Page 17 of Lessons in Love at the Seaside Salon

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

‘Are you sure you don’t want me to pick you up this evening?’ Evie says as she pulls into a parking spot near Gosford train station.

Trudy almost fainted when Evie offered to drive her here today.

They’ve never seen each other on a Sunday.

Not usually on a Saturday either, apart from school-formal season when the salon is packed to the hilt with teenagers wanting perms and teases and it’s all hands on deck.

So when Trudy mentioned she was heading to Sydney by train, she wasn’t expecting Evie to offer a lift to the station. Except she did.

‘You don’t have a car, do you?’ Evie asked as she was about to walk out the door to pick up Billy on Thursday.

Trudy can see how Evie would think that. After all, Trudy lives and works within a very small area, and she walks to the salon and the shops and back home.

‘I do,’ Trudy said. ‘I’m just not that keen on driving. Laurie was the driver. I’ve hardly driven since …’ There was no need to say it – Evie knew.

‘I can take you to the station,’ Evie had said.

Trudy could have managed to drive herself to the station, of course.

Or made her way there by taxi, presumably.

Or maybe there’s a bus … When she’d suggested taking the train to Sydney she actually hadn’t considered the logistics of it.

So when Evie took that problem away from her, she felt grateful and surprised at how emotional she was about it.

As she’s not given to crying – even after Laurie died, she didn’t cry much – the emotion she felt at Evie’s gesture seemed too strong, and she’s still feeling it as she unbuckles her seatbelt in Evie’s car and prepares to exit.

‘Thank you, pet,’ she says. ‘But I’ll be fine this evening. You’ll have Billy coming back and you’ll be busy.’

‘Trudy,’ Evie says firmly, ‘how do you think you’ll get home from the station?’

‘There must be a bus. Something.’

Evie raises her eyebrows. ‘A bus on a Sunday night? You’ll be lucky.’ She smiles. ‘Why don’t you call me when you know which train you’ll be on. You can leave a message on the answering machine if I’m not home.’

‘What about Billy?’

‘Billy can come with me to pick you up. He loves an adventure. He’ll probably want me to put him on the train instead of taking him back home.’

‘All right,’ Trudy says, feeling that gratitude emotion rise, but she’s not going be pathetic in front of Evie so she sniffs it back. ‘Thank you.’

Evie waves her goodbye and Trudy heads for the platform.

When the train arrives it’s mostly empty; she takes a window seat because there’s a lot to see on this journey.

Sometimes she and Laurie would take the train to see Dylan rather than Laurie driving, so she knows the track.

The journey won’t be too long – Dylan suggested they meet at Hornsby, which is where she’d have to get off the train anyway, as everyone has to change at Hornsby if they want to travel elsewhere in Sydney.

If they were driving it would be at the end of the freeway, so it almost marks the spot where Sydney begins. For her, at least.

Dylan suggested they go to the RSL for lunch, as it’s near the station. Trudy is happy with that – she likes a club.

The rhythm of the train makes her drowsy but she wants to keep watching the view.

As the train nears the Hawkesbury River, Trudy marvels at the size of it.

The magnificence of the setting. It looks more like an inland harbour than a river, dotted with islands and defined by inlets.

Oysters are farmed down there. People have whole lives lived in, on and around that river and she knows nothing about them even though as the crow flies they’re not that far away from her.

It’s been so long since she’s seen the Hawkesbury – at least two years.

Maybe three, because in the last months of Laurie’s life they didn’t go anywhere much.

They weren’t exactly world travellers before that – Trudy doesn’t even have a passport because she’s never been able to take enough time away from the salon to travel very far – but they got out and about.

Sundays were their day together and they would drive to Newcastle sometimes and have lunch, or to the Hunter Valley where they’d visit the vineyards.

Trudy would sample the wine while Laurie watched.

He never took a drop of alcohol when he was driving somewhere.

She knew his death would circumscribe her life but she hadn’t considered that it would mean she’d stay so very close to home because there was no one to drive her around.

Everything became smaller, and she’s conscious that she needs to get out more, otherwise the boundaries of her world might close in on her so much they’ll crush her.

Her thoughts occupy her until the train pulls in to Hornsby, and she sees her son at the end of the platform. At six feet two, he’s easy enough to spot.

‘G’day, Mum.’ He stoops to hug her and Trudy notices some grey hairs – she shouldn’t be surprised, as he’s thirty-five now.

When she had him she was twenty-two; at the time she felt so grown up, but when she thinks that Josie is nineteen, there’s no way she could imagine her with a baby in three years’ time.

But who knows? Motherhood makes you grow up like nothing else.

‘Annemarie not coming?’ Trudy says, simultaneously miffed because she thinks it’s a slight and pleased because she’ll be able to have a proper conversation with Dylan.

‘Oh yeah, she is – she’s at the club with the kids. Thought we’d get a table early.’

‘Righto.’

Trudy takes his arm as they stroll and he fills her in on his work week.

He’s in construction and there’s always something being built in Sydney.

This city is not for her; no city would be.

The beach, the village attached to it, the peace at night, the brightness of the stars – these mean far too much to Trudy and she doubts she’d find them in this city that seems larger and louder each time she’s here.

Arriving at the club’s dining area – it’s a cafe on its way to being a bistro – Trudy sees her granddaughters waving vigorously, then hopping off their seats and running over.

‘Nana, Nana, Nana,’ squeals the youngest, Bree, who is five to her sister Irene’s six.

Trudy pulls out the presents she brought them – books from the Terrigal newsagent, who keeps a selection.

‘Great idea,’ says Annemarie as she stands and gives Trudy a kiss on the cheek. ‘Now they’ll be quiet.’

Trudy can’t tell if Annemarie is happy about that or not, but she chooses to believe she is.

Once food and beverages are ordered, Trudy feels her shoulders relax and she smiles around the table.

‘So, what’s the news?’ she says. It’s something she says to her clients, who usually give her a recap at a million miles an hour then ask Trudy what they should do about their wayward child/ bitch of a sister/horrible co-worker or the bloke who won’t ask them on a date (the latter answer is easy: forget about him).

‘I’m learning to do nails,’ says Annemarie with a hint of pride.

‘Hm?’ Trudy glances from her son to her daughter-in-law.

‘Nails.’ Annemarie holds up her hands and waggles her fingers, which seem to end in bright-red talons. ‘Acrylics.’

Annemarie has, until now, shown very little interest in anything to do with grooming.

She goes to the hairdresser for a trim every six months, which is about four months past the point Trudy would do it.

Lipstick is a concept she has not fully embraced.

And as for clothes … Well, Trudy may prefer an all-black uniform at the salon but outside of it she’s fond of a dress in a nice pattern and is a firm believer that a decent pair of slacks can carry a person quite a long way.

So this nail development is unusual. Accordingly, Trudy looks to Dylan for an explanation.

‘She wants to run her own business,’ he says, smiling. ‘And she can do nails from home. Or in a salon.’

‘Right,’ Trudy says. He makes it sound easy, as if Annemarie can just do a little course and suddenly be the belle of the nails ball.

Perhaps she can be, but in Trudy’s experience a beauty business – which is what she’d call it – requires people skills, creativity and a little nous, and Annemarie is not famous for any of those.

She’s a wonderful mother – Trudy can’t fault her there, the girls are well looked after and polite – and she must be a good wife otherwise Dylan wouldn’t be so cheerful, but for any role beyond that Trudy has her doubts.

Which makes her a mean mother-inlaw so she’ll keep them to herself.

‘I was inspired by you, Trudy,’ Annemarie says, her talons back under the table.

‘Oh?’

‘You’ve run that salon for so long. Years and years! So you must like doing it. And you had Dylan and everything.’

‘I did,’ Trudy says. ‘But I couldn’t have done it without Laurie supporting me.

Not financially, I mean. Lifting me up. He was …

’ Her voice catches and she bites her lip to stop becoming upset.

What is it with her today and these tears that threaten to appear?

Except she knows: it’s the reminders she keeps being given that Laurie isn’t here.

Of all the ways he helped her. She means it when she says he lifted her up.

Everyone who is trying to make something of their lives needs a person who tells them they can do it, and he was that for her.

Dylan reaches over to pat her hand. ‘It’s all right, Mum,’ he says. ‘I know Dad was irreplaceable.’

Yes, he was.

Not that she has plans to replace him, and she doesn’t know how Dylan would feel about that if she did.

‘Sorry to upset you, Trudy,’ Annemarie says. ‘Girls, stop kicking your chairs.’

‘Sorry, Mummy,’ the girls chorus as their drinks are put on the table.

‘But would you mind if I ask you for some tips?’ Annemarie goes on. ‘You know – about how to start a business?’

Trudy is taken aback – partly because Annemarie wants to ask her for advice, which has never happened before, and partly because she doesn’t believe she has anything useful to say.

She doesn’t think what she’s done with the Seaside Salon is that noteworthy.

This is her son’s wife, though, so she has to make an effort.

‘Sure,’ she says. ‘Call me when you’re ready.’

‘Great. Thanks.’ Annemarie smiles then turns to her daughters. ‘Now, drink that pink lemonade slowly, okay? You’re only getting one.’

The lunch is pleasant, and the chatter is superficial, and by the time she reaches the payphone at the station Trudy is pleased she made the effort.

‘Hello?’ Evie says on the other end of the line.

‘It’s me, pet.’

‘Hi! How was lunch? Actually, no, tell me in the car. What time does your train leave?’

‘Five minutes.’

‘See you at Gosford in an hour. Billy will be with me.’

‘Sounds perfect.’ Trudy hangs up and feels relieved, although she isn’t sure why. Maybe it’s because Evie is giving her a little touch of the care Laurie used to. And, in his way, Dylan did too.

So the day wasn’t so hard after all. Without Laurie, she thought it might be.

As she waits for the train those tears are back, and this time she understands why: this was her first big test of being without him, the first family get-together without him, and it shouldn’t have taken this long, but two years have passed both in a blur and been an eternity.

The tears are coming not because he’s not here but because she passed the test. She got herself to Sydney. She made it through lunch. So this means she is moving on. Life is flowing without him and, after being stuck in a dam for so long, she is flowing with it. Leaving him behind.