Non-Negotiable

"Packing for a holiday and packing for an escape use the same muscles. The difference is in what you're willing to leave behind."

Through the back door. Through the kitchen.

I was already cataloguing before I'd fully crossed the threshold—my eyes scanning the room, my mind racing through logistics with a clarity that felt almost chemical. What did I need? What could I leave behind? The car. The children. Clothes. Documents. The essentials of a life reduced to what could be carried, what could be loaded into the boot of a car and driven east until everything else faded to irrelevance.

My body knew what to do even when my thoughts couldn't keep up. Muscle memory, maybe. Some deep maternal instinct for flight that had been waiting all along, dormant beneath the years of stability and routine, ready to activate the moment circumstances demanded it. I'd packed for holidays before. For weekends away, for visits to Adelaide, for that glorious trip to Brisbane when the children were younger and everything had seemed possible. The mechanics were the same. Only the stakes had changed.

I moved through the kitchen without stopping, registering the mess peripherally but not letting it slow me down. The dishes could rot in the sink. The food could spoil in the fridge. None of it mattered. None of it would matter once we were gone.

The bedroom.

The door was still ajar from this morning—or was it yesterday? The days had blurred together so completely that I couldn't remember the last time I'd actually slept in this room, in that bed, like a normal person living a normal life. The curtains were still drawn, filtering the afternoon light into something grey and underwater. The sheets were still tangled from whenever I'd last tried to rest here. Evidence of unravelling, everywhere I looked.

I didn't look.

Instead I went straight to the wardrobe, reaching up to the top shelf where the suitcases lived. The big one—the one from the Brisbane trip, still with the Qantas baggage tag attached to the handle, a small white rectangle that read BNE and reminded me of palm trees and chlorine and the sound of my children laughing in a swimming pool. I grabbed it, yanked it down, felt the weight of it in my hands.

The suitcase hit the unmade bed with a soft thump. I unzipped it in one motion, the teeth parting with that particular sound of possibility, of departure, of going somewhere else.

Drawers. I pulled open the top one without thinking, grabbed handfuls of underwear and bras, threw them into the suitcase without looking. It didn't matter if they matched. It didn't matter if I had too many or too few. What mattered was covering the basics, filling the case, getting out.

The second drawer. Shirts—casual ones, the soft cotton t-shirts I wore around the house, a few nicer blouses for occasions I couldn't currently imagine. They went in. The third drawer, then the fourth. Jeans—the good pair and the everyday pair, the ones with the loose waistband that I wore when I was bloated or sad. Leggings. A pair of shorts that I hadn't worn since last summer but threw in anyway because Queensland was warm and Broken Hill was cold and somewhere between here and there the weather would change.

Jumpers. I'd need jumpers for the drive. I grabbed three without looking at which ones, shoved them in on top of everything else. The suitcase was filling fast, fabric spilling over the edges, refusing to lie flat no matter how I pressed it down.

My one nice dress. I saw it hanging at the back of the wardrobe, navy blue with small white flowers, the one I'd worn to Mack's school concert last year. Why was I even looking at it? What possible occasion would require a nice dress in the next few weeks? But my hands were already reaching for it, pulling it off the hanger, folding it roughly and cramming it into the corner of the case. I didn't know why. I didn't have time to examine why. It went in, and I kept moving.

The bathroom.

The small overnight bag was under the sink, the one I used for weekends away. I grabbed it, unzipped it, started sweeping things off the counter. Toothbrush. Toothpaste. Deodorant. The expensive moisturiser Paul had bought me for my birthday last year—French, with packaging that made it look like it belonged in a different life altogether. I hesitated for half a second, some part of me wanting to leave it behind out of spite. But spite was a luxury I couldn't afford right now. The moisturiser went in.

My hand brushed against the pharmacy bag.

I'd set it here when I'd gotten home, dropped it on the bathroom counter along with all the other detritus of my hospital discharge. The white paper bag with its folded top, containing the box of sertraline I had no intention of taking. I should throw it away, I thought. Should toss it in the bin and forget it ever existed.

But Dawn.

If Dawn found it—if she came to the house for some reason and saw the prescription bag, saw the label with my name and the words "mental health" somewhere in the fine print—she would know. Would know that whatever I'd told her on the phone had been a lie, that the hospital stay had been more serious than I'd let on, that the "mistake with medication" had resulted in a psychiatric assessment and a new prescription for antidepressants.

I couldn't let Dawn find it. Couldn't give her more ammunition, more evidence, more reasons to question whether I was fit to take care of my own children.

The pharmacy bag went into the overnight bag, buried beneath the toiletries where no one would think to look. Not to take. To hide. Evidence of where I'd been, tucked away where it couldn't betray me.

Back to the bedroom.

What else? My mind raced through possibilities even as my hands kept moving. Phone charger—essential, couldn't survive two days on the road without it. I found it plugged in beside the bed, wound the cord around itself, threw it in the case. The novel on my nightstand, a thriller I'd started months ago and never finished—why not, I might have time to read where I was going. My jewellery box, the wooden one, too complicated to sort through so I just grabbed the whole thing and shoved it in.

The suitcase was overflowing now. Clothes and toiletries and random objects jumbled together without any of the careful organisation I would normally bring to packing. No neat piles, no rolled garments to save space, no thoughtful curation of outfits for different occasions. Just stuff. Enough stuff to survive on. Enough to get me from here to Queensland without having to stop and buy things I'd forgotten.

I tried to close it. The zipper refused, straining against the bulge of overpacked contents. I sat on the lid—actually sat on it, my full weight pressing down—and yanked at the zipper with both hands. It gave, grudgingly, catching twice on fabric that had escaped through the teeth. I didn't care. It was closed. Good enough.

The children's rooms.

I stood in the hallway for a moment, the suitcase zipped and waiting on the bed behind me, looking at the two closed doors ahead. Mack's room on the left, decorated with the solar system decals we'd let him choose when he turned six. Rose's on the right, painted pink at her insistence two years ago, a colour I'd grown to hate but couldn't bring myself to change because she loved it so much.

I hadn't been in either room since before the hospital. Since before the studio. Since before any of this had happened. The children had been at Dawn's for days now—since Saturday? Sunday? The timeline blurred—and their rooms had sat empty, waiting, preserved in whatever state they'd left them.

Mack's room first.

I pushed open the door and stepped inside, and for a moment the familiarity of it—the smell of little boy, the chaos of toys and books, the posters on the walls—made something crack in my chest. This was my son's space. My son, who didn't know his father had left, who didn't know his mother had spent the night in a hospital being assessed for psychiatric admission. My son, who I was about to uproot from everything familiar and drive two thousand kilometres across the country because I couldn't stand to stay here another day.

I forced the thought away. Packed instead.

His drawers were less organised than mine—clothes jumbled together regardless of type, clean and dirty sometimes mixed, the chaos of a nine-year-old who hadn't yet learned to care about such things. I grabbed handfuls without sorting. Shorts. Shirts. Underwear. Socks, mismatched but functional. His warmest jumper, the one with the spaceship on it that he'd worn until the cuffs frayed.

The space book. It was on his shelf, the big one about the solar system that he'd asked for last Christmas and read so many times the spine was cracking. I pulled it down, added it to the growing pile. He'd want it for the drive. He'd want something familiar while everything else changed.

The stuffed dog.

It was on his bed, right where he always left it—a floppy brown thing with mismatched button eyes, named Captain for reasons I'd never fully understood. Mack was nine now. Too old, he'd decided, for stuffed animals. But Captain still lived on his bed, still got tucked under his arm at night when he thought no one was looking, still mattered in ways he wasn't ready to admit.

I grabbed Captain and shoved him into the bag on top of everything else.

Rose's room.

The pink hit me as soon as I opened the door—that particular shade she'd chosen, somewhere between bubblegum and salmon, overwhelming in its intensity. The room smelled like strawberries, the lingering ghost of the shampoo she insisted on, the one that came in a bottle shaped like a cartoon character and cost twice as much as the regular kind.

My daughter's room. My daughter, who was five years old and still believed in magic, who wouldn't understand any of what was happening, who would ask questions I didn't know how to answer.

Later. I would deal with that later. Right now, I packed.

Rose's clothes were smaller but more numerous—she changed outfits three times a day when given the opportunity, cycling through her wardrobe with a dedication that bordered on obsessive. I grabbed more than I probably needed. Dresses. Leggings. The rainbow shirt she'd been wearing constantly for the past month. Underwear with cartoon characters on them. Socks with frills that she loved and I found ridiculous.

The purple blanket.

It was folded at the foot of her bed, the one she'd had since she was a baby, so worn now that the fabric was thin as paper in places. She couldn't sleep without it. Had meltdowns when it wasn't available, real screaming tantrums that nothing could soothe. The blanket went in the bag before anything else. Non-negotiable.

The musical jewellery box. The one that played "Für Elise" when you opened the lid, the one she'd received for her last birthday and treated like a sacred object ever since. It held nothing of value—plastic rings, bead bracelets, the kind of cheap jewellery that came in party bags—but Rose didn't know that. To her, it was treasure. I wrapped it in one of her shirts to protect it, nested it carefully among the clothes.

A bag for each child. Not full—they had more things at Dawn's, the clothes and toys they'd taken for their stay. But enough. Enough for now. Enough to get them through the first few days while I figured out what came next.

The hallway was accumulating luggage like debris from a flood. My suitcase, bulging at the seams. The overnight bag with toiletries and hidden prescriptions. Mack's backpack, stuffed with clothes and books and a stuffed dog. Rose's little pink rolling case, filled with dresses and a blanket and a music box. Evidence of departure, piling up around me.

I went to the kitchen.

Snacks. We'd need snacks for the drive—the kids would get hungry, would get bored, would need the distraction of food to break up the endless hours on the road. I opened cupboards without really seeing what was inside, grabbing things by instinct. Crackers. Muesli bars, the ones with chocolate chips that Mack liked. Juice boxes, the small ones that fit in cup holders. A packet of biscuits, slightly stale but serviceable. An apple that had seen better days but wasn't actually rotten.

The tote bag by the back door—the one I used for shopping—became the snack bag, filled with enough provisions to get us to started at least. We could stop somewhere, buy more if we needed to. We could figure it out as we went.

I carried everything to the hallway, added it to the pile.

Then I stopped.

For the first time since leaving the studio, I stood still. Let myself feel the pounding of my heart, the rapid shallow breathing, the tremor in my hands that I'd been ignoring in the rush to pack. The house was quiet around me. The afternoon light was fading, grey giving way to something darker, something that spoke of approaching evening.

I was about to take my children and leave.

The thought landed with sudden weight. Not the plan itself—I'd been operating on the plan, moving through it step by step—but the reality of what I was about to do. I was going to drive to Dawn's house, collect Mack and Rose, put them in the car, and drive away. Without telling Dawn first. Without explaining, without asking permission, without giving her any chance to talk me out of it.

Should I call her? The thought surfaced, tentative, immediately threatening to derail everything. I should call. Should give her some warning, some context. Should explain that I was taking the kids on a trip, that we needed to get away, that I would call her from the road and let her know we were safe.

But if I called, she would ask questions. Would want to know why now, why suddenly, why I couldn't wait until tomorrow or next week or some more reasonable time. And what would I say? That I'd spent the morning scrubbing bloodstains from my studio floor? That two of my students' mothers had already withdrawn? That I'd screamed at my mother-in-law on the phone and given my absent husband an ultimatum I had no intention of honouring?

Dawn would hear something in my voice. She always did. She'd hear the edge, the fracture, the barely-contained hysteria. And she would worry. Would question whether I was in any state to be taking the children anywhere. Would maybe—

Would maybe refuse to give them back.

The thought was ice water in my veins.

Dawn had the children right now. Dawn, who had heard something in my voice during that phone call from the hospital, who remembered 2010 and everything that had happened then. If she decided I wasn't fit—if she decided this trip was a bad idea, that I was unstable, that the children were better off staying with her—what could I do? They were in her house. Under her roof. She could simply refuse to release them, could tell me to go home and rest and wait until I was thinking more clearly.

No.

I couldn't risk it. Couldn't give her the opportunity to stop me, to question me, to look at me with those eyes that saw too much and decide that she knew better than I did what my children needed.

I would just arrive. Calm, collected, reasonable. I'd proven at the hospital that I could do that—could perform stability well enough to convince a psychiatric registrar to discharge me. Surely I could convince my own mother.

I'd tell her I was taking the kids on a trip. A holiday. The school holidays weren't quite over yet; we had a few days before term started. A road trip, I'd say. To see Amelia. The kids would love it. They needed to get away, all three of us did. I'd make it sound spontaneous but not crazy. Impulsive but not dangerous.

Dawn would understand. She had to understand.

And if she didn't—if she tried to stop me—

I'd cross that bridge when I came to it.

Final sweep. I moved through the house one more time, room by room, checking for things I might have forgotten. Keys—on the hook by the door, right where they were supposed to be. Wallet—in my handbag, containing cards and cash and the driver's licence I'd need for verification if anything went wrong. Phone charger—already packed. The phone itself was in my pocket, cracked screen and all, my lifeline to the outside world.

The hallway was full of bags now. Luggage blocking the path to the front door, the physical evidence of departure. I stood among it, breathing hard, and let myself feel the enormity of what I was about to do.

This was real. This was happening. In a few minutes I was going to load these bags into the car, drive to Dawn's house, collect my children, and leave. Leave Broken Hill. Leave my studio. Leave my marriage, or whatever remained of it. Leave everything I'd built here and drive north until it was all behind me.

I wasn't sad.

That surprised me, in a distant way. I'd expected to feel something—grief, regret, the ache of leaving home. But standing here in the hallway of the house I'd lived in for years, looking at the evidence of the life I was abandoning, I felt nothing but the urgent need to go. The dirty dishes in the kitchen. The twisted blanket on the couch. Paul's coffee shattered coffee mug on the kitchen floor, exactly where it had landed when I'd thrown it days ago.

None of it mattered. None of it could hold me here.

I stepped over the bags, walked to the front door, put my hand on the handle.

For a moment I stood there, not quite opening it, not quite ready to step through into whatever waited on the other side. The house was quiet behind me. Peaceful, almost, in its abandonment. I could still change my mind. Could still unpack the bags, put everything back where it belonged, wait for Paul to maybe show up tomorrow morning like I'd told Greta.

But I wasn't going to do that.

I knew it with absolute certainty. Whatever capacity I'd once had for waiting, for patience, for hope—it was gone. Burned out by the last four days, consumed by the fire of everything that had happened. I was empty of everything except the need to move.

I opened the door.

The grey afternoon light flooded in, cold and colourless. The front yard looked the same as always—the patchy grass, the letterbox slightly askew, the street beyond with its ordinary houses and ordinary lives. Nothing out there knew what was about to happen. Nothing was waiting to stop me.

I turned back, grabbed the first bag, stepped out onto the porch.