And that is how I found myself driving to the little town of Hillgrove with Melissa the following weekend. We were in Melissa's car, a large Lexus, because I doubted mine would have made the distance. It needed new tires, plus the mechanic had told me to sell it as it the repairs would cost more than the car was worth. "I need botox." "What?" I said. We had just left Armidale and were driving out to Hillgrove along a road thickly flanked by old eucalyptus trees. Melissa's botox statement had come out of the blue. "Oh no." "What's wrong?" "I just spilled some of the coffee on my jeans." We had been to Armidale McDonald's on our way. Hillgrove didn't have a McDonald's - it didn't even have a single store, no 7-Eleven, no gas station (we call them petrol stations in Australia), no café. "Anyway, Melissa, you don't need botox. Why would you think you'd need botox?" Melissa sighed. "Well, the other day, Skinny asked me if I'd been crying, and I said No, and she said she thought I'd been crying because of all the lines around my eyes." I couldn't help laughing.
