The Director, coming to collect an interviewee. Cate had been surprised, and impressed, by this at the time: it had seemed to her a good omen. A sign of something democractic in the system, to be chauffeured by the boss. But Dottoressa Meadows had barely even shaken her hand at the station, and said nothing, or close to it, as they drove, the car sweet with an expensive fragrance Cate remembered from her most sophisticated aunt’s top drawer. Now, of course, Cate knew – everyone knew – that Loni Meadows regularly found reasons to nip into town; that the big offroader smelled of her perfume because it had become to all intents and purposes her personal property. Then, Cate had ended up staring through the car’s high windows at the great sweeping hills, glittering in the heat haze, miles and miles without a single farmstead. On their way through the hills they’d passed at least one car wreck being examined by the police, only the car’s bonnet visible, thrust out from under a dense thicket of myrtle.
