The End of the World Read Online Free

time off.’
    ‘I might take you up on that. I’ve got a prospect. A biker, but a nice one, not a loser. On a Harley, no less.’
    ‘A Harley?’ he says, raising his eyebrows. Whenever he raises his eyebrows the crusty skin on his forehead wrinkles and he reaches up to touch it.
    ‘You should have that looked at, Norm,’ I say.
    ‘Yeah, yeah, and I should give up the spare parts work and get out of the sun too.’ His arm gestures around his junkyard.
    Some of the machinery is so bent and broken you can’t even tell what it used to be for. In the centre of the yard is a lemon tree, the only greenery in sight. It always has lemons. I’m sure I know what Norm does to help it along, but I don’t ask. He’s got four guard dogs too, tied up around the yard, vicious snarling things. As if anyone would want to steal any of this crap.
    ‘Well, I’d better pick up the kids,’ I say.
    I don’t want to pick up the kids. I want to send them to an orphanage and buy myself a nice dress and learn to live like I used to, before I turned into the old scrag I am now.
    ‘Don’t you worry about that truck,’ Norm says, patting me on the arm. ‘It’ll just go back into the land.’
    I get into the car, pump the accelerator like I’m at the gym and turn the key three times before the engine fires. I should have that looked at, I think. There’s half a kilo of sausages on the seat beside me and I realise they’ve been sitting in the sun for half an hour already. When I unwrap the paper and have a sniff there’s a funny sulphur smell. They’ll cook up all right, I tell myself, and I gun the Holden and screech in a u-turn onto the road. I can’t get used to this huge engine–every time I take off I sound like a pack of hoons at Bathurst.
    It’s 3:30 already and Jake and Melissa will be waiting at the school gate when I get there, ready to jump in and whine about how everyone else’s mum always gets there before I do. Maybe I’ll drop them off at the orphanage.
    At the school gate the kids are both standing with their hands on their hips. I wonder if they got that from me. Old scrag standing with her hands on her hips, pursing her thin lips, squinting into the sun. You could make a statue of that. It would look like half the women in this town. Dust and a few plastic bags swirling around the statue’s feet, the tail-lights of the husband’s car receding into the distance. They should cast it in bronze and put it in the foyer of Centrelink.
    ‘Mum, we have to have four sheets of coloured cardboard for the project tomorrow.’
    ‘All right.’
    ‘And me too I have to have a lead pencil and I don’t want bananas in my lunch anymore they stink.’
    ‘All right.’
    As I steer the great car down the highway toward home I have a little dream. I’ll arrive and swing into the driveway and there, sitting next to the verandah, will be a shiny maroon Harley. I won’t dare to look but out of the corner of my eye I’ll see a boot resting on the step, maybe with spurs on it. Then I’ll slowly lift my head and he’ll be staring at me like George Clooney stared into J-Lo’s eyes in Out of Sight and I’ll take a deep breath and say to him, ‘Can you hang on five minutes while I drop the kids at the orphanage?’
    A bag of lemons is sitting on the verandah. Norm must have left them while we were at the newsagent.
    ‘Who left these?’ Jake says.
    ‘Norm,’ I say.
    ‘How do you know?’
    ‘There’s oil on the bag.’
    I bought Norm a cake of Solvol once. Delivered it to the junkyard all wrapped in pretty pink paper with a bow. He rang to thank me.
    ‘I think you’re insulting me,’ he said.
    ‘It’s for your own good, Norm.’
    ‘You’re a minx. If I was thirty years younger...’
    ‘Fifty more like,’ I told him, ‘before you’d get those paws on me.’
    When the kids are finally settled in their rooms doing their homework I get on the phone for the usual round of begging.
    ‘Are you coming to the meeting