Works by Alexandra Linehan

Autumn Nostalgia

The 6:55 to Belgrave pulled out of Flinders Street station towards Richmond. Dawn was breaking over the cityscape, and the sky was a mélange of fading navy and milky purple. Metal wheels clattered rhythmically against the train tracks but the carriage was silent.

Mia pulled her coat further around herself and felt the fleece against her bare arms, wiped under her eyes again to brush away the mascara that had fallen from her eyelashes.

She lifted her head to look up around the carriage. Her lids were heavy with makeup and lack of sleep. Around her lay the dregs from Saturday night. Girls in heels and short skirts were slumped on seats, bartenders in black blinked at their phones, a few workers from the tunnel project in their high-vis sat yawning on their way home to sleep. She closed her eyes for a moment, lay back in the seat.

“Now arriving at…Richmond. Change here for…Cranbourne, Pakenham, Sandringham, and Frankston services.” Came the monotonous automated voice.

Mia pulled out her phone. Not enough battery to listen to music. One message in the group chat.

Message us when you get home!! xx. She turned the screen o and looked out the window

The train pulled into Richmond. Mia looked out over Hoddle Street, at the tra c flowing past in an even tempo. A billboard pierced on top of a tax agent's o ce swung hypnotically around, advertising a real estate agent on one side, and a shampoo on the other. The doors beeped as they closed and Mia looked as someone sat down across from her. Suit, briefcase, polished shoes. Out of place for sure. She didn’t catch the face and looked back out the window

They pulled out of Richmond. Mia could smell co ee and her tired body ached for the taste. She lifted her gaze toward the suit and watched as he lifted the cup to his lips. He looked straight back into her eyes.

There was a moment of surprise. Each of them wondered if this was even possible.

She recognised him straight away, despite the suit and tie, but what on earth was he doing here?

She had never considered a way their lives would unfold that would lead to this, to him sitting across from her on the early Sunday morning train.

His brown eyes narrowed as he slowly lowered the co ee cup from his lips. “Mia? Is it…is it you?”

“Damian?” She replied, somehow fixing her mouth around the syllables. Everything else was immaterial. She couldn’t even hear the clattering of the train anymore.

Yes.” He blinked. Her gaze travelled up and down his body, the dark blue suit, the brown shining leather shoes, the patterned tie, expertly knotted. He was clean-shaven, dark hair pressed back, briefcase in hand.

“What are you doing here?” The words were blurted out before she could replace them with anything more tactful.

“I um…” Damian cleared his throat, blinked again. “I’m heading to a meeting. The firm I work for… we’re meeting some foreign clients today.”

“On a Sunday?” Mia frowned, although that was the part of the sentence that made the most sense. Damian? Working for some fancy firm?

Damian smiled, his face slightly taught. “Yes, unfortunately. And yourself?” Attached to the question was a slight upward inflection, a slight movement in his eyebrows, a slight accusation. Mia sat up straighter, did up her coat up over her dress. “Heading home. Was out at a friend s place last night.”

Autumn Nostalgia

My short story is called Autumn Nostalgia. In it, two people with a shared tragedy meet, and see how that the other is also running from their past. This story reflects the knowledge I have gained as I have slowly become an adult - that people change in the most unexpected ways, that trauma will always stick to us if we do not face it head on, and that so many people exist in a perpetual state of avoidance. It is not meant to be hopeless however, but to provide a snapshot of people’s inner lives and their inner pain.

“Oh. That sounds fun.” Damian smiled, sipped that co"ee again. The scent was filling Mia with longing. She pushed it back.

“What firm do you work for?” She asked, tipping her head slightly. Damian wasn’t the only one who could be judgemental. “When did you move to Melbourne?”

Damian briefly glanced across the carriage, then looked back at her. “I’m a lawyer. I work for PWC legal. I moved to Melbourne last year. I finished my law degree in Sydney.”

Mia nodded, still not quite comprehending. Images flashed through her mind, memories that had remained untouched for years. She saw Thomas, when he had still be alive, with Damian by his side. She remembered the summer after she finished high school, the night they had built a bonfire on the beach, remembered driving along the country roads, blasting Triple J through the speakers.

A di"erent time, a di"erent life, even. Before she had come to Melbourne.

“When did you move down here?”

Mia snapped her head up, pulled out of the nostalgia. “Four years ago. After Thomas died. I finished studying.” She smiled. “Early childhood education. I work in Richmond now, at a kindergarten.”

Damian smiled, but for the first time it was genuine. “That’s great, Mia. Do you like your job?”

“Love it.” Mia smiled despite herself. “And, and you? You know, I didn’t ever see you…being a lawyer?”

Damian had been studying anthropology and Thomas was studying philosophy when they had met, in Sydney. One summer they had rented a run-down house in Bateman’s Bay and invited Mia along. She remembered Damian’s beard and graphic t-shirts, the way he would bite his lip when he was amused.

She remembered the feeling of being so insignificant and so naive compared to her big brother, with his tales of the Sydney nightlife, and his cool boyfriend, and the intellectual conversations he would insist on having after dinner, one hand on Damian’s thigh, the other wrapped elegantly around the stem of a glass of red wine.

“It’s long hours, but I do like it, yes.” Damian nodded.

Thomas and Damian had been together for what, six months when they had spent that time in Bateman’s Bay? And then two years after that was when that semi-trailer had sideswiped Thomas on the freeway when he was driving home from work. An act of randomness that had changed all their lives.

Mia had tried to stay in contact with Damian, but when she had seen him at the funeral, at the wake…his grief had seemed to immense, a huge cloud enveloping him and threatening to pull in anyone close to him. She hadn’t had the strength to take on his grief as well as her own. She simply would have collapsed under the weight.

They hadn’t kept in contact really. A courtesy visit a few months later when she was leaving for Melbourne, after she had enrolled at TAFE, had been all. Damian in the living room of his crummy share house in Parramatta. Mia standing awkwardly in his door frame, looking down at him, feeling his grief swell and pull her towards him like it was gravity.

Why were they pretending with the niceties? The children Mia worked with didn’t pretend, they just said what should be said. They had infinite wisdom, she realised.

“I still celebrate his birthday, you know. I think it’s important to remember him. We always talk about him at Christmas, when I head back home.” She spoke too quickly, the words stumbling out. “You know, remember all the good times. You should…you should come along one year.” She had no idea where the last impulse had come from, and quickly looked down at the stained floor.

“That, um.” Damian swallowed, breathed in sharply. “Won’t be necessary. But thank you, it’s a very kind o"er, Mia. Very kind.”

“Of course.” She nodded. They had sped through stations. It was Hawthorn now. “Well um, this is me.” She got up, suddenly conscious of her bare legs, her sneakers. She brushed down the skirt of her dress.

“It was nice to bump into you.” Damian stood up too. Smiled, stuck out his hand. Mia frowned, but took it none the less. His touch pulled her back into the summer heat, into the salt water and late nights and smell of cigarette smoke and Thomas’ smile. She almost gasped. “Yes…you too, Damian. Take care.” She smiled one more time, then headed toward the door. As she stepped out of the carriage she turned back, but Damian had already pulled his phone out. The dead leaves brushed her ankles as she walked up the ramp from the station. She pushed her hands deep into her pockets. Damian? In Melbourne? A lawyer? It was surreal. It would be easier for Mia to think that it had not happened at all than to absorb the reality.

The sun was peaking above the horizon now. Purple faded to blue. The stars had almost disappeared except a few stragglers. The eucalyptus trees swayed in the breeze as the city took its first breaths of the day.

A tram clattered past and shattered the moment. Mia turned around and started to walk home. Could Damian also sense that he still carried it with him? That she could still see the outline of grief that clung to him, see his tiredness from lugging the deadweight?

The adrenaline of the night had worn o". The alcohol was long gone. She suddenly felt the crushing weight of her tiredness, the bite of the cold, and the dirt on the street. Of course Damian could sense his own sadness, and he would have clocked hers straight away too. Takes one to know one, after all, she thought, looking up at the rising sun.