Title: Little Steps

Author: Geoff Cochrane

In: Sport 8: Autumn 1992

Publication details: Fergus Barrowman, March 1992, Wellington

Part of: Sport

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Sport 8: Autumn 1992

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The children have spread before them the usual holiday fare. One of the girls was a toddler when I last saw her, a little blonde thing at once shy and page 144 inquisitive with bright Australian speech. Five years ago her sister had not been born. But Rosie remembers something of me, my beard perhaps. She looks to her mother.

'You remember Tony,' coaxes Ann. The child struggles.

'I think so,' she says without pleasure, her dignity apparent. She has one of those little cheerios in her hand and will not now eat it.

'Go on,' I say with a grin. 'Have your sausage.'

'It's not a sausage,' says Rosie.

'It's a sort of sausage, pet. Doesn't Anthony look handsome this year? Did you come by train?'

'By bus.'

'You would have done,' says my mother, 'the train's a thing of the past.'

Is it? I have been sober six months but am still everywhere encountering absences, of things and of people.

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