A girl named Wendy Chan left the noodle shop at ten. Thoughts of a strange woman’s afternoon suicide sluiced through her mind’s eye. In the little restaurant across from Central Station she’d tried to enjoy a beef tendon soup, the broth thick and heady and almost as good as her mother’s. The flavours had made her homesick. What she wouldn’t give for an evening in her mother’s apartment, sipping tea, eating crackers and watching soap operas on the TV.

Wendy pulled her coat collar closer to her neck. No matter how many layers she wore, the chill always found its way into her bones. She had thought Australia would be dry and hot. This had turned out to be a myth, along with the idea that the people were friendly. Wendy found that most people ignored her or stared impatiently at her mouth as she stumbled over her English when asking for directions. On the bus out to the beach, a woman in a tracksuit had shouted at her and called her a nipper. She’d looked the word up on the internet and found it meant surf lifesaver; odd, given she could barely swim.

And then there was her job. Wendy marched on into the night, noting the tickle in the pit of her stomach that even the hot noodles hadn’t managed to calm. If her mother knew what she’d been up to, she’d probably collapse to the floor in tears. Her mum hadn’t slaved away at the factory all these years for her daughter to turn into a common prostitute. Not that she was quite there yet.

But serving drinks semi-naked to leering men was almost as bad. She’d done it because of the money, cash in hand, and because so many other students seemed to be doing it too. She didn’t want to miss out. And it seemed a foolproof system was in place. Nobody had noticed her absence from school and her student visa remained intact. If this was the opportunity Australia offered, she needed to seize it with both hands.

But it made her feel dirty.

Wendy turned onto Harris Street and slouched past the ABC building. Streetlights bounced shadows along the deserted road. The postcard brilliance of Sydney Harbour seemed a long way from here. She had so looked forward to her trip to Australia. Space and freedom lived here, she’d been told. But, encaged in a small foreign-student world, excluded from the wider community, she felt trapped.

That night at the Cheers bar. She’d drunk too many beers and decided becoming a waitress with benefits was a good idea. It seemed every second person she met there was talking about the same thing. She heard about the money they were making and the ease of flouting the visa regulations. Wendy had just wanted to fit in. She’d agreed to go to an audition, and the rest was history.

Her apartment was close. It would be closer still if she cut through the TAFE. Wendy skipped through the campus gates and headed down the lane between two buildings. The walls formed a narrow passage. She increased her speed as she thought of her bed and her hot water bottle. Soon she would be warm. She would pull the blankets over her head and try to forget she was here in Australia, a long way from home and from everything she knew. She would try to forget she felt so terribly ashamed of herself and so terribly alone.

The wind whistled through the tunnel and Wendy’s ears. Lost in her thoughts, she didn’t hear the footsteps behind her. She felt only a warm surge of adrenaline as a gloved hand closed over her throat and her nostrils filled with a chemical burn.

Wendy’s last sensations before the darkness were not fear, but resignation and disappointment. It was all going to end here.

This Australian adventure had not panned out as she’d hoped.