The Long Way Home

  Chapter 20

  October 1986

  Simon rolled gently downhill on his BMX bike before swinging into his driveway and slowly peddling up the short grade to the empty carport at the side of the house. He swung his leg over the frame of the bike and propped it against one of the poles. From across the street he could hear the now familiar guitar chords pulsating from the lounge room of their new neighbour. Simon glared across at what used to be the Braddley’s house as he strode up the steps of the front porch to where his Mum always hid the house key under the dead pot plant that sat beside the front door. He grabbed the key, opened the door and slipped inside before the bass guitar launched into the introduction once more.

  It was quickly becoming the usual routine, coming home from school to an empty house, doing his homework and taking a shower before his Mum got home from her job at the supermarket. Dinner would be a rushed oven meal or sausages and mashed potato before she would say, ‘I’m just ducking across the street to see how Ron is settling in,’ leaving Simon to wash the dishes and put himself to bed. Ron had moved in three months ago and already his Mum was spending more time across the street with him than she was at home with her own son.

  Ron was in a rock band that played on weekends at one of the local pubs. ‘One day he could be rich and famous,’ his mother would often tell him. Since he had moved in, Simon had only ever heard the same two songs blaring out from across the street, and one of the songs that he couldn’t even recognise and sounded so bad Simon thought his band surely must suck. Even though he had only ever met him briefly he hated Ron, and that only made it easier to blame him for the Braddley’s not being there anymore.

  Sometimes he would hear his mother come home drunk late at night, cursing loudly if he had accidentally left a dirty frypan on the stove when he had washed the dishes. Often he would pretend to be asleep, curled up under the doona cover when she opened his bedroom door to whisper noisily ‘are you asleep?’ Sometimes she would tiptoe across the floor to plant a wet kiss on his forehead, her hair strangely saturated with the smell of smoke from Ron’s house. Other times she would simply close the door behind her and trudge down the hallway to bed, either way, only then could he drift off soundly into sleep.