Wallflower Girl

Chapter 40

Her husband ate his steak, kissed her, and went to work in the hay fields. Anne found heels in her wardrobe. She never wore heels. It was hard enough keeping balance as it was. No such issues existed for a ballet girl though. She found a pretty floral sundress and modelled it in the full length mirror on a stand in the corner of her bedroom. She marvelled at her legs, the way the heels shaped them. There was absolutely no need for stockings.

Their car was a truck. It was a big bouncy thing with a wooden tray and a gear lever that came up from the floor and crunched every time she had to move it into a new gear. She rolled on over the timber bridge where there were children swimming in the waterhole. It was already hot at nine in the morning. As she passed the truck-stop, she saw a ladder against the building and two men on the roof fixing the model truck into place. That made her smile, the knowledge that déjà vu was pretty damned real after all.

The town itself was different. The motel had not yet been built. It was a cow paddock. Two black and white cattle looked at the truck with plaintive brown eyes, and one lowed mournfully. She waved. There were far fewer businesses and the roads were bumpy and minus the curbed guttering. The people looked smaller and thinner. Everyone was wearing summer clothes, so there was plenty of skin. The children were all bony looking. There were a few heavily set adults, but the ladies were predominately slender and the men all looked fit.