She might have said she couldn’t go. Might never have clambered into that car. What shoes was she wearing. There must have been a radio. Cigarettes. Bacardi. Joints. The smell of hair gel. Night wide open. Somebody driving them into it. Her neck her hands holding on. Always they conked out on Willunga Hill. Tonight the same. Cars tooting braying offering threatening. She stood in the shadow swish of pine trees making herself raise her head and stare at unnameable constellations caught between premonition and memory. The pines were the halfway mark between home and escape until someone said some people don’t like pines, they call them invaders, and everything once again had to be reassessed.