Three of Us to Fit

There was one spot left in the Bairnsdale station car park long enough for the bus, and we took it. Bikes inside, doors locked, we left our home sitting on its own and went to catch a train to our son.

The train, as it turned out, was mostly buses. The first leg was a coach to Traralgon, where we finally climbed aboard a real train, and for a while it was everything a train should be: the country sliding past, nothing to steer, nowhere to look but out. Not far along, an announcement came through. Vandalism on the line ahead. Everyone off, and back onto a bus for the rest of the run into Southern Cross. By the time we stepped onto a tram for the hotel, we had used four kinds of transport to cover one journey, and none of them had been the bus we live in.

We walked the last stretch from the tram stop and came around the corner just as Torrin was arriving at the hotel from his outpatient appointment, at exactly the same moment. Nobody had planned it. We had our arms around him before any of us had worked out how the timing had happened. It had been since winter. It was so good to see him.

We checked in, dropped the bags, and took turns in a shower nobody had to pump or ration. Then Torrin took us to dinner at a steak restaurant he had found a week earlier, the night he walked out of his trial. The food was delicious, though the order came with a surprise: the waitress had misheard him, and instead of the thirty-nine-dollar steak he’d asked for, out came one worth eighty-eight. It was, by all accounts, a very good steak.

The next morning took us somewhere less glamorous: IKEA. Anth had been printing inserts on the 3D printer to bring some order to our drawers, and they needed knives and forks to sit in them. So we went all the way to Melbourne, collected our son, and bought cutlery.

Then it was the tram back to Southern Cross and the train east, the three of us this time, Torrin’s bags at our feet. He would be with us now until Canada.

The train pulled into Bairnsdale five minutes after the post office closed. Five minutes. Sal’s rotor would have to wait one more day, and so would we. Out in the car park the bus was exactly where we had left it, the bikes still leaning inside, and now there were three of us to fit around them.Read more