He stepped gently over some ferns and stood in the bushes, between two clumps of shrubbery, and began adjusting his stance to a position that would enable him to hold the camera perfectly steady. He remembered what his Grandfather had said about taking a slight breath just before pressing the button to take the picture. He bent his legs slightly for steadiness, looked through the eye piece and exhaled, pressing the button gently.

After taking the picture, Lewis stood up again and felt confused. The shrubbery had seemed shorter before. Now it was up to his neck. Had he been so focussed on taking his picture, that his eyes had not correctly processed the height of the shrubbery? He walked back to the step, and felt confused again. This time the wall seemed two feet tall. He had to exert his legs a little to get up the step. He just didn’t understand it. Everything in the garden seemed to have doubled in height and width, since he’d taken that picture. It was as if the exercise had altered his vision. It just didn’t make sense.

Nor did it really matter, he decided. The main thing was that he had found such a beautiful retreat from the teenage angst of his life, and the incongruity of the apparent and actual sizes of the garden fascinated him in a strange way which added to the pleasure of the day’s discovery. He walked around the garden, using up his remaining photographs, and then saw the alternative path which had a sign at the start.

ROAD EXIT WALK, Approx 5 minutes.

He decided to go that way, having passed Northcote Road on his way along Stanhope Road. It would be a nice round trip to get to know for future Friday afternoon retreats. The pathway was easy enough to follow, but there was a set of upward steps halfway along, which taxed his leg muscles again, just as the step on the far side of the wall had done.

Soon Lewis reached the street and began walking along the road, until he came to an intersection with a sign that took his breath away.

BRENTWOOD AVENUE.

In a much smaller print, below the words “Brentwood Ave” was the word identifying the suburb of Turramurra.

“But I went in at Killara,” he thought, “And the gardens surely couldn’t have been three suburbs long.”

Lewis had been walking along the footpath, concentrating on the pathway in front of him, but now he looked to the side, at a parked car, and the size of it caught his attention too. He walked over and saw that he was shorter than the car’s height, even when standing on his tiptoes. He could not see over the car. He studied the front fences of houses in the street, having walked past them before and mistaken them for high walls. The more he thought about it, the more the height of the sign seemed unusually high too. Were they really that different in Turramurra?