Kathryn Gossow

Taking Baby for a Walk Kathryn Gossow

Sunday morning, in the sleepy town of Stinky Gully, a young girl disappears. Two people hold keys to her rescue but both are too distracted by their own problems to realise. Bree-Anna is hungry and desperate to go to her friend's birthday party. There's no food in the house and her mum is still in bed, so she and her doll Baby set off down the highway to the party. Jake, hot and hungover, is passing through his former home town of Stinky Gully, hoping to spend the day with his daughter. He notices a chubby girl in pink pushing her doll in a stroller and watches her get into an ugly green station wagon. After a fight with his ex-wife, Jake goes to the Stinky Gully pub instead of returning home, and in his despair he misses every reference to the missing girl in town. Eloise works for Bree-Anna's mother, cleaning houses. Eloise also has a photography portfolio deadline, is having an affair with her boss at the Stinky Gully pub, her father's early on-set dementia is getting worse, and her junkie brother wants to visit for Christmas. She barely notices the urine-soaked pink clothes she throws in one of her client's washing machine, and thinks the banging noise in the bedroom is rats. With no one coming to help her, Bree-Anna thinks of all the times she has been brave and decides to escape.