The Road

By Lorraine Liston

This is Jenny’s story and she tells us how she has finally escaped from a life which was anything but perfect. But what she learns as she moves along the new road of her life is that there are still many choices to face and choosing the right one can sometimes be just as complicated as staying with what you know. But in the end Jenny does find happiness and she shows us how important friends are when the past comes back to try and destroy the peace she has found and the road of life is not as strewn with curves and pot holes as before.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris AU
• Release date: Jul 1, 2021
• ISBN: 9781664106116

Lorraine Liston

My name is Lorraine and I have been writing stories – both short and novels for many years. I love to write and explore ideas which are always coming into my head and when I’m writing nothing else exists for me. This is my third novel – only one has been published. I live in country Victoria with my husband David and I have been doing relief teaching in my spare time. I also love to read and work in my garden which is quite extensive. My husband and I love to go camping and our immediate dream is to see the rest of Australia.

Book preview

Copyright © 2021 by Lorraine Liston.

ISBN:      Softcover      978-1-6641-0612-3

                eBook           978-1-6641-0611-6

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 06/24/2021

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Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter One

If you can imagine anything at all that makes you feel sad, lonely or angry at any given time then the following story might help you to understand why I did what I did. It might seem cruel and unreasonable but when I think about it in retrospect I know what I did was the only thing I could’ve done. And by the end of that sorry day I was able to understand more thoroughly why my life had become so intolerable and why on some mornings it was difficult to move out of my bed and join the day.

However, I also realised there are some moments in our lives when you know that at the end of the day, no matter how difficult the journey might be there is almost always a light at the end of the tunnel. Well almost always anyway, and in my case by the end of the first day when I had finally escaped the past, the light was growing brighter than I ever would’ve imagined.

Hi my name is Jenny and this is my story. It’s a long and twisted story and up until the morning when I found my husband dead near the river I thought my life would be forever grey without even the hope of the grey turning white. And there would never be a light at the end of the tunnel because there was no tunnel. Just the endless, pointless days where I existed but did not live.

On the morning when my story began I woke up in my suite of rooms like I usually had done. It was almost six o’clock and the sun was almost up.

My first action for the day was to have a shower and dress. I did both of those things. Then I made myself a cup of tea and sat in my sitting room and sipped it slowly not wanting to go to see if Alex was awake. Because he usually was – he seemed to sleep as little as was possible.

When I was done with the tea, I’d made my way to his rooms on the other side of our mansion. The cold white mansion was the name I’d given it. Because cold was what it was and always had been at least for me.

At the door of Alex’s rooms, I stood and took a deep breath. I never knew what his mood would be and for me it was never friendly or kind. I didn’t have to knock on the door. So I opened it and walked softly across the thick grey carpet. The room was dark as the curtains had yet to be opened. I made my way towards the window and pressed the button and the drapes moved silently open. The early morning light slipped into the room and I turned towards the huge king sized bed where Alex slept.

The bed was empty.

I stood for a moment and tried to take in what I was seeing but it seemed impossible. Alex had to be there. But no matter how many times I checked the scene was the same. The doona was pulled back and there was just the imprint of his body on the sheet.

I stepped back and called his name. I called into the ensuite and again called his name.

Only silence answered me.

For a moment I didn’t know what I should do. Alex should’ve been there. But he wasn’t. I was lost until I decided to check the house. But he wasn’t there either.

In the end I found myself leaving the house and walking into the garden not really thinking why I should be doing this but moving towards the river anyway.

And this is where I found him.

I think it will take me many years come to terms with finding Alex, my husband of some twenty years, dead on a seat by the river. It was the strangest feeling I have ever encountered. But then again, I have not seen a dead body before at least not at close quarters such as Alex was that morning. He was seemingly sitting enjoying the early morning sunshine on my favourite seat in my favourite place in our beautiful garden I had created. My garden, I thought! How dare he spoil it by dying there. It was as if he was waiting for the sun to shine and warm the space he was occupying. The reality was of course he would never see the sun or feel its heat.

He was dead.

He was gone and I was glad.

And I had never been happier in my life although at the moment of discovery I did not know this.

But I do vividly recall how I had stood there before him at first wondering why he was there. And the question in my mind – was how had he managed to even get there? I didn’t know the answer. There didn’t seem to be any answers.

I stared at his lifeless form for what must’ve seemed like an endless moment in time. But when I remember those moments now I realise it was just a brief pause in the scheme of life and I had to check if it was my imagination creating a scene I had longed for. So I had to make sure he was indeed dead. It was one of the most difficult actions I had ever done - walking to his space on the seat - but I made myself cover the short amount of grass between us as fast as I could.

And then I was looking directly at him.

To begin with it seemed as if he was looking directly back at me. But of course he wasn’t. He couldn’t.

After another moment in time I knew I had to touch him even though it wasn’t something I wanted to do.

But I did it.

I had reached over with one shaking hand and touched his once handsome face. Despite everything I had always enjoyed looking at his face although after the accident it had changed and the handsomeness which had at first attracted me was gone, attacked by strips of window glass creating ugly seams across his cheeks and eyes.

I had not been at all surprised to find the skin had been cold. Lifeless and his sunken mouth was forever quiet. It had struck me instantly that this was one of those important moments in my life and at first I was overwhelmed by a feeling of relief. Such a relief even now I find hard to describe.

I didn’t stay.

I didn’t want to be near him – dead or alive.

And as I had walked away I quickly understood I would no longer have to listen to his taunts or his selfish desires. I would no longer have to look at his scowling features I could now live my life at last of his anger. I would no longer have to live with dread.

I must repeat that the relief I felt was so enormous. The weight lifted from my shoulders was as if I could float now.

It was beyond explaining. In some ways it is still beyond explaining.

At least I feel it’s difficult to clarify to anyone in words which would make any sense. But I will try as I tell my story.

So, I had walked away from Alex as he was by the river. At the time when I realised freedom was at hand I thought I wanted to jump into that cold river and scream with delight. But of course, I did not do this because the water was too icy for a dip at that time of the year and my desire to get away was so much stronger.

But I did look back for one last unsympathetic look. I stopped along the path which I had helped to create and felt something akin to guilt. But I wouldn’t allow guilt to overwhelm me and it didn’t last long.

I continued my escape.

How could I feel guilty, I asked myself when I pondered Alex there alone by the river? I was so sure he hadn’t really visited the place in all the time we’d lived in the house. It was another mystery to understand how he’d come to be there. And while the guilt lasted, for a crazy moment I thought I couldn’t be possibly cruel enough to leave him there, but it was just one crazy moment and then it was gone. The crazy thoughts dissipated as if they had never been.

Had our marriage been a normal loving one I know I would’ve cried. It would’ve been normal to cry but my life with Alex had been anything but normal. So crying wasn’t something I felt the need to do.

I didn’t cry.

I know I should’ve gone for help. That’s what a wife would’ve done but as I’ve already explained as a wife who had not been loved then going for help wasn’t in my thought processes.

I wouldn’t have been distraught had my life gone to plan but of course our lives don’t always follow a plan.

Because none of those things applied I was able to move on. For Alex and I, the dreams of love and happiness had disappeared like the sun setting after a short amount of time but unlike the sun our love did not rise in the morning, for once it had set it had stayed that way. So even though he was dead, I didn’t stay with him or sought any help. The feelings which overwhelmed me at the moment of discovery of his death didn’t allow for that.

But I need to explain things and make them clearer.

The months and the days leading up to this point when Alex died had been unbearable and oppressive. Basically we had led our separate lives but in the same fractured house. For me during those days I had become accustomed to being spoken to in a cold and angry tone by a man who blamed me for the way he had become. And this treatment never wavered no matter how hard I tried to do whatever was demanded of me. And I tried to be the best I could be despite what I endured by Alex’s anger.

I thought of myself as being invisible for most of the day to anyone who lived in or visited the house. It was the way life had progressed for us for over two years and for the most part I couldn’t see how it could ever change. Not once had I imagined Alex would die. I thought he’d live forever and I would die before he did.

So, when Alex died I couldn’t pinpoint anything which could’ve alerted me to a change or difference. There was nothing at all which made me think or even imagine he could have walked to the river on his own.

As I packed furiously the things I thought I might need during those intensely frantic moments after release, my mind travelled back to the night before.

There was nothing I could see or imagine which could be alluded to change.

His behaviour and attitude towards me had been exactly the same.

His movements had been as they had been during the previous months.

He was as he had always been. His routine was the same: dinner at seven. Last phone calls at eight. A check of his computer at nine. Then he’d had a hot milk coffee and two sleeping tablets at ten. Then he’d turned off the light and I had slipped away to enjoy some alone time away from his demands.

I ran over and over in my mind what could’ve alerted me to anything but there was nothing. Absolutely nothing. Alex had been as demanding as ever to me. In between his routine activities he had me running to his command.

"Bring me a glass of wine.

Don’t spill the coffee on the saucer.

It just went on and on and I had allowed him to be so vindictive without a word of protest. Such was my feelings of guilt I could do no more.

Now the guilt had gone.

And I as always had jumped to his bidding. Nothing I did for him made him happy. For my benefit he was never cheerful. He was only angry and taunted my every action. He never smiled when I was in the same space as he was. He never spoke to me in a tone other than one of spite and torment; although he hadn’t always been that way. We, hadn’t been that way. When I first met Alex, he had been a quiet and unassuming man and I had been a shy and loving wife who only wanted to please the man she loved.

We both had changed and neither of us resembled who we had been.

But I digress. Alex before he died in the garden on my favourite seat was an angry man. He worked from home and his life was ruled by what he wanted and when he wanted it. There were no choices for me. This was my punishment and when I was not with him doing what he bid me to do, I spent the empty hours of my solitary life down by the river thinking and reading. And dreaming about how my life used to be. But that is an entirely different story.

The story of Alex, except from early in our marriage, no longer belonged in my dreams. Most mornings I would take his breakfast to him at a given time. I would help to shower and shave him. And then I would await my orders for the rest of the day. Our housekeeper Mrs Beks would be like a silent ghost in the back ground hovering and waiting to pounce should I do something she did not approve of. I often looked at her stooped figure with its grey hair and dark clothes and wondered why Alex had hired her. But it was something I could never ask him because the days of asking Alex anything were long gone and Mrs Beks and I carried on our vigil of hate and took care of Alex, each one in her own way: Me as the martyred wife and her as the guardian housekeeper.

Mrs Beks did not approve of me. I believe she’d always disapproved of me but I could never understand why. And I imagined I never would.

She refused to do anything for me. I had to clean my own room and do my own washing but I did not actually mind. Mrs Beks didn’t do the cooking – we had a cook to do that – and while her menu was tasty I had stopped enjoying food. I didn’t want Mrs Beks to be touching my clothes or be in my rooms. I thought she was a spy for Alex and reported anything I did to him.

She would’ve done anything for Alex and for the most part I think she resented me taking care of him even though she knew why he wanted me to. I would’ve been glad to let her do so. But Alex told her it was my job. If it had been up to me I would’ve been happy to see him starve to death or grow a beard – anything not to have anything to do with him.

Now those words may sound cruel and unkind but I mean every one of them and it’s only now, now that I am free, that I can say them and mean them more savagely.

But it wasn’t just about Alex and myself and our broken marriage - There were also the children: The Twins. Although by this time they were no longer children in a sense. They were twenty-one years old when Alex died and they had everything and anything money could possibly buy.

There was Rachel – haughty and singularly self-satisfied. She was a beautiful young woman. I couldn’t deny this fact. She had my eyes and my hair but she had no heart. Her brother Marcus was almost a clone of his father. He was tall and handsome as well as conceited and narcissistic. We didn’t speak – they just ignored me as if I was one of the servants.

Sadly, by this time, I did not like my children and they did not like me. It has to be the most miserable part of my story and I was so happy my parents had not lived to see what my life had become.

The twins treated Mrs Beks with more importance than they did me. They treated everyone with more respect and caring than they did me. And I allowed it to happen and now I wondered why I had been so silent permitting our separation to happen.

They had been to Paris and London as well as New York. They had been educated in the best private schools in Australia and neither of them even thought about finding an occupation which would make them useful citizens of the world around them – at least this is what I believed and what I thought I saw. They had been at home for a break in their social existence trying to persuade their father they needed more money to live their irresponsible lives the week before Alex had died.

They had ignored me as usual.

But I was so used to their indifference I hardly noticed.

There had been nothing in their actions which would suggest they thought their father might die any time soon. They hadn’t stayed. They had flown to Queensland to stay in the apartment their father had bought them when they had graduated from high school. They were planning a big party to celebrate a friends twenty first. It seemed they loved to waste money and Alex indulged them.

As usual I was feeling alone in an ugly world, surrounded by people who despised and ignored me if they could. It was incomprehensible to believe my life would change any time soon beyond recognition. With Alex’s death this is what happened. My last thought as I had fled the scene of death was to ponder how a man who only the day before couldn’t move himself out of bed without help was able to walk unaided from the house to the seat by the river where he would die alone as the sun rose for a new day.

There were so many secrets and I was the last to know any of them but in the end, I decided it was all for the best and it released me from the past and allowed me to have a future.

I drove quickly from the icy and lonely mansion and had soon left the crowded city and my old life behind me. After a few hours I was nearly at my destination. A destination I hadn’t thought about for many years.

I stopped the car at the top of the hill and for a moment I just sat there in my seat and sighed a tremendous sigh of relief. I was finally where I wanted to be: well almost. There were just as few more kilometres to travel and I would be where I had only dreamed of being these past few hours since I’d left the house of pain and no dreams.

The tension in my arms and shoulders began to leave me and I slowly massaged my neck as best I could. I knew I had made the right decision. It was a decision which brought light into my world which is difficult to explain. And the sensation of freedom which had begun as I had realised Alex was dead continued to surge through me like an electric bolt so acute it was burning hotly within me.

I was alive and so aware of everything around me for the first time in more years than I cared to think about. With immense pleasure I reached over to the car door and pushed it wide open. The sweet smell of the sea instantly wafted up to me as I stepped onto the dry yellow grass at my feet and I took my first breath of the salty air. It was the most agreeable of smells and it brought back so many special memories. For a time, I just stood there on the side of the hill and soaked it all in allowing those memories of an almost forgotten past engulf my entire self.

I believe I stood without moving for the longest time. The moments passed yet time seemed to stand still. I watched as the sea far below me ebbed and flowed in a gentle cycle, on and off the sand which stretched forever to the north one way and the south the other. After a while I slid to my knees and stretched out my arms as if I was embracing all before me and I plucked a piece of grass and caressed it in my open hand. The gentle warm wind invigorated me and I felt a strength in my soul I hadn’t in months or years. It was like the pain of the past had begun its slow exit and began to slip away while a gentle peace enclosed me.

Only a breath of wind moved the long grass around me and my skin felt warm against the sun. It was the most perfect of days. And I wanted to stay where I was forever surrounded by the blue vastness of the sea and the sky and the feeling of being alone but not alone.

But my destination was below. The seas side town of Trebray Bay was waiting for me and this was where I hoped I would be able to bury the past and start again. It was a small peaceful place – empty in the long winter months but a ball of activity in the summer. I had known it well as a child when I had come to stay with my parents. We had come every year for as long as I can remember - twice: six weeks of the summer and two amazing weeks in the middle of winter when the tourists stayed away. They had been the best weeks of my childhood.

The memories from those long-gone days whirled around in my head as I recalled the things my parents and I would do together. We had our special places where we went to as we spent our special moments during our sunlit summer days and windswept winter ones.

As I later drove down into the town I recalled the pocket-sized park in the centre of town where my dad would push me on the swing and my mother would sit on a nearby seat and read one of her endless novels trying not to see how high the swing was pushed. I think my dad loved to frighten her always saying he knew exactly how hard to push. I don’t think my mother really believed him and the books allowed her to hide her anxiety.

Beside the park there used to be an ice-cream parlour where we would buy the best tasting ice-creams I had ever eaten before or since. In those summer months the ice-cream parlour sold many flavours and was always busy. I wondered if it was still there although after so many years I doubted it.

In the winter months my father would collect wood and we would have blazing fires in the lounge where we would cook toast or crumpets in the hot embers. During the short days we would walk along the deserted beach being buffeted by raging winds or biting rain. But we hadn’t cared. It was being together, the three of us, which counted the most.

Just beyond the park there was a sandstone church where we went every Sunday. I don’t believe my parents were especially religious but we all enjoyed the service from the jovial minister and my parents also found meeting with locals after the service was an integral part of their lives during the summer. As for me I had found some of the local children to be friendly as well and would spend many happy afternoons playing on the beach with these new-found friends. They were so different from my city school friends. They were full of fun and the things we did by using our imaginations far out played those of my school friends. While I played my parents soaked up the sun and many afternoons were spent with me building sand-castles and them lying contentedly on their lounges sleeping the hours away.

We had to be the most perfect of families.

A cloud of sadness momentarily passed over my fresh sense of joy as I realised how long it had been since I had last visited Trebray Bay and the reasons why. But for the moment I quickly brushed thoughts of Alex and the twins from my mind. Thoughts of them only threatened to darken my day when the darkness had gone and now only light was allowed to exist. As far as I was concerned they had no rights to be there and I resolutely closed their memory from my mind. To my surprise I found this was quite simple to do – at least for those moments as I lost myself in another world.

I sat crossed legged on the grass for quiet moments while continuing to watch the sea. I was finding it so difficult to make a move to leave. I felt mesmerised by the sight before me and I watched the breakers crash and boil as they hit a reef far out to sea my spirits rose and the dungeon of terrors from the near past continues to drift away. I doubted anyone I knew could understand how I felt as I sat there above the town. The thought of freedom had been on my mind for so long but had always been a kind of dream I didn’t think would ever emerge from its shadowy space, now it curled around me like a warm blanket. The thought that there would no longer be anyone there who could take it away from me and destroy who I was just as comforting. This was going to be a new way of life: a whole change in the way I lived.

I had no real idea how I was going to accomplish this whole new world I was trying envisage for myself. My thoughts were not on the future as such but on the moment in which I was living. But I did know I would never allow myself to be ruled by another human being and from this moment I would fight to stay this way. All I had to do was to jump back into my car and drive the final kilometres to my new world: the cottage my parents had left to me and make myself at home. Tomorrow could and would take care of itself.

Eventually I dragged myself to my feet and in no time at all I was back at the wheel of my car and taking the last few kilometres of my journey down the hill to Trebray Bay. As I drove I tried to create a picture in my mind about where the cottage was and what it looked like. I knew it wasn’t in the main part of the town and that it stood back on a block with a few other similar houses whose back verandas faced the sea. I felt I would know it when I saw it and hoped that I had the right house because I didn’t want to be in trouble with the law when I had just been released from one kind of prison and didn’t want to be locked up in another. I laughed to myself as these thoughts passed through my mind. It was funny what you thought about sometimes.

I was soon cruising along the main street of Trebray Bay. I could tell it was a quiet and mostly slow day and this seemed normal as the end of summer approached. The tourists would’ve gone home by now and only the locals would be about. There were only two cars parked in the tree lined street which was probably a good thing as I drove quite slowly while looking about me instead of concentrating on where I was going. It was a time warp in some ways because most things seemed familiar even though it had been so long since I had last been there.

At one point I saw the park but on my slow drive along the main street the ice-cream parlour seemed to be missing.

There was the post office in all its glory. It was painted a brilliant white with red trimmings and of course there was the post box out the front. The house behind the main building had a veranda all the way around it which had a climbing rose meandering along its posts. From my point of view, it looked as if it hadn’t changed in twenty years. Later I was to see that indeed it hadn’t.

The local watering hole or should I say The Breaker Arms, looked vaguely different. It had a new coat of paint and I thought it had been added to although in my memory we hadn’t been frequent visitors as my parents didn’t really drink much. At the end of the street there was a row of Norfolk Palms which stood proudly at the entrance to the beach. They had been there for many years and didn’t look worse for the years they had stood as proud sentinels of the town.

It all seemed familiar and clean. The people here obviously took pride in their town and I felt instantly at home. Back in the city no one seemed to care any more about the rubbish that accumulated so easily and some delighted in covering empty spaces with graffiti. Those people would not be welcome here, I could tell, where a sense of appreciation for order and freshness was everywhere.

At the end of the lengthy main street a growing excitement gripped me. I was dying to find my new home. But it did suddenly occur to me that I was going to need to eat. And if I was going to eat I would need to buy some supplies. I had left the house with only as many clothes and other important items I couldn’t have possibly left behind but it hadn’t occurred to me to raid the pantry. Mrs Beks had always had a full fridge but in a way I was glad because whatever I bought now would be my choice and not hers.

So reluctantly I turned the car around and drove back along the street until I spotted a general store where a sign advertised the papers as well as fresh fruit and vegies. It had to have everything I would need for the night and the days to come.

I parked the car and gathering my newly discovered confidence I made my way from the safety of my car to the store. I hadn’t even bothered to lock the car door which was simply unheard of back in the city. But everything was different here.

There was a new spring in my step as I walked to the open doorway of the store and stepped into its cool confines. It also smelt delicious, like a hundred different perfumes mingled together. You would have to be there to understand this distinct smell which I am sure I have never savoured before in any place I have been. It was a wonderland of flavours. I wandered towards the counter lost in my own world, entranced by just being there. I noticed there was a conglomeration of food stuffs and other paraphernalia around me. If I had been a child again I couldn’t have been happier.

Finally, I was standing at the counter where a tall well-built man of some forty years was standing with a pencil in his mouth and a crossword in front of him.

Afternoon lass, he said lifting his head from his paper and smiling broadly at me. A good day to be alive wouldn’t you say?

Oh definitely, I replied also smiling. The best day, I added for no reason except that’s what it was.

DO you know anything about crosswords? He asked as he looked down once more at the paper on the counter."

Not really, I told him.

Neither do I, he said and then added with another friendly and engaging smile. My wife tells me I waste way too much time trying to work them out. And she’s right but it does offer me a challenge. He folded the paper as he spoke and filed it away under the counter and once more concentrated on me. Maybe I’ll give it another try tomorrow. He smiled once more and added. Now my dear, what can I do for you?

Well … I began. I need quite a few things actually. I need some bread and milk oh and some butter. I looked beyond him to where I could see a large refrigerator. Do you have meat and veggies?

We certainly do. Tell me exactly would you like and if you grab one of those baskets beside you we can fill it up. I did as he told me, also grabbing a basket, and for the next ten minutes we wandered around the store until my basket was full as was the one he had carried. As we walked slowly around the length of the store which as far as I was concerned sold just about anything you might want, he talked about different brands and how things were getting more expensive by the day but they tried to keep prices to a minimum. I found his discussion enlightening as I hadn’t been shopping for food in years. Mrs Beks had always done the shopping for the house.

At the counter he packed everything into brown paper bags. This surprised me as in the city plastic bags were all the rage. When I mentioned this fact to him he told me they were trying to break the mould in The Bay. Plastic bags were the scourge of the world and the sooner they were gone the better. I did agree with him. It seemed a terrific idea.

During our foray among the shelves my new friend had introduced himself as Bruce Jackson and if