The Last Mile Home by Di Morrissey

Author:Di Morrissey
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pan Macmillan Australia
Published: 2009-08-28T04:00:00+00:00

The New England Highway south was free of traffic. The occasional car flicked past in the opposite direction. Enid crossed her legs and angled her body slightly towards the window, gazing at the wall of forest gums and ironbarks that screened the road. Phillip was deep in thought. They never talked much in the car. If she made a comment about the scenery or something that caught her eye, they were past it before he responded, and she had the feeling she was intruding on his thoughts and disturbing his concentration on the driving.

Enid wasn’t looking forward to seeing the heart specialist. She dreaded the tests and her nervousness made her heart seem even more fluttery than usual. She hated people fussing over her; she felt such a bother to them and especially to Phillip. She wished no one knew she had a heart problem. It didn’t cause her a great deal of pain; the breathlessness and her heart’s irregular rhythm were bothersome, but it wasn’t as if she was an invalid. Yet she did feel like such an old woman. Where had her life gone? One day she’d been a young woman, in love and dreaming dreams that never became reality. When she thought about it she could still feel the pain of the day she’d been told of the death of her fiancé. If Ray had lived, would her life have been better, happier? Or was this all there was: raising a child, keeping an orderly house, standing in the shadow of a successful man? Now Barney was independent, her dogs and her garden gave her the most pleasure in life.

Life with Phillip was placid. He had long ago given up making sexual demands on her, and now they slept in separate beds. She had regarded sex as her duty but never understood why it was such a passionate force in other people’s lives. She had only ever experienced sex with Phillip but she could recall the ardent kisses of her youth and she regretted letting her love go off to war, their union unfulfilled. ‘Wait till I come home. We’ll have our whole lives ahead of us.’ But they didn’t and she felt cheated. Ray remained strong and straight and youthful in her memory, while she was aging, no longer pretty or desirable.

Enid knew Phillip had regarded himself as second best in a competition he had lost without the chance to fight. But he had offered her security, a safe haven, and she had welcomed that. They had a pact and she had adhered to her part of it out of loyalty and, she realised now, gratitude. But with years stretching ahead with more of this sameness, a sadness crept into her soul. There would be no adventurous trips up the Amazon, no passionate love affairs, no large and boisterous family to occupy and interest her, and as she stepped into the unknown, she would leave no footprint on the world she left behind. Had there been

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