Gertrude at the Fence

"Some people guard their homes with locks and alarms. Others do it with gossip and roses on a housecoat."

The Portal opened with its familiar flare of colour, spilling a brief storm of light that licked across the sand before collapsing neatly in on itself. The glow snapped shut with a precision that always felt faintly disdainful, as though it were tired of my dependence on it. A blink, a breath, and I was no longer in the desert.

I stepped out into the narrow alley beside Rags chip shop on Oxide Street—the same shortcut I’d used the night before. The transition left me momentarily hollow, ears ringing with the silence of Clivilius even as Broken Hill began to bleed in.

The shop itself was shuttered tight, corrugated steel pulled down to the pavement, dull and streaked with old grease that no amount of scrubbing would shift. A skin of neglect clung to it, greasy fingerprints layered over years of the same. Its bins were lined up along the brick wall like disinterested sentries, overflowing slightly, their lids cocked open, sides darkened with patches of something that had been spilt, congealed, and given up on. The smell here was its own thing: dry dust thick in the air, mingling with that iron tang that belonged to Broken Hill alone. Metallic, biting. It caught in the back of my throat, enough to make me swallow hard and taste rust that wasn’t really there.

From the street beyond drifted the first stirrings of morning. The reluctant cough of an engine refusing to be hurried. A dog barking its disdain at the hour. The scrape and hollow clang of a bin being dragged across concrete. Small, ordinary sounds, domestic even—but they grated against me, too sharp in the raw quiet left over from Clivilius. The ordinary world, pushing back against the desert’s silence, and I couldn’t quite decide which I trusted less.

Not exactly the most discreet re-entry point, either. Anyone wandering past at the wrong moment would have seen the Portal’s flare, light blooming unnaturally against cracked brickwork, and drawn conclusions I wasn’t ready—or willing—to answer for. I edged forward, keeping low out of instinct, and peered around the mouth of the alley. Left, right. Empty pavements, windows sealed behind metal shutters, the faint promise of movement further up the street but nothing immediate. Quiet enough, for now.

That was when my phone shuddered to life in my pocket, a sudden furious vibration that made me flinch. Against the stillness of the alley it sounded obscene, amplified, as though the whole block could hear it buzzing. I fumbled it out, thumb clumsy, already dreading what waited. The screen glared bright in the dim, fat with missed calls, half a dozen unread texts stacked untidily across it, and the usual glut of spam emails—miracle vitamins, once-in-a-lifetime discounts, auto-generated lectures about my apparent lack of style. A flood of normal life, queued up neatly and waiting for me, politely reminding me it was still out here, breathing steadily while I wasn’t looking.

I flicked through quickly, thumb dragging across the glass in short, impatient bursts. Nothing useful. No Mum. No Gladys. Just the background noise of a life I wasn’t entirely sure I recognised anymore—an inbox crammed with adverts I’d never asked for, limp newsletters from places I’d forgotten subscribing to, and the occasional needy nudge from companies I’d never bought from, insisting I “come back.” As if I’d ever been theirs in the first place.

And then—Jarod. One message, timestamped hours ago:

All good. Need to lay low a few days. Don’t call. Will touch base.

Classic Jarod. No greeting, no explanation, not even a perfunctory emoji—just the bare minimum required to confirm he was alive and still knee-deep in whatever mess had exploded after I’d been pushed out of that basement. A part of me itched to reply, thumb hovering, half-formed sentences knotting themselves in my head. Something, anything, even if it was nothing more than proof I hadn’t entirely abandoned him.

But the larger part of me knew better. What was there to say? Sorry I left you mid–gunfight with a python tucked under my arm? Hope you don’t have to much mess to clean up? The words would look absurd the second I typed them. Better to let silence carry the weight for now. Jarod would reach out when he was ready. He always did. He didn’t need my words elbowing their way in.

I locked the phone and slid it back into my pocket, the familiar weight a small anchor. Grounding, or close enough. A tether to the world I was supposedly standing in—though it felt fragile, laughable, like trying to hold a balloon string in the middle of a gale and pretending it meant control.

Broken Hill’s streets stretched out quiet around me, the kind of quiet small towns perfect and polish until it becomes a habit. It wasn’t the restful kind, but the hollow, uncanny variety—empty enough that I half expected to catch a glimpse of cameras, a boom mic dangling overhead, actors off in their trailers while the set waited, motionless, between takes. The silence was so thorough it carried its own weight, as if the town had rolled over and refused to wake just yet.

The light was already sharp, far too honest for the hour, carving across the pavement in clean, merciless lines. It revealed everything without softening a thing, bleaching the colour from brickwork, flattening shopfronts into two-dimensional cut-outs. The shadows it threw were long and unkind, exaggerations stretched thin, like the town hadn’t fully decided if it wanted to be real today or content with being a sketch.

The first street sign I passed read Chloride Street. The next, Sulphide. A few blocks further, Argent. The pattern was obvious enough to make me laugh under my breath. I half expected the next turn-off to offer Mildly Toxic Gas Avenue or Inhaling This Will Shorten Your Lifespan Lane. Someone on the council had clearly been let loose with a chemistry set and an overdeveloped sense of humour, then handed the power to christen roads. Either that or the entire town had agreed to lean into its mining pedigree until the joke wasn’t funny anymore.

As I walked further in, the little details began to tug at me—the kind you don’t see in cities anymore. Letterboxes that weren’t ornamental relics but actually used. Milk crates stacked neatly on verandas, sun-bleached and cracked but still performing their duty. Screen doors clinging stubbornly to life, hanging loose on their hinges, rattling at the barest nudge of wind. Every house bore its own quiet argument against collapse, patched, repainted, propped up with just enough care to stay standing. A kind of stubbornness you could smell in the mortar.

A ute rattled past at the far end of the street, its metal tray clattering like loose bones in a shaken bag. The driver slowed just enough to give me a long, unblinking once-over—a stare without curiosity, without welcome, the kind that reminded you strangers were an event here, and not one anyone had asked for. I kept walking, pretending my shoulders didn’t itch under his gaze. The engine noise lingered for a beat before the silence closed back over it, reclaiming the street like nothing had ever broken it.

Even the air carried its own fingerprint—dry, thin, laced with that faint tang of rust. It caught at the back of my throat, left me swallowing iron, as though the entire town had been seasoned with filings and left to cure in the sun. Yet despite the dust, despite the corrosion seeping into everything, there were signs of defiance. A couple of front gardens bore rose bushes, carefully tended, their leaves vivid against the muted palette of sand and brick. Fragile colour, staked like a flag against the mines, refusing to be ground down into the same dust as everything else.

Paul’s place wasn’t far—two streets over from Argent. The house itself was weatherboard, painted once upon a time in a pale shade that might have been cream, though years of heat and dust had worn it down into something closer to resignation. It had the look of a structure that had stopped trying to impress but hadn’t entirely surrendered either. Like most houses in Broken Hill, it was dated, yes, but not forgotten.

The lawn was patchy but clipped short, a stubborn compromise between pride and practicality, each tuft cut down as though conceding nothing to drought. The front garden was squared off into neat beds edged with brick, where a couple of succulents pushed their luck against the climate—spiky, thick-skinned little things standing their ground in the scorched earth. Someone—Paul, obviously—was still investing the hours. The place had his handwriting all over it: order in the face of entropy.

The curtains across the front windows were drawn tight, sealed against the morning light. No flicker of movement behind them, no familiar murmur of a kettle steaming to life or a radio spilling tinny static into the hush. At the low gate I hesitated, half waiting for Charlie to throw herself into the silence with theatrics—barking, whining, the sharp patter of claws skidding across the verandah. Instead, there was nothing. Just the creak of a gum tree at the corner, its branches brushing the power line with a hollow tap-tap, like someone rapping knuckles idly against glass.

I let the gate swing shut behind me and followed the narrow side path, my shoes crunching through gravel loud enough to make me wince. The air here felt sharper than the city, stripped of any softness, weighted with dust and iron. Beneath it lingered something else too, chemical and faint—so slight it could have been nothing at all, or it could have been everything. Each step seemed amplified, carried further than it should, as though the house itself was listening to my approach.

The path ended at a low wooden gate. I set a hand on the top rail, its grain rough and splintered beneath my palm, and leaned forward to peer into the back garden. Nothing moved. No sudden thud of paws on dirt, no wagging blur of a tail, no bark rising to claim me as an intruder. Just a square of hard-packed ground, dry and bare, its surface marked faintly with the ghostly circle of an old clothesline that had long since surrendered.

At the rear, a shed slouched against the fence line, its tin roof streaked with rust and mottled where paint had peeled away in wide flakes. The structure looked tired, resigned to its own decay. A hose lay coiled by the back steps like a discarded snake, the metal nozzle aimed at nothing, abandoned mid-thought.

“Charlie,” I whispered, testing the name against the still air. It came out thinner than I meant, stretched taut with a hope I wasn’t sure I wanted answered.

The yard gave nothing back. No shuffle, no bark, not even the stir of a leaf in reply. Just silence, holding itself steady.

I crossed to the steps and tried the back door, rattling the handle with more hope than expectation. Locked, of course. The wood gave a tired shudder against the frame, the kind of resistance that said it had been locked for some time, not just last night.

A glance through the kitchen window offered nothing but the pale reflection of my own face, blurred and faint in the half-light. Beyond it: the dull outlines of cupboards, edges softened into suggestion. No motion. No water bowl tucked by the skirting. No smudge of nose or frantic claws scrabbling at the glass to announce me. Just emptiness layered on emptiness.

A prickle ran the length of my neck, the kind that tightened every hair into attention. Paul’s place had once carried weight, a sense of habitation that clung even in silence. Someone lived here. Someone clipped the lawn into obedience, kept the roses alive against the odds. It had worn its occupancy like armour. Now it felt hollow, emptied out. A stage set waiting for actors to reappear, the scene suspended between takes. Too still. Too staged.

I made my way round to the front, pausing at the lounge window. Cupping my hands against the glass, I leaned in until my forehead almost touched the pane. Curtains again—thick, heavy, the fabric reluctant to let anything slip. Through the faint gaps I pieced together fragments: the pale outline of a sofa, a low table in front of it, the faint glint of a lamp base catching what little light seeped through. Ghosts of a room, shapes caught behind fabric, but nothing to confirm breath or movement.

I stepped back, shoes crunching on gravel. The sound cracked the hush like a snapped twig, sharper than it should’ve been. The stillness of the street pressed in closer, weighty, watchful. From somewhere far off a car engine revved and then cut abruptly, the sound carrying thin and clear across the distance. It landed in the silence like a dropped plate—ordinary in the city, absurdly noticeable here.

The front steps gave a long, reluctant groan as I climbed them, timber bowing under my weight. I crouched at the door, keys in hand. One slid into the lock—wrong. Another—still wrong. I tried the next, slow, careful, easing the teeth without letting metal scrape too loud. The mechanism clicked faintly, stiff and uncooperative, like the lock had decided it wasn’t interested in playing today.

That was when a voice carried over the fence.

“Paul? That you?”

The voice cut across the fence, high and nasal—the kind perfectly engineered to carry over backyards and straight into the bloodstream of a gossip circuit. I froze where I was, the key still lodged awkwardly in the lock, my body twisted in a half-crouch like a burglar who hadn’t read the manual. Every muscle braced, caught mid-crime in the least flattering posture possible.

At the edge of the yard, a woman had claimed the side fence as her stage. One hand clamped around the top rail, knuckles white, she leaned forward with all the conviction of a preacher at her pulpit. Her housecoat was patterned in roses, though they’d clearly bloomed decades ago and then surrendered to time, the fabric sagging in weary folds. Her hair refused obedience, wiry strands escaping their pins in stubborn rebellion. The rest of her, however, radiated precision. The expression she levelled at me was razor-sharp—satisfaction, unmistakable. The thrill of someone whose morning had just been improved by the arrival of fresh material.

She squinted against the light, tightening her grip as though the fence itself were an accomplice. “Oh! You’re not Paul.”

I straightened slowly, easing back from the door. Easier to face her head-on than let her catch me bent over the lock like a second-rate burglar auditioning for local theatre.

“No,” I said, keeping my voice casual, light enough to pretend none of this looked as bad as it was. “I’m… looking after a few things for him.”

Her eyebrows arched so high they practically threatened escape into her hairline. “Is that right?” She leaned further across, lowering her voice into a conspiratorial whisper that somehow managed to carry every syllable with surgical clarity. This was not a whisper designed for discretion; it was designed for an audience. “You won’t find much to look after. They’ve been gone—” her lips pursed with theatrical relish “—four days now, maybe five. Left in quite a hurry, too. Claire had that wild look about her, you know the one.”

I gave a low, non-committal hum, the verbal equivalent of folding my arms and refusing to clap. I didn’t know the one. I didn’t care to. The last thing I wanted was to fuel her performance by playing the audience she so clearly thought she deserved.

“And the dog—Charlie, wasn’t it?” she continued, voice bright with the relish of someone who knew she’d arrived at the good part of the story and had no intention of rushing. She lingered over each word, drawing it out as though savouring a boiled sweet. “Well, the police came for her yesterday. Poor thing looked confused as anything, getting lifted into the back of their ute. Officer Massey had her on the lead. Such a shame, lovely animal.”

She clicked her tongue in mock sympathy, a neat, practised sound that landed with all the sincerity of a stage prop. It was the kind of noise you could tell she’d rehearsed in private, fine-tuned for maximum effect in precisely these sorts of exchanges. “They didn’t say why, of course, but you can tell a lot from a person’s shoes. Those officers? Not here for a friendly chat.”

I kept my face carefully neutral, a polite mask stretched thin, the blank expression of someone performing interest while their insides mutinied. Behind the stillness, I rolled my eyes with such exaggerated force I half expected to strain something vital. This woman didn’t merely have opinions; she curated them, catalogued and polished them until they gleamed, then presented them at every opportunity like antiques in a glass case. All that was required was the faintest provocation—a passer-by, a cough—and suddenly the exhibition opened, free entry, no closing hours.

“Right. Thanks for letting me know.” The words fell flat, functional, the conversational equivalent of sliding a lid shut on a box I had no desire to open further.

But she wasn’t retreating. Not a chance. Instead she shifted her weight against the fence, settling into it like a bird preparing to roost for the afternoon, feathers ruffled just so. Her shoulders hunched into comfort, her eyes glittered with the anticipation of a performer who knew she had an audience cornered. Mischief clung to her the way cheap perfume lingers in a lift—thick, inescapable, and far more enduring than it had any right to be.

“Course, you know who else was there? Brock Polden. Mmhmm.” She said his name with the kind of satisfaction a priest might pour into Amen, rolling it slow across her tongue as though the syllables themselves deserved italics. “Local boy. Everyone knows Brock. Grew up here, went off to Sydney, did something brave apparently—don’t ask me what, the details are always fuzzy—but came back, thank God. Looks after his mum now. Salt of the earth.”

I nodded blandly, a vague tilt of the head that I hoped read as polite acknowledgment but carried all the enthusiasm of a damp tea towel. With any luck, it would purchase me a swift retreat.

It didn’t.

“Well.” She fluttered her fingers in the air, delicate as lace, the sleeve of her housecoat slipping just enough to expose an elbow as sharp as the undertone of her words. “It doesn’t hurt that he’s a bit of a looker. Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed.”

Her eyes narrowed, sharp and searching, trying to pry some flicker of confession out of my silence. “All the women do. Married or not. You should see them when he walks into Woolies, half the trolleys suddenly in need of rescuing from the cereal aisle. And the men? Well, they all want to be him, though they’d never admit it.”

I bit down on the inside of my cheek until it stung, the only thing keeping my expression from betraying me.

But the neighbour wasn’t finished—not by a long stretch.

“And then there’s Massey. Felicity. New in town, sharp suits, polished shoes. Always has that big-city air about her, like Broken Hill should be grateful she’s deigned to grace us with her presence. Good at her job, don’t get me wrong, but not exactly the neighbourly type. Never see her at a sausage sizzle.” She leaned over the fence, conspiratorial, voice dropping as though she were about to pass classified intelligence. “If you ask me, I reckon she and Brock make an odd pair. Beauty and the… well, beauty, I suppose.”

Her own joke detonated into a short, delighted cackle, her shoulders shaking with the triumph of it.

I let out a long, slow breath, pitched somewhere between sigh and surrender. If I stayed quiet, she’d keep talking until kingdom come. If I spoke, she’d only spin a new tangent to snare me with. A lose–lose situation dressed in florals and gossip, and I’d walked straight into it.

“Anyway,” the woman pressed on, riding the momentum of her own story, clearly delighted with her performance. “Claire and the kids—gone in a puff. And Charlie, carted off by the police. Poor darling. She looked so bewildered, sitting in the back of that ute. Didn’t even bark. Just stared. Broke my heart.”

The words hit harder than I wanted them to. That image snagged in me, lodged sharp and unwelcome: Charlie’s trusting eyes caught behind glass, her silence louder than any sound Gertrude could conjure. Not barking—just sitting there, still and bewildered. That hurt more than if she’d howled.

The woman finally paused, drawing herself up with the self-importance of someone who knew she’d delivered her sermon and was now waiting for the benediction. 

“I don’t think we’ve met, love. I’m Gertrude.”

She offered the name like a challenge, eyes narrowing just slightly, daring me to meet it with my own.

I hesitated half a beat too long. Beatrix wasn’t a name I wanted drifting loose here—not in Broken Hill, not now, not where it could be carried fence to fence, diluted and reshaped until it reached ears it shouldn’t.

“Sophie,” I said at last, letting the syllables fall with just enough weight, as if they had always belonged to me.

Her gaze flicked over me, sharp and assessing, testing the name for weak seams. “Sophie. Right.” A small nod followed, satisfied enough to tuck it away for later use. “You tell Paul I said hello, will you? And that Charlie was a very good girl.”

“I will,” I replied, giving her the same small nod back, deliberate, careful to hold her gaze long enough to close the moment, not open it wider.

Gertrude pursed her lips, as though turning over the possibility of another instalment in her ongoing chronicle. Then, perhaps sensing she’d already exhausted the juiciest morsels, she straightened. One last look—sharp, assessing, the sort of look you could feel being filed away in a mental ledger—and she shuffled off.

Her housecoat dragged in her wake, roses wilting with every step, and the faint slap of her slippers lingered against the pavement until the sound dissolved into the stillness. Somewhere behind her, a gate clicked shut with a finality that almost felt deliberate.

I exhaled slowly, letting the morning air wash through me, cool and dry. Gertrude’s words rattled in my head louder than they had any right to, the image of Charlie bundled into the back of a police ute sharper, crueller, for the detail of her silence.

Somewhat reluctantly, I turned back toward the door, the key heavy and certain in my palm once more.