The Long Way Home

by Phillip Overton

  Chapter 16

  July 1984

  Rowena Small walked into the upstairs classroom of Simon’s school to be greeted at the door by his teacher. Her first impression was that of a strict, no nonsense type teacher who demanded orderliness in her class at any cost.

  “Good evening, thank you for coming and welcome to class 3C.” She spoke clearly. “If you can find your child’s name on their desk and kindly take a seat I’ll be ready to start shortly.”

  Rowena smiled as she shook her hand. She wore a long navy blue skirt with an old-fashioned ivory blouse. Her hair was pushed back behind her ears, held in place by two bobby pins. It was obvious she used a colour rinse as her hair was jet black, the colour of shoe nugget and fell drably to her shoulders. She guessed the teacher was nearing 50 and still trying to cling to the memory of much younger years.

  Rowena walked up an aisle of undersized school desks that looked like they belonged to the munchkins out of the Wizard of Oz until she found Simon’s desk. Simon had neatly written his name on the small placard and beside it had drawn a picture of an angel, complete with wings. Rowena carefully sat down on the tiny chair. Unable to fit her knees under the desk she squirmed sideways until her knees were protruding into the aisle like all the other parents in the room.

  Another lady sat down in the seat beside Rowena while her balding husband stood behind her.

  “Hi.” Rowena smiled at her.

  “Hello.” Was the only reply she got back.

  Chalk scraped across the blackboard as the old lady began scrawling her name in capital letters under the colourful ‘welcome to 3C’ the children had decorated the blackboard with earlier in the day.

  “Hello everybody, my name is Mrs Grimstone, and I am your child’s teacher.” She announced herself.

  ‘Good grief.’ Rowena thought to herself. ‘It feels like I’m back in school.’