by Joy Dettman
Her walking shoes were new and comfortable, though she resented the seventeen and sixpence Gertrude had paid for them. Norman had given her ten pounds for shoes and the necessary. Nothing else was necessary, or not as necessary as the eight pounds of change she’d tied into the corner of a handkerchief and pinned to her bra. Touched it for luck as she walked by the hotel and crossed over the road to the big old peppercorn tree leaning low over the railway yard fence. The night was clammy cold, the fog clinging to her face like damp sheeting, but it was hiding her, as was that black coat.
She wasn’t scared. Not one bit. Nothing could hurt her now, not the monsters and murderers hiding in Granny’s forest, not the cold, not the fog, not Amber. Nothing and no one would ever hurt her again.
Sometimes the train was late. She’d thought it could be late tonight because of the fog, thought she might have to stand around shivering for an hour, but right on time, she heard it hoot-hooting up beyond Charlie’s crossing. With a glance behind her, she ran through the cottonwool fog to the western end of the station platform where she flattened herself against the wall, her eyes seeking Norman. Couldn’t see him; and if she couldn’t see him, he couldn’t see her.
On a clear night if she looked west down those lines, she would have seen the train light coming long before it got to Charlie’s crossing. Only the foggy dark up there tonight. Nothing to see in any direction. Norman’s house had been wiped from the earth by that fog. There was no fence, no road, only the station, which seemed right somehow. So much of her life had been spent at that station, watching the trains come in, watching them go out. Her first memories were all joined to Norman’s station. So many years she’d spent watching all of those people travelling on by to a better place.
An eerie night; the sound of the approaching train wheels down that line was eerie, like a ghost train that wasn’t really there, a ghost train come to get one ghostly passenger. She felt like the ghost of Jenny, or the dust of Jenny, all of her juices sucked away by that thing feeding on her, only Granny’s coat was holding her together.
It came then, out of the dark, came with the strangest light she’d ever seen. A white light, not penetrating, but flattening against the fog, turning it into a glowing swirling wall.
Or a window, a misty, ripply window like the one she’d seen on the day of the mirage.
She’d run so far that day, trying to get through that window to where the trees and the fences could fly, but no matter how far she’d run, she couldn’t get there, not then. Tonight, that window had come to get her and take her away to a land where she could fly.
And she would. One day, when she felt clean again, she would fly.
No passengers boarding. None stepping down. Who’d be crazy enough to end his journey in Woody Creek? This town had nothing to offer, other than its timber. Loaded flatbed trucks waiting for that train.
She sighted Norman, an indistinct figure going about his business down the eastern end of the platform. He wasn’t always so indistinct. He’d been big enough to kill giants when she was small. He’d just . . . he’d just shrunk, just grown ragged in the wash of life, that’s all.
Loved him still, just didn’t like him any more.
She watched him, her back to the wall, watched him until the door of the goods van opened, until the guard walked down to speak to him.
Then she ran across the platform and stepped on board.
MORE BESTSELLING FICTION AVAILABLE FROM PAN MACMILLAN
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When Alice Love surfaces from a strange, beautiful dream to find she’s been injured in a gym, she knows that something is very wrong – she hates exercise. Alice’s first concern is for her unborn baby, and she’s desperate to see her husband, Nick, who she knows will be worried about her.
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When Alice returns ‘home’, it is totally unrecognisable, as is the rest of her life. Why is her sister, Elisabeth, being so cold? Who is this ‘Gina’ that everyone is carefully trying not to mention? And what’s all this talk about a giant lemon meringue pie?
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Shireen Lolesi, the former wife of a high-profile rugby league player, has written a compulsively readable novel set in a high-testosterone world that pulsates with cocaine, binge drinking, groupies and sex. But just how much is fiction, and how much is fact . . .
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Everybody has a book in them, or so the saying goes. For Kate – wife, mother, freelance editor and aspiring writer – it’s just a matter of finding a spare five minutes, a little peace and quiet . . . and something to write about.
When her cousin Angie announces she has a room to let, Kate’s spur of the moment decision to move temporarily out of the family home and in with Angie takes everyone, not the least her husband and teenage children, by complete surprise. Yet Kate’s sure that in this room of her own, she’ll finally be able to write the novel she’s always wanted to.
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As the months pass, Kate writes her novel. And while it will probably never be the bestseller she had envisioned, it’s the story Kate weaves for herself and her family that is the ultimate triumph.
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