The Long Way Home

  Chapter 1

  September 1978

  Doug Small stepped off the train onto platform two and looked up despondently. Rain fell silently over the station. The light fading from the evening sky already had the reflection of the station lights dancing in the puddles that had formed on the platform. Behind him the guard blew a short, sharp whistle and the train responded with a subdued blast of the horn. A hiss from the air brakes being released followed and the 5.37 arrival at Gosford was on its way once more. The grumble of the diesel locomotive accelerating away was matched by the trudging of feet from the hoards of commuters now marching their way up the stairs of the overhead walkway.

  The day had started much better than this, he thought as he stood there in the rain. Only a light drizzle hung in the air, but he discovered if he stood there long enough for his hair to dampen, then there was a very good chance that same trickle of rain would make its way down the back of his neck and inside the collar of his shirt. His wavy, auburn brown hair wanted to curl as it sprang forward, dangling over his forehead. He tried in vain to comb it to the side with his fingers before giving up and scratching instead at the five o’clock stubble growing on his chin.

  He stepped carelessly in a puddle as he slowly strode across the platform to the foot of the stairs, joining the tail end of the hoard of passengers who had just disembarked along with him. Many had umbrellas to keep the rain off their smartly pressed suits, their business skirts and blouses, and their delicately arranged hair. Like the guy in front of him. The slow trudge up the flight of stairs dislodged every rain drop precariously balanced on his black umbrella and sent it trickling down over the side and straight onto Doug’s face. Why should he care? He was dry, and on an afternoon as miserable as today, Doug couldn’t care less. He didn’t care that his light blue business shirt now began to cling to his body. He wasn’t bothered that his fawn coloured trousers had water splashed on the bottom flare of his right leg, or that his own shoes were now water stained and his socks wet from stepping in a puddle. This morning, by contrast, had been a fine, sunny spring day. This morning he’d had a job to go to. Tomorrow would be different. Because, as Doug had now discovered, when you come home having just lost your job, it doesn’t really matter if it is fine or raining. To Doug the evening would have felt grey and overcast anyway.

  Doug had worked at Hornsby City Council since 1969, starting as a 19-year-old junior mail boy a year after leaving school. He had already worked his way up to an assistant clerk’s position by the time he married Rowena five years later and shortly after was promoted to clerk in the council’s manual records department. Now he was 28 years old and unemployed.

  He turned left at the top of the stairs and crossed over the railway line beneath him. Another train was arriving on a different platform and the scene would probably be repeated several times over until the final evening commuters from Sydney had arrived home. Doug was one of the last in a wave of people to step out onto the street on the hill side of the railway station, and recognize his car parked nearby on one of the steep side streets, with Rowena waiting as usual inside to drive him home.

  “Oh God” he thought out loud. How was she going to take this? The last two years had been tough on the both of them. Rowena simply wasn’t coping with the role of being a mother. She had struggled to accept the challenge since the day they’d brought little Simon home from the hospital. The thought of Simon caught him off guard and caused a smile to briefly sail across his face. But it was gone in an instant when his hand reached out for the chrome door handle of their old, beige Holden Kingswood, opened it and stuck his head inside.

  “Hi honey.”

  “Get in Doug. You’re late. I’ve been waiting fifteen minutes and I’ve got dinner in the oven at home. How do you expect me to put a meal on the table if you’re always going to do this to me?”

  Yep, this wasn’t going to go down well.