SOPHIE’S letter read exactly the way she talked and lived. Her words, like her speech, were peppered with exclamation marks. Everything she did she did quickly and with passion. She never seemed to stop and her enthusiasm had been the prompt that had got Emma on this plane. Without Sophie’s cajoling Emma knew she’d still be sitting in England, feeling depressed and wondering if she could really make this trip on her own. Without Sophie’s insistence she might not have booked her ticket. But now she was almost there.
Emma folded the letter and slid it back into its envelope, taking care not to tear the paper. She’d read it every day for the past month and it was beginning to show signs of wear but even though she knew the words verbatim she couldn’t bring herself to put it away permanently.
Sophie’s letter wasn’t the reason she’d packed her bags and said farewell to her stepmother and half-sisters in order to fly halfway around the world but it had been the catalyst. Emma needed the letter. It was her anchor. It kept her tethered to reality. It helped to make this whole adventure seem real—even when she could scarcely believe she had actually made it Down Under.
Thinking back to the events that had led her here was upsetting so she focussed again on the landscape beneath her as she tried to think of happier, more positive things. But as she looked out the window at this strange land she felt a trace of unease. She’d had a few moments of trepidation over the past month, although not as many as most people seemed to expect her to have, but looking at the vast, dry, red land beneath the plane’s wings she questioned the wisdom of leaving the familiarity of England to fly to the middle of nowhere.
But you were miserable in England, she reminded herself.
Yes, but you might still be miserable here.
At this point she wasn’t sure which was preferable—being miserable in familiar surroundings or being miserable in a strange, new world. She hoped Sophie was right and a change of scenery would keep her too occupied to notice she was miserable. Sophie had promised her that it was hard to be depressed in a place where the sun was almost always shining, and because Emma had long wanted to come back to Australia she chose to believe her. And now she was here. Almost.
As Emma felt the plane start to descend she slipped the envelope between the pages of the novel she was reading and stowed it in her handbag. She took a deep breath. It was too late to turn back now. She let her breath out with a long sigh.
‘Are you okay?’
It took Emma a moment to realise the girl in the seat beside her was talking to her. And another moment to realise she was asking because she’d sighed out loud.
She turned to face her. They hadn’t spoken to each other during the flight; they’d smiled a greeting when they’d first sat down but then Emma had pulled her book from her bag and started reading. She didn’t like striking up conversations with fellow travellers as there was always the danger that they’d talk non-stop for the entire trip and Emma then found it difficult to politely excuse herself from the contact. But looking at her now she wondered if she’d seemed rude. The girl was about the same age as her, in her mid-twenties, and she did look genuinely concerned.
‘Yes, I’m fine, thanks,’ she replied. ‘Just thinking.’
‘You’re English?’
Emma nodded.
‘Are you here on holiday or for work?’
Emma wasn’t really sure how to describe her visit. She wanted to make herself believe it was a holiday, although it felt more like an escape. She knew she was running away from her old life, just temporarily, but she didn’t want to admit that out loud. Not to a stranger, not even to herself. ‘I’m visiting family,’ she said. That was the truth, even if it wasn’t the whole truth.
‘Are you staying long?’
‘I’m not sure yet,’ she replied. She hadn’t planned any further ahead than getting to Broken Hill. Her life tended to move in cycles and she’d found, on more than one occasion, that things seemed to happen without her input. Sometimes she was happy with the way events unfolded, sometimes not, but she had always had a sense that there were some things she couldn’t control so sometimes she didn’t bother trying. More often than not, too, her plans, when she did make them, went awry so she avoided making them whenever she could. Right now her only goal was to get to Broken Hill. Once she was there there’d be time enough to work out what she was going to do next.
Emma was certain the girl beside her was going to continue the conversation but she was too caught up in her own thoughts to find the energy to chat to a complete stranger. She turned back to look out of the window as the noise of the plane’s engines changed. She searched for signs of life beneath the wings in the red dirt.
Where was the town? The pilot was obviously planning to land somewhere but as far as she could tell only miles and miles of nothing lay beyond the windows. When she’d visited Australia before she’d never travelled away from the coast and the landscape beyond the plane window looked so alien.
The country wasn’t completely flat. She could see undulations in the earth, but from this height she only got a sense of their size from the shadows they cast onto the red dirt. There wasn’t a speck of green to be seen—even the trees and bushes looked faded and grey. They’d long since left the ocean and the mountains west of Sydney behind and the world she was entering now looked untamed and hostile.
The land was vast and barren and it looked as though it could swallow people. It was no stretch of the imagination to think of people disappearing out here in the back of beyond, never to be seen again. Was she going to survive this?
A sudden wave of homesickness swept through her and the feeling took her by surprise. Although she’d been born and bred in England she’d always longed to really experience the Australian way of life. After all, she was half-Australian, and this was her chance to really immerse herself in the culture, her chance to experience life here as an adult as opposed to the self-absorbed teenager she’d been when she’d last visited.
As a teenager she’d existed on a diet of Australian television, everything from suburban settings to beachside settings to the Outback, but now it seemed that fantasising about the Australian Outback was one thing; actually experiencing it might be something else entirely.
She hoped this trip would give her a chance to heal, a chance to recover from what had been a terrible twelve months and a chance to work out what made her happy, but looking at this foreign landscape she was beginning to think that she might not find the answers here at all. It might take all her strength just to survive. She hoped coming here wasn’t going to turn out to be a mistake.
The plane continued to drop lower in the sky and Emma felt the undercarriage of the plane open as the pilot prepared to lower the wheels, but a minute later the plane was levelling out and she heard the flaps close again. She looked out of the window at the red dirt and the greenish-grey, almost leafless trees and stunted bushes. They weren’t getting any closer.
The plane’s undercarriage opened a second time, before closing again just as rapidly. Emma frowned and watched as the plane began to circle. As the plane turned she could see the airport buildings below them. At least she knew now that there was civilisation out here. That was comforting. But the next words she heard, however, were not.
‘Ladies and gentlemen …’ The pilot’s voice came through the plane’s audio system. ‘Due to an unforeseen technical problem with the landing gear, I would like to inform you that we will be carrying out an emergency landing.’ He paused momentarily and there was complete silence in the plane as every passenger waited to hear what he had to say next.
‘However, there is no need to be alarmed. Please remain in your seats with your seat belts tightly fastened. Your cabin crew will pass through the cabin, demonstrating the brace position and landing procedures.’
His tone suggested this was more of an inconvenience than a problem but Emma did wonder how he intended to land the plane. She could only assume he’d