Page 19 of Wings Above the Mallee

High colour shot into Lynn’s cheeks. ‘Well, yes, that. But I mean we’ve footy, tennis and netball clubs, the CWA, Apex. Monica has a book club, if you’re brave enough.’

As knowing laughter rippled around the table, bringing the arguing factions together for a moment, Sean raised both hands in question.

‘Monica chooses all the books herself,’ Tracey explained. ‘And you aren’t permitted to disagree with her reviews.’

‘Ah. Perhaps I’ll steer clear of that one, then. But I get what Ethan is saying. None of those are things that will appeal to some teenager who’s not old enough to have a licence to escape the town and isn’t into team sport. Where dotheygo, what do they do?’

‘That doesn’t make the skatepark a solution,’ Christine snapped. ‘You’re trying to make it sound as though performing some silly child’s trick on a toy with wheels is an achievement and will magically stop the kids hanging around, smoking or snorting, or whatever it is they do.’

From the corner of his eye, Sean caught Charlee tug on the sleeve of her shirt, covering the track marks on the underside of her arm. Although empathy flared through him, it was edged with excitement: Charlee had flaunted the scars previously, intent on claiming her right to do whatever made her feel better. This embarrassment, the disowning of her addiction, was new.

‘You’re not getting it.’ Ethan sounded disappointed. The grimace he flashed at Heath seemed to invite his camaraderie. He was definitely barking up the wrong tree there.‘This is why I need to study more onhowto teach.’ He frowned down at his hands, clenched on the table. ‘See,’ he said thoughtfully, ‘it’s not so much about what the achievement is, it’s about the focus required to get there. There was a study done years ago where they put a rat in a cage. It had a couple of water bottles, one with pure water, the other laced with cocaine. The rat preferred the drugged water and died within a couple of weeks.’

‘You just proved addicts can’t be redeemed,’ Tracey said, sounding horrified.

‘No, wait, I know this one.’ The doc sat forward on the edge of her seat. ‘This was Bruce Alexander’s experiment?’

Ethan nodded. ‘Actually, the original experiment was from the early twentieth century. I can’t claim to be smart enough to have read that or Alexander’s papers, but I’ve practically memorised Johann Hari’s TED Talk. He makes the information more accessible. Anyway—’ he straightened, looking around the table to catch everyone’s attention. ‘—in the seventies, Bruce took another look at the original experiment. He pointed out they were putting the rat in a cage with nothing to do, no stimulation, no entertainment, literally nothing but a choice between the numbing effect of drugs or drinking plain water and living with his misery. So then Bruce built this place he called Rat Park. Supplied the rat with food, friends, enrichment toys. Everything he imagined a rat could want. Plus the two water bottles. And here’s the thing.’ Ethan leaned in excitedly. ‘In Rat Park, the rats overwhelmingly avoided the drugs. They were happy. They were busy. Their environment provided everything they could need. They wereconnected.’

Taylor Hartmann twisted her necklace around one finger, a crucifix glinting in the tired yellow light. ‘I think Bruce’s takeaway was that he believed addiction is an adaptionto your environment, not a reflection of your morality or a fault in your brain,’ she said.

Sean shot her a quick glance to make certain she wasn’t targeting him. As his GP, she knew his background. And misery had certainly provided him with an environment rich for breeding addiction. One that the constant stress of worrying about Heath and Charlee threatened to recreate.

‘But kids have everything they could possibly want now, don’t they?’ Lynn reached for the platter of cakes and offered it around the table, as though intent on doing her best to fill any ‘gap’ in their own needs.

‘That’s just it,’ Ethan said. His gaze fixed on Charlee. ‘Like Taylor said, we’ve become a consumer-driven society. So now we try to show our love and care by purchasing things for others. We’re emotionally isolated, we buy our kids everything we think they could want, but we fail to give them what they really need: connection.’

‘“The opposite of addiction is not sobriety—”’ Taylor started.

‘“The opposite of addiction is connection,”’ Ethan finished firmly. ‘Hari is completely right.’

‘It’s a fair argument,’ Heath said, his forehead deeply creased.

Sean wasn’t fooled by his son’s apparent agreement. He knew that, later, Heath would dissect what Ethan had said, looking for the accusations directed at his parenting. And they were most definitely there.

‘Or at least, this Hari guy makes a point.’ Heath’s words seemed to come easier as he shifted any inferred accolade away from his daughter’s lover. ‘But obviously this needs more discussion. It’s not something we want to jump into. I’d suggest the next step would be to investigate how skateparks have worked in other rural towns; whether they’vebeen used and whether that usage comes hand in hand with undesirable behaviours, or if it’s had a measurable positive effect on local youth. There’s a skatepark in Murray Bridge, so I suggest we speak with council about that one. But I’ve not been in the area long enough to know if there’s a similar instalment in a comparable town anywhere else.’

‘I’ll stick my hand up for that,’ Ethan said. ‘My workload is reasonably light this semester, so I can fit in some research.’

‘Ah, yes, uni,’ Heath said, derisively. ‘Mature-age teaching, right?’ Perhaps he’d already unpacked the accusation hidden in Ethan’s words.

‘Not exactly,’ Ethan said, with a shrug that seemed almost apologetic. ‘I’ll finish my Master’s this year.’

10

Amelia

It was obvious that the participants intended to make a very late afternoon tea event of the meeting, so Amelia snuck from the boardroom as soon as she could. The light was still on in Faelie’s office; Amelia suspected that, despite her demands, her manager didn’t trust her to lock up. Well, that suited her just fine. As Gavin and his wife, Hannah, were passing through town that evening, headed from Keith to Adelaide for another hospital admission tomorrow, she had suggested she buy them dinner. She wasn’t about to let herself get tangled up in Gavin’s life—that was half the reason for moving away from Keith, creating the necessary distance to buffer her emotions, keeping herself aloof so that pain couldn’t seep in—but she did owe him for dropping off her furniture. Tracey had suggested that, of the two pubs at the bottom of main street, the Overland provided the best meals.

Amelia unlocked her phone to shoot Gavin a text, directing him to the correct pub.

‘You did a runner, too?’

Sean’s voice drew her eyes from the screen and she set the phone down. ‘Not a local, so I was only in there on sufferance-slash-work. Not sure that the new chairman is allowed to escape early, though.’

Sean chuckled. ‘They’ve moved on to rating the food, so I think I’m excused until next meeting. Besides, you’re about as local as me, so I don’t think you can use that as a get-out-of-jail card.’

‘I’m sure you’ve been here longer than a couple of weeks.’

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