and Drive zone. With a fleeting glance in the direction of the buildings, I caught sight of Payton as she disappeared from view, then put my foot on the accelerator before the parent behind me got a bad case of school car park road rage.

Trust me, it was a thing. I bore witness to such episodes on a scarily regular basis.

And then I was on my way, heading towards the highway that would take me north to Ragged Point. The last time I’d been anywhere near the area had to be over ten years ago when friends of ours got married in Broome, and Adrian had the grand idea that we should drive all the way there, from Perth. With two kids under five. It took us two days each way and needless to say it was a disaster.

We hadn’t stopped in Ragged Point on the way because it was only two hours into our journey. On the way back we’d barely been talking to each other by that stage, the kids were screaming, and we’d simply wanted to get home. But I knew people who went there every summer to camp by the beach, and they raved about the place. Camping and I had never seen eye to eye, but I did like the sound of the quaint little fishing village and the slower pace of life they spoke of.

For the first half hour of my drive, traffic was busy and I didn’t have much time to think while making sure I took the right turn-offs. But once I got out of the suburbs, I left the rush hour behind in Perth and, aside from the occasional road-train whizzing past, it became a pleasant and peaceful drive. The flat rural landscape on either side of me had different shrubbery from what you saw in the city—lots of grass trees and other spikey plants.

About an hour and a half into my trip, I saw big mountains of white sand in the distance off to my right.

‘What are those?’ I imagined Payton asking.

If she were on this drive with me, she’d insist on stopping and traipsing through the rugged vegetation so she could play on them and she’d probably get bitten by a snake or something. Payton was a magnet for such dramas.

My grip tightened on the steering wheel. What if something happened to her while I was two hours away? What if the school had to call Adrian instead of me? What if Payton was inconsolable and only wanted me—she was used to me being the one there in an emergency, to take care of her when she wasn’t well.

My breath quickening, I picked up my water bottle and chugged down a few mouthfuls. What the hell was I doing driving away from my family, from my responsibility? And how on earth was I supposed to win Adrian back if I wasn’t close by?