Katie knew, because she had been awake since 4. Quietly, carefully, she got dressed. Her outfit had given her some trouble. Her grandad’s old army pants were not appropriate for a business trip to Sydney, but she could not bring herself to put on the knitted grey dress Lorraine had laid out for her. She pulled on jeans and a long-sleeved white t-shirt, and tied the laces of her blue Converse sneakers. Then she grabbed the emerald-green trench coat Lorraine had wanted her to wear over the grey dress. That would do. At 5.20, Katie, Lorraine, Joel and Dominic emerged from their front gates. They’d done a lot of sneaking out early as little kids – loved being up while the adults slept. Something in them had changed, though. Now, instead of wanting to be awake, they liked sleeping in much better and there hadn’t been an early-morning adventure for years. But, Katie thought as she felt the dew soak though her runners, their previous adventures had never taken them further than the Parfitt’s factory.
