3.14
The following Saturday afternoon, when the sun was still strong in the sky, the ocean breeze barely cooling the air in what seemed to Yvette an eternal summer, she decided to go into Fremantle for choir by bus. She waited at the shade-less bus stop at the corner of the street, gazing at the bleached grasses of the neighbours’ front lawns, the gnarly flaking trunk of a paperbark nearby and the pendulous arms of a peppermint gum down the road. She watched legions of bees harvest the sweet nectar of a bottlebrush across the street. And she looked back at Heather’s house, the neatly hedged front garden, the smart cream of the walls, the windows shaded from the sun’s ferocity. Her phone emitted a few sharp rings then went silent. She didn’t bother checking to see who’d called. She knew it
