The billboard from the train reads, ‘Retire in Paradise. Beach blocks start at $350,000’, with a picture of smiling young woman from the 1960s, with sunglasses perched on her head Jean Shrimpton-style. Across her red bikini top was the slogan, ‘once seen, you’ll be sold’. In a neat cursive hand, under her belly button, a graffitist wrote, ‘has anyone seen my wherewithal?’

Back in his early 20’s, Tom Riccobono thought trains romantic. ‘Brief Encounter’ and all that. A throwback to a bygone day, of foggy railways stations and a half remembered kiss in an underpass with a woman he’d spent a week with in Prague, 50 years ago. He couldn’t remember her name. Pillar? Pandora? He promised to write but never did.

Now he wouldn’t be caught dead in one. They stopped for no reason and were dirty. But here he was in seat 12B, staring out the window. The covid virus had cancelled planes but for some reason, trains still ran. Tiny incubators on wheels. He was two hours and 20 minutes in to a ten hour journey back in time; back to his home town. A place he loathed with its pretentious arts festivals and parochialism.

Jacqueline crying on the phone forced his hand. Sally packed his suitcase, booked the ticket, made his lunch and a thermos of tea, drove him to the station and kissed him goodbye. He hesitated, turned back and she said, “go, just go” and drove out of the carpark with a wave.

He’d met Gary Saunders at university. Shared the same left wing ideals. Gary was rabid. On a first name basis with Marx, Althusser and Gramsci. In their second year, they stormed the Vice Chancellor’s office, demanding more Aborigines be allowed to study on campus. They moved in to a share house together, threw loud parties, drank cheap red wine, fumbled women in to bed and danced to rock music. They were called G&T because they always mixed together.

After he graduated, he left Adelaide and for nine years, worked as a clinical psychologist in Carlton. He had a three month waiting list of rich and troubled women from Albert Park to Kew, hammering on his door.

After the court case, he didn’t speak to Gary for 40 years. Erased him completely, until his wife, Jacqueline called out of the blue. Gary had prostate cancer. Inoperable. Three months at most. He wanted to see him.

xxxxxxx

In their late 20s, they’d call each other drunk, late on a Friday night. As they aged, the calls moved by tiny increments from weekly to fortnightly, sobering up as the years passed, to calls once a month. Gary’s legal business in the leafy eastern suburbs – an area he once scorned as a ‘bourgeois breeding ground’ – was doing well. He’d bought a townhouse in Unley and was dating Jacqueline, a woman from an establishment family. Old money.

Gary and Jacqueline’s engagement party was held in a mansion over-looking the city. He looked for familiar faces but found none. Gone were the heavy drinkers, the women who squealed when they laughed, the pot heads, the Port Noarlunga surf mob, the Pink Floyd prog-rockers. Replaced by well-groomed young men in expensive charcoal suits drinking Coopers Ale, making small talk to highly preened young women.

Gary gave him a hug and introduced Jacqueline, who was pretty with an equine face, blue eyes and blond hair which fell to her shoulders. She wore a pearl coloured maxi dress with sequins around the hem and high heels.

“Gary has told me so much about you, Tom,” she said in an accent as if Kent was next door. “I feel I’ve known you for years. Thank you for flying over. Planes can be such a bore.”

“I wouldn’t have missed it for the world. It’s not every day Tom can pull such a beautiful woman without slipping her Rohypnol first.”

Jacqueline laid her hand gently on Gary’s arm, crinkled her nose and laughed.

“Tom told me you were a card. Please mingle freely. Plenty of my – sorry – our guests, probably need your therapy skills. Two girls who saw you come in, would like to get you on the couch already.”

She smiled, squeezed Tom’s arm and glided over to a table of older guests.

“What do you think?” Gary asked, as if showing off a new magic trick.

“She’s a delight. I can’t believe someone of your intelligence, could do so well.”

Gary snorted, slapped him on the back, which he’d never done before, and knocked back his scotch and coke.

“The wedding’s planned for November. The dress is coming from Milan,” he rolled his eyes. “You’ll be my best man, won’t you?”

“It would be an honour. Well, not exactly an honour. More like a trial, a duty, an appointment, but I’ll be there, drunk or sober.”

“Thanks mate. My second choice is a lobotomised lawyer. I’d better go mingle,” and gave a wink. “That’s what you do at these things, apparently.”

Tom took a glass of Moet and ambled over to a group of people bemoaning the state of the Liberal Party. He stepped forward and nodded.

“I agree completely. Take my case,” Tom said. “I’m 32, a clinical psychologist with two brothers – one in the Liberal Party and the other serving six years for armed robbery. My sister, Peggy, is on the streets and Dad lives off her earnings. Mum is pregnant to my uncle and because of this, Dad won’t marry her. Last night I got engaged to an ex-prostitute – lovely girl – and I want to be fair to her: should I tell her about my brother in the Liberal Party?”

They looked at him as if he’d just taken a dump on the hors d’oeuvres. A young woman wearing a dark blue pants suit and silver high heels, tapped her highly polished blood red nails on the side of her champagne glass.

“You’re Tom, aren’t you? You do know Gary is running for preselection for the seat of Unley?”

He feigned indifference but their stares made him check his fly was closed.

“As the Liberal Party candidate…”

xxxxxxx

The court official read the charge out. Police allege that on the night of 12 August, Thomas Riccobono raped Carol Marilyn McKenna, 16, a minor and ward of the state, at his apartment.

Carol was Bipolar and was carving her thighs with razor blades. She was his last patient every Friday fortnight. At 12 she’d been raped by her step-father and had run away and kept running. Lived on a diet of pizza, drugs and petty crime. She wore black, loose fitting tracksuit pants, gym shoes and a thick brown jumper but recently, started wearing a tartan mini skirt and a low cut white t-shirt. She feared and loathed men but said she felt safe with Tom. He left biscuits and cheese in the consulting room which she devoured. Carol smelt so he gave her money to buy tampons and soaps.

One Friday night, she asked if he could drop her at Flinders Street Station. He had to stop at his apartment first as he was going out for dinner. He pulled up outside, ran up the stairs to get his credit card, turned to walk back down the stairs and saw Carol standing naked in front of him.

“I know what Doctor Tom wants,” she said. “A quickie against the bookcase. Hey, you’ve books by the Marquis De Sade here. Kinky”

“You’ve got the wrong idea,” he said as he turned his back on her. “Put your clothes on for Christ’s sake Carol or I’ll report this to your supervisor at Youth Affairs”

She yelled ‘fuck you’, threw her panties on top of the bookcase, dressed quickly and ran down the stairs. He drove around the block but she’d gone.

xxxxxxxx

Two detectives knocked at his apartment door on Sunday morning. Carol told the cops he’d raped her. Tom said he’d given her food because she was hungry. He wasn’t trying to groom her. The marks on her thigh were self-inflicted. Anyone could see that. The detectives found semen stains on the bed where he’d made love to Sally, his date that night. They found Carol’s panties on top of the bookcase. Would he mind coming down to the station to make a statement?

The Public Prosecutor’s Office decided the evidence, while not strong, was enough to charge him. The story hit the media. ‘Renowned psychologist charged with rape of a minor’. The rumour mill went to work. Pervert. Pedo. Rock spider.

He asked Gary if he’d fly over and be a character witness. It was messy as the wedding was less than six weeks away.

“The charges are bullshit, mate,” Gary said. “The judge will throw ‘em out. You don’t need me. You’ve got half of Melbourne’s mental health professionals backing you up.”

“Some have got cold feet. I could lose my licence over this and maybe worse.”

“Never happen. Look, I’ve got to make a presentation to the party selection committee around the time you want me in court. It’s down to two candidates. Me and the lobotomised lawyer. But bugger it, email me the date and time and I’ll be there.”

xxxxxxxx

The media packed the court. Six months ago a psychiatrist fed a female client sedatives and secretly filmed them having sex. He copped four years jail.

Tom sat next to his lawyer, who looked 12 and underfed, as the clerk read out Gary Saunders name. People in the court looked around. The clerk called his name again.

The Magistrate shifted in her chair, looked at Tom’s lawyer and raised an eye brow.

“It appears that Mr Saunders is a ‘no show’ your Honour,” his lawyer said. “But if you will allow it, I’d like to question Ms McKenna.”

While his lawyer cross examined Carol, Tom pictured Gary presenting his case to the Liberal Party selection committee. Pictured him talking confidently, using his hands to make a point, just like he did in those politics tutorials years before. He was a successful barrister now and about to marry in to one of Adelaide’s richest families. Tom heard his lawyer talk about Carol’s psychiatric history. Her years of abuse by her step-father, her mendacity to survive on the streets. But Tom’s mind had turned Biblical. How many times had Peter denied knowing Christ? Three? Once was enough for Tom.

The Magistrate had heard enough.

“All rise,” the clerk said, as the media lifted their note pads from their laps.

“Tom Riccobono, this court finds you not guilty of rape,” the Magistrate said. “This matter should never have proceeded. I fear Mr Riccobono, your career has been seriously damaged by this farrago and I sincerely apologise. You are free to go.”

Tom shook his lawyers little hand and felt Sally squeeze his shoulder from the row behind. He walked past the reporters who asked how he felt.

“Like a man saved from a heart attack only to die slowly of cancer.”

xxxxxxx

The train slowed to 30 kilometres an hour then stopped in the middle of a wheat field. The blonde heads of wheat swayed like tiny waves in the light morning breeze. He opened his lunch box. Sally packed two ham and English mustard sandwiches, a small box of sultanas, a slice of carrot cake and a note, which said ‘forgive’. He recalled Emerson’s quote, ‘The years teach what the days never know’.

He was right to kill the friendship off. To sever it irrevocably. How could he ever trust him again? But he knew that’s not what Emerson meant. The years bring wisdom and with wisdom comes forgiveness. Gary’s letter arrived three days after the trial ended.

Dear Tom,

You’ve escaped the hangman’s noose! I told you there was nothing to worry about. I heard the prosecutor copped it from the Magistrate. I’ve been endorsed as the new Liberal Party candidate for Unley! They’ll be an election in the next six months so I’d better get cracking. The wedding is going to be big. My guts are churning. A million things to arrange but at least I’ve got you on my side. Onwards and upwards. Give my love to Sally.

He kept the letter pressed in an old writing journal. Gary never planned to fly over. His pitch to the bluebloods was always going to take precedence over the trial. He didn’t even have the guts to call. The light, dismissive tone rankled, as if being accused of rape, crucified by the media and having his practice destroyed, was an annoyance, like a mosquito in a room at night. ‘Onwards and upwards’. Jesus Christ.

But Gary wouldn’t have known how worried he was. He must have known what it would do to his career. A career he’d spent almost ten years building. The damage was done.

After the trial, the conference invitations stopped. They didn’t publish his papers in academic journals. He sat in his office for a month and no one called. He had rent to pay on the apartment and legal fees, so he took a position as a student councillor at a small liberal arts college, at half his previous salary. Sally stuck with him. Thank God for Sally.

Three weeks before Gary’s wedding he sent him a short letter.

Gary,

I am writing to tell you that I will not be your Best Man because you’re a cowardly piece of shit. You left me swinging in the breeze. Don’t ever contact me again you fucking cunt. Tom Riccobono.

The train lurched forward, knocking his thermos to the floor. He slowly bent to pick it. He had a hip operation six years ago and now his back was going. The sleepless nights, the tight shoulders, the involuntary groan when he sat. He’d spent most of his adult life without Gary. It wasn’t a fall out but a falling out. An ongoing state of anger and regret. He wanted to call him when he and Sally adopted a seven year old young girl with jet black hair. Samantha was working in a bookshop in New York now. He’d heard Gary and Jacqueline had three children. The youngest boy drowned on a camping holiday on the Murray River. He should have called. The silence grew louder. You fucking cunt.

“Forgive” Sally’s note said. “Three months to live,” Jacqueline said. He kept the anger up like an actor reciting lines half remembered without passion.

The train started its slow climb up the eastern slope of the ranges. On the other side lay the city, with its neat green hedges and snobbery, where his old friend lay, waiting for him.