CHAPTER EIGHT
‘A road trip! Are you bloody well insane? You want to drive all the way to Sydney from Adelaide to see Emma, when you could just fly? .....Oh no Missy, I’m not coming with you. What about the business? You invited Hamish to come along? Jesus Christ Penny, you know I love your brother dearly, but I’m not sure I can endure two to three days of having to listen to badly executed show tunes.’
Chloe screeched down the phone like a crazed cockatoo at dusk. Her voice was so high pitched, Penny wondered if her head might actually explode. Finally, there was silence. Are you finished? Penny then took a deep breath and continued to plead her case with the bellowing bird on the other end.
Penny needed this. She needed a real adventure. She wanted to surprise Emma. She wanted to show Emma that her mother is far from boring. She wanted to run away from all of this. She wanted to step out of her comfort zone and regain her confidence behind the wheel.
She needed her best friend by her side. There was no way she was doing this on her own. There were only two people she truly trusted in this world and they were coming with her, whether they liked it or not. Well make that three, but Mark was at the other end, so that wasn’t really feasible.
What if the GPS decides to shit itself? If Penny tried to read a street directory these days, she might take a wrong turn, resulting in the car ending up somewhere at the bottom of Bass Strait. Hamish has never held a drivers license, and has no sense of direction whatsoever.
‘Hello, are you still there? Jesus Christ mate, I know you are off with the fairies sometimes, but I haven’t got all bloody day you know.’ If there was one thing Penny could always rely on, it was Chloe telling it how it is. She certainly didn’t pull any punches, and Penny loved her for it.
Chloe reluctantly agreed to join her on this crazy road trip, and they decided they would all hit the road in two weeks.
Unpublished Work (c) Hayley Walsh 2021
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