Jack didn’t need her anymore. Gab knew it. Not in the same way, anyhow. Brian would win custody; Gab decided she would even help him do it. Jack was safe at Brian’s, and he was happy there. He deserved that. And she hoped it would hurt her mum. But she was filled with a flooding resentment at the thought that Gina would simply attribute it all to the gods, to fate or to whatever suited her latest penchant for avoiding reality. Gina refused to realise her own agency.

There was no point hanging around. Gab was free. She had been pushed so far that she just couldn’t care anymore. Gab was sick of it, literally sick. So, after walking the paddocks for hours and then lying in Tony’s hammock under his veranda until dark, Gab walked silently back to her room. She went to her shelf and pulled out last year’s University handbook. As it was September, her re-enrolment letter should be arriving in the next couple of months. She could take up her place after the year-long deferral.

A Bachelor of Agriculture. Now she allowed herself to really imagine it, to place herself there. She read through the first-year units: Foundations of Agricultural Science, Agriculture in Australia, Biology, Plant production systems, Animal production systems … She knew she’d love it; she was hungry for it. Her mind was a new place.

She didn’t tell Gina what she was planning. They didn’t talk. Gab began spending her evenings after work in Tony’s hammock or in his lounge-room, planning and researching.

She’d be moving to Melbourne. She needed somewhere to live. But her eyeballs nearly fell out of her head when she saw the prices of university onsite accommodation. Then she checked places further away from the university. Slightly more affordable—but only because Gab had spent a whole year working and saving.

“Well, Mr. C,” she said aloud to herself, as she lay in the hammock one evening, “good thing I worked this year after all! Imagine living in the city with no savings!”

Gab was nervous about finding her way into and around the city. She could do so much for herself already, but she felt like a country mouse when it came to moving out. She’d only been into Melbourne a handful of times on school excursions. Her mum certainly never took her on outings or taught her to navigate terrain beyond their own town. But Gab was wholly determined to do it.

By the end of the week, she had a long list of accommodation options. On Saturday morning, she sat down and tried to make a shortlist. By lunchtime, she needed a break and took a ride down to the shops for a blue sports drink and a pie. Riding back, her mind worked as hard in filtering the mental overload as her legs did in pumping the pedals. Against the grain of the hoarding nature instilled in her by a life of poverty, Gab decided (by the time she got home) that what she would look for a middle-of-the-road share-house. A couple of hundred dollars a week would be manageable. That eliminated the top-notch accommodation, which was never really an option anyway, and the dead-cheap single rooms that looked about as big as a cereal box. Those could wait for next year, if and when her money ran out. If she could find a part-time job in the city, that would help too. Her work experience put her in good stead.

Satisfied with her decision, she worked through her short-list and began the online applications. That made it frighteningly real. Fingers crossed something would work out. Send. Send. Send. And more sending. Nine applications sent by dinnertime. It would be cheese on toast tonight. She had more important things to be doing than cooking. Did it matter that the re-enrolment letter hadn’t come yet? She felt nervous about it, but surely it would come?