Free Broken by Ilsa Evans

keeping it clean took hardly any time, nor was there any need to do gardening anymore. Or repaint a wall, or file paperwork, or iron Jake’s collection of business shirts. And the fact that she had only just moved in meant that there were no cupboards to be cleaned out, or linen to be reorganised, or bathrooms to be scrubbed.
    It was a strange feeling, heady with indolence and intrinsic guilt. But she determined to enjoy it while she could and, after the children were safely delivered, continued her walk down towards the Mont Gully town centre. There, she window-shopped and browsed her way along the main street, going inside the pet shop and looking at the puppies that wrestled amongst the straw and leapt against their glass enclosures to attract her attention. For a moment she toyed with the idea of buying one now and pre-empting Jake, but the possible consequences of this stilled her hand. This thought allowed the altercation with Jake to filter through her defences, so she shored them up again and ignored the sick feeling that had come with it.
    The shops finished at a huge intersection that guided a flood oftraffic along Burwood Highway and around the town. Mattie crossed at the lights there, intending to continue her stroll back in the direction she’d come, but instead her eye was drawn to the huge pastel mural adorning the community centre that, alongside the local library, was set back from the main shopping strip behind a grassy verge with park benches and a winding gravelled path. The mural featured an array of active figures – a man with a small boy astride his shoulders, a woman pushing a pram with a happily waving baby, a builder with a ladder under his arm, a pair of schoolchildren running along hand-in-hand. The figures stretched from the entrance and around the edge of the community centre, finishing with the schoolchildren and a leg kicking back in front of them that belonged to the next character, most of which was obviously on the rear wall. Underneath the figures, rippling up and down beneath their feet, was a stream of deliberately childish red lettering that read:
It’s
your
community – so come on! Get connected!
    Mattie stared at the mural, and the lettering, for quite a while. She’d been past the community centre countless times, either on her way into town or out, or when taking the children to the library, or just during her weekly shopping trips. And if someone had asked her to describe it, she would have been able to give a detailed description of the building, the mural, and probably even the message. Yet never had she
really
read it. Or perhaps, more to the point, never had it really meant anything.
    Get connected. That was exactly what she needed to do. Establish roots that went a little deeper than they did at the moment so that she could thrive, blossom. With the gravel scrunching under her shoes, Mattie walked up the meandering pathway towards the community centre. Once there she pushed open the glass door before she could have second thoughts and entered the foyer. It had a crowded, busy feel, even though she was the only person there. To her right was a wall holding rack upon rack of leaflets about subjects ranging from apprenticeships to sexually transmitted diseases, while straight ahead was a huge noticeboard with glossy posters and small handmade signs thumbtacked onto every spare space. Posters about health issues
(Violence against women – Australia says no!)
and photocopies advertising local events
(St Mary’s fete – be there!)
as well as laboriously printedscraps pleading for the return of family pets
(Lost! Ben, a five-year-old German Shepherd – family grieving. Reward offered)
.
    An exercise or dance class was in progress somewhere in the building, judging from the faint beat of music and the occasional hollow litany of foot thumps. To Mattie’s right, next to the racks, was a passageway leading further into the centre and to her