Small Town Choreography

"In Broken Hill, everyone knows your name. The trick is making sure they never learn what it costs you to answer to it."

The car started on the first try, which felt like a small victory.

I sat in the driveway with the engine idling, my hands on the steering wheel, staring at the garage door without seeing it. The heater was blowing cold air that would eventually turn warm, and somewhere in the back of my mind a voice was asking where exactly I thought I was going.

Petrol. I needed petrol.

The thought had arrived in the hallway, clear and practical—a reason to leave, a destination, a purpose that required nothing more complicated than driving to the servo and filling the tank. I'd seized on it like a lifeline. The car needed petrol. This was true, or true enough—the gauge showed a quarter tank, which wasn't empty but wasn't full either, which was close enough to necessity that I could pretend I wasn't just fleeing my own house.

I put the car in reverse. Backed out of the driveway. Turned onto the street.

Broken Hill spread out around me, familiar as my own heartbeat. The houses I'd passed a thousand times, the trees I'd watched grow from saplings, the cracks in the footpath that had been there since I was a teenager walking home from school. This was my town—the town where I'd been born, where I'd built my business, where everyone knew my name and my face and probably the make and model of my car.

The thought should have been comforting. Instead, it made something cold settle in my stomach.

I turned onto Williams Street, then Chloride, letting the route unfold without conscious decision. The servo on Argent Street was the logical choice—closest, cheapest, the place I always went. The fact that it was in the same part of town as Paul's office was coincidence. Geography. Nothing more.

But as I approached the intersection, my eyes began to move.

It wasn't deliberate. I wasn't searching—I was just driving, just noticing, the way you noticed things when you lived somewhere your whole life and knew every building and business. The car park outside Broken Hill Hydraulics, three utes and a sedan. The stretch of kerb near the welding shop where trucks sometimes parked overnight. The lot behind the electrical wholesaler.

No Paul.

His office came into view on the left—the squat brick building with its faded signage, the windows that always looked slightly grimy, the car park that held maybe twenty vehicles on a busy day. My foot eased off the accelerator without my permission, the car slowing as I passed.

Six cars in the car park. I catalogued them in the space of a breath—red Commodore, blue Hilux, white Camry, silver something-or-other, two more I didn't bother to identify. None of them his. None of them the vehicle I was scanning for, the specific shape and colour that had become suddenly, urgently important.

He wasn't at work.

The servo appeared on my right. I indicated, pulled in, chose the pump furthest from the road. The movement was automatic, my body performing the familiar sequence while my mind continued to churn.

I got out of the car. The air was cold, that dry Broken Hill cold that cut straight through your clothes, and I wrapped my arms around myself as I reached for the pump.

The petrol flowed. I watched the numbers climb on the display, letting the mechanical rhythm of it occupy the part of my brain that wanted to spiral. Litres accumulating. Dollars adding up. Simple, quantifiable, controllable—unlike everything else.

A car pulled up to the pump beside me. I didn't look—kept my eyes on the display, on the numbers, on anything except the world around me. But I could feel presence nearby, could hear a door opening and closing, footsteps on concrete.

"Claire? Claire Smith?"

The voice made me turn before I could decide whether I wanted to.

The man standing beside the neighbouring pump was vaguely familiar—middle-aged, weather-beaten face, the kind of build that came from physical work rather than gym membership. He was smiling at me with the easy warmth of someone who expected to be recognised, expected the smile to be returned.

I didn't know his name. I knew I should—knew I'd seen him somewhere, talked to him at some point, filed him away in the vast mental catalogue of people who populated this town. But the pills had fogged everything, and his name was lost somewhere in the murk.

"Hi," I said. "How are you?"

Safe. Generic. The kind of response that worked whether you remembered someone or not.

"Good, good. Can't complain." He was already unscrewing his fuel cap, his movements casual, unhurried. "Haven't seen you around the Demo club lately. You and Paul been busy?"

The name hit like a small electric shock. I kept my face still, my voice steady.

"You know how it is. Work, kids, the usual chaos."

"Tell me about it." He laughed, that easy laugh of someone with nothing to hide. "Jan keeps saying we should get out more, but by the time the weekend rolls around I'm too knackered to move. How's the dance school going? My niece is in your Saturday class—Emily? Emily Thornton?"

"Emily, yes." The name surfaced from somewhere, bringing with it a vague image—a small girl with brown plaits, more enthusiasm than coordination, a tendency to drift left during travelling steps. "She's coming along beautifully."

The lie came easily, smoothly, with the practised warmth I used for all the parents and relatives who wanted to hear that their children were special. Emily Thornton was average at best, would likely never progress beyond the basics, but you didn't say that. You said coming along beautifully and let them fill in whatever meaning they needed.

"That's great to hear. She loves it—talks about it all the time. Mrs Claire this, Mrs Claire that." He grinned, genuine pleasure in his expression. "You've got a real gift with the little ones."

"Thank you. That's lovely to hear."

The pump clicked off. Tank full. I replaced the nozzle, screwed the cap back on, moved through the motions carefully, while my heart beat too fast and my skin prickled with the effort of appearing normal.

"Well," I said, already stepping away, "better get going. Nice to see you."

"You too. Say hi to Paul for me."

"I will."

The words were out before I could stop them, automatic, meaningless—the kind of thing you said when ending a conversation, not a promise, not anything real. But they snagged on something as I walked towards the servo building, caught in my throat like a fishbone.

Say hi to Paul for me.

I pushed through the glass door into the fluorescent brightness of the shop.

The interior of the servo was aggressively ordinary.

Racks of chips and chocolates. A refrigerated section humming with soft drinks and energy drinks and bottles of water. The counter at the back, staffed by a woman I'd known for fifteen years—Maureen something, her surname escaping me the way the man's name had escaped me, my brain apparently having decided that proper nouns were optional today.

"Claire!" Maureen's face brightened as I approached. "Haven't seen you in a while. How's tricks?"

"Good, thanks. Just the petrol."

I retrieved my bankcard, watched her process the payment with the unhurried pace of someone who had nowhere else to be. The servo was quiet—just me and Maureen and an old man browsing the newspaper rack near the door.

"Kids enjoying the holidays?" Maureen asked, handing back my card.

"They're at Mum's for a few days. Giving me a chance to catch up on things."

"Oh, that's nice. Dawn must be loving it—she adores those grandkids." Maureen leaned on the counter, settling in for a chat. "I saw her at the IGA last week, talking about some project Rose is doing? Making fairy houses or something?"

"Sounds about right." I manufactured a smile. "Rose is in a fairy phase at the moment. Everything has to have wings and glitter."

Maureen laughed. "They're only young once. Enjoy it while it lasts—before you know it they're teenagers and they want nothing to do with you."

"So I've heard."

I should leave. Should say goodbye and walk out and get in my car and drive away. But Maureen was still talking, still leaning on that counter with her comfortable familiarity, and leaving abruptly would be noticed, would be remembered, would become part of the story that Broken Hill told about Claire Smith in the days and weeks to come.

So I stayed. I nodded in the right places. I made the appropriate sounds of agreement and interest while Maureen talked about her own children—grown now, scattered across the country, rarely calling as often as she'd like. I performed the role of normal woman having normal conversation, and I did it well, did it with the grace I brought to everything, and if my heart was racing and my palms were damp, no one could tell from looking.

"Anyway," Maureen said finally, "I'm keeping you. You've probably got a hundred things to do."

"You know how it is."

"I do indeed." She smiled. "Give my best to Paul when you see him."

There it was again. That name, that instruction, that assumption that Paul was somewhere nearby, waiting to receive the best wishes of people who had no idea he'd climbed out a window and driven away.

"I will," I said, and my voice didn't waver, and my face didn't change, and I walked out of that servo with my back straight and my pace measured and absolutely nothing in my demeanour to suggest that anything was wrong.

The car was where I'd left it. I got in, closed the door, sat there with my hands on the wheel.

Inside the servo, through the window, I could see Maureen serving another customer. She wasn't looking at me. Wasn't watching. Had already moved on to the next transaction, the next conversation, the next small interaction in a day full of them.

But the man at the pump—Emily Thornton's uncle—he'd asked about Paul. And Maureen had mentioned Paul. And that was two people in the space of ten minutes who'd assumed my husband was present in my life, accounted for, a fixed point in the constellation of our family.

What would they say when they found out he wasn't?

What would they say when the story spread—as it would, as it always did in towns like this—that Paul Smith had left his wife, had climbed out a window to escape her, had driven off into the night and not come back?

The thought made something cold settle in my stomach. I'd lived in this town my whole life. I knew how it worked, knew the way information flowed through networks of friendship and acquaintance, knew that nothing stayed private for long. By this time next week, everyone would know. By this time next month, the story would have mutated into something unrecognisable, embellished with details that had never happened, conclusions that had never been drawn.

Did you hear about Claire Smith? Her husband left her. Climbed out the window, apparently. I always thought there was something a bit off about her. Too intense, you know? Too much.

I could hear it already, the whispers, the judgments, the small satisfactions that people took in other people's misfortune. I'd seen it happen to others—had probably participated in it myself, if I was honest, had listened to the gossip and added my own speculations and never thought about what it felt like to be the subject rather than the audience.

Now I knew.

I started the engine. Put the car in gear. Pulled out of the servo and back onto the road.