Free Roadside Sisters by Wendy Harmer

burnt, crispy offerings, not much more than deep-fried garnish at the edges of concrete driveways. Even the hardest heart could see that out here hopes of a fresh start were withering on the vine.
    ‘Ridiculous place to buy a house.’ Meredith reached for her sunglasses. ‘“Little Boxes”. My father used to sing that song about ticky-tacky houses all sitting next to each other and looking absolutely identical. There’s not even a decent deli. What were they thinking?’ The van sped past a billboard featuring a handsome sun-kissed couple, 2.5 children and a dog. It bore the legend: ‘Rather than live someone else’s dream, we’ve built our own.’
    ‘A nightmare, more like,’ Meredith crowed. She pointed out the absurdity of the names of the countless streets, courts and avenues that flashed by—
Boronia
,
Wattle
,
Blue-gum
,
Koala
,
Rosella
. ‘Apparently you bulldoze the local flora and fauna, and then name a street after it.’ Another billboard—bearing the ironic headline ‘Natural lake . . . coming soon’—had both Meredith and Nina laughing out loud.
    ‘Well, people have got to live somewhere. And let’s face it, Meredith, your lovely leafy suburb once looked exactly like this.’ Annie spoke up over the steady hum of the engine. ‘Would you like all these mums and dads and their little kids moving into some hideous block of Housing Commission flats?’ Annie had come to sit on the step in between the two front seats, despite Meredith’s warning that there was no seatbelt and her perch was, in fact, illegal.
    ‘Maybe you’d rather they moved into the snazzy singleton designer apartment next to you?’ Meredith shot back.
    Nina’s fingers tightened on the steering wheel as she tuned in to their bickering. They may have protested that they were ‘just having a bit of fun’, but she knew very well where thatwould end—in tears. And she wasn’t about to have any of that on this trip. She’d endured years of arguments between her twin boys and had developed a strategy to deal with it. She would create a diversion as cleverly as she had always done. Just like when the boys had been fighting over whose turn it was to have a go on the slippery dip and she had pointed and shouted: ‘Look up there! It’s a helicopter!’
    ‘My uncle used to have a market garden out here somewhere.’ Nina waved her hand vaguely to her left. ‘Probably about where that hardware barn is . . . or that homeware supastore. We used to come out here and help him pick vegetables when I was a kid.’ The distraction seemed to work, thankfully.
    ‘A miniature Ukrainian babushka!’ exclaimed Meredith.
    ‘I can see you on the back of a tractor, in a paisley headscarf and hessian dirndl skirt.’ Annie leaned forward and clapped her hands with delight at the image. ‘A baby blonde potato dumpling.’
    Nina bit her bottom lip and gripped the steering wheel so hard her knuckles whitened. That’s how they saw her. As some rotund ethnic Mrs Pepperpot, carting a basket of cabbages. Well, she would show them. She’d lose at least six kilos on this trip. She’d walk every morning and every night. Cut out the starchy stuff and eat only chicken, fish and salads. The twenty kilos she’d gained since she’d married Brad was his fault. There was no way she could have stayed slim when he was playing footy and demanding pasta and potatoes before every match and training session. That’s when she’d stacked on the weight. The years of picking at chicken nuggets, chips, and macaroniand cheese from the kids’ plates had likewise gone straight to her hips.
    Nina thought of Annie’s bags of slinky designer clothes stashed in the back. Nina’s holiday wardrobe consisted of a few wraparound skirts, baggy shorts, T-shirts and a couple of loose shirts. There was nothing in her size in the smart boutiques of Toorak Road. The last time she had gone shopping—for an evening outfit to wear to last year’s televised Brownlow Medal