14 Years

My husband and I celebrated our 14th wedding anniversary this week, on Tuesday.

I cooked one of my favourite meals - Surf and Turf - steak, prawns and bernaise sauce. Followed by chocolate mousse with strawberries.

Then the next night, Wednesday, after an evening in the city, he got on a train home without me, and I spent half an hour wandering around Wynyard station looking for him, thinking he'd been bashed and left for dead in the toilets.

After 14 years, you think I would know better. He thought I'd pulled one of my "fuck this, I'm not waiting around" routines, and had got on the soonest train home.

But I didn't did I? No, I waited in the station, for him to come out of the loo. And he didn't. I waited 15 minutes .. thinking maybe he had some kind of serious gastric problem (after all the prawns). So I mustered my courage, shoved my foot in the toilet door and called out his name a few times.

Someone replied with "no Greg in here love" so I went to get the station manager.

Incredibly, there is someone on duty at 10.30pm in Sydney's second busiest train station on a Wednesday night.

I told him I appeared to have misplaced my husband and could he quickly check the toilet for me. Which he did, with remarkable acceptance ... I believe he may have been asked to do this before.

He said "He's not in there love" and when I just kinda stood there, he said it again. "He's not there." Oh. Ok.

So where did he go? The bastard just got on a train, didn't he?

I kept wondering why I wasn't getting mad. I was very cool-chick about the whole thing.

He left me in a CBD railway station at 10.30 at night, wandering around for half an hour, not getting to Strathfield til 11pm, to get a cab home by myself.

And I wasn't really mad.

He rang my phone as soon as he got home - I was still at Central, still half an hour from home.

He was very apologetic.

So you are wondering - why didn't I just call his phone? Good question. I couldn't call his phone. It was in my pocket.

It was in my pocket because he had been at quiz night, had plenty of beers, then was making noises about calling people in New Zealand. With daylight saving, it was about 1am in NZ.

To stop him doing this, I took his phone. This has happened before.

Where I went wrong - was not giving it back BEFORE he went into the men's at Wynyard.

After 14 years, I'm still making these basic errors.