The Long Way 'Round
The frosted pneumatic doors of the Concorde Room hissed shut behind Faye with a heavy, pressurised click, cleanly severing the hushed, amber-lit sanctum of crystal decanters and thick wool carpets from the manic pulse of the Terminal. Good old, Heathrow was heaving with a sea of humanity.
The transition was violent. One second she had been breathing rarefied air that smelled of cedar wood, bespoke perfume, and vintage Grand Siècle champagne; the next, her lungs were flooded with the familiar, dry bite of industrial floor polish, burnt airport coffee, and damp London rain clinging to hundreds of moist winter coats.
Faye didn’t pause. She hiked the fraying neon strap of her canvas duffel higher onto her shoulder, winced as the rough webbing bit into the base of her collarbone through her oversized thrift-store corduroy jacket, and joined the river of bodies surging toward Gate 42.
In her left hand, she clutched the battered paperback novel she’d dropped twenty minutes earlier, its front cover creased diagonally across the spine.
QF 10 to Perth via Singapore — Final Call.
The electronic boarding gate blinked with urgent amber numerals. Faye picked up her pace, her scuffed Blund-stone boots squeaking against the polished limestone. Around her, executives in sharp charcoal overcoats wheeled sleek Rimowa cases with effortless, oiled bearings.
Faye looked like a stray bit of driftwood swept into a luxury marina—swimming in corduroy two sizes too large, hair hastily bundled into a loose, sun-bleached plait, and carrying an overstuffed bag that looked as if it had survived a war zone.
At least she wasn't wrestling with her battered, big suitcase with the daisies all over the dented poly-carbonate shell. That, thankfully was checked in as cargo, to be collected at Perth international airport.
She reached the podium with moments to spare and offered her passport to the gate agent, she didn’t look flustered. She looked up through thick, pale lashes, her full lips parting into that easy, effortless smile that seemed to exist entirely separate from the chaos around her.
“Good morning,” Faye said softly. Her voice carried that quiet, musical cadence—unrushed, clear, and melodious—that invariably made people pause.
The gate agent, who had been barking boarding groups into a microphone with mechanical hostility, blinked. He took the passport and boarding pass handed to her earlier at the main check in, glanced at her rumpled appearance, and then looked directly into her wide, cornflower-blue eyes.
His rigid shoulders relaxed half an inch.
“Boarding group D, Miss Evans,” the man said, his tone softening into something almost paternal as he handed back the boarding pass. “Right down the jet bridge. Mind the step.”
“Thank you so much. Have a lovely day.”
Faye smiled, ducked through the barrier, and descended into the long, sloping accordion tunnel.
The cabin of the Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner smelled of stale pretzels, recycled ozone, and the collective anxiety of three hundred passengers bracing for twenty-four hours in an aluminium tube. Faye worked her way down the narrow economy aisle, apologising softly whenever the bulky side-pockets of her duffel clipped an armrest.
Seat 41E. The absolute dead centre of the middle bank of nine. Faye looked at her cramped seat and her companion passengers for the long haul flight ahead and heaved an internal sigh of pure resignation.
To her left sat an enormous fly-in-fly-out drill operator returning to the Pilbara mines, his tattooed forearms already claiming both plastic armrests while his knees pressed firmly against the seat back in front of him.
To her right sat an exhausted young mother wrestling an overtired eighteen-month-old whose face was already purple with impending hysterics.
Faye didn’t groan, and she didn’t sigh, at least outwardly. A composed friendly half smile plastered on her soft lips.
She deftly heaved her duffel into the overhead bin, slid into her seat, and smoothed the folds of her corduroy jacket over her lap. When the toddler dropped a plastic teething ring into the aisle with a piercing shriek, Faye simply bent down, retrieved it with a nimble flick of her slender wrist, wiped it on a clean tissue from her pocket, and handed it back with an encouraging wink that coaxed a watery hiccup of a smile from the frantic mother.
Then, before the cabin doors could seal shut, Faye reached into her canvas satchel and pulled out her salvation.
They were sleek, matte-black Sony over-ear headphones, an old birthday gift from Camilla during their shared years working the floor at Ivy. Camilla had pressed the box into Faye’s hands one evening after a brutal twelve-hour shift in IVY, her cool, aristocratically sculpted face set with firm affection: “Take them, Faye. God knows you need to shut the world out sometimes before that careless brain of yours floats into orbit.”
Faye slipped the padded cups over her ears and flicked the small toggle switch on the right side.
A low, mechanical chime sounded. Then, active noise cancellation engaged.
The cabin vanished.
The roaring jet engines, the whirr of the air nozzles, the baby’s muffled wails, the gruff throat-clearing of the miner beside her—all of it dissolved into an impenetrable, velvet hush.
Faye closed her eyes, letting her head drop back against the paper headrest.
Silence was an airlock. Inside it, she could finally breathe.
For years, the people who loved Faye had called her an eccentric sprite.
In the sleek, candlelit labyrinth of Ivy, where the ultra-wealthy of London came to spend fortunes on oysters and martinis and far more unsavoury and dubious practices, Faye had been the sunshine girl.
Camilla had been the steel—immovable, poised, dangerously sharp.
Jewel had been the fire—unapologetic, razor-sharp, utterly lethal in her ambition.
And Faye, well had been the light, bright, joyful, ephemeral, fleeting and strangely untouchable, there one moment and gone the next.
She had laughed easily, charmed difficult diplomats and spoiled heiresses with equal sincerity, and treated every kitchen porter and dishwasher like royalty. She was the one who left hand-drawn birthday cards in the staff locker room, the one who remembered how the sous chef took his tea, the one who seemed completely incapable of harbouring malice, bitterness, or spite.
And she was the one who, every five or six months, would vanish without a word.
Her phone would go straight to voicemail. Her shifts would be covered. Two days later, a postcard would arrive at the restaurant from an off-grid hostel in the Scottish Cairngorms, or an olive farm in Portugal, or a rainy seaside town in Cornwall. Camilla would roll her eyes with affectionate exasperation; Jewel would scoff and mutter something about wasted potential; and Ella would smile softly and say,
“That’s just Faye. She just gets the itch to wander.”
It was a lovely fiction. Faye had let them believe it because the alternative was unthinkable.
Faye didn’t wander out of whimsy. She ran out of raw, clawing survival.
Beneath the delicate features, the bright smile, and the gentle laughter lay a fortress constructed entirely of scar tissue. Behind the thick, lead-lined doors of her mind lay things she had sealed up tighter than nuclear launch codes—memories so radioactive that even glancing at them in the dark made the air seize in her lungs.
She never let herself dwell on the council estate in Leeds. She didn’t let her thoughts drift to the damp, threadbare carpets, the peeling grease-stained wallpaper, or the sour, sickening stench of cheap gin and roll-up tobacco that had clung to the kitchen curtains. She didn’t let herself remember the heavy, dragging footsteps on the linoleum stairs, or the violent rattle of a heavy leather belt buckle that had sent her heart plummeting into her stomach as a young boy.
Those horrors belonged to a child who had deliberately stood between a monster and her little brother. A child who had endured broken ribs, black eyes, and things far worse in the dead of night, whispering over and over into the pillow: As long as Leo doesn’t see. As long as Leo is safe.
When the system had finally broken down the door, they had torn them apart like wet paper.
Leo had been five—a fair-haired, beautiful boy with untouched skin. He had been adopted almost immediately by an affluent, respectable couple in Harrogate.
Faye, older, scarred, and fundamentally broken, had been tossed from one placement to the next. Seven foster homes in six years. Cramped bedrooms that always felt temporary, cupboards that were locked at night, and schools where she was perpetually the pale, quiet kid staring out the window.
It had been Martha—a gruff, chain-smoking foster mother in Bradford with bad knees and a heart like an anvil—who had finally sat her down at thirteen over two mugs of stewed builder’s tea.
Martha had looked past the silence, past the bruising on her psyche, and seen the truth that Faye had carried like a burning coal in her chest since she was old enough to know her own name.
Martha wasn't much of a carer, but she had fought for Faye in her own way. Martha had fought the bureaucracy. She had battled the slow, grinding NHS apparatus for early blockers, secured the psychiatric assessments, and held Faye’s hand through the terrifying, liberating journey of medical transition. By the time Faye stepped out of the care system at eighteen, she was legally, medically, and entirely the woman she had always been inside. Marha had passed away soon after, lifelong smoking and a battered immune system had not done the woman any favours. But Faye would always remember the woman fondly.
Not that Faye had the capacity to do anything other than that, resentment and bitterness were not part of the fabric of Faye's DNA.
After Martha's passing She had worked menial cleaning gigs, pulled fourteen-hour shifts in greasy-spoon cafes, and lived on toasted white bread and instant noodles, all while sending up quiet, fierce prayers for Leo’s happiness.
She had never been jealous of his private schools, his riding lessons, or the clean, stable life he had been given while she bled. She had always loved him with an almost religious purity.
Until the day, years ago, when she had finally gathered the courage to track him down after some bruising rejections from his adoptive parents when she had contacted them to set up a meeting with her brother.
The plane shuddered as it hit a pocket of turbulence over the Bay of Bengal, jarring Faye awake from her shallow reverie.
Inside her chest, the old, familiar ache tightened, sharp as broken glass.
So she had steeled her nerves and approached him herself.
She had found Leo outside Durham Cathedral on a bright, crisp autumn afternoon. He had been 17 years old, wearing an expensive wool coat, laughing with a group of friends who looked like they owned half of Yorkshire.
Faye had approached him with her heart hammering in her throat, tears blurring her vision, carrying the small wooden toy car she had kept wrapped in tissue paper for over a decade.
She had spoken his name softly.
She had waited for the spark of memory, the sudden, tearful embrace she had pictured every single night of her life.
Instead, Leo had looked at her with pure venom in his gaze.
The laughter had vanished from his face, replaced instantly by a cold, calculating disgust. His blue eyes—the exact same shade as her own—had swept over her face, her slender frame, her clothes, recognising the truth of what and who she was.
His lip had curled in violent, ugly revulsion.
“You?” he had sneered, stepping back into the shadow of the cathedral as if she were carrying typhus. “What the hell are you doing here? Can't you take a god damn hint? My parents have a position in this county. I have a future. I don’t want people knowing I have any connection to... whatever the hell you’ve turned yourself into. You’re disgusting. An utter disgrace. Do us all a favour and Stay the hell away.”
He had slapped the wooden car from her fingers. It had hit the wet stone paving, splitting down the middle, before rolling into the gutter. Then he had turned his back and walked away.
That afternoon, the single foundation Faye had built her entire existence upon—the sacred belief that sacrifice was rewarded, that love was real, and that endurance meant something—had shattered into dust.
She hadn’t screamed. She hadn’t cried. Something fundamental had simply gone cold inside her ribs. She had caught the late train down to London, swallowed herself up in the frantic, anonymous millions of the capital, and landed a job at Ivy.
She had smiled.
She had laughed.
She had loved Camilla, Jewel, and Ella with everything she had left, but she had locked the inner doors of her heart and thrown away the key.
The moment feelings got too heavy—the moment a quiet night in her flat started to echo with the phantom smell of stale gin or the cold venom of Leo’s voice—she packed her bag and ran.
And now, she was running further than she ever had before.
The long-haul flight was a marathon of exhaustion.
London Doha and then twelve hours to Singapore, before the final leg to Perth, Australia. The flight was long, arduous, uncomfortable with noisy companions, crying babies and really shitty aeroplane food.
But she made it to Singapore, finally.
All that was left was a humid, fluorescent blur of a four-hour layover in Changi.
When she got there, Faye washed her face in a gleaming marble restroom, brushed her teeth, and bought an iced green tea with a handful of foreign coins. Then, she boarded the final five-hour hopper down the Indian Ocean toward Western Australia.
As the Dream liner banked sharply over the southern coast, Faye reached under the seat and pulled out her canvas satchel, retrieving a small bundle of folded printouts.
The ad had appeared on Gumtree three weeks ago, buried beneath listings for second-hand utes and shearing equipment:
LIVE-IN GOVERNESS / DOMESTIC HELP WANTED.
Red Ridge Station, Gascoyne Region, WA.
Sole charge of 3 kids (7, 5, 3). Cooking, basic schooling, light chores. Hard work, hot conditions, no town life. Meals and board provided. Good weekly wage for someone who doesn’t mind getting their hands dirty. Must be reliable.
Contact: D. Connelly ([email protected])
It was insane. An isolated cattle station hundreds of kilometres past the rim of civilisation, managed by a man whose emails read like telegraphs from the nineteenth century.
Faye had replied impulsively on a rainy Tuesday evening after waking from a nightmare drenched in cold sweat. Her initial message had been clumsy, open, and perhaps entirely too cheerful:
Dear Mr. Connelly,
My name is Faye Evans. I am twenty-four, currently living in London, and I have years of experience with domestic management, cooking, and childcare. I am very patient, tidy, and I don’t mind quiet places at all. I would love to be considered for the position if it is still available.
The reply had arrived forty-eight hours later, sent via a Starlink satellite dish bolted to the corrugated iron roof of a homestead in the red dirt:
Faye,
Job’s open. Pay is $900 clear a week plus keep. Kids are wild. Station is big. If you can cook a roast and stop the three-year-old from jumping in the cattle trough, you’ll do. Send your passport details and working visa grant number.
— D. Connelly
When Faye had replied with her credentials, she had gently tried to provide context about her background, her English qualifications, and a cautious inquiry about what kind of clothing she should pack.
Darcy Connelly’s response had been brutal in its efficiency:
Don’t need an essay, mate. Need someone who shows up. I’ve wired $1,500 AUD to your account for the ticket. Don’t waste it on Qantas or fancy extras. Get yourself to Perth, then wait for Clint. Don’t be late.
— D. Connelly
He didn’t want an employee; he wanted a functional piece of machinery to keep his house from collapsing. But to Faye, those terse, impatient sentences had sounded like an absolute sanctuary. No questions. No expectations of social grace. Just three children who needed tending and an ocean of red earth where no one would ever look for her.
Fifty minutes before landing, Faye unbuckled her belt, excused herself past the sleeping miner, and slipped into the cramped aircraft lavatory.
The fluorescent mirror was unforgiving. Her eyes were rimmed with faint shadows, and her thrift-store corduroy jacket smelled faintly of aircraft cabin air.
Faye stripped off the heavy corduroy and her faded denim jeans, packing them tightly into her canvas duffel. From the bottom of the bag, she pulled out the cleanest, most serviceable garment she owned: a simple, knee-length sundress made of pale, cream-coloured cotton printed with tiny, delicate blue forget-me-nots. It had a modest square neckline, short cap sleeves, and a simple gathered waist.
She washed her face with cold water, smoothed a drop of rose hip oil over her cheekbones, and unbraided her golden hair, brushing it out until it fell in soft, loose waves around her shoulders before pinning the front sections back with two tortoiseshell clips.
She looked at her reflection.
She looked neat.
Respectable.
A proper governess ready to meet her new employer’s representative.
She had no idea that to the eyes of a country that lived in dust, grease, and work boots, she looked like she had just stepped off the lawn of an English manor house.
The Boeing’s landing gear hit the tarmac of Perth International Airport with a sharp, shuddering screech.
The moment the cabin doors opened, the Australian climate announced itself. Even through the sealed aerobridge, the heat was an undeniable physical presence—not the heavy, suffocating damp of Singapore, but a dry, searing, radiant furnace that smelled of eucalyptus, sun-baked bitumen, and distant red earth.
Faye followed the flow of passengers into the terminal, clutching her canvas bag and her small roller suitcase.
The terminal was a sea of high-visibility orange work shirts, wide-brimmed hats, board shorts, and rubber thongs. Faye, in her cream floral cotton dress, with her porcelain skin, slender frame, and quiet, poised posture, stood out like an English rose dropped into a paddock of spinifex grass.
At border control, she stepped up to the desk manned by a broad-shouldered officer whose nametag read M. HARRIS.
He took her British passport, swiped it through the reader, and looked at the screen.
Then his gaze drifted up.
He stopped.
His bushy eyebrows twitched upward as he took in the delicate sweep of her cheekbones, her huge cornflower eyes, and the neat, modest dress.
“G’day, miss,” he said, his flat Australian vowels immediately softening into something uncharacteristically polite. “Holiday or business?”
“Work, actually,” Faye replied, offering a warm, melodic smile. “I’m on a working holiday visa.”
The officer tapped a key on his console, his eyes flicking back to her face. “Right. Bar work in Freo? Fruit picking down in Margaret River?”
“No, officer. I’ve taken a position as a governess on a pastoral station up north. Red Ridge Station, out past the Gascoyne.”
Harris froze with his stamp hovering two inches above her entry card. He stared at her as if she had just announced she was walking to the moon.
“Red Ridge?” he croaked, clearing his throat. “Out near Gascoyne Junction way?”
“Yes, sir. Working for Mr. Connelly.”
Harris shook his head slowly, a mixture of utter disbelief and dry amusement pulling at his weathered face. “Christ almighty... pardon my language, miss, but have you seen a map of this country? That’s not a farm. That’s five hundred square miles of red dust, saltbush, and forty-five-degree heat. The flies out there have got landing gear, and the snakes don’t knock before they come in the house.”
Faye’s smile didn’t waver. It deepened, bright and completely sincere, though tinged with a speck rueful irony. “I’m very fond of wide open spaces, officer. And I’ve been told I have a very calming effect on dangerous animals.”
Harris let out a low chuckle, bringing the stamp down onto her landing card with a resounding thwack. He handed the passport back, his eyes lingering on her with bemused respect.
“Well, good on ya, love. You look like you belong in a tea room, but I reckon anyone brave enough to take on Darcy Connelly’s mob has got some spine. Drink plenty of water and mind the redbacks. Welcome to Western Australia.”
“Thank you very much,” Faye said, dipping her head with effortless poise before rolling her case toward the exit.
The sliding glass doors of the arrivals hall parted, releasing Faye into the bustling terminal concourse.
It was loud, chaotic, and crowded.
Shift-workers from the northern mines were greeting their families with bear hugs, children were darting between baggage trolleys, and drivers held up digital tablets displaying corporate logos.
Faye stopped near the edge of the crowd, adjusting the strap of her bag, her blue eyes scanning the waiting faces.
Darcy’s final message had been painfully sparse:
“Clint’s picking you up in Perth. He’s taking the ute down to pick up tractor hydraulics from the dealer anyway. Look for a bloke holding a piece of cardboard with your name. Try not to miss him, he’s got no patience.”
Faye’s gaze swept across the line of professional chauffeurs and waiting relatives until it landed on a figure leaning against a concrete support pillar near the far exit.
The man looked as though he had been dragged directly out of a dry creek bed five minutes earlier.
He was massive—easily six-foot-two, with broad, muscular shoulders that filled out a faded navy-blue work shirt whose sleeves had been ruthlessly sheared off at the biceps with sheep shears. His forearms were corded with muscle, covered in golden-brown freckles and fine dark hair, with grease embedded deeply into his knuckles.
He wore low-slung, faded denim work jeans coated in a permanent patina of fine red dust, and on his feet were beat-up leather work boots that had clearly seen years of hard labor.
A battered straw hat with a frayed brim was pushed to the very back of his dusty brown curls, revealing a tanned, rugged face lined with squint lines around pale hazel eyes.
Under his left arm, he was holding a greasy, jagged piece of cardboard torn from a twenty-four-pack carton of Emu Export beer. Scrawled across the brown cardboard in thick, uneven black marker was a single word:
FAYE
The man let out a colossal, jaw-cracking yawn, rubbed the back of his sunburnt neck, and sighed with bone-deep exhaustion.
He checked an ancient, scratched steel watch on his wrist, scowled at the terminal ceiling, and muttered something under his breath.
Then he looked directly at Faye as she walked past him.
His hazel eyes flickered over her cream floral dress, slid right off her golden hair, and immediately locked onto the crowd behind her.
His neck craned, his eyes narrowing as he searched the arriving passengers with clear, grim determination. He was scouting for a sturdy, middle-aged disciplinarian—a woman with short grey hair, sensible orthopeodic shoes, a thick cardigan, and a jaw like an anvil who looked capable of tackling an uncooperative heifer.
Faye stopped three feet in front of him.
The man didn’t notice at first.
He kept glaring over her head, his brow furrowed in mounting irritation.
“Excuse me,” Faye said softly.
The man blinked. Slowly, his gaze lowered from the distant crowd to the woman standing directly before him.
“Are you Clint?” she asked, tilting her head with an open, radiant smile.
Clint Kelly completely short-circuited.
His jaw dropped open.
His pale hazel eyes went round as dinner plates, bulging so hard they looked ready to pop right out of his sun-baked skull. He froze mid-breath, his chest locking tight, his Adam’s apple bobbing violently as he swallowed dry air.
He looked down at the torn beer carton in his hand, where FAYE was written in grease pencil.
He looked up at her delicate, stunning face.
Then his gaze plummeted down the modest floral cotton dress, taking in her slender, impossibly tiny waist, her pale, bare arms, and the neat little canvas shoes on her feet.
His eyes snapped right back to her face, where soft golden curls framed a smile so bright, pure, and luminous it seemed to illuminate the entire terminal.
“You’ve gotta be pullin’ my leg,” Clint choked out, his voice a thick, gravelly drawl so broad and unvarnished you could pave a gravel road with it.
He stumbled half a step backward, catching himself against the pillar. He hastily shoved the greasy beer carton behind his back, as if suddenly horrified that she had seen it, and ran a dirty hand through his messy hair, turning an alarming shade of brick-red beneath his sunburn.
“You... you’re the pommie nanny?” he stammered, staring at her in sheer, disbelieving panic. “Faye Evans?”
“Yes,” Faye said gently. She extended a slender, pale hand toward him, her melodic London accent floating between them like fine porcelain dropped onto concrete. “It’s lovely to meet you, Clint. I hope the flights weren’t too late. I tried to be as quick as I could through customs.But it did take a little long to get this damn thing at baggage claim,” She finished gesturing to the large, gaudy flowery pink suitcase standing on wobbly rollers by her feet.
Clint stared at her extended hand as if it were a venomous death adder made of spun sugar.
He looked down at his own hand—grease under the nails, dust crusted into the skin, scarred knuckles from working on tractor manifolds—and frantically wiped his palm down the thigh of his jeans twice before gingerly taking the very tips of her fingers. He gave them a single, rigid pump, as though terrified that applying an ounce of pressure would snap her wrist in half.
“G’day,” he croaked, his voice cracking slightly. “I... yeah. Clint. Clint Kelly.”
He let go of her hand as if burned, took off his straw hat, and stared up at the high ceiling of the terminal. His chest rose and fell in a massive, disbelieving heave.
A slow, stunned, utterly expectant grin began to spread across his rugged face. He shook his head, a breathless, strangled wheeze escaping his throat.
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” Clint muttered under his breath, staring at the English sprite standing in the red-dirt gateway of Western Australia. “Darcy is never gonna bloody believe this.”
