This is the seventh instalment of Fare Game, a new novel. If you haven’t already please ‘Follow mcphoenix via email’ to the right to receive notifications of each new instalment. Earlier instalments are available by clicking links in the Archives or Categories boxes to the right of the page.

Cross, St Pancras Old Church, London by GanMed64 @ Creative Commons

Last time: When Driver met Minnie – drunk and asleep at the wheel of her car, blocking the road outside Naughton’s pub – but he still knew, straight away, he had met the woman he wanted to spend the rest of his life with

Mind you, it’s not like it was all smooth sailing from there. Minnie did call him back the next morning, they did go out for breakfast and they did start seeing each other. But they were at very different stages of their lives. Their friends did different things, their families did different things and they did different things.

Driver finished his degree not long after they met while Minnie reached the end of only the first of a four-year course. Driver had a place of his own and had started his articles in industrial and employment law at the Footscray office of a big city law firm. It was exactly what he thought he should be doing. Exactly what he saw himself doing. But Minnie was still living at home and a long way short of committing to any detailed ambitions of what life after university could possibly look like. She just didn’t feel the need to care too much about that kind of grown-up stuff back then.

Driver wanted her to stay with him in his Abbotsford flat but, for Minnie, that meant too often having to put up with his work friends, who seemed to know nothing else but to talk shop. And a more socially righteous, arrogant, opinionated bunch of wankers Minnie had never met. She would rather go out drinking and dancing with her friends. In fact, if it came down to it, she would rather poke herself in the eye with a sharp stick. Continue reading →