‘OMG, FLICK, I wish you’d been able to see this place.’
Luci had spoken to her best friend several times already today but she couldn’t resist calling her again to update her on her good fortune.
‘It’s nice, then?’ She could hear the smile in Flick’s voice.
‘Nice! It’s amazing.’ Luci wandered around the apartment while she chatted. ‘It’s right on the harbour. The beach is just across the road. I’m looking at the sea as we speak.’ She could hear the waves washing onto the shore and smell the salt in the air. ‘I don’t know how Callum is going to manage in my little house.’
It was a bit odd to be walking around a stranger’s apartment. Luci had spent her whole life surrounded by people she knew so to travel halfway across the country to swap houses with a stranger was odd on so many levels. It had all happened so quickly she hadn’t had time to consider how it would feel. Callum Hollingsworth’s apartment on the shores of Sydney Harbour was modern and masculine. While her house wasn’t particularly feminine it was old and decorated in what she guessed people would call country style. No surprises there, it was definitely a country house. It was clear that her house-swap partner’s taste in decorating was quite different from hers. She felt self-conscious, wondering what he would think of her place, before she realised it didn’t matter. She didn’t plan on meeting the guy.
She heard the whistle of the Indian Pacific through the phone. The two friends had spent the past few days chilling on Bondi Beach, a girls’ getaway that Flick had suggested before Luci settled into her house swap and study course in Sydney, and Flick returned to South Australia on the iconic trans-continental train.
‘Are you on the train?’ Luci asked.
‘Not yet,’ Flick replied. ‘I’m just grabbing a coffee and waiting to board.’
‘Make sure you call me when you get home,’ she told her.
‘Of course I will. What are you going to do with the rest of your day?’
‘I think I’ll take a stroll around my new neighbourhood. The hospital is a half-hour walk away so I might head in that direction. Work out where I have to be tomorrow. I don’t want to be late.’ Luci was enrolled in an eight-week course in child and family health being run through the North Sydney Hospital and she needed to get her bearings. ‘Look after my mum and dad for me.’
That was her one big concern. As an only child of elderly parents—her mother called her their ‘change of life’ baby—Luci was nervous about being so far away from them, but Flick had promised to keep an eye on them. It wasn’t hard for her to do as Luci’s dad was the local doctor and Flick worked for him as a practice nurse.
‘I will. Enjoy yourself.’
Luci ended the call and had another wander around. It wasn’t a massive apartment—there was an open-plan kitchen, living and dining room with a large balcony that looked out to the beach across the road. Two bedrooms, two bathrooms and a small laundry finished it off, but it had everything she would need. She dumped her bags in the spare bedroom. Having the two bedrooms was a bonus because she didn’t feel comfortable about taking over Callum’s room. That felt too familiar.
The sun shone on the water of Sydney Harbour, white boats bobbed and the houses peeked out between eucalyptus trees. Luci couldn’t believe how perfect it looked. She’d grown up in country South Australia, born and bred in Vickers Hill in the Clare Valley, and she’d never travelled far. Her father very rarely took holidays and when he did they spent them on the coast, but the coast she was familiar with was the Gulf of St Vincent with its calm waters, like a mill pond. It never felt like the real ocean.
Then, when she’d married her high-school sweetheart at the age of twenty-one, they’d had no money for holidays. She’d married young, as had most of her friends, but she hadn’t found the happy-ever-after she’d wanted. Like so many other marriages, hers hadn’t lasted and she found herself divorced and heartbroken at twenty-five.
But now, perhaps, it was time to travel. To see something of the world. She couldn’t change what had happened, the past was the past. She had grieved for a year, grieved for the things she had lost—her marriage, her best friend and her dream of motherhood—but she was recovering now and she refused to believe that her life was over. Far from it. She had a chance now to reinvent herself. Her teenage dream needed some remodelling and this was her opportunity to figure out a new direction, if that’s what she decided she wanted. She was finally appreciating the freedom she had been given; she was no longer defined by her status as daughter, girlfriend or wife. No one in Sydney knew anything about her. She was just Luci.
It was time to start again.
* * *
Luci turned off the shower and wrapped herself in one of the fluffy towels that she’d found in the guest bathroom. She pulled the elastic band from her hair, undoing the messy bun that had kept her shoulder-length bobbed blonde hair dry, then dried herself off. She was exhausted and she was looking forward to climbing into bed. She was far more tired than she’d expected to be. She’d spent the past three days sitting in lectures. She’d thought that would be easier than the shift work on the wards that she was used to, but it was mentally tiring.
Still, it was almost the end of her first week. Only two more days to go before the weekend. Perhaps then she’d have a chance to see something of this side of Sydney. She and Flick had walked from Bondi to Bronte and back and had spent the rest of their time relaxing. Sightseeing hadn’t been high on their agenda but Luci had never visited Sydney before and she wanted to get a feel for the city.
She was familiar with the route from Callum’s apartment in Fairlight to the hospital on the opposite side of the Manly peninsula as she was walking that route every day. She was getting to know the local shopkeepers and was exchanging ‘good mornings’ with a couple of regular dog walkers. It was a far cry from Vickers Hill, where she couldn’t take two steps down the main street without bumping into someone she knew, but she was starting to feel a little more at home here. She kept herself busy, not wanting to give herself a chance to be homesick. Being somewhere new was exciting, she told herself, and she had limited time so she needed to make the most of her opportunities.
The people in her course were getting friendlier by the day. It seemed city folk took a little longer to warm up to strangers but Luci had gone out to dinner tonight with a few of them, just a burger in Manly, but it was a start and Luci knew she’d feel even more at home after another week.
She knew where to catch the ferry to the city and she’d walked on the beach but she hadn’t yet had time to test the water in the tidal swimming pool that was built into the rocks. That would be added to her list of things to do. She hadn’t done nearly as much exploring as she had planned to, and if all the weeks were this busy, her two months in Sydney would fly past. She’d have to make time to see the sights, but first she needed some sleep.
She hung the towel on the rail in the bathroom, went through to her bedroom and slid naked between her bedsheets. She kept the window blinds up and the window slightly open. From the bed she could see the stars in the sky and the sound of the ocean carried to her on the warm spring air. The ocean murmured to itself as it lapped the shore. It was gentle tonight and she could imagine the waves kissing the sand, teasing gently before retreating, only to come back for more.
She dozed off to the sound of the sea.
* * *
It felt like only moments later that she woke to an unfamiliar sound. A slamming door.
She was still getting used to the different sounds and rhythms of the city. She could sleep through the early morning crowing of a rooster and the deep rumble of a tractor but the slightest noise in the middle of suburbia disturbed her. Rubbish trucks, the tooting of ferry horns, slamming of car doors and the loud conversations of late-night commuters or drinking buddies on their way home from the pub all intruded