Author: Michael Burge
Date: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00
Description: James Brandt didn't look back when he got away from his rural hometown as a teenager. Now he has returned to Kippen for the first time in twenty years because his cousin Tony has been found dead under the local bridge. The news that Tony has left him the entire family farm triggers James's journalistic curiosity – and his anxiety – both of which cropped up during his turbulent journey to adulthood. But it is the unexpected homophobic attack he survives that draws James into a hunt for the reasons one lonely Kippen farm boy in every generation kills himself. Standing in the way is James's fathe
Publisher: MidnightSun Publishing
Rights: Copyright © Michael Burge 2021

TANK WATER

‘An absolute page-turner.’

Rosalie Ham, bestselling author of The Dressmaker

‘The parochial under-belly of rural Australia is laid bare in this raw and powerful story that delves into the emotional toll and tragic consequences of gay-hate crime.’

Nicole Alexander, bestselling author of The Cedar Tree

‘Clear-eyed and suspenseful, Tank Water exposes more than one taboo of Australian life away from the big cities. An unforgettable ride.’

Nigel Featherstone, author of Bodies of Men

‘Written in a matter-of-fact way, Mike’s confrontational first novel made me think about life, death and sexuality in the country, because Burge has the rural lineage to make it real.’

Margo Kingston, author and journalist

‘It’s time to move beyond a city perspective on rural gay Australians – so often imbued with pity, condescension and silly stereotypes – to hear our own voices on our own terms. Michael Burge is one of our most compelling, nuanced and enjoyable voices.’

Rodney Croome AM, LGBTIQ equality advocate

‘The writing had me there; right inside the story. Tank Water is such a poignant insight into the dynamics of an extended rural family with all the secrets, contradictions and prejudices that family members inevitably confront.’

Mary Moody, author and broadcaster

First published 2021 by MidnightSun Publishing Pty Ltd

PO Box 3647, Rundle Mall, SA 5000, Australia.

www.midnightsunpublishing.com

Copyright © Michael Burge 2021

The moral rights of the author have been asserted.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted by any person or entity, including internet search engines or retailers (including, but not restricted to, Google and Amazon), in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying (except under the statutory exceptions provisions of the Australian Copyright Act 1968), recording, scanning or by any information storage and retrieval system without the prior written permission of MidnightSun Publishing.

Tank Water is a work of fiction. All characters, places and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination, or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

Cover design by Kim Lock

Internal design by Zena Shapter

Typeset in Bradley Hand and Garamond.

Printed and bound in Australia by Ovato. The papers used by MidnightSun in the manufacture of this book are natural, recyclable products made from wood grown in sustainable plantation forests.

For Pat Burge

PROLOGUE
2005

Daniel listened to his son’s idiotic answering machine for the fourth or fifth time, waited for the beep, cleared his throat and went to say everything; but when the right words still wouldn’t come, he threw the receiver down and went for another drink.

Bottles rattled in the fridge door as he yanked it open. He twisted the top off one and threw his head back for the first gulp. From that angle the leftover sausages on the top shelf looked like his best option for tea, but their yellowed skin reminded him of his nephew’s bloated body inside the freezer at the police station.

Even after shutting his fridge the smell was there. It’d been hanging around for days, like there was mortuary fluid on his shoes. Whenever he noticed that sickly blend of chemicals, Daniel couldn’t help but picture the photographs of Tony’s remains before they’d removed him from the river below the Kippen Bridge.

He turned to the sink and washed his hands again, but the mossy scent coming down the pipes from the tank didn’t help. What water did to a corpse — filling it with more death than it seemed to have room for — was the very worst thing he’d seen in twenty-five years of police work. The head, shoulders and most of the torso had been submerged, swelling the guts. The legs were broken and lying at awkward angles, entirely concealed by reeds and the thicket of poplars.

Daniel reached for his beer and flicked the radio on. Music he didn’t recognise unsettled him, but the news would come on in a few minutes. Word was already getting around town. He hoped no one had contacted the Kippen station with the worst of the stories. Tony would probably still be lying there if a jogger’s dog hadn’t sniffed him out. The park below the bridge was known for attracting lonely types, and his nephew certainly fit the bill. Every ten years or so, one of them jumped.

He reached into the bread bin. Only crusts left. Everything else was in the fridge, but Daniel wasn’t game to open that again. Nothing much in the cupboards. He wasn’t in the habit of going into Kippen just for shopping, not since he’d finished up at the police station. Anyhow, there were beers left from his retirement party on the back seat of his car.

As he pushed through the screen door onto the verandah, rabbits scurried off the last patch of lawn by the tap. A cloud of dust in the middle distance partly shrouded his brother inside his tractor cabin, heading for home. Beyond that, already out of the sun’s reach, Deloraine’s homestead blended into the dark furrows that would push up Bill’s cheeky early sorghum crop soon enough.

Daniel sucked at his drink and swirled each mouthful around his teeth before swallowing, testing whether it could somehow be right to head over there and hang around for something to eat. For more than twenty years, Doris had told him to come around for a meal whenever he needed. He had a whole unopened carton of beer to offer.

Sitting up in his cabin, Bill was a bloody wonder. He never let the farm go, even after the worst life threw at him. With the chance of frost right through to November it was dicey to plant so early, but Daniel knew why his brother did things that way. It was like they couldn’t lose no matter how much they gambled. Bill planted crops even if the conditions were all wrong. He loved feeling like a winner in spite of the weather reports, and there was no one out here to overlook your failures. It had been a huge risk, but he’d pulled the tough older brother act and forced Daniel into sowing sorghum on every square inch of Deloraine and The Mulgas, less than a month after little Gregory had died.

Daniel gnawed the inside of his cheek, remembering his own dead boy.

The hard work of that huge crop had paid off richly for them, but it had been Daniel’s last full season of farming before he’d pulled the skittish younger brother act, sold the land and applied to become a cop. Harvesting his share of nearly five thousand acres in the solitude of his cabin while he’d sobbed for Gregory had done him in. All that was left of The Mulgas’ perfect cropping country was the home yard.

‘Thank Christ,’ he muttered as though someone was there. His colleagues were right. He’d started talking to himself. Former colleagues.

Bill changed gears and the tractor disappeared behind the tall pine trees that obscured the machinery shed at Deloraine. As Daniel watched, he felt the air cool and noticed the gloom of his own house stretching over the field between the homesteads. The unmistakeable shadow of The Mulgas’ water tank steadily covered the dried grass, the gravel laneway and the bare fruit trees along the fence.

He shouldn’t go and bother his brother and sister-in-law. The Mulgas had him in its grasp, and staying in was better than witnessing poor old Bill having to go home to Doris. He’d be trying to disappear into the woodwork even more than usual, and she would be busy with funeral arrangements like it was a bloody dance at the town hall.

Daniel heaved a sigh, drowned it with another mouthful, and prepared to sit with the sorrow in the homestead that once rattled with a wife and kids. There was just one more thing to do before he’d put the lock on the top gate, fetch the beers in and call it a night.

He flung the door open, killed the radio, went for the phone and dialed the number he’d circled in the newspaper next to his son’s photograph. While he waited for the comedy act of Jamie’s message, still with that girlish tone, Daniel finished his beer.

‘You’ve reached James Brandt, journalist at the newspaper everyone loves to hate. I’m not available to take your call at the moment, but please leave me a message if you’ve got the scoop.’

Right off the beep, Daniel spoke.

‘Jamie,’ he said and burped. He wasn’t about to let his son imagine anything had changed. ‘It’s Dad. Look, I’ve been trying to catch you for a few days. It’s just that, well there’s no easy way to say it. There’s been a death in the family. Just call me, son. Funeral’s next week. There’s a couple of things to discuss, but you don’t need to be here.’

ONE
2005

James woke to the announcement of the small aircraft’s descent into the border country, and the couple sitting in front of him started to point out the landmarks below. But the sight of isolated farms along the meandering river left him unmoved. Sunlight was reflecting off dams as the plane cut through a layer of low cloud onto the tarmac, without a hint of turbulence. Touchdown was so smooth it felt surreal.

He was the only one getting off at Wishaw. An older couple waiting to board the last leg to the coast smiled in the tiny glass-walled terminal, but James gave them nothing. The coffee cart and car rental desk were closed. An envelope with his name on it contained the key.

The squat blue hire car was the only vehicle beyond the main entrance. James threw his bag into the passenger seat and let the road take him down the heavily-wooded ridges around Wishaw. After an hour the dense forests gave way to farmland, then James glided back into Kippen just as the towering pair of cylindrical concrete water towers emerged silently from the mist.

At the crossroads, the town’s century-old pub left him completely devoid of nostalgia. The heritage train station looked like it had been renovated into a tourist centre with a café. It was closed. No chance of a coffee yet, so James accelerated straight ahead up the ramp onto the Kippen Bridge.

It seemed right to take a look. That’s what journalists did.

As he crossed the road bridge the reflections coming off the adjacent railway viaduct made him blink. He squinted in order to find the turnoff at the far side, braked at the new-looking gate, turned onto the concrete road that had replaced the old track, and descended into the parkland below the pair of bridges.

The place couldn’t have appeared less like the scene of a suicide. James took in the signs of recent landscaping: a curved planting of native saplings and a sign about wildlife. As he pulled to a stop he also noticed the utes parked at the margins of the bitumen car park and let out a groan, picturing the headline:

Prodigal son goes straight to sex spot.

Since he was already thinking up screamers to avoid the angst of new situations, it was no wonder James found himself drawn to the frosty shadows below a lonely bridge at a gay beat, a journalist exhibiting enough anxiety for his boss to suspect it was starting to affect his work.

As he emerged into the cold air he heard waterfowl calling sweetly from the far bank. Kids were walking to school across the footpath high above, singing. This harmless place was where Dad said Cousin Tony had jumped to his death sometime in autumn. Judging by the bare branches of poplars reaching up towards the bridge, their leaf buds looking ready to unfurl in a matter of days, winter was swiftly coming to an end in the border country.

James spied the broad thicket of trees beneath the bridge, strode across the car park and pushed through a nettle-filled ditch into the shadows under the concrete span. After about twenty metres, the water’s edge stopped him. On the far side of a wide pool dammed by concrete pylons, scraps of police tape had been left tied around some of the timber struts that held up the railway line. As he scanned the thick layers of greenery that concealed the place where Tony’s body must have been found, a flock of birds shook the long reeds and took off towards the cliffs.

The parklands sat at the lowest point of a high-sided gorge. From down here, both road and railway bridge connected the rocky walls that rose each side of the river. Their undersides looked about ten metres higher than the tops of the tallest poplars. James dropped his head and squeezed his eyes shut against the many dangerous looking gaps that someone could have jumped through.

‘Fuck, Tony. What the fuck?’ he said.

Images of victims came to him, all the black-and-white death masks he’d encountered in police photographs while working the crime rounds; restless souls who’d overdosed, severed, gassed, poisoned or jumped their way out of life, often for no apparent reason.

But James had an idea why the body of Kippen’s favourite son lay undiscovered in the river for almost two months before anyone noticed he was missing. As soon as he’d arrived and spotted the public toilet with the utes parked at a distance, the angle of this suicide story had revealed itself.

Detective Constable Daniel Brandt would have missed all the clues. Yet James felt absolutely no sense of superiority over his father, the way his newsroom colleagues did whenever they bitched about how cops always downplayed the obvious.

Looking back towards the safety of his hire car, James sensed that he might be about to pass beyond reason. The unstable feeling came creeping into his gut like the ripple of nausea, just as his counsellor had predicted.

The man assigned by James’s newspaper to give him six free sessions looked depressed and aloof himself, right on cue, every third Thursday afternoon of the month. That made it very easy, in the neutral tones of the consulting room, for James to brush aside any suggestion that coming home for the first time in two decades might result in feelings of detachment. But now that he was back at Kippen, he was desperate to recall his counsellor’s throwaway advice about being self-aware.

He pushed impatiently back through the tall weeds until he could see the tops of the vehicles parked by the toilets. Morning sun was sharpening everything in the park at the bottom of the short, steep hill behind the shops. Retreating was an option, but returning to his car, driving back to the main street and waiting for the vague appointment he’d made at the real estate office wasn’t going to make him feel any better than going into the toilet block, pretending to take a piss, and just seeing what there was to see.

‘If you feel yourself starting to go emotionally numb, pause and make sure you’re experiencing your home town as it is, not as it was. Name the feelings, make notes if you need.’

That had been his counsellor’s suggestion. Then, true to form, James had started treating Tony’s death like it was a news assignment, made room on his schedule, booked his flights, and packed for two days away as though anaesthetised.

Fuck it, James thought. Let’s see how detached I really am.

He passed quickly up the slope away from the river, feeling like he could be a stranger just seeking directions. The gritty sound of his footfalls seemed dangerously loud as he crossed the car park and approached the brick toilet block with its fresh coat of paint. Only when he was standing in the deserted entranceway, its blazing squares of light illuminating the ceiling, did James start to feel an unwelcome warmth. Turning back now would only put him in the pathway of any man following from one of the vehicles.

Around the corner, two backs greeted him at the urinal. A tall guy in a cowboy hat made fleeting eye contact and James could see he was thick-jawed. The other was older, in a grey farmer’s parka and a wide, flat-brimmed hat.

James moved into a stall and almost immediately the door pushed open. Hoping to see the blunt, handsome face of the cowboy, James turned. But it was the old guy reaching one red, creased hand through and covering the place where the bolt would go.

Suddenly cold to his core, James pushed him out and locked the door. There was a scuffle of shoes and the sound of a zipper closing.

The cowboy laughed from the urinal. ‘Nice to see someone young, for once.’

James swore under his breath.

‘You come here at night?’ the cowboy said.

James wrenched the door open, prepared to push past if he had to, but the cowboy was busy manhandling himself, bottom lip glistening below a much older face than James had imagined.

Outside, a white ute sped up the steep rise towards the main road as James crossed to the hire car. He got in feeling as though the real James had been left watching in the warmth of the vehicle while a spineless shell had gone looking for the site of a suicide but ended up cruising for sex.

Another headline came to him with relief and an embarrassed laugh as he turned the key.

Local graziers in public sex sting.

Back in town for just one hour. Reasons why this trip home is different:-

I’m only here for two days max (calm down).

Kippen has a gay beat (who knew?).

Local farmers are cruising for sex with men (can’t believe I’m even writing that down).

I shouldn’t be going to beats (Dylan will kill me if he finds out).

Tony might have killed himself because of what happened in 1985.

TWO
1985

James couldn’t decide what was worse: being forced to stay with Dad or having to waste most of the school holidays on meeting his father’s new girlfriend.

For weeks, he’d weighed these options ahead of the day-long rail journey from the city to Kippen with his brother, which involved two changes of train and started with their mother embarrassing James and Alan during her big farewell from Sydney’s Central railway station.

‘I don’t want either of you to get drawn into any talk about land, or inheritance, or stuff like that, okay? There’s bound to be talk because Tony’s getting married,’ she said, pushing the packed lunches and bottles of juice on them.

‘Okay, Mum,’ James said, rolling his eyes because people had noticed.

‘The new floozie might be with your father when he collects you from the train station, so be nice,’ she said in her pre-school teacher’s voice, slow and falsely polite when directed at anyone over three feet tall.

‘Rightyo.’

‘Stick with your brother, and see you up there in a couple of days. Tell them all Rebecca Brandt is coming back, and she’s fabulous!’ she said, one hand on her hip, the other behind her head, laughing.

James smiled and waved to cover up his intention to do whatever he wanted.

He ate the packed lunch before they reached Newcastle, ditched the juice on the platform, and used his emergency telephone money to buy coffee from the canteen while they waited for the rear carriages to be uncoupled.

‘Mum said you’re supposed to sit with me,’ Alan said, not looking up from his electronic game when James returned to their seats.

There it was. Alan was seventeen. James was supposed do whatever he said, like almost sixteen wasn’t almost seventeen. He ignored his brother and sat at the other end of the carriage while the train rattled through dry uplands to an isolated station. Here, in sight of machines cutting endless wheat fields, they waited an hour for a very late, single-carriage railcar to arrive from the north, unload nobody to connect to Newcastle, and collect only the brothers for Kippen.

The familiar final leg across the vast, harvested plain did nothing to settle James’s rising panic at having come a very long way only to end up nowhere. When the carriage eventually slowed to cross the bridge over the gorge that split Kippen in two, he looked down and saw the surface of the river far below in the shadows.

Even before they trundled to a complete stop, Alan left James to his mood and ran to find Dad. James lingered, not wanting this dumb holiday to begin, but Cousin Tony suddenly popped his bright, blond head through the carriage door and smiled so broadly it made James feel like laughing.

‘He’s in here!’ Tony shouted, filling the doorway with his big frame and scooping up James’s backpack. ‘Your dad’s on night duty until the wedding so you’re staying with us now,’ he added, stepping back onto the platform and marching off with giant strides.

There was no end to the cousins’ inside information about the entire Brandt family. Their long shadows stretched out to James across the empty car park by the huge timber structure that marked the very end of the line. Leaning against the familiar white station wagon, parked in the deep shadows cast by Kippen’s enormous concrete water towers, Alan was already showing off to Tony’s sister Yvonne, and Aunty Doris was brushing away blowflies.

‘Hurry up,’ his aunt said, getting in and starting the car. ‘I have to telephone your mother and let her know you’re both here in one piece.’

After the crossroads, the way out of town took them back across the bridge, past the motel and the abattoir, and gradually climbed into higher country.

James made eye contact with Aunty Doris a few times in the rear-vision mirror, while she nodded at whatever Alan was saying about his school reports and the gun club. Yvonne sat quietly on her brother’s lap in the front seat while Tony kept up the questions about life in the big city.

As the sun levelled with the horizon, they approached Brandt Lane and James stopped trying to keep up with the conversation.

First, he looked for the three white drums on their timber posts; letterboxes mounted in a row for three family farms. That’s how you knew where to turn off the long, straight Kippen Road, between stretches of the same knee-high yellow grass that ran for miles.

The road quickly dropped down to the creek that never ran dry, even when there hadn’t been rain for months. Past the lines of old willows, their grandparents’ homestead, Glen Alpine, stood on the left at the top of the hill.

Grandpa Len was long dead and Grandma Gladys had been moved into Kippen’s nursing home. Nevertheless, James pressed himself against the window to take in the gloom of their neglected garden.

Glen Alpine overlooked Deloraine, Uncle Bill and Aunty Doris’s farm, and as his aunt turned the car and the wheels drummed over the cattle grid, James got a glimpse of The Mulgas right at the end of the lane, where his father would be getting ready to go to work and probably just didn’t want his kids around.

Uncle Bill’s dogs fussed at the scent of new kids, then settled into their kennels after a few commands from Tony. Moths already worried at the one light by the door. Alan and James were herded inside, Tony still the self-appointed sheepdog. Yvonne disappeared into the hallway and Aunty Doris wrangled the wall phone. Uncle Bill was in the end room where the television flicked light around the door, weather report turned up loud.

‘You’re both in with me,’ Tony said, pointing into the dark passageway. Alan forged ahead and plonked his backpack down on the first bed and closed the bathroom door behind him. James waited in the dark, letting his eyes adjust.

Tony noticed this reticence. ‘Want the light on?’ he said.

James nodded and the little lamp was punched into life, revealing the bareness of the room in harsh light, shadows at all angles.

Yvonne swung in with two towels, throwing one at the foot of each bed. ‘Your mum’s not home,’ she said.

‘Don’t you have an answering machine?’ Tony asked.

James shook his head. No quick word with Mum, then.

He needed the toilet, but Alan was using it and Tony and Yvonne were lingering.

‘You have my bed,’ Tony said. ‘It’s more comfortable than the other one.’

‘Where are you going to sleep?’

‘Out there,’ Yvonne replied, raising one arm towards the verandah. ‘He sleeps out there sometimes, when it’s too hot in here.’

They all listened as Alan pushed his last piss into the bowl. Yvonne giggled and left.

Tony went for the chest of drawers, but stopped. ‘I was going to get some things out, but you boys don’t mind me coming in when I need to, right?’ he asked, leaning into the mirror to squeeze a red mark on his shoulder.

James kicked his feet against the metal legs of the bed, and watched as his cousin pulled a face and silently swore. Hung from the top of the mirror was a large key, one of those twenty-first birthday presents covered in gold glitter.

‘Caught my arm on a nail yesterday,’ Tony said. ‘Bloody hurt,’ he added, noticing James looking at his reflection and the key. ‘So how old are you now, Jamie? Sixteen?’

‘Sixteen in a couple of months,’ James said, turning away from his cousin’s big body and the way it stole all the space in the mirror.

‘More than a couple,’ Alan said, finally emerging.

James didn’t look, he just kept beating his heels into the bed base.

Yvonne called them for cheese and toast. James retreated into the bathroom and went to secure the door, but there was no lock.

James woke to the sounds of a ute starting. The distant melody of a country radio station drew him out of sleep. Alan’s bed was an empty mess. Through the high window, sun leaked from behind a bank of heavy clouds.

‘Good afternoon,’ Aunty Doris said as he scuffed into the kitchen.

James looked to the clock near the door. It was quarter past seven.

‘Your brother’s gone with your uncle and Tony today. Farm work always starts early and finishes late,’ Aunty Doris said, and pointed to the toaster as she headed for the laundry. ‘We all make our own here.’

Yvonne was dressed already. ‘I’m too young to go out with Father,’ she announced. ‘And girls don’t have to. Didn’t you set your alarm?’

James shook his head, holding a knife upwards as he hovered by the toaster.

‘You don’t have to pop it up. It does it by itself,’ Yvonne said. ‘Don’t change the setting. Mother will know.’

‘Pass the butter and things to your cousin,’ Aunty Doris said to Yvonne as she stuffed the washing machine. ‘Then get the cloth and do the table.’

James buttered his toast, spread honey on one slice, and took it to his mouth as a trail of amber ran down the cupboard and onto the floor. In a moment Yvonne had it wiped away, a look on her face that told him to say nothing.

‘You’ll have to come to town with us,’ Aunty Doris said, wrenching the machine knobs. ‘You can’t stay here by yourself.’

‘Mother always chats to everyone,’ Yvonne told James, slamming herself rhythmically into the car seat, eyes on Aunty Doris outside the bank. ‘I tooted the horn once and got a smack,’ she added, fingers walking dangerously along the edge of the steering wheel.

His aunt wrenched the door open and threw her bag against her daughter’s legs.

‘What did Sal want?’ Yvonne said.

‘Mrs Beaumont to you,’ Aunty Doris said, getting in. ‘She’s going to drop me the key to the Women’s Club, that way we can set a few things up before the big day.’

Yvonne turned to James. ‘You’re a writer, I hear,’ she said, in her best impersonation of her mother. ‘So you can do the family tree.’

‘Family tree?’

‘Yes, the wedding reception at the club will be the first time we’ll all be together in the same room for ages, and maybe the last.’

His aunt caught his eye in the mirror as she pulled onto the main street. ‘We’re making a bit of a family reunion out of it.’

‘We have cardboard at home, and Mother said she’s going to buy a new set of pens.’

‘If you both behave yourselves while we’re in Leong’s, I will,’ Aunty Doris said.

‘Oh goodie, goodie!’ Yvonne said. ‘The cousins are coming from Queensland, and your mother will be there...’ she trailed off.

A silence followed as Aunty Doris parked outside Kippen’s only big shop. James noticed the large red words above the awning had been repainted. ‘Wang Leong’s Department Store’ faced off against the dilapidated court house across the road, with its faded police sign above the footpath.

Yvonne leaned across to James and whispered, ‘Mother still thinks it’s a bit too soon for Aunty Beck to come back to Kippen.’

James turned away from his cousin and tried to think of a smart response, but when nothing came, he ignored her.

Back at Deloraine, James seemed to be in everyone’s way. Wherever he stood while helping to make lunch, his aunt wanted to get into a cupboard or a drawer behind him.

Once everyone’s sandwiches were finished, Uncle Bill went to have a lie down and Tony retreated to his bed on the verandah. The boys were banished to their room.

But James couldn’t sleep. A mental picture of the family tree was forming in his mind. Yvonne had mentioned something about a school project of Tony’s, with photocopies of family portraits and group shots. If he could be sure of using them, he would know where to start on this task, and James had the feeling that a task was just what he needed while waiting for Mum to arrive.

He crept out of the room with the new pens and approached the verandah where Tony lay. The drumming of fingers on his stomach told James his cousin was awake.

‘Can I ask you about the family tree?’ James said.

Tony flicked a look at his younger cousin, and smirked. ‘Nah, ask me about it at tea time,’ he said, and turned away.

That left James to make a start the same way he began everything. Alone.

At tea, Aunty Doris presented James with a plate of sausages and mash. When everyone else started tucking in, James realised the message hadn’t gotten through to them.

‘He’s a vegetarian,’ Alan said, making the last word sound really bad.

Their aunt froze for a moment, then swallowed.

‘What’s a vegetarian?’ Yvonne said, chewing with her mouth open.

‘It’s someone who doesn’t eat meat,’ James said.

‘Why?’

‘Quiet,’ Uncle Bill said.

Sounds of chewing and scraping cutlery filled the silence.

Yvonne tried to get James’s attention by balancing peas on her fork, until Aunty Doris slapped her daughter hard across both thighs with the flat of her hand.

‘Listen to Father,’ she said, and whipped James’s plate away.

After tea, while James was eating the cheese on toast his aunt had hurriedly prepared, Yvonne left the sounds of the television news in the next room to join him.

‘Want some?’ he said.

‘No thank you,’ she replied, tapping the clean surface of the table with one finger.

He chewed and they both smiled.

‘Father said vegetarians are going to ruin life on the land for all farming families.’

James had just started another piece of toast, but he had his answer ready.

‘Well, bread is made with wheat, and wheat is made by farmers,’ he replied.

‘Father said humans have been eating meat since we were cavemen.’

‘Just because we’ve done something in the past, doesn’t mean we have to keep doing it, you know?’

‘Well, Mother said humans wouldn’t have become civilised if we didn’t eat meat.’

James stared at his cousin. ‘You don’t even know what “civilised” means.’

Yvonne looked back to where the outline of Uncle Bill’s chair showed against the light of the television, put her chin down on her paired, flat hands, and shook her head.

James felt that if he could tell it to her like a story it would make sense. ‘At school, we’ve been learning about cave paintings, and the teacher said that human beings wouldn’t have even started to paint pictures and tell stories until we started farming,’ he said. ‘Farming crops meant staying in one place instead of wandering around. It meant cavemen had time to sit around their fires and tell stories.’

‘Like the aborigines?’

‘Yes, I suppose so.’

‘My teacher said there are no aborigines left in Kippen.’

‘There was one at my school, when we lived up here,’ James said, remembering the girl in his class at Kippen Primary. Her name escaped him at that moment, but she’d been as enthusiastic as him about building stick houses around the roots of the large gum tree in one corner of the school yard.

‘Well, there aren’t any now,’ Yvonne said, chasing his old friend’s name away completely. ‘Father said you can’t get them to stick around long enough to collect their pay. They wander around a lot, and they eat meat.’

James nodded, watching his cousin’s legs swinging enthusiastically.

‘And they always have,’ she said, cocking her head like she’d scored a point. ‘I might become a vegetarian too,’ she added, and reached for a piece of toast.

‘You wouldn’t last a day.’

James woke when Tony knocked on the door frame before the sun was up.

‘Alright if I use the shower, you fellas?’ his cousin asked.

James nodded, and his cousin walked past the foot of the two beds.

‘He sleeping in?’ Tony asked, indicating Alan.

Alan’s head was squashed against the pillow. ‘He got sunburnt yesterday,’ James whispered.

Tony poked Alan a couple of times, bringing sleepy complaints and the shoving of pillows. He laughed, then went for the bathroom.

James got up and started straightening his sheets, remembering the sounds of Tony arriving home long after they’d gone to bed. His cousin had laughed at himself for coming into the wrong room, did a long, loud piss in the bathroom, found his way out onto his temporary bed on the verandah, and Deloraine had fallen silent again.

When Tony emerged from his shower James was sitting on the edge of his bed. He noticed the way his cousin’s whole body shook a little as he combed out his wet hair in front of the mirror, towel pulled sharply around his waist. Before Tony could notice him looking, James moved into the bathroom and shut the door.

As he dried himself, he heard his aunt and uncle speaking between bursts of radio news. James prodded his brother once more and got slapped on his legs. He dressed in yesterday’s clothes and presented himself to the kitchen. Aunty Doris looked disappointed when she realised it was the younger brother who was up first. There was no sign of Tony.

‘Good morning there, young fella,’ Uncle Bill said into his mug of tea. ‘Well, since you’re the only one keen, you can come out with the men today.’

Aunty Doris raised her eyebrows. ‘I don’t know if he even has a hat, Father.’

‘He can use one of mine,’ Uncle Bill said as he stood. ‘We won’t be back in for lunch today. Make him a sandwich, please, Mother, and we’ll take an extra water bottle.’

His uncle and aunt went about their tasks while James hovered by the door to the driveway, wishing somehow he could swap with his brother and disappear into the cool shadows of the farmhouse until the dusk crept over the land, making it acceptable for all people to be indoors. But the sound of the truck starting jolted him out of the fantasy. His aunt held the screen door open. Beyond, there was a sharp whistle and Uncle Bill’s old kelpie leaped onto the ute.

‘See you later,’ Aunty Doris said, like she was relieved he’d be gone.

James moved as slowly as he did on school sports days, trying to think on his feet, because this turn of events was infinitely worse. At least at school you could disappear into a crowd. His uncle’s eyes were on him now, and he sensed his aunt’s at his back as he emerged into the sun. They seemed victorious, trapping a city slicker for a day’s work at things he didn’t want to understand.

The cabin was dusty, heavily scented with hay and oil, already so hot that the underside of James’s clean legs immediately stuck to the plastic seat covers. His uncle pulled at the gearstick and they glided along the gravel, not towards the enticing road into town, but down the hill, deeper into the farmland.

His uncle’s body rolled with every bump and rattle of the track, which soon became nothing more than wheat stubble in black soil. Everything about him was the same colour, the hue of the straw, and the clouds of dust that came off the road, and he grinned whenever James caught his eye.

The outline of Tony on his motorbike showed in the shade of a spreading tree, by a gate that gave onto endless paddocks peppered by sand-coloured wheat stalks. As they approached, he gave a sharp cut to the air, a wave that Uncle Bill returned with speed.

‘We’re gonna top up the tanks so we can get this lot burned off after the honeymoon,’ Uncle Bill said, gesturing towards the dry foothills. ‘This is all our land here.’

His uncle’s worn hand swept to the right, pointing to where the greener patch of Glen Alpine could be seen close to the main road. ‘That’s the bit your grandparents used to work,’ he said. ‘But all of it – Deloraine, and Glen Alpine – will be Tony’s as of next week.’

James nodded while his uncle changed gears.

‘It’s all agreed. After Tony and Leanne get married, they’ll move into Glen Alpine. The family land goes to whoever’s still here and willing to work it. Always has and always will,’ his uncle added, turning to check that James had taken it all in.

‘Grandma and Grandpa’s place is looking a bit overgrown,’ James said.

His uncle sniffed and glanced over at the old homestead, swamped by greenery.

‘We’ll get over and slash the garden before the happy couple gets back,’ he said. ‘No one’s done the garden since your grandmother moved into town.’

The ute slowed and Tony wrenched the passenger door open.

‘Morning,’ Uncle Bill said. ‘We’ve got young James helping us today.’

‘Yeah, I see,’ Tony said, throwing his thick legs into the cabin, which seemed instantly smaller with him inside. A flop of golden hair spilled from under his hat.

‘Scoot over there a bit, wouldya?’ he asked. ‘You can come back this way a bit,’ he added, pulling James to the side of his warm leg, blond hairs standing like wheat stubble.

‘Don’t get too close, you two,’ Uncle Bill said. ‘Leanne might get worried.’

Tony laughed. It welled up from inside him, and the confident vibration went through James like an electric current.

Filling the three remote iron tanks from the metallic container mounted on the ute took two long trips from the bore, a half-empty dam by a windmill at the centre of the valley. By mid-morning James had taken to riding on the back of the ute with the kelpie as they traversed up to where each tank watched over the fields like a little round tower.

It was safer than getting in and out of the cabin the whole time. He’d gone stiff jammed right against his cousin and felt the mix of excitement and embarrassment. Up with the dog it wasn’t much better, with its red dick dangling bright in the sun, tongue lapping against James, putting him on edge.

They ate lunch in the shade of the last tank while the pump on the ute drummed the final load of water in. James finished his sandwich and watched the two men as they leaned on the tank stand, arms at one angle and bums out on another. With his lean, nondescript frame and his narrow face, nothing about his uncle was attractive. Tony, on the other hand, stood out from everything. Away from the farmhouse, his burnished skin reflected the brilliance of the sun, and his body burst out of every part of his clothing.

Tony caught James watching, but that only seemed to make him show off more. While Uncle Bill threw their mugs and plates into the cabin, Tony unzipped his shorts and pissed a golden stream into the sunlight while he laughed and shooed away flies.

James had to turn away and pretend to be interested in the kelpie sniffing around a hole in the hillside, before flicking his eyes back for a second look.

Tony jiggled his penis and did himself up, bent his knees slightly and let out a belch and an extended fart, his face contorted in exaggerated shock at its intensity, before breaking into laughter.

‘What’s a fart, Father?’ he asked, one hand pulling back his collar while he scratched his chest hairs.

Uncle Bill was beyond the range of Tony’s voice, pulling the hose out of the tank and coiling it up onto the ute.

‘I’ve got a new a joke, Father. What do you call a fart?’ Tony asked, louder to cut through the hammering of the pump.

Uncle Bill shrugged and flicked off the engine.

‘A poofter’s love call,’ Tony blurted, snorting with the ferocity of a machine gun. He bent his knees to push out another fart.

The noises were crystal clear in the sudden silence of the high place.

Uncle Bill shook his head, backed into the cabin and started up the engine.

James hoisted himself onto the tray. The dog followed.

Tony looked at James. ‘You get it, don’tcha?’

His cousin seemed so intense that it felt like a bit of a risk to do anything other than nod.

‘Good one,’ James said, and forced out a burst of laughter he hoped was more confident than it sounded.

‘Jamie gets it,’ Tony said, winking at his cousin and smirking as he pressed his body into the passenger seat.

THREE
2005

James sat in the hire car out the front of Jones and Son Stock and Station office, impatiently sipping a takeaway coffee. Apart from a cleaner who’d let herself in about twenty minutes ago, there was still no sign of anyone. It was after ten o’clock, so he downed the last of his drink, locked the car and pushed at the door.

‘Hi, just wondering when anyone will be in?’

The cleaner looked up from behind a computer and smiled. ‘Jamie Brandt?’

‘Yes.’

‘It’s Cassie. You know, from Kippen Primary?’

James let out a breathy, embarrassed laugh.

‘Don’t tell me you don’t remember us playing at school?’ she said. ‘Good to see you back. Now pick your jaw up off the floor, whitefella, and give us a hug!’

They pressed together awkwardly.

‘You’re not the first one to get a shock at a black woman running the show,’ she said, pulling a face. ‘I keep this place open a couple of days a week, and I do the rentals.’

‘Good to see you,’ James said. ‘It must be, what, twenty years?’

‘Closer to thirty, mate. You fly up? Been bloody good for Kippen, getting that airport over at Wishaw after they closed the trains. Apart from that, nothing’s new, except they have to let us mob into the pool these days!’

‘Things change pretty slowly up here.’

She laughed. ‘True.’

‘I got a couple of messages asking me to drop in while I’m in town,’ he said.

‘Yeah, but Mr Jones is over at Wishaw today. Big station coming on the market and he went to take photos. I’m supposed to call him as soon as you show up.’

‘Well, I can come in tomorrow morning. Funeral’s not until eleven.’

Cassie’s face dropped from animated to concerned. ‘I can’t make it, sorry to say, I got family stuff of me own,’ she said, shrugging and laughing at the same time. ‘But Mr Jones is that keen to see you, so just let me call him now.’

Before James could object, she’d lifted a receiver and punched a button.

He turned away to take in the room. A glassed-in office sat across the back, no doubt for Mr Jones, with a small desk for Cassie out front. Dilapidated racks of property listings ran all the way to the front windows. A faded photograph of Mr Andrew Jones, proprietor, hung at one side of each, face as red as a parrot.

‘He always leaves his phone in the car, I have to let it ring for ages,’ Cassie said.

James smiled. ‘How did he find me?’

‘Nobody from around here has done as well as you, Jamie. We all follow your stories.’

James waved the compliment aside. ‘I guess what I mean is, why did he find me?’

She held a finger up. ‘Mr Jones... sorry, it’s Cassie... yeah, he’s here... I know he’s early, but I guess he wants to spend time with the family... alright, I’ll ask him to wait, no worries. Seeya then, Mr Jones. Sorry about interrupting,’ she said and hung up.

‘I’ve got to head out to The Mulgas, maybe I could just see him tomorrow morning?’

‘He’s heading back now,’ she said, unlocking a cabinet filled with bunches of keys on hooks and holding one out for him. ‘Locks won’t be changed until the morning. Why not go have a look through your cousin’s stuff while you’re waiting? The flats are on the main road, first past the swimming pool on the left. Blond brick. Number seventeen is up the end of the drive. I’m really hoping to get a cleaner in there at the same time as the locksmith.’

The mounting information made the key seem heavier as James took it.

‘The police are finished in there now,’ she added, ‘so if you want to take anything with you, Mr Jones said you’re alright to just go for it.’

The cluster of flats looked as though they’d gone up in the seventies but had served nobody particularly well since. The door of number seventeen faced onto a fence that enclosed a small communal driveway. Beyond that was an overgrown field that gave onto the caravan park.

In the entranceway, a rush of stale air met James’s nostrils, and just by the door he recognised the old clock that had stood for years in his grandparents’ farmhouse, hands stopped at almost four; one languid afternoon, or some crisp, pre-dawn hour.

A twisted scrap of police tape had been caught by the plastic hall runner, and a few careless cops must have trodden mud into the carpet, long since dried. Beyond, the kitchen was just a tiled corner of the main room.

The clock dwarfed a card table and one armchair, shoved into a corner to make room for a television on a tray-mobile. As James averted his eyes from the lonely angle of that one uncomfortable-looking seat, his foot clipped the television magazine on the floor, dated back in the early autumn.

He picked it up and went to put it with other paperwork stacked on top of the microwave. In the top kitchen drawer, a pile of pay slips was tied with a rubber band, bearing the name of the local supermarket. Tony had regularly been paid twenty-five dollars an hour for doing something there on weekends.

James turned the handle of the bedroom door and opened it just as someone’s shadow passed across the blind that covered the front window.

‘Hello?’ whoever it was said from the doorway.

‘In here,’ James said.

Mr Jones appeared, considerably larger than he looked in his photograph, big trunk heaving as though he’d been rushing.

‘G’day mate,’ he said, grabbing one of James’s hands and shaking it. ‘Can I just offer you, and all the family, the sincere condolences of everyone at Jones and Son?’

James nodded while his shoulder was loosened.

‘Blimey, you look just like your father when he was young!’

James grunted and leaned into the bedroom door frame, always after a way to make straight men feel comfortable.

It worked. ‘We had a bloody big booze up for him last month, did he tell you?’ Mr Jones said, grinning.

James nodded. It was better than speaking the lie.

‘So you’ve spoken to him, then?’ Mr Jones asked.

‘About what?’ James said, instantly regretting how the question seemed to trouble the older man.

‘I dunno if I should say anything, but Tony had been late with the rent. Very late. Cassie sent the usual notices while we waited, in case he was just away on one of his boat trips, you know?’

‘Well, I’m sure my uncle and aunt will fix things up, when the estate is all done.’

‘So you’ve talked to your dad about the will?’

‘No, should I have?’

Mr Jones shook his jowls. ‘Nah, not for me to say, it’s just the landlord wants a new tenant pronto, so we’ll do whatever it takes to help you get it sorted,’ he said, strolling onto the tiles of the kitchenette.

James had a low threshold for listening to this type: funny but rude; talkative but ignorant, just like his father. He dropped his own act and followed.

‘There’s also Tony’s old car,’ Mr Jones said, stopping at the microwave and lifting some of the paperwork. ‘Those vintage Fords are worth a bit now.’

James picked up the stack of records and shoved them in the kitchen drawer.

‘Sorry, none of my business,’ Mr Jones said, moving away and looking out the kitchen window towards the caravan park. ‘We’re all that cut up about Tony, it’s just they’ll want the place empty when we list it for lease.’

‘I’ll talk to my aunt and uncle about it,’ James said.

‘Cassie said you flew up?’

‘Yep.’

‘Well mate, if I were you, I’d dump that hire car and drive the old Ford back to the city.’

‘And why would I do that?’ James said with unmistakeable calm.

‘Not for me to say, but you know Jones and Son offer an estate auction service, so think about coming to see us when you’ve chatted with your dad,’ Mr Jones said, lifting the frilly top curtain to get a better view. ‘Tony must have walked to the bridge from here.’

James looked too. Beyond the low rows of vans and the distant wall of enormous willows he spied the concrete span and the deep shadows it cast on the railway viaduct.

Fuck, Tony. What the fuck?

He was caught by mental pictures of his cousin locking up this ugly flat one random autumn night, walking through town to the public toilets, then leaping off that bridge because of guilt or shame or whatever it was. He forced himself to picture Tony alive and well.

‘Perhaps he rode his motorbike?‘ James asked, remembering how his cousin got around.

‘Motorbike?’ Mr Jones said, turning to look James in the eye. It was a quick scan, searching for intention, although his lips hung in a vague smile.

‘Tony always had at least one motorbike,’ James said. ‘Unless he’d sold it?’

‘Wouldn’t know,’ Mr Jones said, giving the place an offhand look on his way to the front door. ‘Let your dad know we can’t make it to the funeral, but I might be able to swing by the pub for the wake. The Joneses are praying for youse all in your time of need.’

For the third time that morning James traversed the Kippen Bridge, but it was so high above the water nothing of the parklands was visible below.

He noticed the motel was still open for business, then the abattoir showed on the left, swamped by weeds, before the road started to rise gradually. Its surface was still a patchwork of bitumen blotches from a thousand ineffective repairs. Just after cresting the edge of the upland valley that enfolded his family’s three farms, James spied the old tin-drum letterboxes and slowed to turn off the main road. A trail of dust burst upwards in his wake.

On the far side of the willow-choked creek his grandparents’ homestead appeared on the left, a couple of iron roofing sheets kicking up with the wind. The old signpost on the gate was gone, nothing to show this place was called Glen Alpine.

The hilltop afforded a view of Deloraine out to the right, swallowed by dark, freshly-tilled fields and stands of pine trees. If they were home, Doris and Bill would be watching, but James would leave them alone for now. Perhaps he and Dad could go around and see them later? Maybe today, or at least sometime over the next two days, he’d find the right time to plant the seed about Dylan and the fact that he and James shared a home in the city? James needn’t let on that they’d done so for almost ten years. That could come later, once everyone in the family knew he had a long-term partner.

Past the sign for Deloraine, with its fifties-style lettering, the lane levelled off where bare paddocks on either side always copped the wind shearing up from beyond The Mulgas. At the end of a flat section of road, the gate into his childhood home stood closed.

As he braked, James noticed the heavy chain wrapped around the fat timber post, the lock glinting like the head of a snake. The Mulgas’ old sign was gone too. When he emerged from the car, nothing felt familiar apart from the sudden attention of blowflies.

Even from this distance he could see the place wasn’t the verdant retreat he recalled. In the twenty years since he’d seen it, the homestead had diminished from encrusted white weatherboard to what looked like bone, belted by wind. The only new addition to the cluster of low buildings was the beige plastic water tank.

Running to the blue horizon, fields and gullies were dotted with only a few stands of trees tinged predominantly with the colours of struggle and drought. James’s ears filled with the competing air movements from either end of the valley, sounds of grass moving, and wire worrying at metal.

Beyond the fence and a little off the gravel lane he saw the old tank. It had taken a battering, crushed by a gale that might have blown it up the slope from the house. He shimmied up the straining post and launched himself over onto home soil. Only the thud of his insignificant landing announced his return.

In the shade of old blackberry canes that had thirsted for the last of the water, James discerned something that appeared like an ancient inscription in the old metal. He’d be able to read it if the surface was wet, so he spat on his hand. The iron went iridescent blue under his saliva and the words appeared: ‘Brandt, The Mulgas, via Kippen’, as though it had been written yesterday.

There it was again, the chance to split himself in two. The real James could just walk to the family farm and start explaining why Tony had killed himself, or the spineless shell could just say nothing.

He started to walk while he made up his mind which it would be, and immediately the stones on the driveway started wreaking havoc on his good shoes. He made better progress pushing through the grass at the side, but the immediate prickle of burrs invaded his ankles through his socks.

So he struck deeper into the grass to where the black soil mixed with the bright red of gravel and the grass was stunted. Stopping to take in the sagging fences of the old tennis court bowed by hungry honeysuckle, James inadvertently stood on an ants’ nest, only noticing when a few tickled their way up inside his jeans.

He jogged back to the drive, flicking off ants and prickles, and noticed the gate at the end of the home yard was open. As kids, they’d always been warned to shut it to prevent the rabbits ruining the lawn, but now it stood open in a strange form of welcome.

James passed through, noticing a ute pulled up beneath the pepper tree, probably because the garage was overflowing with machinery and junk. The plastic tank overshadowed the kitchen window, high on the old timber stand. Newish pipes looked as though they’d been stabbed through the wall, leaving splintered wood around the edges of rough-sawn holes.

The door on that side of the homestead was locked. James called out an awkward greeting, but the whiny breeze didn’t allow him to hear anything inside. He tried the front door and it opened with a gentle crunch of the handle.

As soon as he was inside he heard the low, drawn-out snoring coming from the bedroom his parents once shared. A quick look along the hallway showed his father stretched on his back across the double bed, still dressed. His sleeping habits must still be fucked up from years of night duty.

All but one of the other doors off the lengthy hall were shut. The room he and Alan shared was sealed away, just like little Gregory’s. A slice of light from the kitchen cut the passage in half, exposing the empty beer cartons piled in the shadows.

James backed out quietly, drew the door back onto its fastenings, and retreated.

If Dad couldn’t be bothered getting up to take the lock off his own damned gate so his second son could drive home, James had a ready excuse for staying elsewhere; but word would quickly get around if he didn’t pay respects to his uncle and aunt.

As he approached Deloraine in the hire car, its row of pines loomed large. White linen flapped between slashes of dark green fir.

You could never see these country homes on approach, James thought, not the real old working homesteads. They were subsumed by spreading foliage long ago, shrouding them with a verdant secrecy through which, even now, he knew his aunt would be peering.

As he came to a stop, two young kelpies sniffed the air to catch information about this new car. The quietness from the house was unsettling. James pulled the key out and opened the door.

Suddenly, the dogs spooked and put their ears flat against their heads. One sat and the other lay down, eyes focussed on the door to the homestead and nothing else. Their gaze was so fixed that James felt compelled to look too.

Uncle Bill was approaching, hand out ready to shake, wearing a wide grin as extreme as a mask. ‘Welcome home... well, welcome back at least,’ he said.

‘G’day Uncle Bill,’ James said, giving his voice a hint of country, just to settle the other man.

‘A good number of years since we saw you,’ his uncle said, and propelled himself to the screen door to hold it open. ‘Mother, young Jamie’s here!’

A high-pitched exclamation of surprise came from inside. James saw his aunt pass across the servery opening, removing her apron and patting down her frock.

Inside, he wiped his feet. Everything was the same. The hat rack by the door, the cane verandah setting with the floral fabric, the radio set high above the rusty chest freezer, the smell of baking, and the face of the woman at the threshold of the kitchen.

He went to kiss her cheek. ‘I just want to say how sorry-’

‘Hello Jamie,’ she said, cutting him off. ‘We heard you were in town. Cuppa tea?’

‘Yes, thanks.’

‘Been down to the old farm?’

‘Dad’s got the lock on,’ James said, standing in the hallway while his uncle busied himself in the bathroom by the door.

‘You know your father,’ Doris sang. ‘Security-conscious if nothing else. We haven’t seen much of him, now he’s retired.’

Familiar faces greeted James from a cluster of photographs on the hall table. Kids with tanned faces posing with party hats; mothers with indolent smiles; the whole family on the front steps of Glen Alpine some long-ago Christmas before James was born.

‘We’ll sit out here,’ his aunt indicated with her head, both hands occupied with a tray. ‘We were just about to have our tea and a bickie, so another cup’s no problem. You’ve grown a bit since we saw you last.’

James nodded and sat, allowing himself to be diminished.

‘Daniel hasn’t done much to the place. Could do with a lick of paint before it goes like Glen Alpine,’ she said, passing his cup. ‘Come and have some tea, Father.’

‘I forgot to... I’d better fix the, you know,’ his uncle said and disappeared up the hallway. ‘Back in a minute.’

‘Biscuit?’ she said, shoving the plate towards James.

It must have been less than sixty seconds since he’d come indoors.

Suicide barely registers on stoic parents.

James started to fidget as soon as his aunt got her cup on the turn and the grind of unglazed china on the underside worked its noise between them.

‘We liked that article you did about the mining industry,’ she said. ‘Father follows all your stories. He’s always hoping you’ll come out here and write something about this part of the world.’

‘We never really get to choose,’ James said.

‘That’s what I always tell him.’

‘If any local journalists try to bother you about Tony, I can deal with them if you like.’

‘No, it’s alright. The police said it was quick and he wouldn’t have suffered.’

So any mention of Tony lying dead in the reeds was off limits, then.

‘Do you need any help with the funeral?’ he said, going for a second biscuit.

‘Father and I have got everything in order. We can take care of our boy now.’

James nodded, fumbling for ideas while trying to catch crumbs.

‘You’re a day early. They shouldn’t be giving you two days off for a cousin’s funeral,’ she said. ‘I suppose it’s the prospect of getting the farms that’s made you so keen.’

‘Pardon?’ he said, letting several crumbs fall, thinking she must be confused.

The biscuit landslide rushed from his mouth down his front and onto the upholstery between his legs. He put his tea down and started trying to clean it up.

‘Leave it,’ she said.

‘What do you mean, about me getting the farm?’

‘You needn’t worry. Your uncle and I have decided the only way the property can be sold as a going concern is for us to move out.’

‘Why do you have to sell?’ he asked.

‘Because Tony’s left everything to you. Deloraine. Glen Alpine. All the acreage.’

Fuck, Tony. What the fuck?

James felt himself blinking as all the strange events of the day suddenly clarified. His father’s awkward phone messages and the throwaway comments at the real estate office finally made sense. He looked away and tried to picture the neat confines of Tony’s unit, wondering where in that sterile place his cousin had felt capable of such potent secrecy.

‘If you were married and needed a place to start a family, we could understand you taking it on,’ his aunt said, ‘but your brother told me you’re still keeping yourself to yourself.’

The mention of Alan triggered that old spike of jealousy in James, right up his spine.

‘He’s not coming to the funeral,’ she said. ‘Travel is too much when you’ve got kids under the age of seven. Alan’s got quite a head start on you. How old are you now?’

The same old games about birth order. ‘Thirty-four,’ James said.

‘Well, that’s not too late to start settling down,’ she said, leaning forward and encouraging the fantasy. ‘There’s still a school bus into Kippen, which is an enormous help to all the young families out this way. Plenty of local girls are looking for decent husbands like you. You saw what happened when your father picked a city girl.’

James looked right at her, just to be sure she’d actually said it, but even his aunt seemed to think she’d gone too far, shaking her head, eyes closed, tears leaking.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said, all force gone from her voice. ‘Your mother did try her best. She was only a bit younger than me when she came to live out here. Young enough to need good mothering advice, and smart enough to take it. How long has she been gone now?’

‘Ten years,’ he replied, not prepared to let Rebecca Brandt back in at that moment.

‘I used to laugh at Beck, you know? She would stand out in front of The Mulgas waving a tea towel across the paddock whenever she saw me hanging out the washing. That meant “come over for a scone, bring the kids”,’ Doris said, shaking her head with a smile. ‘There were plenty of good times, Jamie.’

He nodded and made a little hum of approval, knowing it would settle her.

It worked. She washed the past away with a fast mouthful of tea, and got back to business.

‘No, we understand perfectly. You don’t want to take on the farm. Your uncle and I have managed to make a living off wheat and sorghum, but we’ve done it for almost forty years now. You’ve got to cultivate every bit of land you’ve got. No one will be interested in buying unless the place comes with plenty of land.’

‘Listen, Doris, I don’t think we need to be making any hasty decisions about all this.’

‘But there’s five thousand acres of good cropping country along this lane. Someone’s got to work it. If it’s not one of the Brandt boys, then we ought to sell it.’

‘What about Yvonne?’

She hissed and drowned the thought of her daughter with more tea.

‘Tony wouldn’t have wanted you to move.’

‘But that’s precisely what he did want,’ she said. ‘The last time I saw Tony was at the bowling club for the fire brigade fundraiser, and do you know what I thought?’

James was tempted to answer the question for her, but all that came to mind was an old-fashioned screamer no editor would ever run.

Breaking: Grazier’s wife says what she actually fucking thinks.

‘I felt that my son wanted us — his own parents — to just leave him alone. Can you believe it?’

She looked into her cup, head and hands trembling. The only sound was the air she dragged in and out of her nostrils. She seemed intent on giving space for him to answer, with his uncle out of the room.

‘There’s usually a reason for most things, Aunty Doris,’ James offered.

Initially it didn’t look as though she’d heard, or perhaps she also thought it sounded silly calling her that, even though they all did it up here in the country.

But she erupted.

‘What on earth could it be?’ she shouted at her knees, spilling tea on her lap.

He moved fast to catch her cup and saucer.

‘Perhaps if I told you a little bit about my own experience?’ he asked, placing her tea on the table but staying on his feet.

‘What would you know about it?’

‘Well-’

‘No, you’re the wrong person to ask,’ she said, cutting him off.

There was nothing for James to do with those words, they swept all safety aside.

‘I should get going,’ he said as calmly as he could manage.

But her voice wavered up a few notches. ‘We’d put you up, of course, but I should think that’s too much for any normal family in our situation, although I just don’t know how you’ll find things over at your father’s.’

James considered the risk of placing a hand on her even as he watched his fingers descend onto her shoulder. She shrugged him off but he patted her cautiously, just as his uncle appeared in the hallway entrance.

‘I’ll see you both tomorrow,’ James whispered, crossing to the screen door.

It swung open and he got almost all the way to the car before it made the unintentional slam that cut through the yard and spooked the dogs.

In the rear-vision mirror his uncle was framed by the door, looking lost.

As he reversed, James got a quick impression of the shape of his aunt, who seemed to be slamming things around in the kitchen.

Turning the wheel, he felt an unbearable urge to go back in and shout the entire house down. He saw himself pointing at them both and telling the truth about Tony; the laughing, wry, gorgeous Tony.

But she would scream until she would hear nothing, and Uncle Bill seemed beyond James’s help.

So he put his foot down, swerved onto the driveway, and was swallowed by dust.

Back in town for just over five hours, and:-

Dad’s retirement is getting off to a good start (not).

I seem to have inherited five thousand acres and two homesteads (thanks Tony).

What the fuck am I going to do with it???

Bill and Doris have no idea why Tony killed himself (and they don’t want to know).

If I hang around the farms too long, I’m worried I’ll tell them anyway.

FOUR
1985

While James had been out filling tanks with his uncle and Tony, Alan had spent the day digging weeds in the veggie garden and seemed to have scored himself plenty of points; whereas James got in trouble for using too much water in the bathroom.

‘We’re on tank water in case you’ve forgotten,’ Aunty Doris said from the stove. ‘You shouldn’t need to be in the shower for more than three minutes.’

‘And you only flush if you’ve done number two,’ Yvonne added, sitting at the kitchen table making pink rosettes out of plastic ribbons.

‘Or go over by the back fence garden, like your brother,’ his aunt said, invoking Alan’s good behaviour again.

‘Are those wedding decorations?’ James asked, trying to rise above all the fuss by focussing on Yvonne’s handiwork.

‘These are going on the ends of every pew.’

Yvonne was brimming with endless news about her brother’s imminent nuptials. The buck’s party was taking place that night at the Kippen Bowling Club. The couple would be honeymooning on the Gold Coast. Leanne’s bridal gown was coming up from Sydney and still had not been delivered, so Aunty Beck had already collected it from the city department store and was bringing it up with her. Yvonne was too young to be a bridesmaid, but she would be the only flower girl. Her enthusiasm for her handsome brother was unbridled.

‘Tony’s really nice,’ James said, sliding into the chair next to Yvonne, fingering one of the rosettes and wondering if she’d let him make one. His cousin and aunt didn’t respond, so he tried to say more, but it came out breathy: ‘He’s really funny.’

‘You’re the funny one,’ his aunt said, shaking her head.

Alan’s new currency saw him invited for the short ride over to the Kippen Bowling Club on Tony’s motorbike. Uncle Bill decreed the boy was tall enough to pass for eighteen and allowed to go to the buck’s party, with dinner at the Chinese restaurant beforehand and a roo shoot on the way home.

This led to much preparation in the boys’ bathroom, and thanks to Yvonne’s constant questioning about whether there’d be a stripper at the club, Alan and Tony started a debate around whether blondes or brunettes were more attractive.

Tony retrieved his girlie magazines for the purpose, and James got a fleeting look at their contents until Aunty Doris handed over freshly-ironed shirts and made him sit with Yvonne in the enclosed verandah to continue work on the family tree.

After Uncle Bill left for the pub, Yvonne and James had pancakes for tea and were allowed to watch television for one hour, and the house settled into silence apart from the distant sounds of the eight-thirty movie coming from the television room, where Aunty Doris sat with her coffee.

All that was left of Tony was the strong smell of aftershave.

James hunted for the magazines and found them stuffed in the bottom drawer of his cousin’s wardrobe. He shut the door, turned on the bedside lamp, and got into bed.

The first sight that got his attention was the thrown-back head of a woman, jaw dropped and eyes shut, although James could see no reason why she would pose like that. It looked as though she’d been stabbed in a horror movie.

At the back of the magazine were small advertisements with naked men. One of them gave some clues: a man stood over a woman, her head similarly thrown back and mouth open, but their point of connection was concealed by a black dot.

Something men did to women brought on this reaction. James put the magazines back, got into bed, and, recalling Tony’s broad body, imagined what that might be.

James woke to the sight of coloured lights flickering across the ceiling through the window and the stifled cries of Aunty Doris.

Urgent muttering drew him out of his bed and cautiously towards the kitchen. From the threshold he saw his father in police uniform and Alan wrapped loosely in a bloodied blanket at the kitchen table, one side of his face blackened. Tony hung over the sink wiping blood off his face. In her full-length floral dressing gown, Aunty Doris was making coffee. Uncle Bill was leaning in the doorway of his office.

Still more than half asleep, James whimpered.

‘Hello son,’ Dad said, holding out one large arm.

Drawn to remove the hollow sense that he might have been dreaming, James ran to his father and buried himself in the embrace.

‘Everything’s alright, mate,’ Dad said.

‘What happened?’ James grizzled into his father’s shoulder, scenting fuel and road.

‘Well, young Tony here decided to let Johnny Jones drive him and your brother home, and Johnny Jones hasn’t learned that you never swerve to avoid a roo. If you do, you’re likely to roll your car a few times,’ Dad said, voice deep and in control, like a policeman from the television.

‘No casualties,’ Uncle Bill said.

‘Thank goodness,’ Aunty Doris said, patting Alan on the back. James could see that bleary look in his brother’s eyes that meant tears were on their way, but his aunt wasn’t about to let that happen. ‘Well, young man, let’s get you cleaned up. You’ll be sore in the morning, so I think we should pop you into the bath. Run one for him, Father.’

‘Rightyo,’ Uncle Bill said.

‘Listen, Doris, I reckon I’ll take him home,’ Dad said. ‘Both the boys can come.’

Aunty Doris chewed her lips. ‘Don’t you think they’re better off here? It’s nearly two in the morning.’

‘They can wake up in their own beds and have a sleep in.’

‘But their bags and things...’

James felt his father go rigid.

‘Listen, I had no choice but to cover night duty at the last minute,’ Dad said, almost whining. ‘I want my boys at home at least one night before their mother gets here.’

‘Let them go with Dan, Mother,’ Uncle Bill said.

Aunty Doris nodded. Dad inhaled. James felt the turbulent air coursing inside him.

Alan groaned.

‘This one won’t be getting up tomorrow,’ Dad said, patting his eldest son’s arm.

His aunt shifted her focus to James. ‘Come and get your things.’

He followed as far as the hallway, where he paused and listened.

‘At the bridge, were they?’ Uncle Bill said.

‘Yeah, picking off poofters in the park,’ Dad replied.

One of them sniggered.

‘Young Mr Jones is the best man,’ Uncle Bill said. ‘Hope he’s still up to the task?’

‘Ah, Johnny Jones drives like a faggot, if you ask me,’ Dad said. ‘There was no roo. All he did was hit a tree on the road back to town.’

‘Well, anything can happen on a buck’s night,’ Uncle Bill said.

‘And usually does!’ Dad added.

‘Go and put your shoes on,’ his aunt said, startling James as she passed back into the kitchen with their bags. ‘And don’t you go blurting this out to your mother tomorrow.’

The short drive to The Mulgas in their father’s police car was completed in the profound country darkness that encourages sleep for everyone apart from the disturbed and wary, and James was both.

He felt he had good reason: nobody had even mentioned Dad’s new girlfriend, but he hadn’t forgotten that returning to his old home might be even more confronting than a few days with Aunty Doris.

The homestead’s outside light blazed like a beacon, but before they were within its glow James had to open the gate at the top of the hill. Under the oppressive sky, head full of the hollow sounds emerging from his brother in the back seat, he felt tears on his cheeks and wished he’d worn socks.

While his father helped Alan through the side door of the old farmhouse, James knew where to turn on the light switches, and found himself in his original bedroom for the first time in years.

His bed and Alan’s were made, but an unused, musty smell rose as James sat against his pillows and he sneezed. The sound of the bath filling came from along the hallway and he heard his father’s stifled call, which must mean she was here, probably in his parents’ room at the other end.

James went to see. Dad had Alan balanced on the edge of the bath, cradling him.

‘Here, hold him up,’ Dad said, indicating where James should support his brother. ‘Get him out of those clothes. I’m going out to the car to get my first-aid kit.’

Alan was unusually compliant. As his brother shook himself out of his pants, James saw the bruise along the back of his right leg. The skin was not quite broken, but there was a growing welt.

‘You weren’t shooting roos, were you?’ James asked.

Alan turned, naked, hands over his crotch. ‘Jamie, get out now,’ he said. James stood blinking in the light. ‘Get out wouldya!’ his brother repeated, louder.

‘What’s going on in there?’ Dad called from the kitchen.

‘Nothing,’ Alan said, then flicked a harsh punch into his brother’s arm.

‘Ouch!’ James said.

‘If you don’t shut up and get out, I’ll do it again, harder.’

James rubbed the sore place. ‘I know what you were really doing,’ he whispered.

Alan shook a fist at him, so James retreated to their bedroom, flicked his brother’s bedside light on and got into his own bed, jumper, shoes and all.

Then came the distant sobbing, as Dad tended to Alan’s wounds. James shut his eyes and waited for the smelly linen around him to warm up.

Later, he woke to the sound of his father putting Alan into bed.

‘Drink this,’ Dad said. Alan slurped at whatever it was, and after more groaning, drifted off to sleep.

Throughout their slow ascent to dawn, whenever he woke, James whispered Alan’s name loud enough to disturb him, and waited until he heard breathing, just to check his brother was still alive.

FIVE
2005

James was halfway back to Kippen in the hire car when his father’s number lit up the screen of his mobile phone. He pulled over in the shade of a culvert and picked it up.

‘Hi, Dad.’

‘Where are you?’

‘I don’t know,’ James lied. ‘Somewhere on the highway.’

‘You can stay with me. There’s always a bed made up for you,’ Dad said, his voice gravelly. ‘Funeral’s tomorrow. Eleven o’clock. Do you remember which church?’

James pictured the Presbyterian spire in town. ‘Need me to call anyone?’

‘No, I’ve told all the cousins. Your brother’s coming.’

‘Does he know I’m coming?’ James said.

‘Well, I didn’t know you were coming until just now,’ his father said.

‘If you want to see Alan, don’t tell him I’ll be there.’

‘Now listen, none of that,’ Dad said, and coughed.

James watched a kangaroo slip through a hole in his uncle’s boundary fence.

‘Look, Dad, I don’t reckon I’ll make it all the way up there today.’

‘Well, I suppose you can afford to waste good money on a motel,’ his father said. ‘Listen, we need to talk while you’re home.’

‘Alright,’ James said, pulling a face.

‘Your cousin made me his executor, so the best thing is to chat to me before you get into anything with Bill and Doris. I’ll tell you what Tony’s will says when I see you.’

‘Okay.’

‘Goodo. Well, don’t drive all night, son.’

James scrunched his face into a knot and released it with a frustrated grunt.

Retired top cop sits on family secrets.

As he accelerated, he pressed the radio into life just as a weather report wrapped up, before a bright and camp country song filled the car.

The sight of Kippen in the afternoon light was less welcoming than it could have been. Farmers were heading back to properties in their utes, their dogs leaning into the rush of air, anticipating home.

Utes brought to mind the toilets by the river. Soon, once the eyes of day were gone, the road near the bridge might be crawling with men. James guessed he could be parked and waiting his turn in the approaching darkness within ten minutes.

He noticed the abattoir, meaning there should be motel lights any second on the left. It would do. No good booking a room at the pub, word would get back to his father.

He was hungry. Hungrier for a feed than for anything he could get down by the river, so he turned into the gravel drive. The neon sign was already flickering intermittently by reception, where a middle-aged woman was chewing gum.

Special Feature: The Americanisation of the Aussie outback.

His room was in a corner of the deserted courtyard. The low sun gave everything a surreal, orange glow. He ordered pizza, plugged in his laptop and logged onto his emails while it was delivered, but there was nothing new, just the usual notice about the editorial meeting on Monday.

He flicked on the telly and lay across the bed. The coverlet stank, so he threw it off and tried to relax, but the smell was coming from his armpits.

As the warmth of the tiny shower enveloped him, Tony came into his mind. James pushed aside the confusing gift of five thousand acres and two homesteads, jammed his back against the shower screen and jerked-off the entire damned day to the memory of his beautiful lost cousin.

Halfway through the episode of Friends on the motel television, James’s phone suddenly vibrated across the bedside table.

‘Hi boyo,’ Dylan said, ‘made it up north okay?’

‘Yeah,’ James replied, his voice thin.

‘You staying with your dad?’

‘Nah, found a motel.’

‘Oh, a motel, how very “Psycho” of you,’ Dylan said, chuckling along in their easy city banter. ‘You eaten?’

‘Pizza,’ James said, looking at the pile of ham pieces he’d had to pick off it.

‘That bad, already?’

‘Yeah, that bad. Just want to sleep now,’ James said, sighing. ‘Funeral’s tomorrow.’

‘Tomorrow?’ Dylan said, then went quiet. James could hear the tapping of computer keys, imagining exactly where his partner was sitting in the little office below the stairs of their cramped terrace house, feet up on the bookshelf. Low light from the overhead lamp would be illuminating the beautiful shape of Dylan’s balding head.

‘I could get a flight in the morning, be there for the wake at least. You want?’

James let out another sigh. ‘How are the puppies?’

‘Took them to the park after work, then home past the butcher. Sausages straight out of the bag for them. I cooked mine. Always get in a bit of meat when the veggo in the family is away,’ Dylan said, and stopped. ‘Just say if you don’t want me there, Darl.’

‘Don’t know what kind of reception you’ll get, that’s all,’ James said, imagining Doris’s face when introducing the city bride she would never see coming.

‘Not important. That, I can handle.’

‘Don’t know if I can.’

‘You’re just a small-town boy, aren’t ya?’ Dylan said, in that mock ocker accent James found annoying whenever his partner kept it up.

‘I’m just tired, really tired. Wouldn’t mind just going to sleep.’

‘And here was me thinking you’d had plenty of time to think about my question, and that you’d have an answer for me by now, and we could have sweet phone sex to celebrate,’ Dylan said. ‘I guess I’ll just pop around to the bar for a sad, solo beer then?’ he added. ‘You ought to watch out. It’s a nice night in the big city. You don’t know who might want to pick up a handsome fella like me.’

James swallowed. ‘Dyl...’ he said.

‘Ye-es,’ Dylan said, cautiously. ‘Have you got bad news for me, boyo? Don’tcha wanna be moi missus?’

‘I’m not saying that,’ James replied, throat sucking at his voice, eyes on the close-ups of people laughing on the screen.

‘There’s hope, that’s something!’

James pictured their favourite bar, a welcoming place just a short walk around the corner where they knew plenty of people. There, in the noisy atmosphere, with hundreds of people walking past and others dancing to loud, funky music, he could talk to Dylan properly. ‘I’ll be home this time tomorrow. Can we discuss it then?’

‘Course we can.’

‘Thanks, Dyl.’

‘No probs, Jimmy,’ Dylan said. ‘Love you.’

‘Love you too.’

‘Hope your uncle gets a nice send off.’

‘Cousin.’

‘Oh, I thought you said he was your uncle?’

‘Well, sort of. He was a bit older, but not too much, you know?’

‘Aha, complicated,’ Dylan said, with that tone. ‘Just like this conversation.’

‘Listen, I’m just tired.’

‘I know,’ Dylan said. ‘It’s just that you told me it was your uncle’s funeral, and that it was today.’

‘Did I?’ James said, swallowing. ‘I didn’t mean to. Sorry. I was worried about seeing Dad again.’

Silence. Dylan sniffed. ‘Okay. I’ll pick you up from the airport tomorrow. Evening, mystery man. Nite-nite.’

‘Thanks Dylan. Big hug,’ James said, but the line was already dead.

Grazier’s son leaves future husband hanging.

Not far from the motel, James turned down into the parklands below the bridge, finding his way on foot in the dark by following the pale concrete road.

The toilet block was lit by a single light around which moths were circling. He counted three cars that revealed themselves only by their subtle reflections. On the far side of the dark belt of water and up the scrubby slope, the distant sounds of the Kippen pub carried across to the silent park.

Before he got too close, James stopped at a bench, sat, and watched.

Even though it was late, less men seemed to be here than he’d imagined. The air was cooler away from the road, so he zipped his jacket up to his neck and shoved his hands in his pockets.

James seemed to be the only one here without a car. He shuddered and thought about going back, but just then a figure slipped through the light into the toilets. After another minute, a car door shut with a crunch and a second figure entered the toilet block.

His breath got faster. James squeezed his hands into fists inside his pockets, and stood. If he paused now he’d have to retreat completely. He would just go in, have a piss, and see what there was to see. Sitting around a lonely motel room waiting for sleep to come was not going to make him feel any better than he did now.

The ute that appeared from nowhere clipped a tree branch as it swerved into the car park, and as James turned his head to see what had caused the noise, it closed on the toilet block at a shocking speed. Before it even came to a standstill on a rough angle, men were jumping out, shouting. He saw a flash of a baseball bat in the harsh light of the spots mounted on the vehicle’s roof, and heard the drumming of one of them down the side of the dog cage on the tray. One of the cars parked in the shadows leaped into life and accelerated to the main road, turning dangerously up the hill.

James was between the ute and the toilets in the full glare of the light. He could think of nothing but bolting into the darkness in great strides, feet making loud falls until he hit longer grass in the shadows. He made for the darkness right down by the water where the lights up top had no reach.

When he heard shouting, muffled within the brick walls of the toilet block, he turned and discerned a large shape pursuing him.

‘Come here, faggot,’ the man said, sounding close.

James returned to running, trying to make out the water’s edge, and the longer grass started to drag at his ankles. Well behind him, another car retreated and someone let out a series of high-pitched expletives.

‘There’s one over here!’ the figure following him shouted. The voice sounded immature, but James made out an extra sound, like a pipe being hit against concrete.

The path came to a confusing end and James felt the unmistakeable sting of nettles on his ankles. The ground was uneven and he sensed it grew more level in the distance, but the noise his flight was making was just too loud. He’d need to reach a patch of grass in order to shake his pursuer and escape the reeds by the water.

A truck crossing the bridge behind him provided enough competing sound and light and James spotted a concrete path and an inviting stretch of parkland just as it was lit for a moment. He judged where and when to start running once the grass fell into shadow again, and, keeping the pathway on his right, he ran with every shred of energy he could muster, dragging air into his nostrils and pushing it out, not looking back.

If he remembered this park correctly, a weir cut across the river not far ahead. On the far side, street lights glowed between low branches higher up at the back of the supermarket.

His assailant might be on his heels, but James didn’t stop until he saw the glint where the water dropped no more than a metre, making a rushing sound that might cover his footsteps as he crossed.

His feet got wet, but in less than ten steps he was on the other bank, before he turned to see the kid already halfway across.

‘Keep running, faggot!’ he shouted, and there was enough light for James to see the round hole of the mouth, but not the eyes. They were buried beneath a black hood.

He struck up the steep riverbank, but veered away from the abandoned feel of the shopping centre. He didn’t want to be trapped against the wall of rubbish skips.

The car park ran another hundred metres towards a new source of light, filtered by more vegetation. The place only revealed what it was to James once he’d passed the first few darkened caravans and noticed the park’s toilet lights shining onto a barbecue area.

He switched back past the coloured lights of an open-air laundry area and found the back of the toilets, completely in shadow but penned in by a high mesh fence with vines growing up it.

Judging it safe to pause, James tried to swallow his exhalations and leaned tight against the wall, watching and listening for his pursuer, but all that came back to him was the distant noise of a television.

After a minute he pushed deeper into the narrow space, wincing as he kicked over what might have been plastic garden pots. On the other side of the fence, a paddock stretched across toward small homes, lights showing here and there around window blinds. In between, the odd reflection came off pools of water interspersed by neglected swathes of long grass.

Where his hideaway ran out, a largish hole in the fence revealed itself, so he pushed through. The lights across the field drew him, only because the chance of being beaten with the pipe or the bat or whatever it was diminished with every inch he drew closer to them, even if he was followed across this final stretch.

Thorns tore at his jeans, but he pressed on and came to the high metal fence. There seemed no discernible way out apart from up and over, so he peered across and instantly recognised the seventies units near the swimming pool. Tony’s place.

As he sat astride the fence for a moment to adjust his seat and swing his legs over, he looked back across to the caravan park and saw the figure swinging his bat under the coloured lights, revealing himself to be considerably younger than James had realised. Before he dipped out of sight, the kid pointed at James with the bat and let out a strange sound, like one animal mocking another, and followed.

It was dark on Tony’s porch, and the key was still in his jeans pocket, but he dropped it and took a second to find it by the doormat in the shadows, listening for sounds coming from the other side of the fence. If the kid took a while to find the hole in the caravan park fence, James might have time to get inside unnoticed.

He shut the door quietly just as the kid starting climbing. A shadow passed over the blind of Tony’s bedroom, stopped and seemed to look in multiple directions, before disappearing.

There was probably no power, but James didn’t want any lights on. He pulled out his phone and flicked it into life, casting a low glow in front of him. Driven by thirst, he found the sink, wrenched the kitchen tap around and dragged water into his needy gullet.

His shirt damp from sweat and spilled tap water, James wrenched off his jacket, threw it over Tony’s lounge chair, checked the glass door at the side was locked, and started searching for a telephone directory.

He found it behind Tony’s chair, squashed into a low shelf. The light from his phone allowed him to find the number for the Kippen police station. He keyed it in with his thumb and sat in the chair while it rang.

The ringtone altered as though connecting through to somewhere else.

‘Hello, Wishaw Police Station,’ the speedy voice answered.

‘Hello, I wanted Kippen police,’ James said.

‘Diverts through to here when there’s no one over there. Is it an emergency?’

James went to unload the whole experience, but every angle he could approach it from was full of ramifications. ‘There’s people being attacked at the Kippen Bridge, in the toilet block. I’ve been pursued,’ he said after a moment.

‘Your name please, caller?’ the officer said.

Anything but that, James thought. ‘There’s men getting belted with bats, they’re probably still at it,’ he said.

‘Are you safe now? If you’re not, I can put you through to emergency.’

‘I think so,’ James replied.

‘Caller, do you need an emergency response?’

‘No, I meant I don’t think I’m being pursued now,’ James said. ‘I just wanted to talk to someone at Kippen police.’

‘Can always go in there tomorrow, I’ll check what time someone is on, hang on.’

‘Aren’t you going to send someone over there tonight?’ James said.

The line went quiet while James calculated how long it would take for a police vehicle to get from Wishaw in an emergency. He heard the cop laughing with another voice that sounded like it was coming from a two-way radio, then hung up.

Adrenalin was still coursing through him, so he shook his hands until they stopped tingling. Over and over in his mind he mapped the distance from Tony’s flat to the toilets by the bridge. Despite his monumental sprint, it was possibly less than five-hundred metres in a direct line over the weir.

Fuck, Tony. What the fuck?

James pulled his knees up to his chin, gripped the phone tight against them and started searching for his father’s phone number. It rang out and clicked onto an answering machine, on which his father’s voice went through clipped platitudes about leaving a message after the beep.

It didn’t sound like anything was recording, which probably meant the machine was full, but James said: ‘Hi Dad, listen, I made it to Kippen in the end. Just drove through. I didn’t want to wake you, so I checked into a motel. Um... look, we need to talk. It’s about Tony. I think there’s something the coroner might need to take into account, I’ll-’

Repeated beeping interrupted him, followed by what sounded like a tape rewinding. James pressed the hang-up button and pushed the phone away into the middle of the room.

It was too late to take back anything he’d said. Maybe his father’s answering machine hadn’t recorded it? Maybe it had, and Dad would call back, and come and collect him if James asked him to? He’d feel a like an idiot, of course, but talking to his father felt like the safest option while he hid against the only inner wall of a place it would probably be really easy for someone to break into.

He pushed away all thoughts of walking anywhere that night, just as the phone screen went black, plunging the flat into complete darkness.

Back in town just twelve hours, and:-

I’m really scared someone might be waiting for me outside. He looks like a teenager, about my height but skinny. Black hoodie, black pants.

I can’t call Dylan because I’d have to explain going to the beat.

I wish Dad would pick up the phone (probably too pissed).

Tony obviously didn’t kill himself (but if not, what happened?).

Sitting here right now, I feel like they all know exactly what happened.

I’m texting this to myself in case something happens to me.

SIX
1985

James woke early in his old bed at The Mulgas with a full bladder.

The bathroom floor was stained with Alan’s blood and littered with discarded bandage wrappings. A trickle of water had diluted a patch of red and was sending it towards the drain. James pissed then fished under the sink for a cloth to wipe away the night’s evidence.

Further down the hall he listened at the door to his parents’ bedroom. It was here that he’d stood eavesdropping on their desperate, late-night arguments. James turned the old wooden knob with the familiar crack running from top to bottom and made a space big enough to look through.

The heavy curtains weren’t quite closed, allowing a shaft of light to fall across the mess of clothes, most of it his father’s uniform. Dad slept soundly with his back to the door, the stripes of his pajama top crushed into a thick knot under one arm and a tuft of his grey-flecked hair rose from behind a pillow. The other side of the bed was empty.

The pantry yielded nothing for breakfast. The refrigerator contained only milk. James thought about showering, but within a minute he’d gently closed the side door of the farmhouse and was halfway up the hill.

He’d walked to Glen Alpine many times with messages from his mother, or eggs, or just because he wanted one of grandma’s hugs, when she’d fold him into her apron and squeeze him tight against her belly.

The gate that gave onto the fields stood ajar, long grass holding it slightly open, giving unseen creatures regular access. The dampness in the soil started to work its way into James’s trouser bottoms as he wriggled through the gap.

Inside, the old vegetable garden was sending up neglected seed heads. A bucket had rusted its way off the clothesline and upturned, leaving a pile of weathered wooden pegs through which ants were pushing up their nests. Blackberry canes tapped at the window panes along one side of the house, given a leg-up by the tank, perched at a dire angle.

The front verandah was still safe above the tendrils of hydrangea that reached up to the hanging baskets, their lilac-and-green flower heads shimmering. James mounted the steps, the scene of annual family photographs, and tried the front door.

It was securely locked, but a sliver of light revealed a chink in the window above. Both of the French doors that gave onto the verandah were heavily curtained, but when James put his eye up to the cold glass by the door, he could see into the hallway that ran through the guts of the house.

The grandfather clock that had always stood on the right-hand side of the hallway was still there. Apart from its hands being stopped at the wrong hour, the old homestead was so complete that Tony and his new wife would be able to move in after the wedding.

James sat in the patch of sun that was spreading over the top step, and watched it rise above Deloraine.

Aunty Doris and Yvonne were sitting in the kitchen when James wandered back to Deloraine. His aunt announced the phone had rung twice while he was on his ‘little adventure’.

At eight, it had been the news that his mother would not be arriving for lunch. That had been bumped-back to afternoon tea, so Uncle Bill and Aunty Doris had driven over to collect Tony’s motorbike from the bowling club.

At nine, it had been Dad wondering where his youngest son was.

‘I’ll have to ring Daniel now you’ve decided to turn up,’ Aunty Doris said. ‘I told your mother about the accident, but that she wasn’t to worry, so don’t just disappear again, alright?’

‘You know what boys are like,’ Yvonne said, parroting what she’d heard of the night’s events.

‘How did Alan look today?’ Aunty Doris asked.

James shrugged. ‘He was sleeping.’

‘Best thing,’ Yvonne said, before her mother could.

‘That’s right,’ Aunty Doris added. ‘He’s going to be sore, so you’re to leave him alone. Your father should let him stay in bed as long as he wants. Your mother stopped overnight,’ she added, making it sound like a bad thing.

There was a stigma in not making it all the way from the city in one day, motels being an unnecessary expense. James knew it. They all knew it, but he said, ‘It’s fun to stay in a motel’, and went over to make himself some toast.

Yvonne chewed, wide-eyed at his comeback. Her mother rinsed something at the sink and flicked it harshly onto the drying rack, then disappeared into the office to call Dad.

When James went to check on Tony, he was still asleep in the bed James had been using, mouth agape and snoring lightly.

On the other bed, a pile of laundered clothes sat at an accusatory angle that could only have been achieved by his aunt. James quietly sorted through his things and worked out what to wear.

His cousin seemed far too large for the bed, which bowed under his bulk. James spoke his name, which half-woke Tony for a few moments, but he turned over and faced the wall, scratching at his side.

‘Want to help with the family tree?’ James said. ‘We’ve only got today and tomorrow.’

‘Huh?’ his cousin said, after a moment.

‘Shall I just finish the family tree?’

Tony groaned and stretched, sending the bed springs into a discordant chorus. He let his body roll back, which was when James saw the graze that cut across the back of his cousin’s forearm. Tony noticed him staring, turned his arm and checked the dried blood.

‘Fuck, I dunno what this was from. Must have been a tree branch or something.’

‘Yeah, Alan’s pretty sore,’ James said, going for his towel hanging behind the door.

‘He would be. But he’s alright, right?’

‘Yeah, he’s alright.’

Tony inhaled and as he let the air out of his lungs he farted. ‘Geez, sorry. That’ll stink of beer,’ and he waved the sheet up.

The sight of the hair running from his cousin’s neck to his belly made James look away. He jiggled his towel as though wondering what to do next, and Tony laughed in a way that made James look back. As the sheet came to rest on top of his cousin’s body, the outline of his erection made a peak. Tony laughed again.

‘I gotta piss,’ he said, and went for the back verandah, concealing himself as he passed. James sat on the bed, listening to the fluid expulsion, the inevitable fart, and Tony’s mock surprise at it all.

Sitting in the enclosed verandah, James took his time over the creation of the family tree because it meant he had an unimpeded view all the way to the lane, and would therefore see his mother’s approach. It also kept him out of his aunt’s way, with enough room to lay down the sheets of cardboard and map out the multiple generations of names and faces.

His only resource was a thick folder, a school project of Tony’s from years before. The handwriting was clumsy, but James was quickly absorbed by his cousin’s well-intentioned efforts to explain their lineage.

At latest count there were sixteen cousins, but another sheet needed to be added when Yvonne reminded him that cousin Roger and his wife Helen had another baby not long before Christmas. Aunty Doris helped her dig out the card to make sure James got the name right.

Yvonne gave up on him after lunch, leaving James stretched out with the full set of new pens, giving the whole thing his own touch. Coloured shadows for the names of the pioneer ancestors, and other colours for the maiden names of as many women he could name who married into the Brandt family.

At the bottom, towards the right-hand side, he included his immediate family, ensuring his parents’ names were significantly apart to show they were not a unit anymore. A word of explanation was required: divorced. Across the display, there were second and sometimes third marriages due to untimely deaths; but divorces, no. He made the word purple, and when he stood back from it, it drew the eye like a bruise.

The only other anomaly was also in his family line. He didn’t use the purple pen, just the plain black to mark in the name of the baby, Gregory, born after him, but who’d died.

Dressed in clothes James had never seen her wear before, and sporting a fresh hairdo, Mum sailed into Deloraine’s kitchen, late, for afternoon tea, arms full of so many presents that Aunty Doris wasn’t able to serve scones and tea at the same time as all the unwrapping.

The main source of interest was Leanne’s bridal gown, which Mum pulled through the tissue paper of its expensive-looking lidded box, just as Tony emerged wanting to see what all the noise was about.

‘Out!’ Mum told him, laughing. ‘I’ll tell you when it’s safe. Bad luck for you to see any of this.’

Tony grinned and backed off. Mum winked at Aunty Doris and checked to see James and Yvonne’s reaction to the books they’d unwrapped, before she realised Alan was nowhere to be seen.

But Aunty Doris was ready for her. ‘He’s over at The Mulgas, and he’s in one piece,’ she said. ‘Daniel wants me to drop Jamie home later.’

‘He’ll find some way to make that all my fault,’ Mum said.

His aunt ignored it. ‘All these things,’ she said, raising her hands because she simply didn’t know where to put the flowers and chocolates that filled the kitchen surfaces.

‘I’ll help,’ Mum said, cornering her sister-in-law into an awkward embrace by the chest freezer. ‘I love that colour on you, by the way.’

Aunty Doris patted down the front of her orange blouse and reached for her apron to cover it. James felt unexpectedly proud of his mother in that moment, sporting new pants, the type with the denim dart at the back of the waist, and a smart, white halter-neck top. She’d already ditched her bright sports shoes by the door, where they were a refreshing sight against all the work boots. Everything about her expressed what he wanted to say about how much they’d moved on since they’d left Kippen.

‘Come out and have a drink with us, Bill. You’re not still working, are you?’ Mum said at the gap of the office door, running a finger around one of her new earrings.

‘Father’s getting ready to burn off, over by The Mulgas,’ Aunty Doris said, as though that was a good excuse for his hiding. ‘Conditions need to be just right.’

‘Daniel still not doing anything with the land?’ Mum asked, dropping her voice.

‘I don’t know what his plans are,’ Aunty Doris said, then, in an even lower tone: ‘Apparently, she hasn’t stayed over there yet,’ before the women closed ranks closer to the hallway.

‘They’re talking about your dad’s new girlfriend,’ Yvonne said, shutting one of the colouring-in books she’d received, registering her lack of interest in it.

‘I know,’ James said.

‘She was there, last night, wasn’t she? Is that why you came over here early?’

He shrugged.

‘Was there much blood?’ Yvonne asked.

‘Alan had more than Tony.’

‘Tony’s only got one scratch on him, I saw it,’ she said.

‘You don’t know what you’re talking about,’ he said, moving to the kitchen without bothering to notice Yvonne’s reaction.

His mother and aunt stopped their gossiping as soon as James appeared, but Mum put her arms out to him.

‘Come and look at the family tree,’ he said.

‘Jamie, you can show off your work when we put it up at the hall,’ Aunty Doris said, starting to clean the spotless sink.

‘I want to see,’ Mum said. ‘He’s gotten very good at English, at school. We might look into some private lessons next year.’

‘In what?’ Aunty Doris said.

‘Creative writing,’ Mum replied as James dragged her up the hallway.

Loud rock music was playing in Tony’s room as they approached. He already had the light on and he was sitting on his bed leafing through a car magazine.

‘Hi,’ he said cautiously.

‘Hello, Tony. It’s safe to venture out now, frock’s all under wraps.’

She leaned over her nephew and pecked him on the cheek, and went to pick up the clothes that had fallen from Alan’s backpack.

‘Where did you spend the night, Jamie?’ she asked.

‘At Dad’s,’ James said, loitering by the end of Tony’s bed.

‘I’m so sorry about the accident, Aunty Beck,’ Tony said, the magazine pulled up over his embarrassed grin, leaving only his eyes looking at her.

‘Well, your dad and Dan crashed a truck below the Kippen Bridge once, not long before we were married.’

‘Oh yeah,’ Tony said. ‘Who was driving?’

‘I don’t remember. I think they were shooting roos,’ Mum said, opening the bathroom door. ‘Have you been cleaning up after yourself in here?’

Tony winked at his cousin. ‘I reckon if Uncle Daniel ever pulls me over for speeding, I’ll remind him of that!’

She laughed as she picked towels off the floor. ‘Hang these up after yourselves, you boys!’ she said. ‘Leanne won’t let you get away with that after next weekend,’ she added, throwing a wet washer at Tony, landing it right on his face.

He yelled in mock outrage and slapped it back at her.

‘How did you get so tanned?’ Tony asked as she peeled the washer off her elbow, laughing.

‘Harbour cruising,’ she replied.

Mum was glowing, it was true. She’d been raving for weeks about the weekend lunch trips on the yacht owned by the husband of one of her colleagues at the pre-school. The days out on the harbour had worked on her skin ever since.

‘Sail boats and stuff?’ Tony asked.

‘Yep,’ Mum said, squeezing out the washer over the bathroom sink.

‘I’d love to do all that, you know, get out on the water. I reckon me and Leanne can have a go next week, up at the coast.’

‘Take her on a lunch cruise. You can have a bottle of wine and just relax.’

‘I reckon we will.’

‘Go and enjoy it. You boys never take enough time to get off the land,’ Mum said, guiding James out of the room just as his aunt came along the hall with a tray, trailed by Yvonne. They all arrived in the enclosed verandah at the same time to see the family tree stretched out in the afternoon light.

‘You’ve done a lovely job Jamie!’ his mother said. ‘Oh look, there’s Grandpa. Wasn’t he a handsome fellow in his day? All the Brandt boys are tall and good-looking, eh Doris?’

His aunt pretended not to hear, put the tray down and shouted from the hallway: ‘Have your scones. I haven’t finished getting your room ready yet.’

‘Leave it, come and have a drink with me,’ Mum called.

‘No, don’t fuss, I can do it,’ Aunty Doris said, as Mum and James mouthed the words in unison. They laughed, except for Yvonne, who’d seen and registered her disapproval by following her mother.

‘Where are we, on the tree?’ Mum said, hugging James from behind.

He led her hand along the extended branches until she ran a finger over their names, rising up to trace that of the dead child, and whispered: ‘Mummies never forget’.

‘Mum?’ James said, extending the word because he was asking something important. ‘Can I stay here tonight, please?’

His mother inhaled, distracted by the attentions of the lost child.

‘Of course you can,’ she said.

James felt it best to shower, then change into his pyjamas in the bathroom. His cousin had the bedside light trained on his magazine, leaving the rest of the room in semi-darkness, so James tried to find something of interest in the books Mum had brought.

Even though he was tired after his interrupted sleep the night before, the proximity to his semi-naked cousin kept James alert. He lay quietly, listening to Tony scratching himself and turning the pages with an impatient flick. Eventually, the sound of Mum’s voice chatting with Aunty Doris in the living room soothed James to sleep.

He woke suddenly when Tony went to the bathroom and pissed, long and loud. The door shut and the shower wrenched into life. James relaxed again.

Still later, he was woken by the flickering of the bathroom light going on. He sat up, thinking he’d seen Tony standing at the foot of his bed, naked.

‘Just sleepwalking, mate,’ James heard his cousin say from the bathroom. Then the light went off and he sensed a shadow pass quickly back to the other bed.

When he thought it was safe, James started brushing his hand over the end of his penis, imagining Tony hadn’t retreated but stayed and lifted James’s bedcovers, discovering something he liked underneath.

Sudden pleasure pulsated through him with a shocking ripple that became a wave of confusion about what part of it might be real. James looked for Tony’s form in the half light, but his cousin was facing the wall, his breathing regular.

James’s feet were suddenly hot, so he pushed the sheet aside and stared at the ceiling. Water must have run down from the cornices to the picture rail years ago. Within their subtle lines, he convinced himself he could see a map of some imaginary land.

Perhaps he could lose himself in it. If they all suspected he was a poofter, he’d just put all the intriguing thoughts and images of men out of mind until times such as this, when it was safe to bring them back. By day, men like Tony would be just a distraction, something to be forced down, like the chewy vegetarian rissoles his aunt had prepared for dinner now that Mum was here.

It was probably morning already. A new day. Time to start afresh. The idea of sticking with his mother and taking his cues from her settled James back into proper sleep.

It was a Sunday, so alarms didn’t sound or dogs stir. James turned and looked for Tony, but the other bed was vacant.

Voices eventually drew him towards the kitchen; but the tone of the conversation made him stop before he reached the threshold.

Mum was conversing from the table, while the familiar noises of his aunt sounded from the pantry. Beyond that were voices of men and a car on the drive, and the chattering of dogs mixed with similar sounds from Yvonne.

‘Father’s giving Tony his wedding present early; it’s old Mr Brandt’s car. He’s been restoring it in secret up in the back shed,’ Aunty Doris said. ‘You ought to send Jamie out to have a look, whenever he gets up.’

Vehicles bored him. Men talking about cars repelled him. Mum knew that.

‘It’s the wedding rehearsal today, isn’t it?’ his mother asked, changing the subject.

‘After church,’ his aunt said, voice coming from inside the pantry. ‘You’re welcome to come along, but don’t feel compelled. I can take the family tree and put it up at the club.’

‘Oh, I’ll save church for the wedding,’ Mum said.

The telephone on the wall rang. His aunt crossed to it.

‘I can stay here and get lunch ready,’ Mum added.

‘Goodo,’ his aunt said, lifting the receiver. ‘Doris Brandt,’ she said brightly.

Whoever was on the other end was doing all the talking, leaving space only for Aunty Doris to repeat her assent with a series of hums. ‘Alright Daniel,’ she said eventually, ‘we’re busy enough over here anyway,’ she added, before saying goodbye and hanging up. ‘Alan’s fine, he’s stopping at home. They’ve found a body under the Kippen Bridge.’

‘Oh dear,’ Mum said. ‘Anyone we know?’

‘Didn’t say,’ Aunty Doris said. ‘It’ll be one of those sissy types. Daniel will be over there most of the day, but he wants Jamie back over at The Mulgas by tea time.’

James retreated to his bed and pulled the covers up to his neck. The pale lines of water damage on the wall above didn’t look like a safe new world anymore. They were like bars on a cage. From now on, he’d need to keep everyone off the scent.

SEVEN
2005

The distant distress of a dog woke James. Thinking it was one of his, and that he was back in Sydney, he turned to shout for quiet only to see the chilly, grey smear of a country day showing through the patio door of Tony’s flat.

As he got up, he realised his jacket and shirt had worked their way up his body while he’d slept, leaving most of his torso exposed. He’d left mud on the carpet.

From somewhere within the caravan park, the dog continued to bark. James leaned against the door frame and ran a hand across his belly, stopping where a heavier fold was starting to develop, then scratched at the scar from the hernia operation the year before. His groin responded with that familiar numbness where they’d severed a nerve.

Half the small bathroom was covered by mirror, making it impossible to ignore the bulk of his body. He thought of Dylan and half-awake mumblings in their tiny bathroom, the way Dylan patted his bum on passing, and how that often resulted in sex.

James leaned across the toilet, put one hand flat on the wall to get his half-stiff cock at the right angle to get the piss out, and wondered if flushing would alert the neighbours.

The sense of isolation was immediate as James struck out along the narrow footpath that traversed the Kippen Bridge. It was so high there was nothing above it but air, and the turbulence of a passing truck made him grasp the handrail.

He forced himself to stop at the middle of the span. From here, one ute and the toilet block were dwarfed by the panoramic view of the brownish water receding in a gracious curve, wrapping around Kippen and meandering through stands of poplars and willows and into endless farmlands.

Directly below, bare trees rose up towards him, yet even they were out of reach.

Last night’s escape became clear. The concrete path snaked away into the high grass before meeting the weir. Various little trails ran up the scrubby slope to the supermarket car park. If that way had been blocked for Tony by a bunch of kids intent on belting him with something, the only way home would have been back up the road and across this bridge.

Picking off poofters in the park.

James went to cross the road, almost not seeing the car approaching from town. As its driver sounded the horn, he backed against the gutter and gave an apologetic wave.

The view from the other side of the road bridge was wilder. Here, the crumbling timbers of the railway viaduct blocked out most of the forested riverbanks below, leaving a gap just a few metres wide between both bridges. The old station showed back towards the main street, screened by saplings that had pushed up through the rails and sleepers. More trees were growing further down, right against the massive struts that held up the track. Directly below, James spied the reed bed where Tony had been found.

It would take an immense amount of courage to leap voluntarily, but if you jumped out of fear, in the dark, perhaps while being pursued, that would be a different matter. If you were thrown into the darkness and no passing vehicle was there to notice, you’d simply disappear.

James churned the possibilities over all the way to the motel car park, trying for the outward, confident air of someone returning from a brisk morning walk. His unnecessary show was rather undone when he was momentarily confused by two sets of keys.

Inside, he tore off his muddy shoes and ignored signs of his takeaway dinner and strangled the shower into life. Catching himself naked in the mirror, James gave a laugh that was more like a snort. He and Dylan should get back to the gym, but they only ever talked about it. Before long, one of them would renege and the other would follow.

Once he was dry, he checked his phone for calls from his father in case he’d missed one under the noise of the water, but there was nothing.

Of his desperate escape from the night before, there was little trace, just a hairline scratch on his neck, probably from a branch, and the red patches of the stinging nettles above the line of his socks. His muddy jeans and shoes were swapped for the casual suit he’d packed for Tony’s funeral. He also deleted the desperate text he’d sent himself.

When he went to pay, James noticed the sign ‘Breakfast NOT Served’, laminated, covered in dust, bending up from the cash register. He rang the dull buzzer, put together from some kind of old doorbell. It sounded in the distance through a glass sliding door with an orange lace curtain. He could smell frying eggs. A morning television show blared from the room beyond.

The teenager who greeted him was more intent on the television than taking his money.

‘Enjoy your stay?’ she said, halfway through the curtain, laughing at the interview.

‘It was crap,’ James said, low and facetious.

‘That’s nice. Visit us again, won’t you?’ she said, impatiently pulling the receipt and putting it down on the bench, before sliding the door shut with a slap.

The police station was closed and there was no indication about when it would reopen. A small notice inside the front window encouraged people to call triple zero if they were experiencing an emergency.

James grunted at that and sidled back down the steps, noticing the court house door wide open. He knew his way around a court house. Sometimes you got more out of court staff than the police.

The receptionist was enjoying a quiet moment with a takeaway coffee in the high-ceilinged interior, but she smiled so refreshingly that James started things off by asking about the chances of looking up an old case.

‘What date, love?’ she said.

That was disarmingly fast, not like city or suburban courts watched over by officious arseholes who hated helping journos. ‘I’m not sure,’ he said.

‘What name?’

He’d have to give the name of the only person he knew in Kippen who’d ever committed a crime. ‘Brandt, Beck. Rebecca,’ he replied.

She acknowledged the surname by raising her eyebrows. ‘We don’t keep records before 1990 here,’ she said. ‘They’re at the state archives, but if I can look up the charge sheet, we can possibly find a date.’

She reached for a dog-eared ledger, flipping back into the past while shaking her head. ‘I know what we can do, we can look up the defendant in the police records. You’re a relative, right?’

‘I am,’ James asked. ‘Want to see some ID?’

She smiled and shook her head. ‘You look too much like your dad,’ she said. ‘Are you the older, or the younger brother?’

James smirked. ‘Younger.’

‘Denise Beaumont,’ she said, holding out her hand to shake.

He took it. ‘James,’ he said. ‘You’re Sal’s daughter?’

She nodded and went to the computer terminal at the far end of the counter. ‘Rebecca Brandt,’ she said, typing it in, then nodded as the information flicked up. ‘Here it is. It’s 1980, so it’ll all be at the archives. I can get them to fax it across, if you like?’

Newshound accidentally sniffs out mother’s secrets.

‘Do you want to look at the entry in the charge book?‘ Denise asked.

He nodded. She registered the correct entry before spinning it around for James to see. There, by her long fingernail, was his mother’s name. The facts came rushing at him. December, 1980. Mrs Rebecca Brandt. Seventeen charges. Shoplifting.

‘If the fax comes through after two, I’m going to have to leave it for you to collect at the police station next door, that alright?’ she said, waving her arm towards the thick glass panels of the side door, through which the familiar blue and white police sign showed. ‘There’ll be a duty officer over there later.’

‘No worries,’ James said.

‘Listen, I hope you don’t mind me saying, but we’re all so sad about Tony,’ she said. ‘My younger sister Louise was in his year at school.’

‘Was she?’ James said, eyes still in the charge book scanning for more information.

‘Yes,’ she said, picking up her coffee. ‘She was Leanne Jenkinson’s best friend. Tony and Leanne used to go on double dates with Louise and her boyfriend, Johnny Jones.’

The names crowded between them, and James sensed they were about to play the old game. The rules were always the same, for him: never reveal too much. She’d ask if James was married, after she’d said kind things about his work at the newspaper.

‘Louise and Johnny broke up, but Leanne and Tony had that lovely big wedding, remember?’

James nodded vacantly, trying to concentrate on why he knew the name Johnny Jones, but Denise didn’t give him a chance.

‘How’s your dad liking his retirement?’ she asked.

‘Oh, I think he’s enjoying himself,’ he replied, about to backtrack to Johnny Jones.

But she ploughed on. ‘We gave him a good send off at the bowling club,’ she said. ‘Everyone joked it was a great night to rob a bank in any town in the border country, seeing as every cop across the district was out drinking with Detective Constable Daniel Brandt.’

James grunted out a laugh.

‘That is if there were any banks up here. They’ve all closed now,’ Denise said, and laughed ruefully. ‘You know, I used to babysit you, and your brother,’ she added, relaxing against the desk. James recognised the body language. He’d gotten great quotes out of witnesses offering themselves at that angle.

‘I remember,’ James said, even though he didn’t. Now would be the moment. ‘Listen, are you able to look up stuff about other cases on the computer?’

One corner of her mouth sprang back to the middle. ‘I’m not supposed to have given you what I did,’ Denise said, licking her lips quickly, ‘but we all make exceptions, you know, when we know someone.’

‘Well, I wouldn’t normally ask, but Dad’s been pretty cut up about Tony. We all are...’

‘I bet,’ Denise said, and sighed like she’d already surrendered. ‘I’m really sorry that I can’t be at the funeral. I’m the only one in today,’ she said.

Perfect. He had her in a place where she’d feel she owed him something. ‘There’ll be a coroner’s report soon enough anyway,’ James said, making himself look a little forlorn. ‘But it would really help Aunty Doris and Uncle Bill if we just had a few more details.’

‘You’re lucky I am on my own this morning. What do you want to know?’

‘Well, let’s start with Tony.’

Denise typed in the name, her face neutral apart from her scanning eyes. She struck at a few keys and raised an eyebrow at the result.

‘Lots of traffic offences,’ she said and laughed as she counted. ‘He’s been keeping the state economy going on parking fines alone!’ she added, before something more important caught her attention. ‘Did you know he’d been fined for public indecency?’

‘No.’

‘Looks like only the once, in 1999,’ Denise said. ‘Over the border.’

‘Any sentence?’

She shook her head, still hitting keys and scanning. James saw that her face was starting to redden.

‘No, just the fine,’ she said.

‘Any more details there? Location?’

‘No, but we’re not going to find anything in here about a suicide,’ she said, instant regret registering across her face.

James nodded. ‘Denise, I’m going to level with you. In my line of work we know that you lot hear all sorts from the boys in blue,’ he said, indicating the police station with his head, which made her smile. ‘Are they sure it was suicide?’

Denise looked spooked for the first time.

‘Was there any evidence, whatsoever, that Tony had been pushed?’ James asked.

‘I haven’t heard anything about that,’ Denise said, barely audible.

‘Well, is there any scuttle about what goes on in the park?’

This was the moment he knew he needed to read every single reaction from this woman. From here, the facts lay in one direction, only she could indicate which.

Denise put one arm across her breasts and planted her mouth inside her palm. That type of distress meant the response would be personal, in James’s experience, but before he could push further his phone rang.

‘I’d better take this,’ he said. ‘Can we talk later today?’

She nodded and took a long sip of her coffee, looking at him gravely over the cup as James pushed his way back onto the street, reached for his phone and started walking.

‘Dad?’ he said.

‘Where are you?’ a female voice said as soon as he picked up. No pleasantries. His cousin Yvonne never engaged in any.

‘Main street,’ James answered tersely. ‘Actually, I just turned off. I need coffee.’

She laughed. ‘Did you go out to the farm?’

‘No,’ he lied. ‘Are you coming?’ he added, passing the pub and spotting the pathway on the far side of the road that led to the visitor’s information centre and the old railway station beyond. Further down the street the spire of the church rose out of the earth like a dagger.

‘Yeah. We’re just having a toilet stop.’

‘Pete with you?’

‘Yeah. He’s dealing with the girls. We’re driving straight home afterwards. I don’t want to talk to anyone, apart from you.’

‘Me too,’ he said.

‘Alan showed himself anywhere?’

‘Nope,’ James said. ‘Probably won’t come...’

‘Well, we’ll see you at the church,’ she said. ‘We’ve still got the old green car.’

‘Nice.’

‘Yeah, costs us a bomb all the bloody time,’ Yvonne said. ‘They’re coming. I should get going. See you in about forty minutes.’

‘Rightyo,’ James said. ‘Hey, I know you’ve moved away, but you might know...’

‘Know what?’

‘Do you remember the Joneses?’

‘Yeah, they’ve got that place just past the abattoir on the way out of town. Three generations on the one farm. The father is the stock and station agent. His wife died a couple of years ago. I think the son is in the business too, or was. Some trouble there. Tony was in the same class as Johnny Jones,’ she said. ‘Don’t tell me they’re coming?’

‘I doubt it. What kind of trouble?’

James had reached the car park of the old train station now, the twin bridges showing through the trees beyond it. The small eatery inside the renovated waiting room was open. He needed coffee.

Yvonne sighed. ‘I dunno. It’s not Jones and Son anymore apparently, not since the son got his real estate license suspended. Something about fiddling with livestock numbers, and then his wife left him. Doris tries to tell me all this stuff about the locals, but I don’t really give a fuck.’

‘Neither do I,’ he said.

‘A house full of men... gawd, can you imagine?’ she said.

They laughed, loud and fake, and rung off. James checked his watch. It was ten-thirty. There was still half an hour until he should show up at the church.

James ordered coffee and a toasted sandwich from the teenager staffing the tiny canteen. While he waited, he read the billboard with an image of the first Kippen Bridge, a pair of timber structures that went up in 1901, one for rail and one for road traffic. Before that there’d been a ferry, which is why the weir had been constructed. The latest vehicle bridge was the same age as the toilet block, which featured in a forty-year-old, black-and-white photograph of the town’s aldermen at the big opening. Someone had decided to take the snap at the parklands, no doubt because it afforded the best view of the concrete span.

The image was faded, but James reckoned he recognised a young Andy Jones standing at the back of the group.

‘Ready,’ the teenager said and shoved a tray to the front of the counter.

James found a table on the terrace overlooking the bridges, as far as he could get from the two middle-aged couples who must own the campervans in the car park. The drink was hot and bitter, so he emptied a sachet of sugar into it and allowed himself to be mesmerised by the eddies that formed where the river curved between the great pylons far below. Around their feet, reeds spread into deep thickets, unlike the bare branches of the tall European trees dotted on the banks either side of the bridge.

Tony’s body had been lying there while tourists stopped at this terrible eatery and admired this view. By day, a tourist panorama like nothing else in the whole region. By night, a death trap for the local gays, and plenty who wouldn’t have called themselves gay.

Newshound knows a murder when he sees one.

Murder felt too strong, but could it be the right call? James had heard about a couple of the attacks on gays in Sydney. It was usually a body found at a picnic spot, just like the parkland under Kippen Bridge. Ever since starting his cadetship with the paper, he’d pretended to have no interest in this type of police report, fearing he’d be earmarked as a poof. That would have meant kissing every one of his few promotions goodbye, perhaps even his job.

But James sensed the question clearly now with the kind of angry sarcasm that always inspired him into writing: murders only ever looked like suicides in tacky thrillers, but might the suicide of a closeted country boy really be a killing? And who would do such a thing to one of their own?

He checked his phone. Still twenty minutes to go. He finished his coffee while searching for his brother’s number.

‘Hi, Alan’s phone. Leave a message, go on,’ his brother said, with the hint of a laugh.

Brother’s jokes keep demons at bay.

‘Alan, it’s James. I’m at Kippen for Tony’s funeral. Aunty Doris said you couldn’t get the time off,’ he said, keeping it light. ‘Anyway, I know it’s been a while, but I just wanted to ask you something quickly. Remember that time we came up here on the train, for Tony’s wedding, and you were all in that car crash? Was there a guy called Johnny Jones in the car that night? I want to look him up before I come back to the city. Please give me a call as soon as you can.’

He was about to leave when he noticed a copy of last week’s Kippen and Wishaw Times on the next table, Andy Jones’ round, rosy face staring back at him from the top of a back-cover advertisement for Jones and Son stock and station agency. No image of the son, though, just a series of unimpressive homesteads, acreage and auction dates.

The list prices varied, but a one-thousand-acre property that looked about the same vintage as Deloraine was going for almost half a million dollars.

James snorted in amazement and checked to see if anyone had noticed, flipped the edition over and flattened the front page with his hand. At the top of the teaser column he found it.

Kippen Bridge suicide: latest details.

The red kicker strapline sported the words ‘lonely local death’, the way any old-school sub-editor would have pitched it. Just a follow up, no details. Only the man’s name, ‘identified as Tony Brandt, 40, formerly of “Deloraine”, Kippen,’ was published, and no hints about the time his body had lain undiscovered. James noticed one typo and two literals, and that the last paragraph was a straight repeat of the first.

But there was one crucial element missing. Someone had laid out this typical sensationalist story without adding a by-line. That meant only one thing: the story was basically a re-hash of the police report.

At the bottom of page four he found the contact details of whoever put the thin edition together. It wasn’t a Kippen address; this was a regional weekly published in the city by the main competitor of James’s company. Nothing about the lazily-copied police report would trigger the allocation of a city journalist to agitate the Kippen cops in case more details came to light about Tony’s death.

James flipped open his phone and redialled his father’s number. As soon as the answering machine kicked in, he hung up. He’d just have to question Dad after the funeral.

Back in town for twenty-four hours, and:-

I don’t feel like going to the funeral (I’d rather have a look around the Jones farm because I bet that ute with the dog cage is parked right in the driveway).

I’m pretty sure I’ve uncovered a murder.

Actually, Dad probably had a murder on his watch back then.

That’s two unsolved murders (and this does feel like I’m in a crap novel).

Tony’s body should go back to the morgue, not into the ground.

EIGHT
1985

Tony knew his hair was springing up in all directions even though he’d tried pushing it down whenever no one was looking. Mother even licked her hand and pressed his fringe flat as they piled into the car after the wedding rehearsal at the church. It was bad enough that Leanne noticed, but at home Mother went completely overboard showing his fiancée into Deloraine like she was Princess bloody Anne.

‘I think a little drink would be nice,’ Mother said, giving Tony that wide-eyed look she always put on when she wanted him to play barman.

‘Shit,’ Tony mumbled, low enough that Mother wouldn’t hear.

Thankfully, Jamie was nowhere to be seen.

Yvonne was playing cards at the kitchen table. Father was already hovering by the office door, looking ready for a beer. Apart from pouring lagers, Tony knew how to mix only one drink: lemon, lime and bitters, and he made a start as Aunty Beck filled the silence.

‘I knew you when you were a little girl,’ she said to Leanne. ‘When Doris and I went over to Kippen for cards. We used to play against your mother and Sal Beaumont. Merle and Sal usually beat us, didn’t they Doris?’

‘Oh, yes,’ Mother said, dusting off a platter.

‘Merle must be so excited about the wedding,’ Aunty Beck said.

Leanne nodded, then spoke when she realised there was airtime: ‘We’re almost ready, we just have to finish off a few things for the reception.’

That was more like it. Tony smiled at his fiancée and kept pouring drinks.

‘Jamie,’ Aunty Beck called down the hallway, ‘come and meet Miss Jenkinson.’

Shit.

‘Call me Leanne, please.’

Jamie held out a hand and Leanne took it. Tony tipped the bitters bottle back to upright so he could watch, wondering if Leanne thought what everyone else reckoned: Jamie Brandt was the spitting image of Uncle Daniel.

Mother broke in: ‘If there’s anything you need done for the big day, you know you only have to ask.’

Leanne’s eyes sought out Mother’s and started blinking.

‘I reckon Mrs Jenkinson’s got it all worked out,’ Tony said to settle her.

‘Except you have to take your dress with you,’ Yvonne said.

‘Oh goodness, yes!’ Mother said. ‘It’s in the good room, all ready to go. Don’t you move Tony, we’ll put it in the car now, that way you can’t forget. Goodness, how would that go, waking up to no wedding gown? Father, you come with me.’

They all laughed and Father followed. Lucky bastard, escaping.

‘We’re still organising the final placement of everyone, you know, where they’ll all be sitting and that,’ Leanne said.

‘Oh, your seating plan will seal your future in this town,’ Aunty Beck said.

They all laughed again, but Leanne didn’t get it. She just blinked.

‘Actually, we realised we have to write our own place names, you know, where people are sitting and stuff? The catering people said they can’t do it for us,’ she said.

Tony approached her with the tray of yellow-coloured drinks, put his hand nicely on her shoulder as she sipped, and looked down lovingly. It settled him and seemed to do her some good.

‘Place names, did you say?’ Mother said from the hall, as she guided Father out through the screen door, dress box in his arms. ‘I’ve got these little cards somewhere left over from Coral Taylor’s fiftieth. They’ve got flowers on. Pink and yellow, I think,’ and she dived into the dresser.

‘Jamie could write them out for you,’ Aunty Beck said. ‘He’s got lovely handwriting. He did the family tree for the reception.’

‘Here they are,’ Mother said, holding the cards up like she’d caught a bloody cricket ball. ‘Jamie can go over to Inverlochy Park when you drop Leanne home, Tony. Show Merle and get her approval.’

Jamie started to smile like it was Christmas.

‘Alright,’ Tony said, and patted Leanne on the shoulder until she smiled up at him.

Tony had spent the whole morning polishing up the original light-green paint job of Grandpa Len’s old Ford, and it looked a treat.

Leanne was smiling up in the front with him, finally loosening up a bit away from Mother and Father. Jamie was sulking in the back, under orders to keep the bridal gown from sliding around.

Tony liked the Jenkinsons’ place but he was glad it would never be his. Inverlochy Park was less than fifteen minutes away but it was much grander than Deloraine, with showy whitewashed gateposts and matching rows of stones lining the driveway that swept up a hillside like something out of a storybook. He wouldn’t want to have to take care of it.

As soon as they arrived, Leanne skipped up the front steps, leaving Tony to help his cousin with the posh-looking bridal box.

‘Tuck your shirt in,’ Jamie said.

Tony slid his hand across the inside of his pants, pushing the crumpled white fabric down. The kid had taken over from Mother, giving reassuring looks all the bloody time.

Shit.

Inside, good rooms showed on either side. Tony and James passed straight down the hallway and through a set of double doors. The main room on the other side was bloody big. Leanne’s heels clicked on the fancy polished floor and she laughed. A grand piano piled up with family photographs peeped from the edge of a dance floor.

‘Wow!’ Tony said.

‘Haven’t you seen it already?’ Jamie asked.

‘Not this far in,’ Tony said.

‘Mother must be baking,’ Leanne said, taking the box from James and placing it on the big dining table.

The kitchen was through another small hallway, accessed by double swing doors with portholes. ‘Like the movies,’ Tony said as they passed through, which made Jamie shake his head like he was embarrassed.

Leanne rushed up to her mum at the far end of the enormous kitchen. The old girl’s face lit up for her daughter, but she looked Tony and Jamie over like they were at school.

Shit.

‘Hello, Anthony.’

‘Hi, Mrs Jenkinson,’ he replied.

‘This is Jamie, Daniel Brandt’s boy,’ Leanne said.

‘Oh yes? The first or the second?’ Mrs Jenkinson said, as though they’d interrupted something very important.

‘The second,’ Jamie said, and started up his sulking again.

‘You’ve caught me making scones,’ the old girl said, whipping off the apron.

‘Yum,’ Tony said.

No response; he better stay quiet.

‘Father’s out, I’m afraid,’ Mrs Jenkinson said, looking Tony in the eye.

‘I’ve got my dress,’ Leanne said, and the old lady rolled her eyes. ‘We just came to show you Jamie’s idea for the place-names.’

‘Oh, very good,’ the old girl replied. ‘We’ll take a look right here. Anthony, would you head out the back for me and see if Father’s filled the car up yet?’

‘Yeah, will do, Mrs Jenkinson.’

‘You’d better start calling me Merle.’

‘Alright, Merle,’ he said, and laughed. Thankfully, when he pulled at his hair in nervousness, they were all looking at Jamie.

Tony slipped out the short hallway that ran past the laundry. Across the lawn, a white gate gave onto what looked like a long garage, but there was no sign of the old boy. He turned back to the kitchen window. Jamie and Leanne’s mum were already chin-wagging like chooks, waving their arms and holding up the place cards.

He looked the other way, up the hill. The wheat stubble had already been burned, but since the Jenkinsons were mainly in cattle, they only had a few hundred acres of grain close to the house. A bit of fast money. That crop would probably pay for the wedding.

A tap on his shoulder made him turn. Leanne had followed and closed on him, her lips parted. Tony had to bend down a little, and he let his mouth linger for only a moment before patting her on the shoulder.

‘Tomorrow’s our big day,’ she said, right into his ear.

She went for another kiss but he’d already dodged and was looking to see whether the old girl was watching. Sure enough, she was, and Jamie was too.

Shit.

Tony yanked off his tie and went to unbutton his collar as soon as Inverlochy Park disappeared behind the ridge.

‘Get this, would you Jamie?’ he asked, leaning across and pointing to his neck.

His cousin did what he was asked. Tony exhaled and checked the road.

‘Thanks,’ he said, and punched Jamie’s thigh. ‘Great work, with the old lady. You probably impressed her more than I ever will.’

Jamie didn’t seem to see anything funny about that. Tony went quiet for a minute, rolled up each sleeve of his good shirt with one hand still on the wheel, but spotted the red graze from two nights ago and rolled them back into place.

Once they were on the long, straight stretch of the Kippen Road, things got so quiet it looked like Jamie was pretending to sleep. Tony darted a couple of looks at his cousin’s legs. Long, like his father’s. His hands, relaxed on his thighs, were already big. Only the sulky looks made him seem like a kid.

‘Hey, sleepyhead,’ Tony said as they turned onto the lane, slapping Jamie on the leg this time. ‘Nearly home.’

He’d have to do it now or never, so as they got to Glen Alpine Tony pulled to a stop, dragged the handbrake on and let out a long sigh. It wasn’t the best place, because the sun was right in their faces.

‘So, boyo, where to from here?’

‘What?’

‘Mother said I should take you back over to your dad’s.’

‘Well, Mum said I’m allowed to stay at Deloraine.’

‘Yeah, but think about Uncle Daniel. He’s probably got tea on by now,’ Tony said.

‘He’s probably just barbecuing a few sausages.’

Tony sighed and looked ahead, right into the sun. ‘Mate, you’ve got to learn it’s not a good idea to rock the boat.’

Jamie went really quiet then, so Tony changed tack.

‘Gees it’s good to see Aunty Beck so happy after all the dramas.’

‘Well, things are different where we live now,’ Jamie said with a real bloody whinge.

‘Yeah, I know mate, I know, but she didn’t stick with it up here.’

‘She gave it her best,’ Jamie said, reaching up to pull the sun visor down against the light, sending dust swirling all over the dashboard.

That annoyed Tony more than anything. He’d have to clean the car out as soon as he got home or he’d be shitty all evening.

‘You know she went to court?’ he said, brushing the dirt that was settling on the dashboard. ‘They caught her stealing stuff at Leong’s store.’

The kid pulled at the door handle, so Tony accelerated.

‘Mum couldn’t show her face at Leong’s for months because of Aunty Beck. She put our family though hell, and judging by the way you carry on, Jamie, we’re not out of the woods yet,’ he said.

‘What have I done?’ Jamie whined.

Tony couldn’t quite form the answer straight away. How do you make it all the other person’s fault? ‘You’re a sook, mate,’ he said, looking along the lane to check the car wasn’t about to drift into the ditch.

He expected more sulking, so when his cousin lashed out with those hands it took Tony by surprise and made him swerve to the other side of the road.

‘Fuck you!’ Jamie shouted as he got the door fully open.

Tony went to grab the kid by the arm, but Jamie’s punch landed heavily on his neck, even though it came at the wrong angle.

The kid pulled free and was out the door fast, but one pump of the pedal and Tony caught up with his cousin, sulking like it was going out of fashion. The open door slapped the little dickhead on the arse, and swallowed acres of dust as it slammed shut, meaning Tony had to shout.

‘I don’t want you hanging around, mate. You can fucking walk to your dad’s place!’

There, he’d managed it. No cousin moping around his room the night before the wedding. Goodo.

But as the dust cleared and the sun hit Jamie’s face, Tony was thrown by the man who emerged. The jaw, the tuft of hair at the neck, and the strong brow all combined into a look so rugged that his hard-on started to press against his undies.

Shit!

Tony slammed his foot down on the accelerator and obliterated his view of the kid with another cloud of dust. He didn’t ease up until he reached the gate into The Mulgas, where it was better to go slow so stones didn’t fly up onto the new paint job. Down the hill, he saw Uncle Daniel and Alan on the verandah. As Tony rolled to a stop, Alan waved from the old lounge and his uncle lifted a tray of meat to the barbecue.

‘Just in time for dinner, fellas,’ Uncle Daniel shouted, slapping sausages onto the hotplate.

Tony took his time avoiding the smoke from the barbie as he crossed the lawn, but just as he hit the steps he winked at Alan and said: ‘I fucking love the smell of barbecued meat,’ before helping himself to a beer from the fridge inside the laundry door.

‘Jamie, you want a beer?’ Uncle Daniel asked.

When there was no response, his uncle turned to see the old vehicle in the sun by the pepper tree. ‘Jeez, Bill did a good job on the old car,’ he added. ‘Goes alright?’

Tony nodded. ‘Runs real nice. Took her for a spin over to the Jenkinsons.’

‘Yeah?’ Uncle Daniel said, looking like he was still expecting Jamie to show.

Tony looked at his feet and sniffed. ‘Put it this way, Uncle Daniel,’ he said. ‘Bringing Jamie over for tea would have been a waste of good snags.’

‘What do you mean?’ his uncle said, squashing rissoles with a spatula.

‘Well, with Jamie being the way he is,’ Tony said, hoping his uncle would get it.

‘What about him?’

‘He’s a vegetarian,’ Alan said.

‘Oh, that,’ Uncle Daniel said, pulling a weird face. ‘I didn’t think he’d be keeping that up while he was staying around here. He’ll bloody starve.’

‘Well, he’s got Mother running around making vegetarian rissoles,’ Tony said.

‘What’s in a vegetarian rissole, for fuck’s sake?’ Uncle Daniel asked, and threw back a mouthful of beer. They all laughed.

‘Vegetarians,’ Alan said after a moment, and they all laughed more.

‘Good one,’ Uncle Daniel said, stoked up the hot coals and wiped his hands on the old towel hanging by the door. ‘But he’s coming over after tea, yeah?’

Tony shrugged. ‘Yeah, probably.’

‘What does that mean?’ Uncle Daniel said.

Alan looked away. Tony hated it when his uncle tensed up.

‘I can go and get him,’ Tony offered, ‘but there’ll be some kind of drama.’

‘He’s supposed to be staying here,’ Uncle Daniel said.

Alan and Tony nodded. ‘Well, I can go get him, if you like?’

His uncle looked a bit trapped. He shrugged and pushed at sausages.

‘He’s been a sook ever since we got on the train,’ Alan offered.

‘What’s his problem?’ Uncle Daniel asked, exasperated.

Tony shrugged. His uncle looked at Alan, but he shrugged too.

‘Lack of protein?’ Tony suggested, and Uncle Daniel laughed, so they all laughed and looked out at the car.

‘Bloody good job Bill did on it. Did he need to get in new parts?’

‘I dunno,’ Tony said. ‘Been a big secret.’

‘Bill’s bloody good at keeping secrets,’ Uncle Daniel said. ‘They said Doris didn’t even know she was getting married to him until she found him at the altar!’. They all laughed. ‘You can stay and eat, at least,’ he added, looking at Tony.

‘Nah, Mother will want me around there for tea, night before the wedding, you know?’

His uncle nodded. ‘Footy’s on the telly, so me and Alan’ll cook this lot up and just kick back. Don’t tell me you’re not tempted on your last night of freedom?’

Tony laughed. ‘Shit yeah.’

‘Grab me another beer wouldya?’ his uncle said.

Tony leaned in and got one, while Uncle Daniel lined the empty bottle up with the others on the edge of the verandah boards. ‘Shit, these snags’ll be done quick,’ he added, turning them fast.

Now was his only chance.

‘So, who topped himself over at Kippen Bridge?’ Tony asked.

‘Some fucking poofter,’ Uncle Daniel said. ‘We haven’t had one of those jump for a while. First one I ever saw hit the ground instead of the river. Fucking mess,’ he added, shaking his head and turning steaks.

‘Who was it?’ Tony asked, sucking beer through his teeth.

‘Nobody we know. Found the car in the scrub,’ his uncle said. ‘Plates told us he was from over the border. Left it to the boys up there to tell the family.’

‘Yeah,’ Tony said, and finished his beer in one go. ‘Well, I gotta go. Mum’ll be wondering where I am.’

‘Right you are,’ his uncle said.

‘Uncle Daniel?’

‘Yeah mate?’

‘I’ve been meaning to ask you something.’

‘Not having second thoughts about the big day?’

‘Nah,’ Tony said, and laughed. ‘Nothing like that.’

‘Well, spit it out,’ his uncle said, and winked at Alan.

‘Well, it’s pretty last-minute, but I wondered if you’d be my best man?’

‘I thought Johnny Jones was going to do the honours?’ Uncle Daniel asked, starting to pile up the meat at one end of the grill.

‘Yeah, he was.’

‘Well, he wasn’t injured any worse than you two, so what’s wrong with him?’

‘I dunno.’

‘Want me to have a word with his old man?’

Tony looked at his feet and shook his head. That was the last thing he wanted.

‘Well, whatever you need,’ his uncle said, and picked up his beer. ‘Here’s to you, mate. Next time we have a barbie you and Leanne can host at Glen Alpine, and you can tell us all about the honeymoon,’ he added, raising the bottle and winking.

Tony clinked his bottle against his uncle’s. He knew he must look pretty relieved. This sticky situation had been worrying him all bloody day, especially after Mother asked him why Johnny wasn’t at the rehearsal.

‘Get me a plate would you, Alan?’ Uncle Daniel said.

Alan heaved himself up, but as he stood, he winced.

‘Sorry, mate,’ Uncle Daniel said. ‘Forgot about the war wound.’

‘I’ll get it,’ Tony said.

‘Nah, it’s alright, I’ll just take it all in,’ his uncle said, going inside with the tray.

That left Tony and Alan, and the barbecue smoke.

Shit!

It seemed like Alan wanted him to say something, but Tony didn’t know where to start. ‘Want to look at the old car?’ he offered.

His cousin nodded. They moved for the stairs, but Alan fell behind, having to ease himself down slowly.

‘Need a hand?’

Alan shook his head. Tony noticed a couple of scratches on his neck, but the other injuries must have been under his cousin’s clothes.

‘Fucking Johnny Jones,’ Tony said, trying his best to make it sound funny. ‘Who does he think he is, eh?’

Alan smiled but laughed with his mouth closed. At the car, he reached for the bonnet and used it to lean on.

‘Bit sore, eh?’ Tony asked.

‘Yeah,’ Alan said, squinting now that his face was in the sun.

Tony had seen the painkillers Uncle Daniel plied his son with on the side of the Kippen Road the night before last.

‘Your dad asked you anything about what happened?’ he said.

Alan shook his head.

‘You blacked out for a bit, so you might not remember too much anyway.’

‘I remember you carrying me up the track, after the crash,’ Alan said.

‘Yeah, I had to leave you in the bush for a bit while I went back and helped push Johnny’s ute back over,’ Tony said.

‘There was a lot of shouting,’ Alan said.

His cousin looked brittle, but it wasn’t about his injuries.

‘Johnny’s always been a loud-mouthed bugger,’ Tony heard himself saying.

Truth was he also remembered Johnny’s unmistakeable shouting from the top of the bridge, like he was scoffing at a child, toying with it in the dark. The shrieks in response came from someone begging to be left alone. Tony had tried to find a torch inside the upturned ute so he could collar Johnny and bring him back, but the screaming had ended suddenly with a silence that still chilled Tony in his guts. Hopefully Alan had been out of it at that moment.

‘Was it you who walked into town to get the police?’ Alan asked.

Tony nodded. ‘I was so relieved Uncle Daniel was on duty,’ he said.

‘Would have been bloody embarrassing explaining to anyone else that we’d swerved to avoid a roo.’

Alan had his mouth squashed, like he didn’t believe a word of it.

Tony had gone over it in his mind so many times: Johnny and his mates belting the faggots by the toilets, men moving in and out of shadows, flashes of blood and wild kicking, before they’d all piled onto Johnny’s ute and chased one of the faggots up the track to the Kippen Bridge.

He’d never seen Johnny drive that wildly before, taking the corner too fast and throwing them all off into the scrub before slamming the ute into a tree and rolling it.

But while Tony had searched for Alan in the dark, hoping like hell his cousin was alright, he’d heard Johnny shouting at someone further up the track to the main road.

Shit!

‘Well,’ Tony said, patting the side of Alan’s arm. ‘Least we’re all still in one piece.’

Alan nodded.

‘You still here?’ Uncle Daniel yelled from the verandah as he went for another beer.

Tony laughed loudly to fill the silence. ‘Hey, Uncle Daniel!’ he shouted.

‘What?’

‘If you want me to go get the vegetarian, I’ll do it right now.’

His uncle grunted. ‘Nah, I’ll deal with him tomorrow.’

NINE
2005

Beyond the Kippen Bridge the motel showed on the right-hand side, the car park now empty. James slowed the hire car when he saw the grey buildings and the meat works signs. There, on the left, not far past the abattoir, was the property he was looking for.

A verge allowed him to pull over near a pair of post boxes at the head of the drive. One of them sported the faded word ‘Jones’ on the shaded side. A newish house stood in front of a line of willow trees beyond a high barbed-wire fence. Above the wall of foliage, the chimneys of an old homestead showed. The head of the driveway was blocked by a very new, very high, spiked, black metal gate locked with a heavy bolt.

James got out and took two steps before dogs started barking from under the willow trees. He paused, fingers still on the edge of the open car door, and waited to see if the animals were loose.

Once they settled and started whining, he approached the letterboxes knowing he’d have to be quick about it. Inside the first were a couple of supermarket flyers and a small bundle of envelopes. Through the window of the top one, he saw the name: ‘J and A Jones’, put them back, slipped into the hire car and drove about half a kilometre out of town until he found somewhere to turn around.

Returning slowly, he pulled off the road and stopped in the shade of a stand of fruit trees in sight of the Jones farm. He had less than fifteen minutes to see what was what before he had to be at the church. If nothing happened, he would come back later.

At five minutes to the hour a ute approached from the direction of Kippen and turned into the driveway. The dog cage on the back was blatantly obvious, but James couldn’t be one-hundred percent sure about the passenger. These things were never totally clear; they only opened up to more leads that needed following up; but the kid who looked pissed off at having to get out, collect mail and unlock the gate was a pretty good match for his pursuer from the night before.

It was such an everyday scene and James couldn’t help but fill in the gaps: a teenager old enough to have a job yet not able to get one, bludging a ride home from town with his father over a distance so short he could very well have walked.

He’d only have to go through the arcade to the back of the shops, across the car park, down the grassy slope to the river, over the weir, past the public toilets and up the concrete road to the motel; or past the pub, along the Kippen Road about five hundred metres, across the bridge, and just past the abattoir. The parklands below the Kippen Bridge may as well have been the Joneses’ front yard.

James checked the ute. It had spotlights mounted on the roof and the dog cage filled most of the tray. The guy in the work vest could have been Johnny Jones. He looked about the right age. All any cop would have to do was ask where that vehicle had been last night, and who had been responsible for it.

The kid locked the gate and was almost inside the cabin when Johnny accelerated up the drive and disappeared behind the willows.

Newshound beats top cop to suspect.

James adjusted his gaze to check for traffic coming from behind. By the time he’d turned back and was looking across to the Jones farm, Andy Jones was strolling up the driveway towards the gate, craning his neck to look at James’s car.

And he knew it was James’s car.

And James knew the estate agent said he’d be out of town that whole day.

It was too late to do anything. As James sped past, the liar Mr Jones threw a pointed finger at him and made a noise he didn’t quite hear through the window. He’d heard it before. It sounded like one animal mocking another.

James expected to see the weather-beaten faces of his gene pool as he passed Kippen Presbyterian church in the hire car, but apart from the hearse at the front door, the place seemed empty for a funeral that was meant to have started five minutes ago.

As he turned into the car park, Yvonne, Pete and the girls were just getting out of their old four-wheel drive.

James pulled up at a distance, not feeling ready to start asking awkward questions and talking about hitting the pause button on proceedings. He stretched his spine up into the padding of the car seat, closed his eyes, and counted the sounds he could hear. His cousin helping her daughters into their cardigans; kids playing at the far end of the adjacent field; cars passing on the main street; magpies fighting in the trees across the road, and someone mowing their lawn over the side fence of the units opposite. Finally, he had to acknowledge the call of the organist from the church.

Queer suicide: community stays away.

The gravel underfoot announced his approach to his nieces, who leaned against their parents in a kind of silent alarm at an unfamiliar world.

‘G’day,’ he said, kissing Yvonne between drags on her cigarette.

She smiled and commanded her progeny: ‘Say hello to Cousin Jamie.’

They did, in rehearsed unison. Pete pumped James’s hand, looking this way and that, laughing in that careless, breathy way, all on the surface.

‘Take the girls in,’ Yvonne said, guiding her twin daughters’ hands to their father’s and returning the cigarette to her lips, sucking deep. ‘Ready for this?’ she said to James.

He shrugged.

‘So, how is Doris holding up?’ Yvonne said, pushing out the smoke.

‘Kind of like it hasn’t actually happened,’ James said.

Yvonne laughed and forced the rest of the air out of her lungs, offering him the box of cigarettes with the lid open.

‘No thanks.’

‘Alright,’ she said. ‘No one’s forcing you. What about Father? Did you see him?’

James nodded. ‘I think they’re both deep in denial.’

Yvonne snorted and shook her head as she held the smoke in. ‘Gone back into it, more like. You told me you hadn’t been out to the farm,’ she added.

‘Did I? I’m so sorry.’

‘Don’t be,’ she said, ‘We’re all liars in this family. Did they tell you how long he was left in the river?’

James nodded. It was the perfect moment to mention what he knew, but his cousin kept on.

‘I don’t know what I’m going to say to Doris about all that,’ she said, shaking.

‘Well, perhaps don’t call your mum that,’ James said, trying to make her laugh. His cousin threw him a rueful look. ‘Actually, who am I to talk?’ he added. ‘Call her whatever you want.’

A car pulled up on the main road. ‘We’ll go around when I’ve finished this,’ she said.

She stood like a tortured tree, hips pushed forward beneath the navy satin twin-set, cigarette arm out with the palm up, every angle a bitter one.

He was going to have to tread carefully. ‘I never hear any family news,’ he said. ‘I didn’t know Tony and Leanne had split up.’

‘They parted company years ago. The divorce was last year because Leanne met someone else. Tony only got back in touch with me after that.’

‘So, how come nobody knew he was missing?’ he asked.

She jerked her head to look him sternly in the eye. ‘Because I assumed he was busy chasing after another bird.’

Not okay about awkward questions, then. James let her process another two drags before he spoke. ‘Your mum told me about Tony’s will.’

‘Yeah? He told me he was making a new one. Didn’t want Leanne getting any of the family assets,’ she said, laughing. ‘If I’d known he was planning to top himself so soon afterwards, I might have put in a case for him leaving it all to the girls.’

‘He’s left everything to me, actually.’

His cousin let her cigarette burn, expelled a few sarcastic huffs, shook her head and met his gaze. ‘You’re joking?’ she said.

He shook his head.

‘Well done you,’ she said softly.

‘Listen, I had nothing to do with it. I only found out yesterday.’

‘Don’t worry, it’s probably Tony’s way of paying me back for moving away. He had this little caretaker act going on with Doris and Father, keeping the fridge full and making sure the bills were paid. He wasn’t doing any farming.’

‘What did he do at the supermarket?’

‘How’d you know about that, if you never heard any news?’ she said, aiming smoke at his face.

‘I’m a journalist,’ he said. ‘I have ways of finding things out.’

‘Shelf stacking,’ she said. ‘Night work. All the time in the world. No kids. He should have just waited until our parents were gone and he could have done whatever he wanted.’

James nodded and shrugged. ‘Whatever that was?’

Yvonne suddenly launched herself away from the vehicle. Awkward question.

‘Fuck, I can’t wait for this to be over,’ she said, fishing for her sunglasses. ‘You may as well take care of the oldies on the farm now; you’re the only one getting anything out it!’

She dropped her cigarette butt, suffocated it underfoot and strode towards the front of the church. James followed and thought about stopping her by putting a hand on her shoulder, but the sight of the empty hearse stopped him.

The short funeral attendant made a solemn announcement that the deceased Mr Brandt’s parents were running late, but if they’d like to wait in the church they were more than welcome to join the rest of the family.

Yvonne went inside. James followed only as far as the first row of pews before he caught sight of the coffin by the altar, waiting in a haze of sunlight coming through the high windows.

Fuck, Tony. What the fuck?

The organist was pumping away, smiling as though she was glad of even a small audience. Pete and the girls were already sitting down the front on the left-hand side, Yvonne heading for them.

James sensed the temptation to split in two when he felt a rumbling in his pocket. He questioned a moment what it was, before a shrill ring tone threatened to outdo the organ. Dragging his phone from his jacket, he rushed back into the daylight, apologised to the funeral attendant and ducked around the corner of the building before he saw the name on the screen.

Alan.

‘You there, Jamie?’ his brother said.

‘Hi, we’re just at the church now. Things haven’t kicked off yet.’

‘Yeah... just couldn’t get there, you know what it’s like, getting time off? Flight times are all over the place anyway,’ Alan said. ‘You staying with Dad?’

‘Yeah,’ James lied. ‘How are the kids?’

‘Oh, we’re all good, yeah, thanks. I got your message. Bit out of the blue, all that.’

‘Yeah, but you know me, if I can get a lead out of family, I’ll do it,’ James said.

The key to getting his brother to talk was to keep things jocular.

‘Bloody journos, you never change,’ Alan said. Perfect.

‘I was just talking with a couple of locals… you remember the Beaumonts?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Well, they were reminiscing about that time we were up here in the holidays and you lot rolled a car. Someone mentioned something about Johnny Jones.’

‘Johnny bloody Jones,’ Alan said, as though he were trying to remember details about a good mate. ‘There’s a name I haven’t heard for a long time.’

‘Well, see, this is the thing, they reckon he crashed the car out on the Wishaw Road the night of Tony’s buck’s party in town, but I seem to recall it was near the Kippen Bridge,’ James said, and forced himself to stop there.

Alan paused and made that breathy sound, the one he always made when he didn’t know what to say. ‘Dad’ll remember,’ he said eventually. ‘I was so shaken up I wouldn’t have known where I was.’

‘Weren’t you shooting roos?’ James asked.

‘Yeah, no... look it’s so bloody long ago, Jamie. I just couldn’t be sure,’ Alan said. ‘Sorry, mate. Listen, I’ve only got a short break, but give everyone up there our love. Poor old Tony. Dad’s pretty cut up about it all from what I can tell on the phone. I reckon we should bring the kids up at Christmas or something.’

‘I’m sure everyone would like that.’

‘Is Johnny still living in town?’ Alan said suddenly.

‘Yvonne said they’re still out on the Kippen Road, past the abattoir. He was a good mate of Tony’s, so he might even be here today.’

‘Listen, I don’t want to tell tales out of school, but I just reckon you should steer clear of him, Jamie,’ Alan said, and exhaled. ‘I dunno the full story, but there’s bad blood there; best leave it alone.’

‘Yeah?’ James said, just as a car passed on its way to parking in the shade near his. The pale face at the wheel was unmistakeable. Dad.

‘Yeah,’ his brother said. ‘So, anyway, I gotta go. Catch up with you soon, alright?’

It was the standard way the brothers wrapped things up.

‘Alright, looking forward to it,’ James said, and flipped his phone shut.

Doris was waiting as he turned around the corner of the church, sun belting onto her navy frock and hat, topped by a little veil. Uncle Bill was already in the shadows.

‘Aunty Doris...’ James said.

She broke away and went wide of his open arms.

‘Wait for your father,’ she whispered, moving inside, Bill in her wake.

Dad made a big show of smiling and reaching out one arm as he closed in, shaking first James’s hand and then that of the funeral director. Up close, James noticed the familiar roughness of his father’s features, but he’d filled out considerably in the years since they’d seen each other.

‘Doris said you came up the lane yesterday and had afternoon tea,’ Dad said quietly and without emotion, maintaining his wide grin.

‘Well, you-’

‘Save it, Jamie,’ his father said, cutting him off and broadening his smile. ‘Never try lying to a cop. Your father might be retired, but he’s still as sharp as ever,’ he added as he pulled the front of his son’s jacket down and dusted imaginary dandruff off each shoulder before James could move away.

‘Did you get my message last night?’

‘I did,’ his father said. ‘And I got one from the boys at the station just before I left to collect your aunt and uncle, which is why I’m late.’

‘Didn’t think of calling me back?’

‘Don’t you start lecturing me.’

James was angry enough to reply, remembering how desperate he’d been to talk to his father last night, but the funeral director interrupted them in a hushed tone. ‘Sorry to ask, but I need to know if there are to be family pallbearers, at the conclusion?’

‘Yep,’ Dad said, winking at his son. ‘There’s Bill, and me,’ he said, ‘and Pete, and you. That makes four of us. Anyone else?’

James couldn’t help himself. ‘Alan not coming?’ he asked.

But his father dodged it and the funeral director said: ‘That might not be enough,’ giving James a fatigued look as he handed them a program each and moved inside.

Now or never.

‘Dad, look, I reckon there’s some serious questions about whether Tony killed himself,’ James said.

His father scanned impatiently through his copy of the thin leaflet. ‘I heard you were snooping around the court house asking questions,’ he said, not looking up.

James had been accused of the very same behaviour by plenty of police officers, but coming from his father it sounded ridiculous. He retreated by focussing on Tony, beaming back from the photograph on the cover. One thick arm pulled his frame towards a rope on his yacht, a deep blue wash of sky from the zenith to the horizon. Standing in a country town approaching midday, James could feel the same dry, summery ache that Tony must have felt as he stood laughing for the photograph, his skin so tanned it made his teeth flash.

‘Just checking the police didn’t miss anything,’ James said lightly. ‘You know me.’

‘I’ve seen the report, and the photos, it’s crystal clear what happened to your cousin. Just too bloody sad for words,’ Dad said, slapping the program shut and looking at the image of his nephew. ‘Tony loved that bloody boat. Anyway, he jumped from the other side of the bridge, not where the toilets are,’ he added, shoving the flyer inside his jacket pocket as he moved into the church.

James watched his father’s back recede. That last comment would be the perfect place to instigate another chat, but it would need to be very soon.

Inside, Yvonne was looking the other way, offering no invitation for him to sit with her. James took a few steps along the aisle and seated himself in the last row as the music came to an end and the minister approached the lectern. Including the organist, the funeral attendant and the little girls, James counted just eleven people gathered to remember one of Kippen’s most popular sons.

Throughout the painfully short service, James started getting anxious about how four men were going to carry Tony’s casket out, and how he’d stop them driving it to the cemetery.

But as the organist started up, Doris made the first move and took a place beside the coffin. Dad followed and went in front of her and Uncle Bill positioned himself behind. Pete moved to take the back-right corner, opposite his father-in-law, so James joined them and stopped in the front-right spot.

‘Rightyo,’ Dad muttered, and they simultaneously hoisted Tony onto their shoulders in a swift movement.

The sudden weight made James panic for a second. The funeral attendant stood in the aisle, looking too short to assist but going through the motions of clearing the way, though it was clearly unnecessary.

‘Stay here,’ Yvonne said to the girls. ‘Mummy’s going to help Daddy, and then we’ll go and play in the park, okay?’

James noticed the look his cousin threw at the organist, who nodded that she’d watch over the girls while their mother helped with this unexpected task. As they started down the aisle, Yvonne slipped past the attendant, avoided eye contact with James and slid her shoulder under the box behind him.

The coffin lightened a little with her below it.

‘We’ll take it slow,’ Dad said.

James sensed his father at his left, felt the brushing of their arms together. The tiled floor was slippery and everyone’s shoes made scuffing sounds above the strains of the music. Drooping flowers niggled at the top of his head.

Ahead, the open doors sent a harsh light towards James’s eyes and he squinted. There was no use averting his gaze, because the same light was picking up the tiles and the ends of the pews. It was like they were marching Tony into some light-filled vortex.

Thinking of his cousin only brought the idea of his remains to James. Bodies were forlorn, especially those in police photographs. Abandoned until the facts were known, no one to care for them, shoved in a freezer somewhere.

Nevertheless, James’s desire to see Tony again started to become overwhelming, his face only inches away from his cousin’s behind the polished sheen of the casket. It wouldn’t hold the animated beauty, the sheer spark of Tony’s face, so bright that James had always wanted to look deep into it; but he had never been given the chance to gaze at it for more than a moment.

Outside, the merciless glow encased them all.

As they shoved Tony through the opening of the hearse, James and his father made more involuntary contact as their arms and hands were forced to turn and change positions. He noticed the bitter scent of sweat and saw dark patches of it in Dad’s armpits.

Once the hearse had taken Tony’s weight, they fell apart in an embarrassed cluster.

James looked back into the dark opening of the church. The girls had followed and looked abandoned in the church doorway, so Yvonne moved around the silent pillar of Doris and made for them. Dad started talking about a funeral cortege up to the cemetery, but James would let everyone else deal with that. All he wanted was to find out who had done this to Tony.

James’s return ticket was in his bag in the hire car, underneath yesterday’s jeans, which had left muddy streaks across the paperwork. He brushed it off and read that his flight was due to depart Wishaw at four-thirty that afternoon. It was coming up to midday.

Dad was waving his arms, organising everyone into cars, but there was some doubt about whether the minister would be driving himself or getting a lift.

The length of time it took for a disparate family to get itself organised was all the time James needed. He pocketed the ticket and drove off in the other direction, taking the long way back to the crossroads past the water towers.

Only three hours left in town, and:-

I might have alerted a killer’s family that I know something.

If I stick with the retired cop in the family, I’ll be safe, right?

How the fuck do you stop someone being buried once their funeral has happened?

TEN
1985

James sat on the verandah at his grandparents’ old place, watching the road for signs of a search party coming after him. Fighting his way out of Tony’s car had left him very unsettled. It might have only been round one of a family effort to make him stay at his father’s place for the night, and he was determined to avoid that at all costs.

Half an hour ago, Tony had returned along the lane and glided the old car back into Deloraine. James had ducked out of sight until he was sure his cousin was inside. The afternoon wore on while he fantasised that his beloved grandmother would open the door of her old homestead to him and he’d spend the night in one of her spare rooms, tucked-up within the linen she lovingly washed and ironed. Instead, the lonely figure who eventually cut along the track up the barren hillock was his mother, the old kelpie at her heels.

Every step of her lazy gait was painfully slow, as though she was trying to buy time.

‘Walk to the end of the road with me?’ she called over the wild roses.

By then, the lengthening shadows had made him lonely enough to push through the gate onto the road. They strode in silence, flicking away flies and keeping an eye on the dog in the roadside grass, above which its tail periodically showed.

‘Can’t wait to go home,’ she said. ‘What say we head off the day after the wedding?’

She wanted him to make the decision. He hated the way she put him on the spot, but he let it go and just nodded.

After ten minutes of walking in silence, they reached the closed gate of The Mulgas. The dog found a way to squeeze through the fence, yelped a little when a stray wire caught its leg, then looked back at them and panted to show it was alright.

She leaned on one of the gateposts, elbows out like they would stop her going any further. ‘Looks like your father’s still using the old water tank,’ she said, nodding down the hill towards the homestead.

He didn’t know what she wanted him to say, so he focussed on the gravel at his feet.

‘Are you going to give me a break soon?’ she said.

He shrugged.

‘You can ask me whatever you want, you know,’ she said. Expecting him to know the right questions only annoyed James and made him feel afraid there was more to know than he wanted to hear.

‘Did you steal things?’ he asked, positioning himself by the other gatepost.

‘Your cousin’s got a very big mouth.’

‘Did you go to court?’

‘It was just clothes, for you kids,’ she muttered.

‘Why?’

James sensed her turn, but he refused to meet her halfway, for fear it would make her stop explaining. She exhaled and a little cry came off the air at her mouth.

‘Sometimes people do bad things. Good people. It takes a while for others to understand, but we shouldn’t end up loving them any less.’

‘Mum, you can tell me. I’m old enough.’

She shifted the position at the post and planted her chin against the heel of one hand, eyes looking far beyond the old homestead.

‘A thunderstorm had kept us all awake very early the morning Gregory was found, and you boys grizzled through your breakfast,’ she said. ‘Your father wasn’t much better. He was in a bad mood because he hadn’t bothered to connect the new water tank, and we’d just had enough rain to fill it. Alan was pestering him to get a lift up to the school bus, and little Gregory was whinging about going too.’

James had heard this story told in many ways over the years. He would endure her telling again, because this time she might go further than ever.

‘Doris was the one who distracted me with a phone call,’ she said.

Everyone had been recruited into their share of the blame, but that detail was new.

‘We always had to count the number of rings to check who along the line the call was for, and because Gregory was on the brink of a tantrum, I just took the call and left all the whining to your father,’ she said with a guilty look. ‘Your aunt was only wondering if we were still going to cards with all the creeks up. We chatted for a while, and apart from the television, everything was quiet by the time I got off the phone, so I managed to get the mess you’d all left washed up and put away, in peace.’

James knew where he fitted in to the story, sitting in front of the television in the living room by himself, meaning he’d missed the first scenes of confusion.

‘Then Daniel came back without Gregory,’ his mother whispered.

He still remembered the alarm of his parents shouting his little brother’s name, and glimpses of other sounds and sights from his five-year-old perspective.

‘Your father reckoned the garden gate must have been left open and Gregory had only wandered down to the creek, so he went to check. I searched the whole house,’ she said. ‘You started following me, and I made it into a little game, but he wasn’t hiding anywhere inside.’

James recalled his father wrenching the old telephone into life.

‘Doris and Bill turned up and we all searched,’ his mother said. ‘At some point, your grandparents arrived, because they’d seen Kevin in the police car turning down the lane off the Kippen Road. Then you came in carrying one of your dolls, and the look your father gave you was awful. Doris made us all a cup of tea and Gladys sent everyone out to keep searching, then sat you on her lap. Your grandmother never liked men hanging around the kitchen, but she made your father stay and sit with me,’ she added, looking as though that hadn’t brought her much comfort.

‘Then Gladys and Doris started telling stories about other kids who’d gone missing and turned up inside wardrobes or wandered off into the bush for an hour or two,’ she said. ‘Before your uncle came in and said the police were looking at the dam.’

In previous tellings, this moment had always been a turning point.

‘Everyone started shouting at the idea that a little boy could have walked that far up the driveway,’ his mother said. ‘I was a pre-school teacher, and they all looked at me like I shouldn’t have allowed a child to get lost, but Kevin just let me take him through the house to see Gregory’s room and his bed. Your father trailed us, seeing the solution around every corner, until he went off in a huff to search the machinery shed again.’

James remembered the desperate tone of his father’s shouting. Each bark of his brother’s name, shortened to just sharp cries of ‘Greg! Greg!’ had become increasingly dead-sounding beyond walls of tin.

‘They’d only just started talking about dragging the dam when the young officer shouted from just outside that he’d found Gregory,’ his mother said.

James turned away from her, knowing there’d be no relief on her face.

‘He shouted: “Here he is!”’ she said, imitating the voice of the policeman.

Despite not remembering it, and the years since the incident, James sensed his mother had done a good impersonation of the hopeful way in which the words had been spoken, like the terrible story was about to have a happy ending.

But he did remember his mother throwing her chair back and shoving the young policeman out of the way. Someone’s hand must have landed too heavily on the table, because his grandmother’s teacup had gone onto the floor and James had dropped his doll and started crying.

‘You were wailing,’ his mother confirmed. ‘But it was nothing compared to the sound coming out of your father’s mouth when I found him at the door. Daniel was holding your little brother up in front of him, but I wanted him to hold Gregory close and not keep him out at arm’s length,’ she said, the breath going in and out of her with a tremble. ‘And he was moaning, and when he saw me, he started shouting at me to stop your crying, but then he started howling so loud that it silenced even you. Gregory’s face was blue, all down to his neck, and he was dripping wet, but not from being in the dam...’

She gave up the fight and hung her head between her hands.

‘I couldn’t believe it,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘I just couldn’t believe your brother would have climbed into the new water tank your father had left chocked up against the laundry wall with the round hole right down at ground level. Rain had gotten in, just a little bit, but enough to drown in,’ she said. ‘And I’d read him a story about rabbits going into their holes because we had rabbits in the lawn,’ she said, forcing the words out.

‘The thing was, everyone told me how common it was for farm kids to drown in water tanks. What did I know about any of that? I grew up in the suburbs. If I’d been aware, I could have made sure Daniel put the tank up the other way, with the hole out of reach.’

James stood as motionless as the posts while his mother shuddered, her face hidden by the fall of her hair. She lifted her head, inhaled, and looked at him, red blotches where she’d forced her face against her hand.

‘That’s when your father first thought about going into the police force,’ she said as she turned and called the dog.

When it didn’t come, but sat panting at a distance, James witnessed her falter. She clicked her finger to interest the dog, and muttered, ‘Go down to your dad’s, or come back to Deloraine. It’s up to you.’

But she hadn’t actually answered any of his questions about stealing, and as she wandered back along the lane, it seemed as though everything she had said was designed to prevent her ever having to answer him.

James watched his mother and the dog walk all the way back along the road and turn into Deloraine’s driveway.

By the time he followed as far as the top of the drive, the sun had reached the horizon and a damp scent rising off the creek caught in his nostrils. To escape it, he decided to find a way into his grandparents’ old house and spend the night there. He took a few purposeful steps up the slope towards Glen Alpine, but the sight of the last sunlight slipping off the empty homestead removed every shred of his determination, and he turned back.

When he stepped carefully across Deloraine’s cattle grid he could see Yvonne showing off her flower girl dress while his mother and aunt encouraged her to parade up and down the enclosed verandah.

The dogs were quiet on their chains, which meant there’d be no sign of Uncle Bill. James sat by them and put an arm over each. The younger kelpie gingerly licked at his jaw. The old dog seemed to know that all James required was a calm welcome.

But the scrape of the screen door made them all lie prone as the beam from a torch swung across the wide driveway.

One of the dogs grizzled, and the spotlight bathed them all with stark light.

‘Jamie, get up,’ Tony said and flicked the torch off.

The young dog relaxed. The old one surrendered more slowly, eyes on the farmer.

‘Everything’s alright,’ his cousin said. ‘Just come inside.’

When James quietly closed the screen door behind him, the evening news was on the television in the living room, and he could smell dinner.

Aunty Doris and Yvonne were setting the table. Tony ripped a cork out of a wine bottle and his mother let out a cry of approval. Even Uncle Bill tore himself away from the weather report and welcomed his nephew with a smile.

‘Drink, Aunty Beck?’ Tony asked, pouring her one.

‘Take it with you and run a bath,’ Aunty Doris said. ‘There’s time, I’m just doing steak and veggies, and I’ve got some of those vegetarian sausages for you, Jamie,’ she added. ‘Your mother brought them up, but I’ve made a special gravy to go with them.’

Tony winked and said: ‘Wanna beer, mate?’

James looked to his mother.

‘Half a beer,’ she said.

‘Jeez, it’s good to have you all here the night before the wedding,’ Tony said.

‘Cheers,’ Uncle Bill said, tapping his forehead with his beer can.

‘Jamie really impressed Merle with his handiwork on the place names, you know. She and Leanne loved it,’ Tony said.

‘Yeah?’ said Uncle Bill. ‘Bit of a creative streak, eh?’

James nodded, his face warming with the embarrassment. ‘I still have to get it done.’

‘Ah, you’ll knock it over easily, mate,’ Tony said. ‘I brought the list in from the car, it’s on the verandah table. Yvonne’s set it all up for you.’

‘You’re allowed to use the new marker pens,’ she said, placing napkins precisely.

James dragged his feet towards the hallway.

‘You’re tired, aren’t you?’ Mum said. ‘Get it done before tea, eh?’

‘Go and get things ready for him, Tony,’ Aunty Doris said, shelling peas. ‘He hasn’t got any of his clothes. Loan him a pair of your pyjamas and get yourselves a fresh towel each.’

‘Rightyo,’ Tony said, grabbing another beer and passing into the hallway.

Uncle Bill disappeared back into the living room and flicked the channel over to the footy. Mum nudged James to follow his cousin.

‘It’s all in there, mate,’ Tony said, passing the brightly lit verandah where the blank name tags sat ready for inscribing.

‘Just you and me, now that Alan’s at your dad’s,’ Tony said, crossing the hall and pulling a bright towel from the closet. ‘Don’t have to crash till you’re ready though, alright?’ and he stood aside while James crossed the threshold.

By the mirror hung a dry-cleaned morning suit, still in its plastic wrapping.

‘If you want pyjamas, look in my top drawer, on the left,’ Tony said, flicking the light on in the bathroom and pressing the towels onto a rail.

‘Okay,’ James answered.

He yanked at the drawer. Under pressure, socks, underwear and handkerchiefs spilled out. He spotted the pyjamas down on the left. The ones on top had a kind of smooth, burnished feel which was like Tony, so James pulled out a salmon-coloured set, just as his cousin emerged.

‘I forgot I had those. Never wore them, always thought they were a bit poofy,’ he said, laughing.

James was trapped by the word, chin on his chest, looking at the offending colour.

‘But, you know, what the heck!’ Tony bellowed. ‘I won’t tell your girlfriend!’

After Yvonne was sent to bed, Aunty Doris got a bit tipsy and danced with Uncle Bill on the terrace to the jazz music coming from the record player.

Mum taught Tony how to lead a simple two-step she said she’d coached Dad in before their own wedding, but James noticed Tony didn’t need much encouragement. He immediately conquered the simple moves and started twirling Mum and dipping her until her laughter rose and blended with the music.

‘Oh, I’m booking a dance with you tomorrow!’ she said, out of breath and going for her drink, while Tony continued to shake his hips to the beat.

James couldn’t take his eyes off his cousin.

The music played on while each of them retreated. First, Aunty Doris, settling herself down from a rare burst of laughter, tousling her son’s hair as she passed; followed by Uncle Bill, who mumbled about ‘last night of freedom’ before they both disappeared into the silent bedroom off the hallway.

Tony danced himself between the cane lounges and mumbled that he was going to call Leanne from his father’s office.

Mum sank into one of the chairs and started flicking through a magazine, bouncing her leg to the music. When the record player clicked off, she stretched and smiled, neatened things up a bit, and sleepily wished James goodnight.

He moved to one of the servery stools, flicked on the television and yanked the volume around so it barely registered. Just enough to obliterate Tony’s telephone mumblings.

Still hungry, James went to the pantry to find the bread bin and chomped obliviously on crusts, then sat down to watch an old movie.

He must have fallen asleep, because it was Tony who woke him by squeezing his shoulder. James sat up and wiped the saliva from the side of his mouth.

‘They all gone to bed?’ Tony said.

James nodded and swallowed.

His cousin’s eyes darted to the hallway and back to James. ‘Right,’ Tony said, hesitating. There was no sense of the impromptu party about him, only the slight whiff of booze, like when Dad had been drinking.

‘Well...’ Tony said, sounding like Uncle Bill. ‘Sorry about all my aggro this arvo.’

‘It’s okay,’ James said. ‘I never got the chance to ask, how was your buck’s night, before the accident happened?’

‘Oh yeah, alright, actually. Yeah,’ Tony said, jostling one finger in his ear.

They’d run out of small talk. Tony moved for the hallway and disappeared with a furtive glance.

James let him go and listened for the wrenching of taps at the far end of the house. Their familiar sound drew him past his aunt and uncle’s room, the door resolutely shut, then past his mother’s door, slightly ajar but dark inside. Another closed door on the left led to Yvonne’s room and at the far end of the hall the enclosed verandah was a cave of silence in the moonlight.

Tony’s undies greeted him, sitting in the well of his pants on the floor. James shut the door, making enough noise to signal his arrival. A crack left by the open bathroom door glowed, but he wavered on the threshold. Should he make some signal?

‘If you need the loo boyo, just go for it mate,’ Tony said, lathering soap up his front.

James moved inside, where steam immediately enveloped him. He lifted the seat as he sensed Tony turning in the shower, unzipped his pants as he saw the man’s flesh in the corner of his eye, and locked eyes with Tony as the older man drew back the shower curtain.

‘You’ve got a pretty good left hook on you, mate,’ his cousin said, throwing a mock punch at James, getting water down his front. ‘Are both doors shut?’

James nodded.

When James woke, it was the tight sense of panic at the base of his stomach that reminded him of everything.

They’d struggled for a few minutes in the bathroom, fighting against the shower curtain, and James’s clothes had been spattered in water as Tony tackled him out of them. Then came the hot, wet mouth that had made its way over James’s entirety.

But Tony had stopped, his eyes boring into James’s, stark with warning, and James had sensed the silence being demanded of him. In answer, he’d brushed a hand over the back of Tony’s head, and Tony had allowed his great, beautiful bulk to rest.

Yet his cousin had paused a second time, listening like an animal, and turned the taps off to be sure. The house had lain unaware, like an adjacent country beyond a barrier.

He’d sighed, and smiled, and buried James’s penis inside his mouth.

The pattern had repeated for most of the night, and they’d slept in fitful embraces on one narrow single bed, Tony caressing James like he did his dogs, tousling his hair.

Once, James had woken with Tony’s weighty arm around him, the snoring right in his ears. Boldly, he’d kissed his cousin on his open lips, boozy breath escaping, and tenderly touched the raw scar of the buck’s night accident. The eyes flicked open, and there was a tussle as Tony had awoken to the reality, before searching out the intimacies all over again.

In the light of the early morning, the unworn pyjamas were still on the chest of drawers, but the morning suit had disappeared. James put out a hand, feeling for his cousin, listening for him, but the world was silent.

ELEVEN
2005

James parked the hire car outside Leong’s store and as he crossed the road, he could already see the police station was now open. He took the stairs two at a time and pushed through the door into the reception area, making the young officer behind the glass screen look up.

The face was familiar, and habit drew James’s eye to take in the name tag. The best way to question cops was to let them know you could attribute anything they said to an individual, and reception constables were the softest target. Once he’d committed this one to memory, he looked into the fine young face of Constable Samuel Bailey.

‘Yep?’ the officer asked, not standing.

‘You’re Kevin Bailey’s son,’ James said, remembering the man who’d been the local cop when he was a kid.

‘Who wants to know?’ Constable Bailey said, looking back at his computer screen.

‘James Brandt.’

That made the gorgeous creature look up.

‘Daniel Brandt’s son,’ James said. ‘The younger one.’

‘Yeah?’ the officer said, not standing but lifting his arms over his head, planting his hands behind it, and spinning the chair around offering a view of his thoroughly fit form, from his thick arms to the tight waist of his uniform pants. He grinned. ‘Heard you were back in town.’

James nodded, eyes flicking to the clock. It was twenty past twelve.

‘You look like your dad,’ Constable Bailey said.

James nodded. ‘So do you.’

The young man smiled and nodded. Obviously, he knew the impact of his good looks.

‘What can we do for you, mate?’ he said.

In his rush, James hadn’t really worked that out. There might be a form for the state Coroner, and he knew he’d have to go over his father’s head to get it, but it was likely something only Tony’s next-of-kin could sign. That meant appealing to his uncle and aunt, but he’d need the facts to back him up if he was going to disturb a graveside funeral.

James would have to start with his bona fides.

‘I’m expecting a fax from the state archives,’ he said. ‘Just wondering if it’s here yet?’

Constable Bailey spun around in his chair and scanned the row of trays, smirked and shook his head. ‘Nope, nothing,’ he said.

James was about to ask for the number of the coroner’s information line when the constable was distracted by someone in the corridor behind his desk. Two men passed the doorway. One was a senior officer whose face James didn’t recognise. The other was Andy Jones.

‘Seeya, Mr Jones,’ Constable Bailey said.

‘You’d better start calling me Andy, son,’ Mr Jones muttered, and laughed.

James used the momentary distraction to disappear.

The cemetery was set against a low hill, just off the main road at the northern edge of Kippen. James was the last to arrive, so he parked on the verge between two pine trees and walked down the main driveway that ran into the mass of graves.

Everyone was gathering around the granite obelisk that marked the place where all the Brandts were buried. Yvonne was punishing the last of a cigarette. Her parents were talking with a woman in a white hat and cardigan so radiant they seemed like the source of the sunlight. She opened her arms to Doris and they embraced.

The minister was talking to James’s father at the end of the coffin, which had already been placed over the hole in the ground. An excavator stood amidst the memorials by the dunny and a sparse willow tree.

As James approached, he recognised Leanne under the white hat. No longer the slight country girl, she had Doris’s gloved hand resting on her burnished forearm. When she saw James, Leanne dipped her head and mouthed a greeting. Doris had her chin lifted on an angle of supreme control.

James started to feel a subtle pain in his gut and slowed. Something about the gap in the earth below the coffin was unsettling. If Dad allowed this burial to take place it would put Tony beyond a legal line that even a senior policeman would have to move heaven and earth to undo.

A flock of raucous cockatoos landed in the big gum trees along the river at the bottom of the hill, drowning out the minister’s welcome. Everyone leaned forward slightly, but couldn’t catch what was being said. Yvonne and Pete’s girls were standing on pebbles and wouldn’t be still, so the minster’s verbal comforts were lost in their scraping. With a rush of wind and a rumble, a grain truck took the corner on its way up the hill and out of town, sending a dust cloud down over them all.

Before the coffin was lowered, James hid behind the memorial wall down the hill from the dunny. Tears had evaded him, and did so even when he put his back to the plaques and kept his eyes on the river. In the distance, the Kippen Road ran up the spine of a ridge which marked the start of his family’s farms.

He checked the car park a few times, waiting for everyone to leave. So did the grader operator smoking in the shade of the dunny. The guy gave him a nod and seemed resigned to waiting for as long as it took for all the bereaved to depart.

James acknowledged it with a nod in return, and picked his way between headstones until he stood by the dark-grey shaft of the Brandt’s memorial. At its foot, he found his grandparents. A large patch of lichen had spread across his grandfather’s name, but the much newer lettering of his grandmother’s still had a rich sheen. Old jars were perched at her side in a row, one of them toppled with long-dried flowers spilling from its neck.

He circled the family plot and found the simple plaque for Gregory. The letters were disappearing but his little brother’s age — one year and eleven months — could be read by the high angle of the sun.

James paused at those thirty-year-old letters – ‘Beloved son of Daniel and Rebecca Brandt’ – carved for little Gregory. He’d been told about his brother’s funeral, how Dad had wept so much on the way home that Mum had to take over the job of driving them to the wake at Glen Alpine.

Two decades later, his mother’s name had been carved into a headstone in the suburbs after a brief struggle with breast cancer. Just another name left unread for years in a lonely place while lives went on regardless.

The hole containing Tony’s coffin had a mound of freshly-dug soil heaped up to one side, and a pile of flowers in plastic sheaths on the other.

The sob pushed straight out of James’s throat. He thought about paying off the council worker hiding behind the dunny, just to buy time to contact whoever was the right person to prevent this burial, but the snot and tears brought out nothing more than a gagging noise.

Fuck, Tony. I’m sorry.

At the Women’s Club, James realised immediately that too much food had been prepared in anticipation of a better turnout.

A couple of grandma’s friends were serving tea, coffee and trays of sandwiches. James recognised Mrs Beaumont sitting by the kitchen door wiping up dishes, but she didn’t hear him say hello.

He retreated with his tea to the sunlight outside the back door. Yvonne still seemed to be blaming him about her brother’s will, pacing in the smoking area by the back fence, giving him pinched glances; so James sat on the edge of the ramp, just as Bill sidled over and stood behind him.

‘The old place hasn’t started sliding down the hill just yet,’ his uncle said.

James looked up to see what his uncle was talking about, but he was gazing out to the sports oval beyond the fence.

‘You mean Glen Alpine?’ James asked.

‘She’ll need a new verandah and roof, for sure, but the timbers are still good. A house just needs to be lived in for a bit and she’ll start to tell you what needs doing to her.’

The feminine personification of his grandparents’ house made James want to laugh, but he knew it would scare Bill off. It was time they spoke; here was private enough.

‘I reckon we’ve got some spare roofing iron under our place,’ his uncle said. ‘Should still be good for patching. We could get that on and connect up a new water tank. I could order one of those new plastic ones. They last for years, you know? A good wet spring and you’d have enough water to move in. You’ll be alright on tank water. You were on it when you were a boy. Once you’ve got it in your system, you’re set for life.’

James nodded. His uncle stepped closer.

‘There’s plenty of fellas with small holdings making a go of it,’ he said. ‘You could take it on, Jamie. It would be good to see old Dad’s place lived in again by someone in the family.’

James allowed space for more by keeping his eyes down and sipping at his tea.

‘Your aunt will do what I say, because it was old Dad’s house first,’ Bill said, finally landing his eyes on his nephew for long enough to make a point.

‘Listen, I think we need to include Yvonne in all this,’ James said, very quietly.

‘Eh?’

‘About Tony’s will,’ James said, pausing because it wasn’t coming out right. ‘I’m not ready to take on any farm.’

‘It’s in your blood,’ Bill said, assuming a grin because at that moment James’s father came up to them.

‘We’re all going down the pub in a minute,’ Dad said. ‘We’ll have a few drinks for Tony, and we can chat about what’s going to happen.’

‘Right you are,’ Bill said, scuffing away.

James didn’t move and his father just stood behind him. The thought of the Kippen pub was draining. James had managed to avoid it his entire life. Now, it was poised to swallow him because his father wanted to tell him what to do about Tony. He checked his watch. It was after one o’clock.

‘Keeping you, are we?’ Dad said.

James ignored him. He’d need two hours to drive over to the airport, refill the car and check in for his flight. Endless pub chats were not going to work in that schedule.

‘What was your uncle talking to you about?’

James shrugged. He could smell his father’s breath from here, already boozy.

‘I know that you know about Tony’s will,’ Dad said. ‘Doris told me about your little chat. I wanted you to hear it from me instead of bothering her with all that. Your uncle and aunt don’t need more on their plate just at the moment.’

‘Dad,’ James said quietly. ‘I want you to listen to me, just for a minute.’

‘What?’

‘There was a bashing in town last night.’

‘Where?’ his father asked, stepping closer.

‘At the park below the bridge, near the toilets. A gang in a ute with baseball bats.’

‘Probably a buck’s party. Just local boys messing around.’

James pictured the kid who’d pursued him: the harshly-opened mouth, the absent eyes, and the pointing of the weapon.

‘A buck’s party, in the middle of the week?’ he said.

Dad exhaled. ‘Just get over to the pub, son. Don’t make them wait, and don’t start any of your conspiracy theories.’

His father moved beyond the mottled glass of the entrance hall where Doris and Leanne were chatting. James watched them all going through the family motions. He sighed and looked across the courtyard. Yvonne was finishing her cigarette and taking one of the girls from Pete. Broaching any of his ideas with her was going to be a challenge. Everyone seemed content to simply let Tony go.

Before he could slip away, James got roped into giving Mrs Beaumont a lift to the nursing home with the spare hot water urn and two trays of leftover sandwiches.

‘I’m not so active as I used to be,’ she said, testing that the back door of the club was locked properly and running a flat palm along the wall so as to stay upright, the other resting on his arm. ‘Denise should know that and not leave me here wondering when she’s going to collect me. She’s working at the court house now, did you know?’

James nodded and left her at the bottom of the ramp while he loaded the sandwiches into the back seat of the hire car and drove it back across to collect her. She stood watching as he lifted the rattling urn and dealt with the wayward cord.

‘You take more care, don’t you?’

‘Pardon?’

‘Any other man would have just flung it in there and not worried about whether the lid flew off, or the cord broke. You did it nicely without asking. You’re a well brought-up boy.’

While he helped her into the passenger seat Mrs Beaumont fussed over whether she’d lost the hall keys somewhere on the gravel. He was just crossing to the driver’s door when an orange sedan pulled into the shade. Out of it emerged Denise.

‘Have you got Mum in there?’ she asked. ‘I’m so sorry, I got held up at the court house. Looks like it’s all finished up?’

‘Everyone’s going to the pub. I was just going to take your mum home.’

‘That’s very kind of you, but I can take it from here,’ she said, and knocked on the passenger window. ‘Mum, we can let Jamie go to the pub with the family!’

‘The urn’s in the back,’ James said. ‘I’ll bring it over.’

‘No, I’ll just help Mum and I’ll come back for it,’ Denise said.

‘Always late!’ Mrs Beaumont said as Denise helped her into the front of her own car. As she returned, she scanned the back steps.

‘Everyone gone?’ Denise asked.

‘I think so. Your mum has the key.’

Denise laughed quietly. ‘Oh, yes. We won’t give up the key, even though we’re not on the committee these days.’

James smiled a little, sensing Denise wanted to talk. He went for the urn as a means of giving her a distraction, and as he emerged from the back seat, arms full, he could tell by the look on her face that she was about to spill.

‘I had a bit of a think about what you were asking this morning,’ she whispered. He leaned in closer and saw her stark expression. ‘I hope I didn’t get us in trouble, but I asked a couple of questions about some other incidents. Did you know there was another suicide at Kippen Bridge twenty years ago?’

Of course he did, so he nodded.

‘Brian Fryer,’ she said, before the name could come back to him. ‘That was in your dad’s time,’ she added, cautiously. ‘Now that he’s retired, there’s talk they might be planning to close the Kippen police station. All the office records were dumped in one of our back rooms before Christmas.’

‘Do you have them?’

She nodded. ‘I also know about a bashing last year, over the border.’

‘What kind of injury?’

‘He was hit multiple times with a baseball bat. There were at least three attackers, and they left him in a ditch on the side of the road near a closed service station.’

‘Did he die?’

‘No. Mark went to live in Sydney.’

‘How do you know?

‘My brother didn’t go to the police. Nobody up here apart from me knows about his... his lifestyle. He said he went to the police but they didn’t do anything about it. The gang is mainly from Queensland, but there are locals that get involved, he reckons.’

James was so intent on listening that the plug of the urn slipped from his fingers and dropped onto his foot. Denise started, then reached for it and tucked it over his arm.

‘Mum doesn’t know about Mark,’ Denise whispered. James put his hand on her shoulder, which set her off sobbing. ‘You don’t need to be comforting me, not today.’

‘Well, the more we talk, the better,’ James said. ‘I have a name. It’s a bit of a long shot, but if any of the Joneses appear in any of the paperwork, we’d have a definite lead.’

She pulled away from him and put one trembling hand up, face grave with recognition, as though taking on any more would bring her physical pain.

‘I can’t lose my job,’ she said. ‘Thanks for taking Mum home,’ she added nervously, even though he hadn’t. Instead of correcting herself she retreated to the driver’s side of the car.

‘Oh, that paperwork from the archives arrived,’ she said. ‘Your dad collected it about twenty minutes ago and said he’d give it to you at the pub.’

Two hours left in town, and:-

There’s only one thing left to do.

It’s the one thing I wanted to avoid more than anything.

I’m going to have to confront the retired cop in the family.

TWELVE
1985

James felt more confident than ever about walking into Aunty Doris’ kitchen and sitting down to breakfast. Tony wasn’t there, but the memories of his cousin kissing him all night – and more – were fresh enough to fend off any shame about sleeping in. Mum smiled and passed the cereal box. She and Yvonne were going through the checklist of things to take in the car for the wedding, and it didn’t look like they’d let him help; but James had a powerful secret, and it made him feel very grown up.

‘I’m going to put the bread away if no one else is having toast,’ Aunty Doris said, just as the phone rang. She answered it, but had barely spoken a few words when she announced she needed to take the call in Uncle Bill’s office.

‘It’s Daniel,’ she said. ‘Can you hang this up for me when I pick it up in there?’

Mum took the receiver. ‘Oh, tell him to bring Jamie’s good clothes,’ she said. His aunt nodded, her face stern, as she interrupted Uncle Bill and asked him to turn the weather report down.

‘We could listen in, eh?’ Mum said, putting one hand over the mouthpiece.

‘You’re not allowed. That’s rude,’ Yvonne said.

‘You’re no fun,’ Mum said, pulling a face.

‘Rightyo, got it,’ Aunty Doris called from the office, and shut the door.

‘Big mystery,’ Mum said, raising her eyebrows and replacing the phone. ‘Have you both had enough to eat? There won’t be any chance for a snack until the reception.’

‘I’m saving myself,’ Yvonne said, placing one hand coyly over her stomach.

Aunty Doris opened the door, cleared her throat, and looked at James. ‘After you’ve had a quick shower, hunt through Tony’s school uniforms for something to wear. Your father will leave your shoes in the letterbox.’

‘Where’s Tony?’ Yvonne asked.

‘He’s getting ready over at The Mulgas, there’s been a change of plan.’ ‘Everything alright?’ Mum asked.

‘Jamie, could you please bring me all the place cards?’ his aunt said.

Mum indicated with her head that he should do it now, without question.

By the time James was dry and standing in front of Tony’s open wardrobe, it already felt like familiar territory. During a slow inspection of the broad jackets and shirts, he managed to recapture the scent of the man who’d tenderly held him throughout the night.

The sleeves were a fraction too long, and Mum needed to do a quick job of shortening a pair of school pants by more than an inch, but once he sported his cousin’s blue blazer and a red tie that had still been in its packet in Tony’s top drawer, James was aglow. He was even wearing a pair of his cousin’s underpants and socks.

Mum told him to make sure the room wasn’t left in a mess, so James went to straighten the bed he and Tony had shared. On one side, the shape of his cousin showed where he’d wrapped his large body around James’s smaller form. Two impressions showed where their heads had lain. The tell-tale stains had dried, and James tested the crusty edge of one patch with a fingernail. Whether it was his or Tony’s, he couldn’t tell. It didn’t matter. It was both.

‘Johnny Jones wasn’t a good choice for best man,’ he heard his aunt whisper in the hallway. ‘I’ve been on at Tony to ask someone else for weeks.’

James leaned back to see his mother and aunt fixing their hats at the hallway mirror.

‘God, it’ll be a very sad day for some,’ Mum said.

‘Well, at least we got some notice,’ his aunt replied.

He lifted the thin blanket and gently placed it over the shared bed so as to disturb things as little as possible. Soon, he would see Tony again.

Mum pulled over at the row of letterboxes on the Kippen Road so James could retrieve his shoes, but she made him put them on while she drove. As he tied the laces, she started to sigh like she wanted to say something.

‘I’d better fill you in,’ she said. ‘There’s been a terrible death.’

James sat up and let his head come to rest against the car seat.

‘Do you remember the Fryers?’ she asked. ‘They have that big sandstone place along Kippen Road, about twenty minutes further out, on the right, well past the Jenkinson’s.’

He knew the name. He pictured the line of stocky, brown-haired brothers.

‘All the Fryer kids are older than you and Alan,’ she said. ‘The eldest, Brian, jumped off Kippen Bridge the night before last. That’s why Aunty Doris had to sort out the place cards, because none of them are coming to the wedding now, of course.’

James nodded. They’d be crossing the same bridge any minute now. He didn’t want to lose the feelings he was having wearing Tony’s clothes.

‘It would have been quick. He wouldn’t have suffered at all, Jamie.’

They crested the hill and Kippen appeared in the distance.

‘He’d been living in Queensland,’ Mum said. ‘Came home for the wedding.’

They descended onto the flat expanse that ran all the way to the river, where the high railway viaduct cut across fields out of nowhere and came into line with the road, before both ran parallel over the twin bridges.

‘He was a very nice young man. A bit of a loner, but one of those boys that everybody loves, you know? Makes you really wonder. It’s those ones you have to watch the most.’

James swallowed as the motel swept past on the left, followed by the abattoir on the right. The car did that strange long bounce as it crossed the span and the river appeared below them.

‘So if people seem a bit quiet,’ Mum said. ‘That’s why.’

As they arrived at the church his mother gave James her arm and he noticed how the broad sleeve of a blazer seemed designed for a female hand to rest over it. He felt taller, but perhaps that was because she leaned into him a bit.

Most of the guests had already entered, but Aunty Doris and Yvonne waited by the door, scanning for the bride’s arrival. Inside, the organist was working on an upbeat hymn.

‘No sign of Gladys. Daniel’s collecting her from the nursing home. He’s late, but he wasn’t planning on hosting the groom as well, you know,’ his aunt said, tersely.

‘Do you want me to wait here with the flower girl?’ Mum asked, taking her niece by both hands and letting Yvonne show off with a twirl.

James let her go and moved inside, drawn by the sight of Tony standing alone at the front. His cousin had his hands clasped, and every few seconds he leaned forward on his toes to the rhythm of the organ. His curls were already escaping from the sides of his ears, and every now and then some friend or relative would shake his hand and clap him on the shoulder.

The popping of gravel under tyres made James look back out the door just as his father pulled up with Grandma in the front seat of the old family car. Alan clambered awkwardly out of the back seat and started helping her.

The slight fuss they created made the groom turn around. James waited for Tony to lock eyes with him, but got only a quick, fearful glance.

The adults all laughed and nodded. Someone shouted: ‘She’s late, mate,’ and Tony made a show of pulling at the tight collar around his thick neck.

Grandma passed, all in florals, Dad on her left and Alan on her right, so she didn’t notice James as she made her entrance, but Dad did. He left Alan to help Grandma to her place up the front and leaned towards James.

‘No more of your nonsense. You’re staying at my place from tonight whether you like it or not,’ Dad muttered, clapping a hand on James’s back and moving off.

James shrugged it off. Over his shoulder, Mum was approaching, Aunty Doris and Mrs Jenkinson slightly behind. The mother of the bride didn’t look all that pleased to be there, he thought, and the mother of the groom seemed unhappy to be delayed by her daughter’s chatter.

Mum stopped at James’s side and they smiled at Mrs Jenkinson and Aunty Doris in their uncomfortable procession to seats on opposite sides of the aisle.

‘Your father doesn’t seem too keen to see me,’ Mum whispered. James sighed impatiently while she waved to one of the cousins. ‘Come and sit with me,’ she added as she bore to the left where there were some empty pews.

But James slipped out of the church altogether.

‘Where are you going?’ Yvonne asked as he dodged her.

Halfway between the front door and the toilets around the back, James stopped where the long shadow of the steeple cut along the pathway and pierced the dappled light, like it was pointing at him.

Are both doors shut?

That had been before he’d felt Tony’s skin, before he’d taken his cousin’s weight. None of the pictures in the magazines had shown the truth about the sheer bulk of a man on top of you; like getting tackled at footy, only there was a pleasurable point to all the grappling. He yearned for a chance to do it all again. Just a glance from Tony would give him hope that was possible.

Just then, the bride arrived in a white-ribboned car. Leanne’s father helped her from the back seat with a dapper flourish, Yvonne jumped about in excitement, and they disappeared inside.

He knew every eye would be on Leanne right now, a young woman peering at them from within her white bower. Tony would be enraptured.

The organ drew to a resonant conclusion and the faraway muttering of the minister filled the broad silence of a day that was already turning uncomfortably hot. James ground the heel of one of his good shoes into the sand until something across the grass distracted him. Mrs Beaumont, shaking a cloth out of the kitchen window at the Women’s Club, threw him a questioning glance he found it impossible to hide from.

James ignored her and returned to the door, where he waited in the shadows for some sign that Tony had enjoyed their night, too.

While the wedding party was having photos taken in the park below the Kippen Bridge, James was recruited into carrying trays of finger food between arriving guests at the Women’s Club.

He got sick of everyone asking which of Daniel Brandt’s boys he was, so he avoided people by collecting empty glasses and hanging around the back steps.

From there, James heard most of the gossip in the kitchen, which changed from whispered concerns about the Fryers, to the news that nobody had caught sight of Daniel Brandt’s new girlfriend. The general opinion was that perhaps she had enough respect to stay away for the sake of the family.

The first of the cousins to arrive was Norman, looking just like their late grandfather in the same white cotton shirt and black pants.

‘Hello, young Alan,’ he said, awkwardly offering a hand to shake.

‘I’m James.’

His cousin made no correction. ‘I brought some clippings to put up. Your grandmother told me there was going to be some family history for us all to look at.’

Indicating the long, ugly row of noticeboards at the side, James helped his cousin in silence, pinning photographs and newspaper clippings in the small amount of space left. It made his family tree look even worse, so he decided not to tell anyone that he’d done it.

Cousin Roger made his arrival known throughout the hallway with his bellowing laugh, bearing the new baby on his arm perched like a bright-eyed little birdie. His wife Helen followed with five daughters at her feet. James gave them a little wave, but they all just stared.

‘One day, it’ll be Brandt and Son,’ Roger shouted, lifting his first and only boy even higher, and the little one burst into tears at the prospect of following his father into stock and station sales on the Darling Downs.

As James walked through the gathering, trying to find his mother so he had someone he could talk to, he heard gossip about which rivers were up, which roads were closed, which Aboriginal community was the more risky to pass through on the way into town, and of course, the weather — what it had done the night before and what it was expected to do that afternoon.

Finally, he found someone he knew would be welcoming. Moving with a stick, Grandma came into the room with a broad smile and raised her hands in greeting before collapsing into the chair deftly produced by Aunty Doris, smiling like a game show hostess.

‘I’ve been looking forward to seeing you, Jamie,’ Grandma said as she hugged him. ‘And your mother.’

‘I’ll go and get her,’ James replied, looking into the lines of people emerging from the entrance hall, guessing she’d be out there.

But the bride’s family entered with the bridesmaids before he could get through, and James ended up witnessing the embarrassment when it became clear a place had been set for Johnny Jones next to chief bridesmaid Louise Beaumont.

Mrs Beaumont emerged from the kitchen and quickly removed the crockery, cutlery and place card and silenced her daughter before any fuss could escalate; but word started to spread between tables that Johnny and Louise had split up yesterday, and Johnny’s parents were a no-show.

James eventually found his mother sipping champagne in the lounge off the hallway, chatting to an older couple and smiling far too much, like she wanted to leave.

‘Come in with me?’ she asked, taking his arm.

James nodded, but they were forced to wait when Tony and Leanne passed through the entrance hall and received a round of applause. As the clapping died away, James and his mother found their places, just as trays of food started going around.

Dad was already sitting, Alan to one side of him, with a place for James on the other and one for his mother next to Grandma. There was no spare setting for his father’s new floozie, James noticed, which made him feel considerably better.

They all raised their wine glasses and Dad nodded to Mum before they were served little plates of tuna mornay vol-au-vents by all Grandma’s friends in matching white aprons over their good frocks.

Seeing his brother up close for the first time since the night of his accident, James noticed a stiffness to Alan, as though he couldn’t turn his head to the right to greet James and their mother. He kept his gaze on their father and the rest of the room, except when Grandma asked about how school was going, and even then he talked past James and Mum as though they weren’t there.

After the starters were cleared, Grandma beckoned.

‘Jamie, move your chair beside me so I can talk to you properly.’

Being near Grandma settled him, so he willingly did what she asked. Shifting his position also gave him an uninterrupted view of Tony, which settled him even more.

During the main course there was a fuss about the vegetarian meal almost going to Alan because James had moved. Dad glowered every time the word ‘vegetarian’ was spoken. Grandma said it the most, since she wanted to know all about this decision of her grandson’s, and what meals Beck prepared for him.

James gulped at his wine and managed another without either of his parents noticing, but always his gaze settled on Tony, framed between uncle Bill’s back and Alan’s shoulders.

It was about time his cousin gave him a tender look, James thought.

But the speeches took everyone’s attention away from their plates, and James lost his view of Tony while Leanne’s father mumbled about her family. Merle Jenkinson was in James’s sights now, giving stern looks whenever her husband faltered.

Then Dad took the microphone and carried on about Tony’s exploits at the footy club, and wayward girls, and that finally a sheila had trapped his nephew for good.

As soon as the loud, old-time dance compilation started booming from the speakers in each corner, James returned to hanging around the edges of the party.

When the cake was cut, he found the best hiding place at the end of the bar where the spare tables had been stacked. He sat watching the broken exit sign flicker on and off, downing the dregs of every abandoned beer glass he could get his hands on.

THIRTEEN
2005

From inside the hire car, James saw the Kippen pub looming above the street, with its upper-story verandah casting a deepening shadow over the long row of parked vehicles. He recognised Yvonne and Pete’s four-wheel drive, so he knew there’d be somewhat friendly faces inside, but he waited until a group of men in suits entered the main door before marching in, prepared to act like he owned the place.

In the foyer, a choice confronted him: the women’s bar on the left and the public bar on the right.

The spineless shell opted for the left.

Yvonne was sitting at the bar chatting to Pete, and when she noticed James she smiled. That was something, James thought, so he approached them, ready to make some kind of amends for disinheriting them.

‘Hi, mate,’ Pete said, looking like he wanted to get away.

‘Want a glass of my wine?’ Yvonne asked, sounding a bit slurred.

‘You’re wasting your time in here,’ Pete said. ‘They only serve this side if they’re not busy in the public bar. If you want a drink, you’ll have to come through with me,’ he added, and disappeared the way James had entered.

At the other end of the room, James noticed Doris and Leanne sitting in a booth, the little girls asleep in the one adjacent. Light from the street poured through the high windows and picked up both women’s hats.

‘My husband doesn’t like it when I drink,’ Yvonne said, leaning over the bar and retrieving a grubby cocktail glass. ‘This’ll do,’ she said, and poured it full of white wine. ‘When are you coming up to stay with us, city slicker?’

‘Oh, you know, when I get some time off,’ James said.

‘Well, make sure you do. We’ve got plenty of spare room,’ she said.

‘Listen Yvonne, I don’t think I’ll ever go back to Queensland.’

She dropped her gaze to her lap. ‘I know.’

‘They’re not that friendly out your way to people like me, you know?’

‘What, journalists?’ Yvonne asked, looking up with a glazed expression. ‘Nobody cares what you do up there, they only care where you fit in. Which family, which property. Whatever!’ she added, and paused on a pensive look. ‘You could bring someone with you. I’d be really pleased to see you settled, as long as you found someone who made you happy.’

Straight advice on gay dating scene.

Before James’s bum could hit the stool next to hers, Yvonne grabbed him by the arm and led him between the empty tables to the booths. Doris noticed them coming and turned her head midway through a sentence.

‘Leanne, you remember Jamie Brandt?’ Yvonne said.

‘Yes,’ Leanne said, dipping her chin and looking up. ‘Hello James.’

‘Leanne married Ian Taylor last year,’ Yvonne said. ‘They’re on five thousand acres of cotton, not quite over the border.’

Leanne gave her glass a careful half turn. ‘Tell me, James, are you still as creative as you always were?’ she asked.

The spineless shell replied: ‘Oh, I work in the media now.’

‘He’s been with the same paper since he left school, worked his way up, and he’s made a good life for himself in the city,’ Yvonne said, digging her elbow into his side. ‘He doesn’t blow his own trumpet enough.’

‘It was nice of you to come, Jamie, but don’t assume people up here aren’t leading good lives,’ Doris said.

‘Mother,’ Yvonne said, telling her off.

Doris shrugged.

James thought it better to just raise his glass. ‘Well, to Tony,’ he said.

They all followed, apart from Doris, whose wrist started to tremble.

‘It’s just so lovely to see everyone again after all these years, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘And Leanne came across to be with us to remember Tony. He loved you very much,’ she added, underlining the last two words with a double tap of her hand on Leanne’s arm.

Leanne responded by leaning in, pursing her lips together, and tapping Doris’s arm.

Yvonne swirled her glass, emptied it down her throat, and said: ‘Well, Tony loved Jamie too. To leave him everything, he obviously must have loved Jamie very much.’

James choked on a gulp of wine. Leanne flinched and her glass toppled onto the floor. ‘Oh bugger...’

Doris let out a muffled cry and looked as though she could crush Yvonne, until Leanne pushed between them and made for the bathroom.

James shook his head and appealed for his cousin to be silent.

Yvonne opened her eyes wide and shook hers back at him. ‘What?’ she asked.

‘Clear this up before someone treads on it,’ Doris said, and followed Leanne.

In a fake tone meant only for James, Yvonne said: ‘Whoops.’

He retrieved a dustpan from beside the chest freezer and started sweeping up while Yvonne checked on the girls.

Doris emerged with paper towels and silently wiped down the table, the padded seat and the carpet. When it was done to her satisfaction, she found a bin near the door and shoved all the soaked scraps into it.

‘Both of you, leave that poor girl alone,’ she said. ‘She’s suffered enough.’

Yvonne grunted. ‘Jamie hasn’t said a thing,’ and started brushing down the front of her skirt.

‘It’s probably too late for her and Ian to have any kids, you know?’ Doris said.

‘Who said anything about kids?’ Yvonne asked.

‘Leave it there,’ Doris said, pointing a finger.

Yvonne dismissed it with a swipe of her hand. ‘No one in this family ever has the guts to say things out loud!’

James put his hands up in a conciliatory way, but Yvonne shot him a stern glance and aimed her words right at her mother.

‘Did Dad tell you about how well our business is going?’

‘Your father and I never talk about other farmers’ business.’

‘We lost two contracts before our third shed was even completed, so we’re trying eggs instead of broilers, but I haven’t even told Pete what I know about the level of debt we’re in.’

‘Your father didn’t listen to me when he signed everything over to Tony,’ Doris said. ‘I wanted to keep Deloraine out of it, but he decided your brother was the only one of the boys who would stick around and work the land. I’m sorry that’s left you out of things,’ she added, without any apparent sorrow, and looked at James.

Yvonne looked at him too. The spineless shell wasn’t going to cut it, that was clear.

‘What time is your flight?’ Doris asked.

‘I should get back over to Wishaw by three-thirty, at the very latest,’ he replied.

‘Well, that’s time enough for a drink with your father and uncle,’ Doris said. ‘We’re all dependent on you now.’

James placed his hand flat against the door of the public bar and pushed past the group of tradesmen gathered on the threshold. They were just at the climax of laughing raucously at a joke, but he was determined to keep moving until he’d found his father.

He didn’t have to go far. Dad was right in the centre of things, about to land a tray of drinks in front of Bill and Pete. James was struck by his father’s bulk, built out by the suit into a force capable of muscling his way around criminal activities every bit as effectively as a thirsty pub line. By comparison, Bill disappeared into the woodwork, despite being encased in the same steel-grey tones. Pete was perched on a stool eating sandwiches from a pair of trays someone had brought from the wake.

‘Glad you decided to join us, Jamie,’ his father shouted. ‘Here, have mine,’ he added as he sloshed a glass of beer into his son’s hand.

‘Cheers,’ Bill said, scratching at the side of his neck.

James sipped at the beer, eager to rid himself of the sickly taste of Yvonne’s wine. There was a laugh at the bar as his father got loud forgiveness from office workers and the tradesmen for pushing in and getting another drink.

‘My second boy is here, in the pub, with me!’ Dad shouted. ‘Come and help yourself to sandwiches, fellas, there’s plenty!’ he added, and the men in the line cheered.

James smiled and took a longer draught of his drink as his father moved in far too close. ‘Isn’t this a nice way to end a tough day, fellas? Me and my brother, and my second son, and our son-in-law. Now, to Tony,’ he said, and raised his glass.

They all mimicked him, rocking forward on their feet and gulping at their beers.

The booze hit the right spot. All of them drew breath, glasses held away from their bodies.

‘So, what’s it like being back?’ Pete said.

‘It’s been quite enlightening, actually,’ James said over the noise.

Dad choked, sending a frothy spray down his front and onto Pete’s leg.

James felt a sudden grip on his arm as his father led him away.

‘Come over here and talk to me,’ Dad said. ‘You made me lose a bet, you know?’

They got to the line of poker machines before James managed to wrench his arm free. Leanne was sliding coins into the myriad of promises while Doris hovered.

‘Twenty bucks you cost me,’ his father said, ‘but I seriously didn’t think you’d be bothered to show. I thought Alan would come, for sure.’

‘Dad, can I just have the envelope?’

‘Hold on a minute there, cowboy! Let’s just sit and catch up a bit, eh? You staying at my place tonight?’ his father said, simultaneously pushing James onto a stool with one hand while expertly sucking at his beer.

‘Nope. I’ve got work tomorrow,’ James said.

‘Oh? I was hoping we’d have time for a chat.’

‘You said you wanted to chat here, so let’s chat.’

‘When are you going to come up this way and grill a few of our politicians? Most of them are crooks, but don’t say your old man told you!’ and he exhaled a throaty laugh.

‘Can I have the envelope, please?’ James said.

‘Listen, just ask me whatever you want about your Mum, and I’ll tell you.’

‘Dad-’

‘Think about it. You might thank me later. Anything you want to know about your Mum, you can ask me, right here.’

James drew courage by gulping at his drink. As it reached a point deep inside him, he whispered, ‘I didn’t come home to talk about Mum.’

His father started to laugh. ‘Well, you were always her favourite. It blinded you both. You know nothing, actually,’ he added, angrily brushing the air with the back of one hand and putting his beer down. The other hand plunged into his pocket and tested his coinage for another round. ‘If you were ever to get married, you might.’

‘Why do you think I’m not married, Dad?’

‘That, my boy, is something I have spent a lot of years wondering! No one in the family wants you to be a loner.’

‘What, like Tony?’

His father looked across to Bill, who was talking awkwardly with his son-in-law, nodding and shrugging with the compliance of a boy, and James sensed the first troubled sign on his father’s face.

‘Yeah, like Tony,’ Dad said, shaking his head. ‘He seriously needed to get a life.’

‘Bullshit,’ James said, under his breath.

‘Keep your voice down, and I mean really down. Bill and Doris don’t need to hear it. They’ve never had their eyes opened,’ he said, then drained his beer.

‘I didn’t come back to talk about me, either,’ James said.

‘You know, an old mate of Dad’s once explained it to me at the saleyards. He reckoned it runs in families, this,’ and James watched with horror as his father tried to grasp invisible qualities between both hands, ‘this homosexual stuff. A couple of blokes I went to school with got over it. Tony could have gotten over it too. Alan’s alright, but the jury’s still out on you.’

Each offended pulsation of the slack skin around his father’s mouth made James angrier. ‘Whether people are gay or not is really none of your fucking business,’ he said.

‘Well, you’re wrong about that. Obviously, it’s in the bloodlines. You can’t help what’s in your bloodlines, end of story.’

‘So, you reckon being gay is inherited?’ James said, impersonating his father’s country-boy bulldust.

‘Nah, I reckon you’ve just got to marry a decent woman, and the problem just drifts into the background. One fella I knew had so much hassle over it he spent a night in the cop shop, when we were young.’

‘What for?’

‘Well, he always said it was nothing to do with him, but he got arrested with a bunch of perverts in a public dunny down at Newcastle railway station. His dad went and bailed him out. His mum never knew. She didn’t need to, because he’s been alright since he just came home and got married.’

A rueful laugh escaped James’s nostrils. ‘First you reckon it’s genetic, then you say it’s environmental. You can’t have it both ways, Dad.’

‘Ah, save your intellectual bullshit for the big city.’

‘Well, let me put it in a way you can understand,’ James said, his sarcasm clear. ‘Marriage obviously didn’t work for Tony. He went looking for what he needed in the toilets below the bridge.’

His father dismissed him with a rough sigh. ‘You’ve been away for too long, Jamie. You’re looking for something that just doesn’t happen up here.’

‘Didn’t anyone notice Tony was missing? I mean, come on, Dad, it was months!’

‘Lower your voice, mister amateur detective. We all assumed he was on his yacht.’

‘How would Tony have gotten to the coast without his car, then?’

His father sat back, sniffed, gulped at his beer, and shrugged.

‘Did he still have a motorbike, or just the old Ford?’ James asked.

‘I dunno.’

‘Did you think to check while Tony was missing? Did anyone get over to the coast and have a look around his yacht?’

‘Why the hell should I be bothered doing that?’ his father muttered.

‘It’s pretty basic police practice to rule out all the possibilities, right?’

His father erupted. ‘Ah, you’re just another bloody journalist making up some drama to put on your front page, and you all love to point the finger at the force when we’re just doing our job, cleaning up all the mess that no one else has got the guts to.’

The drop in the noise around the bar was noticeable. James’s father smiled, raised his glass at the room, and as he drank from it, the wall of conversations returned.

‘I think it’s pretty clear what happened to Tony,’ James whispered. ‘It’s happened around Kippen before.’

His father dropped his volume too, but not his intensity: ‘Poor bloody Tony who had everything handed to him on a plate. Poor bloody Tony with his perfect wife and his big plans for the farm. Poor bloody Tony gave it all up and threw himself off the bridge because poor bloody Tony fit the profile of a self-hating loner, mate.’

‘What about Brian Fryer, was he a loner too?’ James said, really softly.

But his father swept it all aside with his broad, confident, cop smile. ‘This incident you allege took place at the river last night... the boys told me there was nothing called in, nothing substantial anyway. No one’s been reported injured.’

The only defence James had was to lean back and take another mouthful of beer.

‘If there was a witness, the police would be very interested in them coming forward and making a statement. We can’t do anything until they do,’ Dad said, hands up. ‘But it always turns out the witness was on the scene, illegally soliciting for sex in a public place,’ his father added, leaning over his beer and whispering it clearly. ‘Which means they are just not credible. Now, are you having another drink?’

James held up his glass, still half full.

‘I’ll get you another one,’ his father said.

James shrugged and watched Dad launching into another round of laughter with the office workers. A night of disturbed sleep was catching up with him. He leaned against the wall and tried to prevent his father’s version of Tony’s death from taking shape, but James had to admit, the suicide of a divorced former farmer, bored with packing shelves and the odd fuck in the local public toilets sounded credible enough.

It was just before two o’clock. There was no time for outlandish plans to improve policing standards in the border country. He could just finish his drink, make a polite exit and talk it all out with Dylan over dinner, minus any mention of the incident at the beat. By the time James was back in the city, he hoped that would just be a bad memory and a few scratches.

His father returned and unloaded more beers, a familiar face in his wake.

‘Jamie, I think you know Andy Jones?’

James had no time to respond with anything other than a smile.

‘We finally meet again, Jamie,’ Mr Jones said, no hint of menace.

‘Cheers,’ James said, gulping at his beer to prevent the spineless shell from shaking the hand that was offered. Mr Jones shrugged and took to one of the stools, revealing a thin, sullen youth standing with his beer.

‘This is my grandson Bobby,’ Mr Jones said. ‘Bobby, shake Jamie’s hand.’

Judging by the wet sheen of his dark hair, the kid had recently showered. He shoved his right hand out, a grin forcing the whole face up on one side.

‘G’day,’ Bobby said.

The grip was awkward but tight, although James was more disturbed by the way Mr Jones witnessed the whole exchange with an air of satisfaction, like shaking one Jones family hand was proof of shaking them all. Some kind of negotiation seemed to have been opened.

‘Bobby’s been helping me out in the field today, haven’t you?’ Mr Jones said. ‘A couple of months and we’ll have him ready to sit his agent’s exams.’

‘Yeah?’ Dad said. ‘Good on ya, Bob,’ he added, and clapped the kid’s back.

The three of them laughed. James nodded and smiled.

‘Andy here wants to chat to you about Glen Alpine,’ Dad said. ‘He reckons he could get top dollar for you, Jamie.’

It was an obvious set up, and the agent took his cue. ‘The house isn’t worth anything, but there’s more than a thousand acres that side of Brandt Lane. Now that we’ve had half a year of pretty decent rain, an investor would take it off your hands in a matter of weeks. You wouldn’t have to do a thing.’

James nodded. ‘Something to think about,’ he said.

‘Well, don’t think about it too long, the market can crash anytime,’ Mr Jones said, looking to James’s father to back him up. Dad nodded enthusiastically, his mouth full.

‘How’s that son of yours going, Andy?’ Dad asked, changing the subject.

Mr Jones grinned but he didn’t look happy. The kid looked at the floor.

‘Council’s talking about laying off more contractors. Johnny reckons he’ll be out of work again by spring unless they get the funding to resurface the Wishaw Road,’ Mr Jones said.

‘Don’t like the chances of them finding money for that,’ Dad said.

‘Council are a bunch of fucking faggots,’ Bobby said into his beer.

Dad and Andy laughed.

Even though it had been spoken softly, James recognised the hatred. This kid was about the right age and height, and he looked fast on his feet. Worst of all was that he seemed to have noticed that James wasn’t laughing.

He moved quickly.

‘Listen, I’ve got something I need to ask Dad about,’ James said. ‘In private.’

Mr Jones hopped off his stool. ‘No trouble,’ he said.

‘No, sit down, Mr Jones, Dad and I can talk over here,’ James said, indicating an empty table in the corner.

‘Call me Andy, please. Here, let me leave you with one of these,’ he said, holding out a business card.

James took it and moved away. His father followed.

‘No need to be rude,’ Dad muttered.

‘I’ve got to get over to Wishaw, can I just get that envelope, please?’

As he produced the folded yellow envelope from inside his jacket, a tear became visible in the crags of his father’s big, suddenly soft and handsome face. ‘You don’t leave town without talking to me about this, right?‘ he said.

James took it, but his father grabbed him by the wrist and squeezed so tight that a pain shot up James’s arm all the way to his shoulder.

‘There’s always been way, way too much crime in this cop’s family,’ Dad said. ‘Just remember, there’s two sides to every story in a marriage, mate. Watch my beer, I’m going to the dunny.’

City girl’s darkest secrets revealed.

James waited for the life to return to his arm and his father to disappear along the corridor to the men’s toilets. The bar had emptied a bit. Mr Jones and his grandson had drifted across to the trays of sandwiches and were helping themselves.

There was little doubt now. James could imagine that slight frame inside a dark hoodie and cap, a caricature of a boy with a very adult ability to maim, and possibly kill.

He flipped open his mobile phone, pretended to dial and started a serious-sounding conversation with nobody, tucked the envelope under his arm, waved at the potential suspects in the non-existent murder investigation and rolled his eyes at them as though he was taking a boring work call as he passed, and left the pub.

One hour left in town, and:-

There’s no use going to the police. I’m on my own.

Dad always got violent when confronted with my sexuality.

They all did.

FOURTEEN
1985

Tony scanned the wall of guests at the wedding reception, but he couldn’t see Jamie. Maybe the kid had gone home early?

‘I’m going to the dunny,’ he said to Leanne.

‘Don’t say dunny,’ she whispered, patting him on the leg and smiling at Uncle Daniel dancing with Louise Beaumont.

He nodded, gave her hand a squeeze, and went for the back door.

Outside, the tinny sound of music coming from the big speakers gave way to the silence of the hot afternoon. He leaned on the corner of the brick wall at the bottom of the ramp and inhaled the cooler air of the shade, thinking he’d better not drink much more if he was going to drive his bride to the coast.

Thoughts of a whole night in the company of Leanne started to form, so in order to avoid them, Tony pushed off the wall. Across the patch of sun lay the men’s toilets. Inside, it was even cooler, and he took his time loosening his tie as he emptied his bladder.

Above the broad steel sheet of the urinal, someone had left small gaps between the brickwork, and still more of that bloody good cool air was coming through. He was enjoying that when he heard the scuff of shoes coming along the pathway.

Whoever it was slowed in the doorway, and sniffed. He looked and made eye contact with Jamie.

Shit!

Tony turned back to the view through the cracks in the bricks. He could see as far as the little flats on the far side of the playing field, where big old trees were already spreading their long shadows.

Jamie didn’t say anything, but Tony could hear him approaching, stumbling a little until he held out a hand to steady himself.

‘You pissed?’ Tony asked, laughing, but Jamie stepped up onto the tiles and leaned against him. The sudden force nearly made Tony misfire, and he pushed his shoulder back into place, covering his dick with one hand.

But Jamie reached up with his lips.

Shit!

There was a scuffle. Piss slashed across trousers. Tony caught sight of his cousin’s dick against the stark white of his shirt, and it was stiff.

‘Mate-’ Tony said impatiently, trying to repel with the word.

Cousin Roger appeared just as they came apart. Tony turned fast to finish off. Jamie moved along to the end of the urinal and leaned on the wall, covering himself.

‘Just about wetting myself,’ Roger said, unzipping himself and launching a stream that thundered against the old stainless steel.

‘Making room for more?’ Tony said, still pushing the last of his piss out.

Roger laughed, and Jamie started to lean against him.

‘You right, mate?’ Roger said to Jamie, who mumbled. ‘Just point your prick, and push.’

Jamie muttered something, then looked through the slits between the bricks, Roger’s arm across his back.

‘You’re gonna have a night of fun tonight, eh?’ Roger said to Tony.

Tony allowed his eyes to dart to the side and saw the yellow stream shooting from Roger’s dick, a forest of black pubic hair encircling it. He looked away fast, nodded and zipped up: ‘Too right mate.’

‘This one might be about to spew,’ Roger said, indicating Jamie.

‘He’s alright,’ Tony said. Jamie was now leaning his forehead on the wall. ‘You’re alright, aren’t you, Jamie?’

Jamie nodded, so Tony moved for the door. Roger did himself up, and followed.

‘Want a ciggie?’ Roger said as they emerged into the sunlight.

Tony took one, let Roger light it for him, and started sucking relentlessly.

‘Poofter in training, that one,’ Tony said, loud enough for Jamie to hear. He pushed smoke out of his lungs.

‘You reckon?’

‘Yeah,’ Tony said. ‘You can always tell.’

‘Poor fucking Daniel, just what he needs, eh?’ Roger said.

Tony nodded and let the next lot of smoke pour out of his nostrils, thinking what a lucky cow Helen was being married to Roger. He was a handsome bugger and he smelled good every time Tony leaned in close.

‘Ah well, back to the celebration,’ Roger said, reaching out and flicking Tony on the arse as he headed up the ramp. ‘You bloody get in there and enjoy yourself!’

Tony laughed as the excitement of the touch ran right through him, but as he dropped his ciggie and scraped his shoe over it, he checked the doorway of the toilet block. There was no sign of Jamie. His cousin would probably stay slumped over in there until Uncle Daniel took him home.

‘Mission accomplished,’ he whispered.

Daniel noticed Beck look at him properly for the first time while he partnered Louise Beaumont in a waltz, although the poor girl just couldn’t dance to save herself.

The second time his estranged wife looked at him over her shoulder, Daniel smiled at her from across the room, but she looked away. He took a long swig of the piss-poor beer the bride’s parents had laid on, and decided to finish the whole glass.

He reckoned everybody was talking about him, but no one had the guts to ask about Mandy. What did they all expect? With every single bloody relative descending on Kippen, he hadn’t wanted to arrive without a woman on his arm; but as soon as he’d mentioned his nephew’s wedding to the young teacher from Wishaw, Mandy had never called back.

Anyway, that was weeks ago. Months, probably. Whenever the invitations went out. And Beck surely had heaps of boyfriends in the city. He hadn’t been able to get Alan to come clean about any men hanging around, trying to get his wife. His estranged wife.

Daniel sighed. When were the happy couple gonna leave? Leanne seemed to have retreated to the front hall and Tony had just come back in from the dunny looking as guilty as heck. Cousin Roger followed him, brushing down his jacket.

He smelled the cigarette smoke before the other man closed on him.

‘That wife of yours know you’re back on the death sticks, mate?’ Daniel asked.

Roger cranked one side of his mouth up into a grin, rubbed his hands together and touched his nose. Guilt. They’d all had classes in body language last month. Daniel thought it was all bullshit at first, but he had to agree there was more to it than he gave it credit for. That lady trainer from the city had been a looker, too.

‘Yeah, well, you’re no angel mate,’ Roger said.

There it was. The confession.

‘So is this true what I hear about Jamie being a vege-bloody-tarian?’ Roger asked.

Daniel went for his glass, but it was empty. No hiding there.

‘You know what they say about vege-bloody-tarians?’ Roger asked, knocking Daniel’s knee with the back of his hand.

‘Shut up, arsehole,’ Daniel said, pushing back with his knee. ‘Get yourself back on your side of the border, before I lock you up for the night.’

It was time. He stood, found his estranged wife’s back, and crossed the floor towards her, dodging Doris and Bill doing one of their little bouncy moves. As he approached, he thought about trying to make a joke out of the word “estranged”, but as soon as she turned and locked eyes with him, all joking drained away.

‘Time we had a dance, eh?’

Beck blinked and her bottom lip disappeared under the top one. ‘Alright,’ she said.

‘We need to talk about the boys,’ he said, reaching out his hand.

She took it.

It seemed stupidly easy after all the years of drama, guiding her upright, taking a few steps into the small crowd, and enfolding her into him quickly before anything looked too awkward. She placed one hand on his right shoulder, where it fitted with speed, and he led them off.

It had the feeling of driving an old car for the first time in ages, although she kept her head turned to the side instead of resting it on his chest the way she used to.

‘Well, it’s all gone off well, hasn’t it?’ he said.

She nodded.

‘They’ll be getting away soon, I suppose, and we can all go to the pub.’

She turned her head to look where they were going, like she suddenly didn’t trust him, and he noticed her scent. Not like the old days. This was something new.

‘Listen, Beck.’

‘Hmm?’ she replied, just the same way she always did, allowing him space to form the words.

‘It’s time for both the boys to go to my old school,’ he said.

She stiffened and looked up at him, squeezing her eyes the way she always did when she was about to start hammering him with questions.

‘You promised,’ he said before she could start up. ‘We agreed they’d board for their senior years, and I’ve hung onto the money from selling most of The Mulgas to pay for it.’

Beck dropped her gaze and he felt the subtle pushback in her hands, so he held them a little tighter.

‘Alan’s ready,’ she said. ‘But Jamie’s too young.’

They’d run out of space, so Daniel manoeuvred Beck the other way and she suddenly had to take a few steps backwards. Only once they’d reached a clear spot near the bar did she settle.

‘Jamie’s the one who needs it more,’ he said. ‘Poor kid’s so bloody confused. A bit of discipline will help him sort out who he is and what he wants to do.’

She cleared her throat and gave a little smile to the people standing along the bar.

‘You know I’m right,’ he said.

‘I don’t think you’re right,’ she said, not taking her eyes off the spectators. ‘Not about Jamie. I want you to let me tell him,’ she added, flicking her gaze right up into his eyes. ‘I’ll do it on our way home tomorrow.’

He hated the idea of home being anywhere other than The Mulgas, especially the tiny suburban rental Beck was paying for while the boys went to the local state school. ‘I was hoping to take them both to the pub tonight,’ he said. ‘You can pick them up from home in the morning.’

Beck dropped her eyes and sighed so deeply that her shoulders lifted and her mouth went slack. Bill and Doris popped up on their left. His brother had enough good grace to say nothing, but Doris fucking smirked. The Jenkinsons were bobbing on their right, his eyes on the floor and hers on the ceiling.

Estranged. Daniel hated the bloody word.

‘So, you’ll let me take them both?’

It seemed as though Beck nodded, but it might have been a little sob.

James was slumped at the side of the toilet bowl. Even with his head between the concrete floor and the brick wall he noticed when the music was turned off and everyone started applauding and shouting good wishes for Tony and Leanne’s departure.

But the sharp sound of footsteps approaching was a sudden indication that he should lock the door.

‘Get out of there,’ Dad said, shoes showing under the cubicle door. ‘What are you hanging around out here for?’

James didn’t move. His father stepped up to the urinal and started to piss.

‘Boys who hang around public toilets get a name for themselves, you know?’

James was halfway to upright when the earth suddenly felt like one vast slope trying to throw him off. He reached for the lock in order to stay upright, flicked it around and let the door drift open.

‘Jamie, did you hear me?’ Dad said, looking over his shoulder while he urinated. ‘There’s always a few fellas in every town who end up sissified from all this kind of stuff,’ he added, shaking off and zipping up. ‘Come on, we’re all going to the pub.’

James groaned.

‘Pull yourself together.’

But James couldn’t shake his fatigue. Dad reacted suddenly, thrusting one arm out, pinning his shoulder to the brick wall and gripping his wrist in a way that sent a spike of pain up his arm.

‘You’re going to boarding school, mate. Your mother’s agreed. You can start next term, with your brother.’

James opened his eyes and sensed fear dropping off his father’s flat cheeks, like rain; the panicked flicker of the eyes, like water on the surface of a well, worried by the chance of sun.

‘That’ll sort you out,’ his father said, releasing him and scuffing his shoes on the path all the way back inside the hall.

James rubbed his arm where it stung, like that might erase this fresh attack. Surely his father was bluffing. Mum hadn’t mentioned anything about a new school for a couple of years. He bent forward over the toilet, hands on his knees, wondering if he would vomit, but he felt suddenly awake and ready to sort out this nonsense.

Up the ramp and inside the mostly empty hall he found his mother taking down the family tree. Grandma was sitting with Yvonne’s head in her lap, probably waiting for someone to drop her back to the nursing home. Aunty Doris was loudly farewelling the women left in the kitchen.

James took to ripping harshly at the tacks holding the posters in place.

‘What’s up with you?’ Mum said.

Now, he spewed out a reply: ‘Am I going to boarding school?’

It must have been loud. Grandma’s foot, which had been tapping impatiently on her plastic chair leg, came to a sudden rest. Yvonne drew breath and was about to react when Aunty Doris appeared at the kitchen door, her mouth open in shock.

‘What did you say to your mother?’ she asked.

James contritely repeated his question with all the sarcasm that good diction delivers, eyes on the floor.

‘That’s none of your business, young man,’ his aunt said. ‘Both your parents will decide what is best for you.’

‘Doris-’ Mum said.

‘Are you going to let him speak to you like that, in front of everyone?’ his aunt said, stalking towards James.

Mum inhaled. The air escaped right through her. James went to speak, but couldn’t decide what his mother’s silence meant. Strands of hair were collapsing down her proud forehead.

Aunty Doris shook her head and signalled to Yvonne. They disappeared into the tricky light of the entrance hall.

The noise of crockery being dried and put away returned, and they all breathed.

‘You’re a very good sport, Rebecca,’ Grandma said. ‘You’ve handled yourself very well, you know? You didn’t have to come back.’

Mum grimaced like she was holding in tears. ‘Well, I came for the boys’ sake,’ she said, as other women emerged from the kitchen and started wiping tables.

‘And that’s the right thing to do,’ Grandma said. ‘Now listen, I’ll say one thing about boarding school. I’ve spent the last thirty years telling my sons never to send their kids away. If Bill and Daniel hadn’t gone, I’d know them better. As it was, it felt like they were strangers once they turned eleven.’

Mum nodded, and got back to work on clearing the noticeboards.

‘Doris has got the key, hasn’t she, Sal?’ Grandma said.

‘Yes,’ Mrs Beaumont said, removing her apron and rolling it up into a string bag.

‘Well, you’d better give me a lift then, if you wouldn’t mind?’

‘Right you are, Gladys.’

‘Show me this family tree, Jamie,’ Grandma said, making for the place where James was gathering the sheets into one pile. ‘Cousin Norman thinks I don’t know anything about it, but I can remember your grandfather used to talk about old Sarah Brandt. She was on the same ship as her husband, only she was in the hold and he was not, do you see? Once they were on Australian soil, she was pardoned after a while, and they married. Cousin Norman reckons all the Brandts back in England were shocked to their boots, but he doesn’t know what he’s talking about,’ she said, as she waved her stick over the names. ‘They would never have even known, and why should they? Sarah Brandt bore him seven children and nursed her husband until the day he died. Who cares what she did before? I don’t. Your Grandfather didn’t, and none of you kids should either. Every single one of us has done something we’re ashamed of,’ she said, and her lips trembled. ‘It can be a hard life up in this country. It’s not for everyone, but we don’t have to make it worse by calling anyone a convict.’

She’d let the word go softly.

‘They should have buried her next to her husband, but we don’t know where they put her.’

‘Why?’ James said.

‘The stigma,’ Grandma whispered.

‘What’s that mean?’

‘It’s a kind of shame,’ Grandma said, planting her stick and holding James by the shoulder as the rattle of the servery door rolling shut hammered the point home. ‘Right then, we’re off. See you in the next school holidays, I suppose,’ she added, running a hand quickly across the back of Mum’s arm, the other finger on her lip as though there was plenty more to say, but no time, willingness, or use. Things were the way they were, and the hall had been left as it should be.

At the crossroads, Mum accelerated past the pub and only seemed to breathe easier after they crossed the Kippen Bridge, heading for Deloraine.

‘I bought some new tapes on the way up,’ she said. ‘Put one on if you like.’

He shrugged, so she pushed one into the player with a crunch and upbeat jazz burst into life.

‘Did you have a nice time, Jamie?’

He shrugged again, which made her look.

‘You didn’t want to go to the pub with your dad, did you?’

He shook his head, uttering a dismissive grunt.

‘I didn’t think you would,’ she said, shifting gears as they leveled off into the uplands, the night approaching swiftly. ‘At least your father’s new girlfriend wasn’t there,’ she added, and let out a fake laugh.

James smirked. His mother noticed.

‘Keep an eye out on your side for roos, won’t you?’ she said.

He continued staring straight ahead, enjoying this new-found unwillingness to respond to demands from either of his parents. Mum retreated into a series of her big, unanswerable sighs, underscored by a long Blues track. She reached over as though she was going to ruffle her son’s hair or pat his arm, but stopped her hand and spoke instead.

‘Your father gave up on me too, you know.’

James’s anger surprised even him. ‘But Dad never sent you away,’ he said.

He watched as she struggled to form a reaction. ‘No, he didn’t.’

‘Then why are you sending me away?’

Before she could answer, the dented white drums of the letterboxes appeared, and Mum aimed the car down Brandt Lane.

‘Your dad has always wanted you boys to go to the same school as he and your Uncle Bill. Tony went there and he seemed to enjoy it.’

‘I’m happy where I am. I have friends at my school,’ he lied.

‘Well, when you go into the senior years, you often make new friends,’ she said, negotiating the dip to the stream. ‘It’s a big school, too. It’s bound to have plenty of good stuff for your writing.’

He scoffed at her offerings just as the empty farmhouse slid by silently on his side. As she turned onto Deloraine’s cattle grid and he spotted the solo light burning by the homestead door, it lit her face, revealing a kind of calm.

This was real, he thought, as she stopped the car near the dogs straining on their chains: she had already decided to let him go.

FIFTEEN
2005

James needed somewhere quiet to look at the contents of the courthouse envelope. The main street was empty like it always was mid-afternoon, but the milk bar was still open.

‘What would you like, love?’ one of the waitresses asked.

‘Flat white, please.’

‘Be with you as soon as possible. Just had a big coffee order from up at council.’

James nodded and gestured towards the booths. He sat at the very last one, back to the street, and opened the envelope with his thumb.

He’d waited for two decades for someone in the family to give him answers about his mother’s criminality, and here was the court case, in approximately fifty pages of material held together by a clamp at one corner.

There was an irony to his father acting just like a court registrar, putting his journalist son on a short leash with a set of criminal documents. James scanned through the pages, just like he and his cadet colleagues had done at police stations and court houses, chasing stories on crimes in the suburbs.

But this was about Mum. He spied her signature and let his eyes trace its familiar loops, imagining how she must have looked writing it at the police station. Cornered. Unguarded. Exposed. Beyond help, or finally getting it?

James turned back to the front of the dossier and started seeking for the guts as though he’d been sent to file a story. If he didn’t, he might not get through it all before his father caught up with him.

The extraction sheet had two lines of charges — seventeen in all — and the date: December, 1978. Seventeen charges had resulted in seventeen recognizance orders. His mother’s name appeared in typed capitals at the centre of each crime. The only difference on each page was the stolen item.

There were no dates, only a bracket of time. Between March and December 1978, his mother had stolen children’s clothing and kitchenware: a hat, a pair of slacks; a skivvy; a singlet. All of it swiped from Wang Leong’s Department Store.

The angle of the story leaped out at him.

Stolen goods ‘gifts’ for dead child.

The amounts of money owed in compensation and bail were concerning. He did a quick calculation and came up with more than five thousand dollars in thirty-year-old money, without taking legal fees into account. That would be almost thirty-thousand now. If left unpaid it would have resulted in three months’ jail time. The perfect follow-up story took form.

Farm sale funds grieving Mum’s freedom.

A case like this could extend to three articles. James scanned through the charge sheets again, noticing the search warrant for The Mulgas, and skimmed through an account by a witness by the name of Mrs Nian Leong, who appeared to have allowed Mum to continue her light-fingered habits for nine months before finally making a complaint to the police.

At the back of the stack of pages, James found the court proceedings. Here, the clumsiest set of transcripts he’d ever seen revealed plenty about how things were done at Kippen, with entire lines of text erased using the ‘X’ key on the typewriter.

There was the guilty plea, and a few character references, one from Sal Beaumont. The psychiatrist’s report was clear and to the point, with recommendations for ongoing treatment and support. His eye was drawn immediately to its definitions about his mother, and the angle of the third story revealed itself.

Mother’s crimes a ‘cry for help’.

Ten efficient paragraphs formed in James’s head, smothering his mother in enough platitudes to completely let her off the hook. Yet it wouldn’t matter how many in-depth analyses he was asked to do, he’d probably never get any closer to the truth than this.

But James had hidden the truth from Mum, too.

He’d left home in the suburbs for a cadetship on a city newspaper, letting her believe that any one of his flatmates might be girlfriend material. But whenever the question of his sexuality occurred to someone else on the rental agreement, James always found an excuse to move on to another awkward house-share arrangement.

Eventually, Dylan had saved him from all that. When James had written an article on a suburban school winning an award, his interviewee was the handsome teacher who’d found his way into the newsroom to collect a few extra copies for his mother, and quietly asked James on his first date.

Once or twice, James had come close to telling Mum about Dylan, but there’d been so much bad news in the family by then that he wasn’t sure she could take any more. When she died a couple of years later, she seemed content to disappear beyond all the blame laid at her feet by three generations of the Brandts.

He slapped the pages of the court records together, shoved them back into the envelope and looked for his coffee, but both waitresses were busy sorting takeaway cups into trays. Despite being a winter’s day, the sun was belting through the high windows, and there was heat coming off the linoleum floor. Heat he hadn’t felt, until now.

Numb.

The word was unfair. Very unfair. “Afraid” was a better descriptor. Always so fucking afraid to be real, just in case.

In case what?

He checked his watch. It was coming up to half-past two.

In case someone decides they don’t like you, because you’re gay.

That was the story he really wanted to write. He reached for his pen, flattened the envelope, and wrote:

2005, Tony’s death at Kippen Bridge.

But immediately he corrected it:

2005, Tony’s death at Kippen Bridge killed at Kippen Bridge.

James tested even that word in his heart, then crossed it out again:

2005, Tony’s death at Kippen Bridge killed at Kippen Bridge. MURDERED.

The next dates took their place slightly higher:

Around 2003, Mark Beaumont attacked over the border.

1985, Brian Fryer murdered at Kippen Bridge.

Was that all? James felt there was another crime, or a suggestion of one, somewhere in this mix of dates. He wanted to put it in the 1980s, but felt it should go earlier.

Just then, his father slid into the booth opposite and shoved two coffees down.

‘Best coffee in the border country, this. Drink up.’

James turned the envelope over and went for the sugar.

‘We didn’t know where you’d gone,’ Dad said.

‘Just needed a bit of quiet.’

His father nodded. ‘So, you’ll let Bill and Doris stay on at Deloraine until they retire, and we’ll sell the old farm before it falls down. It’s the perfect solution, really. You could just pop into Andy’s office two doors along and sign the paperwork now. Get the ball rolling.’

‘I’ve got to get to the airport.’

‘Well, you know how to get in touch with him,’ Dad said, sweeping up the envelope with the accusations scrawled across it before James could stop him, and holding out something else. ‘Some light reading once you’re on the plane.’

The smaller, white envelope had James’s name typed on it. He took it, sensing a thin document inside, as his father downed his coffee and stood.

‘This one’s on me. See you back over at the pub. Your cousin needs to get on the road soon.’

Dad laughed with the waitresses and muttered about his son needing the table for a ‘couple of minutes to think a few things over’.

Calmed by the solitude, James opened the new envelope. He’d never handled a will before, and as he scanned it, he encountered the paragraph in which Tony had dispassionately left him his entire estate.

The document was dated that year, with a hand-written codicil, signed and witnessed: ‘My estate includes my yacht, the Home Free, moored at Dangar.’

Now that was a kicker.

James reached into his pocket and unfolded the flyer from Tony’s funeral. The cover image of his cousin on the yacht leaped out again, captured somewhere far away from Kippen where that broad, genuine smile had appeared on that handsome face.

Awareness coursed through him, helping him shake off the beers and the pub. As he tucked the will and flyer safely in his pocket, James realised something about his father’s demeanour had been a touch overplayed.

All that talk about selling the farm had been meant to muddy the waters. The stuff about Mum was just weird, and the manner in which the tough cop had teared up when he’d finally handed over the court records had all the ingredients of a damned good act.

James was back on the main street walking in the opposite direction to the pub when he worked out he’d fallen for an old cop trick.

Fake leads keep journalist off the scent.

SIXTEEN
1985

Beck needed to get her escape plan happening, but the only way she could do it without waking everyone at Deloraine was to use the phone in Bill’s workroom.

As she eased the office door open, she noticed the first sunlight leaking around the blinds. The room was musty, probably from the oil on the blackened hand towel hanging on the back of the door. Doris must have given up trying to keep things clean in here years ago.

She found the telephone under a stack of maps and picked up the receiver before realising she didn’t know the phone number at The Mulgas, and this wasn’t the old party-line system where you just got the exchange to put you through.

Beck laughed at herself for expecting nothing to have changed out here, remembering how she and Doris used to have a code when they used the line that anyone on this side of Kippen could listen in on.

‘Do you smell bad breath, Rebecca?’ Doris would say, as politely as possible.

‘You know, I think I do,’ Beck would reply, outdoing her sister-in-law’s posh accent, and they’d hear the soft click as whoever it was decided to mind their own business.

But that was when Doris still had a sense of humour. Now, Beck needed to contact The Mulgas and arrange for Alan to be ready to leave for the city that morning. Daniel would be in a rage about Jamie not staying with him, and that would be all her fault, so she wasn’t about to turn up unannounced.

As she went to open the door, Beck heard someone in the kitchen, so she paused. No crap from Doris, not today, she was determined about that.

But it was only Bill quietly setting the kettle onto the stove. Beck pulled her dressing gown closed, did it up at the waist and cleared her throat as she went to join him.

‘Morning,’ he whispered, flicking his eyebrows up.

‘Good morning. I was trying to use the phone,’ Beck said, motioning to his office door with her arm. ‘Without waking Doris.’

He nodded. ‘Cuppa tea?’ he asked, reaching for a second mug.

She nodded. ‘I need to phone Daniel to get Alan ready.’

Bill spooned the tea into the pot. ‘Got to get over to Glen Alpine and slash the grass, get it looking good for the newlyweds on their return from the Gold Coast,’ he said, and winked. ‘I’ll get Daniel on the line and tell him to drop Alan up there with his bags. Young fella can give me a bit of a hand while you finish packing.’

‘Let me do that,’ she said, checking on how close the kettle was to boiling.

He nodded and went for his office. Good old Bill.

By the time Beck was on her second cup, Doris was up and flicking the radio on.

‘You should catch the weather forecast. If you’re going across the plains, you’ll want to know if it’s rained down there,’ she said.

Beck downed her tea, washed and dried her cup before her former sister-in-law could do it for her. ‘Heard it at six,’ she said. ‘No rain forecast for the plains until after midnight. We’ll be back home by then.’

She didn’t look at Doris, just put the cup back in the cupboard and went to get Jamie up. Beck might have been born in the city, but she knew about the fucking flood risk across the plains south of Kippen.

Beck packed the car while Jamie sulked in the front seat.

‘Brian Fryer’s funeral is Friday,’ Doris said when she eventually came to the door.

Beck nodded and shrugged. ‘Well, thanks for having us.’

‘Right you are,’ Doris replied. ‘It’s brisk!’ she added, rubbing her hands.

‘Jamie, say thank you to your aunty.’

‘Thanks for having us,’ Jamie said, not even getting out of the car.

Little shit, but Beck could see his point. Doris was going to leave all her point scoring and nitpicking unspoken. Nothing new about that. Goodo.

Over at Glen Alpine, Alan was driving the tractor and looked totally crestfallen when his mother expressed her wish to get away immediately. Still, Beck felt like getting out and having a look, just so she could say a proper thank you to Bill.

The scent of mown grass pervaded, and the old house was already looking a bit better now that half the blackberries had been torn from their roots.

‘I’ll poison the stumps in a bit,’ Bill said, but none of them had a response for him.

Alan loaded his bag into the boot; Jamie was slumped in the front seat. Beck just couldn’t imagine Leanne moving into this derelict-looking place, with gaps in the weatherboards and the roof going rusty. The frost was still heavy in the shade of the hedge, and she noticed a crack in one of the window panes.

‘Looking good, Bill. See you again somewhere down the track, I expect,’ Beck said, reaching in to give him a peck on the cheek.

‘Well, have a nice trip,’ he said, and gave her arms a strange little shake of approval.

Even though the boys started fighting about who was going to sit in the front, Beck felt immediately lighter once the hard surface of bitumen sounded under the tyres.

‘We’ll have a quick brekkie in Kippen, if anything’s open,’ she said, snapping a new tape into the console and singing along to the music while the boys sulked.

The shops were mostly shut, but the milk bar’s owner was sweeping the pathway, steam rising off his breath. She turned her head to reverse park on the country angle and noticed her sons looking away from one another, and from her.

‘Look, Alan, you can have the front seat later, alright?’ she said, tugging at the handbrake. ‘Who wants pancakes?’

She didn’t wait for them. That was always the best way to get her boys to move.

James ignored his brother showing off about getting permission to have a coffee, like Mum, and asked the waitress where the bathrooms were.

‘Down the street a bit,’ she said from the stove where their eggs were cooking, indicating a left turn out the door with her thumb.

Mum and Alan were laughing at something in a magazine, so James left the milk bar and turned up the laneway where a sign pointed into the public toilets.

Standing inside the only cubicle by a small urinal, James could hear the sounds of a big vehicle coming to a stop, a slammed door and heavy boots approaching. Pants were unzipped and the obligatory noises came from what sounded like a large man.

James zipped up, opened the door, and looked at the craggy-faced bloke as he passed. Outside, he strolled along the length of the huge trailer and looked back towards the milk bar, where his brother would be all smiles, and their mother on Alan’s side for the rest of the day.

Beck spent the first hour imagining Jamie was just sulking in a shop somewhere along the Kippen main street, probably watching her panic and laughing about it. But when Daniel pulled up outside the milk bar in his work car after another hour with no sign of Jamie, she knew they had a serious problem.

He sauntered in with no idea who’d been reported as missing and winked at the young woman behind the counter.

‘They turned up yet?’

The waitress shook her head.

‘Tourists, is it?’ he said. The waitress shook her head and looked at Daniel like he was stupid. ‘Where’s the mother?’ he added, changing tack by flipping open a notebook.

‘I’m over here,’ Beck said from the booth, hidden by high racks of bagged sweets.

Alan was slumped in his seat, back to his father, annoyed at having been made to search the street and the car park for his brother, so it wasn’t until Daniel rounded the corner of the counter that he recognised his family.

‘It’s Jamie who’s missing,’ she said.

Daniel’s response seemed to ripple up through his legs. He stopped moving, sighed and shook his head. ‘Sure he’s not just fooling around?’

‘We’ve searched,’ she said, biting out the words. She would take no accusations this time.

Daniel ignored her and addressed Alan. ‘Hey boyo, wanna ride in the car?’

He passed between his parents and made for the front seat of the police vehicle.

‘I’ll go question a few of the shop owners. You can wait here, or in the car. Whatever you like,’ he told her, before turning to the woman at the counter. ‘Make me a coffee would you, Love? I reckon by the time you’ve got it ready, we’ll have found him.’

Beck knew Daniel was pointing the finger right at her during the short drive from the milk bar to the police station, but she wouldn’t take it.

She had only baby photographs of Jamie in her purse. He said he had a more recent one at home, even though she pointed out it was still likely to be years out of date. He asked what their son was wearing, but she had to admit she couldn’t remember for sure. Even when he tried to confirm their son’s age, his tone suggested it was her fault neither of them could remember if Jamie was fifteen or sixteen. Alan quietly confirmed it for them as his father pulled up and rushed into his office ahead of them.

The last time she’d gotten out of a car here, the whole world had changed.

The day before Christmas, seven years before, she’d carried the small orange suitcase full of toddler’s clothes into this police station. The unworn shorts and T-shirts inside it were now evidence, and she’d realised how vain it had been to imagine that leaving the shop labels on meant it wasn’t really shoplifting.

Beck kept telling herself it was totally different now. Nobody could blame her for Jamie’s disappearance. Teenagers have minds of their own. She repeated it to herself until she found the way to use it as a crutch to get herself out of the police car.

Alan stirred and walked in her wake. As they approached the front door, she could hear Daniel on the phone. His familiar voice drew her through the old screen door into the shade of the reception area.

Her ex-husband replaced the receiver and drummed his fingers on it, like he was calculating who to call next. As his eyes caught sight of her, he plastered a smile across his jowls.

Despite his confidence, a bristle of panic passed through her. The last time she’d been in this room, Daniel’s face had been full of blind loyalty as his colleague, Senior Constable Kevin Bailey read out her rights.

The phone rang. Daniel snatched at it.

‘G’day Macca. Look, we’ve got a teenage truant who might turn up over your way. We’ve got his mother in here and she’d like him brought back quick smart so they can get back home to the city...’

When he turned back to look Beck in the eye, he wore the demeanour of a man in control, getting on with things, but he still hadn’t confessed the missing boy was one of his own.

‘Stay here for a bit,’ Daniel said, yanking his jacket off its hook behind the door. ‘I’m gonna make sure he’s not waiting for the midday train over at the station. Phone’s switched over to Wishaw; I’ll check for messages when I get back.’

Daniel took his time getting takeaway burgers and chips for lunch before he went back. They ate in near silence until he suggested that it might be an idea to let Alan lie down in the sick room.

‘Best thing for him,’ he said. ‘Probably got a bit of a hangover from the reception, and he’s still sore from the car crash. You can tell, despite the brave face.’

Beck nodded. The phone rang. Daniel strode back to his desk and wrenched the receiver up, but it was just someone calling in a car accident.

‘Let the tow-truck boys deal with it,’ he mumbled, then slammed the receiver down, making Beck jump. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Just a collision on the other side of Wishaw. No one hurt. Just wanted to clear the line fast.’

She nodded.

‘We’re supposed to report the exact nature of each conversation, especially if there’s a family member present,’ he said, flicking his pen in and out. ‘It’s supposed to stop silly ideas getting into their heads.’

His ex-wife looked at him this time and nodded a bit more enthusiastically.

‘Where are you going to stay tonight?’ he asked.

She shrugged.

‘Want me to try Doris and Bill again? Never know, he might have legged it over there, or turned up at home.’

She turned away.

‘I’ll try Bill and Doris again. We’re not supposed to ask too many questions, but take direct action. It’s less upsetting to the family.’

Beck started the uncontrollable swallowing as soon as she drove back over the cattle grid into Deloraine’s driveway and saw the dense avenue of dark trees, low sun throwing afternoon light between them.

Bill appeared from one of the sheds. Doris came running out. Yvonne stood in the doorway.

‘Hello again, young fella,’ Bill said, shaking Alan’s hand as her son got out. ‘It’s tea time, and I reckon Mother might have put together a cake or two.’

Beck had no barriers when her sister-in-law opened the car door. The terrible first night would begin soon enough, and she’d only just managed to hold things together to drive back to this place.

‘I don’t think I can get up,’ she managed to tell Doris, knowing it was too thin to hear.

‘What was that?’ Doris said.

‘I can’t get out!’ Beck shouted, forcing it to come.

Doris turned away and shouted for Bill.

Beck let her brother-in-law carry her back into the spare room, but she wished Doris hadn’t shut the door. The air felt too still. No breeze was blowing up from the creek where shadows were already spreading up the hill. The room felt like it was too small to hold her.

She turned away from the view towards the inside wall of the room where the oversized wardrobe stood silently in the near-dark. The murky flame pattern of the dark wood seemed about to swamp her.

Doris came back with a jug of iced water and a glass, lifted a thick white cloth from the tray and plastered it across Beck’s brow before she could utter any kind of protest. The cool liquid streamed into her eye sockets, down beside her nose, and across the upper ledge of her tense mouth.

‘We’ll get your shoes off in a minute.’

Doris pulled the cloth away and offered the water. Beck let it fill her gullet, sucking at it until streams coursed from her jowls past her ears and soaked into the pillow on each side.

‘Sorry,’ she said.

‘It won’t matter. You’ll feel better soon, and by then, there might be some news.’

But Beck knew immediately she shouldn’t be here. By this time they should have been only a couple of hours from home and she and the boys would be nearly back in their proper lives. Instead, she was being drowned in a country town by the pressure of water at her temples.

‘There, now,’ Doris said, trying to bring more water to Beck’s lips.

Beck slapped the glass away and its contents spilled down the side of the mahogany bedside table, as dull and absorbing as the wardrobe.

‘There’s no need to-’ Doris said, tutted, and tried to apply the cloth again.

Beck pushed it away.

Doris withdrew her arm. ‘Rebecca!’ she called, but Beck was trying to get her hands underneath her backside in order to sit up.

When she managed to get clear of Doris and draw breath, the air went deep and came back with panic. Out came a silent cry, followed by a profound shaking that could not be concealed.

Beck involuntarily reached for Doris, and the rattling went into her sister-in-law’s forearm like a jolt from an electric fence. The assault on her body was complete. Beck fell back onto the bed and tried to fold herself up, but it wasn’t big enough for the comfort she needed.

Another lost child!

She might have actually shouted it, because Doris retreated to the door.

‘Daniel rang while you were on your way over here,’ she said. He’s going to come and get Alan on his way home. I’ll make a bit of tea for us all.’

Beck couldn’t relax her neck muscles enough to respond. Clearing her throat only punctuated the noise that was coming out of her gullet.

‘Pardon?’ Doris said.

‘Don’t let him come in here!’ Beck moaned.

Daniel pulled up at Deloraine and the dogs started carrying on as he crossed to the screen door.

Doris stood in the kitchen, eyes brimming with confusion.

‘Knock, knock,’ Daniel said, entering.

‘Hi, Dad,’ Alan said quietly, standing on the terrace. ‘Where’s Jamie?’

‘Oh, he’ll turn up,’ Daniel replied. ‘You alright?’

His son nodded. Yvonne made a cautious appearance, but a look from Doris made her disappear back to her room.

‘How’s Beck?’ Daniel ventured.

Doris started shaking her head. She muttered something to Bill and disappeared into the hallway.

‘Sorry, mate,’ Bill said. ‘It’s best you stay away, just for now.’

Daniel replaced his hat. Alan stepped forward.

‘Stay here and look after your mum?’ Daniel said.

His son nodded. Daniel couldn’t look at his brother.

The whole way back to Kippen, Daniel imagined arriving solo at The Mulgas without either of his sons, in the place where his littlest boy had his life snuffed out in the water tank.

Nobody had ever said anything to him about that bloody tank. They’d struggled on with the old one for years, patched it up time and again. Even when the water went rusty, the new tank sat out the back of the machinery shed, empty. He’d never even tried to sell it. Who would want a water tank that a little boy had died in, for Christ’s sake?

If he were to go home now, that tank would sit watching him, the glint on the top edge stubbornly reflecting the light from the back door, like the eye of some creature that knew more than him and would never let on. He should roll it down the gully to the rubbish dump before it got blown up the hill during one of their big storms.

He parked in the field by the police station, crossed to the front verandah and flicked the station sign on. Set above the road, the dull light started attracting insects almost immediately. As he shut the screen door a gust of wind rushed through the gap between his arms and his sides, chilling the sweat in his armpits.

Daniel flicked the radio unit into life and twisted the dial around, listening to the chatter, hoping like hell that something would come back about Jamie; but they were having a quiet night out there. It was these dead bloody evenings that had led to the cutbacks that saw them sharing night duty rosters with the guys up the ranges at Wishaw, halfway to the coast. Someone was on the line dealing with an ambulance run for a heart patient. That was it.

He decided to leave the volume up, let the scramble of the radio annotate the evening and retrieved the rest of his half-eaten chips from the bin.

Beck had never let him resort to takeaways. She’d always brought him a covered tray before the sun went and too many roos were on the move. She’d hated him working late, and she’d hated him having to rely on fast food. Her photograph was no longer on the shared desk. It had taken him a good year after she’d gone to take it down, and even that was at the suggestion of his counsellor.

As he crossed to the drink machine, he remembered how he’d had to make excuses to get out the door on time at the end of his shift on the first Tuesday of every month, to race over the border for the only counselling service for hundreds of kilometres.

The fellas were full of ideas about him meeting some sheila on these little missions, and he’d let them have their fantasies. His counsellor was actually alright looking, he’d even asked her out because she’d looked a bit like Beck’s cousin from Neutral Bay. But she’d said it wasn’t appropriate.

Someone said ‘Kippen’ on the airwaves so Daniel slung himself around the counter and ramped up the volume.

‘Kippen here. Go ahead,’ he said, cleaning the muck out of the grooves of the speaker with his thumbnail as he waited.

‘Queensland here. No reports of missing teenage male north of the border. Office closing. Switching to national. Go ahead.’

Lazy shits. He made them wait a bit longer than usual to sign off. ‘Copy that. Over and out,’ he said.

‘Over and out,’ replied the voice he didn’t recognise, lighting up the needles for a moment before they fell dead.

He inhaled, but that only caught at the half-swallowed mouthful of cold chips at the side of his throat, which made him cough enough for water to force its way out of the corners of his eyes.

If only Beck had remembered whether Jamie was wearing some kind of outer layer, Daniel would be able to find some way of making a positive out of this. This whole thing could be character building for the little dickhead, if he was somewhere on the ranges, and if he was able to stay warm.

Daniel looked at the clock. Almost seven. A quick calculation told him that was about two hours to the twelve-hour mark; that would be halfway to really terrible statistics for finding his son.

Beck waited a good ten minutes in the darkened kitchen to make sure Doris wasn’t going to get up when she opened the fridge.

She’d pretended to be asleep at nine, then waited for all the lights to go out.

Hunger had come to her in a wave, and now that she was sure of being left alone, she pulled at the leftovers under the tightly-pinched foil, took the whole plate to the sink so the light from the fridge didn’t spill towards the end of the hallway, and started devouring sliced chicken.

A sound, far away. Beck froze, expecting to see Doris and being forced to endure one of her chats. In the silence she realised how thirsty she was. She already knew what noise the taps above a farmhouse sink would make with the rush of the water through the pipes, so she returned to the fridge, opened it a crack, and pulled at the closest bottle.

The soft drink was refreshing, and as she gulped it, Beck let the heavy door drift on its hinges until it shut with a sucking away of air.

As the light disappeared, a paper slid off the freezer door in front of her feet. Before the night absorbed it, she saw the words “Gold Coast” in big yellow letters, and realised the high-rise hotel in the bright picture was the place where Tony and Leanne were honeymooning.

SEVENTEEN
2005

James looked back along Kippen’s main street to check his father wasn’t following, then disappeared up the driveway to Tony’s front door. There was still time. If he hadn’t found the keys to Tony’s yacht in ten minutes, he’d get on the road to Wishaw airport.

But the key to the front door didn’t fit. Looking closer, he saw the lock was brand new.

James knew the fence would support him, but he was surprised at its height. In the panic of his escape the night before, he’d scaled it without even thinking.

He lifted himself over into the field and landed in tufts of high grass, then pushed through them along the fence. Getting back across made a bit of noise, so once he was over, James cast an eye around the caravan park, but this whole end of town was silent.

Grandma’s old wrought-iron plant stand was there, heaving with dead flowers by the sliding door, which was locked fast. The only other option that presented itself was the small bathroom window, high in the wall.

After two shoves James had broken the plastic lock worn by decades of sun. He positioned one foot on the hot water system and managed to squeeze himself halfway through the window, the frame cutting him across the belly. Then he dragged himself inside by grabbing the toilet cistern.

Grass stains and smears of dirt traced their way down the wall, so he took his shoes off and left them on the vinyl kitchen floor. The carpet was damp and there was a heavy scent of cleaning fluids. None of his footprints from the night prior were evident.

He found a Kippen Bowling Club keyring hanging by the microwave. One of the two keys was probably for a car, although James didn’t know what a typical boat key looked like. He compared the last one with the key still in his pocket. One of them was an exact match with the now redundant key to this flat. Home and car. No boat.

James pocketed them and starting pulling at drawers in the kitchenette. Nothing about the Home Free in there. He opened the door to the small front bedroom, stripped of its sheets, revealing the slight body-sized dent in the single mattress where Tony must have curled up each night.

Fuck, Tony. I’m sorry.

Within minutes he’d been through his cousin’s possessions. The bulk of the drawers contained only clothing. The built-in wardrobe stored grey pants and matching jackets, a row of stiff white shirts and a tail-coated dinner suit.

Voices coming from out the front startled him. He edged to the gap between the blind and the window. Just off the street, Dad, Mr Jones, and a woman were chatting by the gate. Mr Jones looked like a man forced into hearing someone out without really listening. Dad was rocking impatiently on his feet, itching to get going.

James only had time to retreat into the toilet before he heard the front door unlock.

‘You may as well leave me the key and just go back to the pub,’ Dad said. ‘I might be here a while.’

‘You haven’t told me what you’re looking for yet,’ Mr Jones said.

‘Police business,’ Dad said, his voice getting louder as he moved inside. ‘Can’t really say.’

‘Thought you were retired?’ Mr Jones said, putting a hopeful laugh at the end of it.

They stopped outside the toilet just as James remembered his shoes were still sitting in the kitchen.

‘That clock’s the only thing of any value,’ Mr Jones said.

Dad grunted. ‘What’s it worth, you reckon?’

‘You’d have to get an appraisal, but there’s not really enough to justify me getting an estate auctioneer in.’

‘I dunno if it still works,’ his father said. ‘Used to be a winder.’

They moved into the kitchen and started opening cupboards.

‘You looking for the motorbike keys again, is that it?’ Mr Jones said.

Dad laughed awkwardly and coughed. ‘It crossed my mind that we ought to have checked if Tony still had a bike. He sold his ute when he moved into town, but I don’t reckon the old car would have made it as far as the coast. So what was he using for long trips?’

‘Those vintage Fords are just the sort of thing people are starting to collect,’ Mr Jones said. ‘Even if they’re not in great working condition.’

‘It’s had a few dings over the years,’ Dad said. ‘Bill and I rolled it once, on my buck’s night.’

‘I remember,’ Mr Jones said, laughing. ‘I was in the back seat.’

They chuckled.

‘So, no motorbike keys anywhere that I can see,’ Mr Jones said. ‘Satisfied?’

James heard a drawer open and paperwork being pushed around.

‘Well, if I could find a receipt telling me he’d sold it,’ Dad said. ‘I suppose I could put the idea to rest.’

‘What are you gonna do, reopen the case?’ Mr Jones asked, scoffing at the idea.

Dad didn’t laugh. ‘It’s probably worth heading down to Dangar to take a look at the yacht.’

‘Well, I could do an appraisal on it for you,’ Mr Jones said.

‘Rightyo,’ Dad said. ‘Reckon Jamie’s back at the pub by now?’

‘Hire car’s still parked down there,’ Mr Jones replied. ‘Where’d he get to?’

‘I dunno, when he gets emotional, he goes off somewhere,’ Dad said. ‘What say you give me the key and I’ll come back once Jamie’s gone?’

‘I should come back too,’ Mr Jones said, moving past the toilet.

‘Don’t you trust your old mate?’ Dad said, also passing.

‘Ah, you cops wouldn’t know how to keep this town safe without me.’

‘Well don’t forget I know you overcharge on rent, and pay yourself a commission,’ Dad said. ‘I’m sure the tax man would be very interested in that.’

‘Nothing illegal about being the landlord and the agent, mate,’ Mr Jones said as they shuffled out.

There was more laughter and scoffing, then Dad spoke clearly.

‘Gimme the key, Andy.’

The door was locked, but it was impossible for James to tell if Mr Jones had done what he was told.

In any case, he moved quickly now because he’d remembered where to look. Grandpa Len had given James and Alan strict instructions about the winder of his old clock. You had to carefully stop the pendulum and reach behind it, where a small cavity allowed one finger inside, then deftly pull open a little door that released the scent of wood oil.

The hole proved a little small for James’s large finger, but he got it open. The familiar linseed smell permeated as he felt for the small, dense, metal winder, but out came a plastic tag with the clock winder and a key. It took him a moment to read the name on the tag — Home Free — written in Tony’s schoolboy hand.

James slid the winder into the clock face, turned it a few times, checked his watch and set the hands to the correct time: a quarter to three.

Heirloom holds key to dead man’s secret.

James had passed the Kippen swimming pool on foot and was halfway back to the pub when he saw his family gathered in the distance around the hire car.

Under the pub awning next to the vehicle, Uncle Bill and Aunty Doris were chatting to Dad and Mr Jones. Yvonne and Pete stood rocking their girls like a pair of rag dolls, laughing at something Bobby Jones was telling them.

Nothing got past Dad, so the scene of happy families wouldn’t stay that way for long. James had no way of telling if his father or Mr Jones had noticed the shoes sitting like the dog’s balls at the threshold of Tony’s kitchenette; but he knew their eyes would soon be all over Tony’s yacht moored at Dangar.

Considering the bland state of his cousin’s unit, which would now be rented out and all his clothes and bits of furniture donated to a local charity shop, James just couldn’t accept it told Tony’s story. The scene matched the life of a man who’d been working hard at the local supermarket, perhaps saving up for something, like another voyage.

He’d heard the stories about Tony’s boat trips in the odd letter or email from Yvonne. Sometimes the holidays lasted a year or more, and it all sounded very exotic. Now, after years of keeping Tony at the margins of his life, James wanted more than anything else to see inside the Home Free.

He stopped in the shade of the library verandah and checked his watch. It was coming up to three o’clock. Down the road, Mr Jones and his grandson were inspecting the wheels of the hire car, looking at it disapprovingly while Dad kicked one of the tyres.

While they were distracted, James crossed the road and walked past the court house into the small field beside the adjacent police station, full of police vehicles and used as the town’s unofficial car yard.

If things were as they’d always been, that paddock would give onto a laneway that ran all the way along the back of the shops right to the Wishaw Road. If James cut up that way and found somewhere to wait for a while out of sight, they might all be gone by the time he returned to his vehicle. The hire car company would probably charge him a whole extra day’s rental, and he’d have to leave a message with his editor about taking another day off, but so be it.

He slipped across the road into the long grass and noticed how the police cars sat on the same angle up against the station, spied the lane and had taken a few steps before recognising the vehicle parked under the willow trees right around the back. Tony’s old Ford.

James felt in the pocket for the keys that had been hanging in his cousin’s kitchenette. The back door of the cop shop was closed.

He had one chance. The car would need reversing before he’d be able to angle it towards the back lane. With any luck, if any of them noticed they’d assume it was Daniel Brandt going about family business, that’s if the car worked.

James walked towards the old car like he owned it. Technically, he did.

My whole estate.

A few bare branches trailed over the driver’s side of the pale green vehicle, and the roof appeared to have collected plenty of fallen leaves; but the key turned in the lock.

The door swung open with a tinny grind and James quickly got in. If anyone came out to challenge him, he’d say he was just checking something for his dad. Cops were usually easy to fob off if you showed even a hint of confidence.

But as he closed the door quietly, no one emerged from the back of the police station. He inserted the key and turned it halfway. Various lights glinted back at him through the dust on the dashboard, so James pushed himself back into the lumpy seat, covered by a musty sheepskin car-seat cover. The windscreen was filthy, but he’d deal with that once he was on the way to Wishaw.

When he turned the engine over, it coughed, but he pumped the accelerator and reached for the unfamiliar stick shift. It took two goes to put it into reverse, then a case of beginner’s luck saw James achieve his exit from the paddock quickly, quietly and efficiently before disappearing along the lane.

As he checked for anyone following, James spotted the slab of beer in the back.

Booze purchase throws suicide verdict into doubt.

EIGHTEEN
1985

James woke from interrupted sleep, head and shoulders squashed against one end of a hard seat. It was dark and rain was wetting his legs, which made his whereabouts confusing for a few seconds; but the light showing from the one streetlamp back along the lonely road reminded him where he was.

The rain suddenly started getting heavier, but there didn’t seem to be any leaks in the tin roof of the bus shelter. He pulled his arms inside his jumper, hugged himself in the timeless dark and waited for the feeling to come, the victory that he’d won over all of them.

But it didn’t.

On their way over the ranges, James had lied to the truckie about returning to an imaginary Gold Coast family after running away a week earlier. Davo seemed to buy the story in its entirety, then they’d sung along to a country music station on the radio, eaten chips and downed fizzy drinks, just like they’d all done with Dad when he was still a farmer and they were all together.

But then the rough-looking man had sworn at the news, particularly the bit about the government and ‘what they’re doing to farmers across this great country!’

James had gone quiet after that. They pulled over in a bushy place with nothing more than a dunny and a bin spewing its contents across a scar of red soil.

‘You’d better take a leak now, because I’m not stopping anymore,’ Davo had said.

The sun had been very low by the time Davo dropped him at the service station near the Gold Coast turn off. James had walked for an hour until finding this lonely shelter. There was an old glass-covered noticeboard, but when there’d been enough light, he hadn’t been able to read the faded words of the timetable, if it was a timetable.

There was a break in the showers at first light, so he started walking, using the road because the grass either side was sodden and his feet were already wet enough. The coastal air warmed quickly and steam started rising off the bitumen into clouds that blew out sideways whenever a car rushed past.

He found half of one of Davo’s chocolate bars in his shirt pocket, scoffed it, and washed his fingers in a puddle. Beyond, a field of cows shook their hides at the approaching sun. One or two of them looked at him as though he might be the farmer about to bring their feed.

Around the last bend in the road, a motel was coming to life. A woman wheeled a trolley along the upper balcony, dropping trays into the little doors and knocking as she did. Beyond, high-rise Gold Coast hotels began to emerge from the haze.

Somewhere in that place, he would find Tony.

By the time James reached the main strip the sun had burned away the mist and the sea was showing between motels, scraps of bright blue and stark white surf at the edges.

He also realised that the signs of every second motel sported palm trees and setting suns. If only he’d thought to take the leaflet off the fridge back at Deloraine.

The establishments became more complex closer to the centre of town. Here, families in beach gear were spilling out of large hotels, heading for the golden strip. James stuck to the edge of the footpaths in the shade of the long rows of pine trees and headed for the really big hotels.

He snuck into the first one, painted a rich salmon colour with brassy fittings. A man at the front desk glared at him, so he sat at the far end of the foyer underneath a row of plastic palm trees and watched.

Inside, young couples were making their way from the lifts to the desk, where they were treated with a bright demeanour by the staff. He heard a few new words: concierge, lobby, bellboys, and observed how they worked for their tips and seemed to have a place in this world of guests and giving service.

After less than ten minutes, James decided what he needed was a story.

It took him a while to remove the flowers from the garden by the water feature in front of the Dolphin Haven without being seen, and had to dig a sheet of plastic out of one of the skips down the side of the Captain’s Trove eatery, but soon James had a passable bunch of flowers for a pair of newlyweds.

He easily assumed the demeanour of the confused delivery boy. He even invented an imaginary annoyed mother who was waiting outside in an imaginary van, angry at him for losing the imaginary delivery note, which was the imaginary reason they were trying all the hotel foyers looking for actual newlyweds, Mr and Mrs Tony Brandt.

When the first bellboy put his head down and went through the guest notes, James knew it was just a matter of time.

NINETEEN
2005

James realised he’d left two trays of unwrapped sandwiches from Tony’s wake in the boot of the hire car; but as Kippen’s church spire and silos diminished in the rear-vision mirror, he shrugged and laughed to himself.

Tony’s car was clunky, and, if the gauge was accurate, the fuel tank was low, but James didn’t care. He wanted to cover some ground, and the long, straight road allowed him to accelerate wildly towards Wishaw, where he’d refuel.

Farmland quickly surrendered to woody ridges with old gum trees as neglected as pensioners. A couple of dry creek beds took the Ford into parched gullies, where long shadows were already spreading.

He was cresting a hill, the road turning to the right, when the mob of roos descended.

One tumbled across the bonnet, tail clipping the windscreen before it shot into the long grass. Another switched back insanely to avoid a collision, sending James into a long skid to the right. The carton of beer slammed into the back of the front seats, throwing some of its contents against the dashboard. He over-adjusted steering to the left, where another roo dodged him and leaped into the ditch at the side of the road, before he brought the car to a standstill at an awkward angle in the middle of the road, facing back towards Kippen. At least one of the beers had broken open and was dribbling onto the carpet.

James pulled the bottle free as he got out to inspect, nostrils immediately filling with the scent of burned rubber. The surface of the bonnet was buckled, and there was a diagonal crack across the windscreen.

Shadows from roadside trees covered him and the car, but the roos were in the full blaze of the sun, settled after the panic and seeking out fresh shoots of grass. A large male lifted itself and flicked its ears.

A car suddenly rounded the bend and had to swerve to avoid James. Its penetrating skid seemed to predict another collision, but it shuddered to a halt just behind the Ford.

The roos spooked and followed the sun, which made James laugh and raise a hand, but the woman driving the small white car was in no mood for jokes.

‘What the fuck are you doing?’ she shouted. It was Cassie from the real estate office, and she looked really pissed off. ‘I got my kids in here!’

He saw faces in the back of the small car, and a spooked-looking teenager in the passenger seat. When he didn’t answer straight away, James realised the sun at his back was in Cassie’s eyes and he was holding a beer next to a Ford parked in the middle of the road. She shook her head and reversed out of the way.

‘I don’t know,’ he said.

‘Jamie?’ she asked, jerking the handbrake on. ‘Wait here,’ she barked to the kids, and got out.

‘I’m really sorry.’

Cassie started scanning the fields over his shoulder. ‘That mob of roos get ya?’ she said.

He nodded. She dropped to her knees and started checking under the Ford.

‘Nothing’s leaking,’ Cassie said, getting up. ‘You going back into town?’

James shook his head.

‘You should know better than to swerve to avoid a bloody roo, mate,’ she said. ‘Turn her over, see if she’s still working.’

James dropped the bottle, let it roll into the grass and got back into the car. As he turned the key and the engine came to life, Cassie approached the driver’s window.

‘Mr Jones called me about you,’ she said. ‘Told me to call him quick if I saw you on my way into Kippen.’

James shrugged. Cassie leaned in closer.

‘When people are after you, best thing to do is just keep running,’ she said.

He nodded. She clapped her hand flat on the side of the car like she was encouraging a horse. He turned the wheel, accelerated in a slow circle through the high grass until he was heading for Wishaw, and watched her laughing in the rear-vision mirror as she disappeared around the bend.

As James reached the top of the ranges the road started meandering through tracts of bush split by shafts of late-afternoon light. Still, there was absolutely no sign of Wishaw, just endless trees.

Traversing the highest country, where hints of mist gathered around the peaks, every view drew his eyes upward and he was pretty sure he spied his airplane heading for the city long before the outskirts of town finally showed.

James placed no alternative version of himself up there in his allocated seat, settling back to sleep his way back to the big city. That lie was for his father to imagine. Instead, James pulled into the fuel stop past the Wishaw crossroads.

He positioned the Ford on the wrong side to fill up, so had to reach the hose awkwardly over the roof where the pump just reached the hole. The old car took on more than sixty dollars of fuel. He grabbed a bag of chips, paid, and pointed the car towards the coast.

As the sun set behind him, the highest ranges welcomed him into upland valleys exposed to the waxing moon. It was a lonely journey, accompanied only by the sense of other people in low-set farms and cabins, closed up by the side of the road.

Once all signs of settlement abandoned him to dense pine forests, James flicked the radio on. There was a live broadcast of a symphony from Sydney, or a debate about climate change, so he settled for the company of the voices. They dulled the sense of isolation until the transmission started to falter.

He barely remembered hitching a ride along this route with the truckie all those years ago, but he knew the road eventually descended to the coast. So James took it as a sign of progress when the road began to drop and glimpses of town lights showed through the stands of tall timbers.

The excitement leaped out. ‘Yes!’ he shouted, pumping his fist.

Taking the tight bends in the old car forced James to focus for the next half-hour, but the sense of accomplishment was unbridled. There was absolutely no way he was going to stop somewhere and go through the motions of naming the feelings.

‘Hey, counsellor!’ he yelled at the view. ‘Another reason this trip home is the same as my last trip home. I’m on the run again!’

But not long after the radio signal returned, the vibrations of his mobile in his pocket gave James a reality check. Dylan would be worried by now, but he wouldn’t stop and check his messages just yet.

Dad and Mr Jones might be on his heels tonight, or they might come over in the morning to start picking over Tony’s yacht. James wanted to get there first. Whenever journos spotted evidence before the cops got to the scene, the truth was usually laid bare much faster.

TWENTY
1985

Daniel couldn’t work out if the ringing was inside his head or not. As his feet found the floor, he accidentally kicked a row of beer bottles across the verandah. They skittled into the garden and frightened off the cockatoos that were grazing on the seed heads of his overgrown lawn.

Then he remembered. The beers had been the answer to arriving late in the night to the house painfully empty of any of his children. No children meant no wife. He had a terrible feeling that he needed to do something, but first he had to shake the disturbed laughing of birds and answer what he now recognised was the telephone.

‘Dan?’ the male voice said as he lifted the receiver and held it to his ear.

‘Yep?’

‘Macca here. Listen, it’s about the missing boy. We’ve just had a report of a sighting from a truckie who called it in from the border before midnight.’

‘Right,’ Daniel said. ‘I’ll go inform the mother.’

Beck felt as though a clear stream was flowing out of her mouth, leaving the kind of scent you pick up near a drain. She was sure her boys were down below, playing in a series of pools, but with the water pouring out of her mouth she couldn’t make herself heard. If she tried to yell, all that came from inside her was a gurgling.

As she woke with a start, her tongue dry apart from the line of saliva that ran down her cheek onto the pillow, the end of her cry was still escaping from her mouth.

Something had happened. One of the dogs was whimpering. Sunlight streamed through the French doors from the verandah, but the angle of it told her that it was still early. On the far side of the dark field, mist was rising over The Mulgas, drawing her old home out of the shadows, and she remembered Jamie.

Beck knew by experience that it was going to be a long, long time before she’d have this solitude again, so she pulled her heels up towards her bottom and twisted the sheet against her chin to wipe the spit away. Her neck was stiff, so she stretched it back and into the pile of pillows at her head, which knocked two of them off and revealed something crinkly behind her neck.

She reached for it and found the leaflet for the hotel where Leanne and Tony had gone on their honeymoon.

Fast and incomplete visions of her own honeymoon came to mind. Daniel on the beach at Norfolk Island, caressing her leg, that boyish look on his face, the same look he’d give her for the next decade whenever he’d wanted sex.

In the distance, Yvonne let out one of her sharp, excited sounds, then a lower voice was added to the mix: Daniel.

Beck got up and dug around for the robe. It had spilled onto the floor and now looked as though it was reaching out to the closed door, arms raised in a panic. She broke its pose by picking it up and pulling it around her, and went for the door.

The deep tones of Constable Brandt sounded underneath the noise of Doris clattering in the pantry, so she crept up the other way, where Tony’s bedroom door was ajar. Alan wasn’t in there, so she went further to where the hallway door gave onto the enclosed verandah.

One of his long arms trailed from the side of the wicker lounge onto the floorboards, and one foot was raised at the other end. Both her boys were almost as tall as their father, but Alan had been shooting up even more these past few months.

His face was buried in the pillow, and his back heaved up and down with the deep breaths of heavy sleep. A trail of sheets and clothing ran from Tony’s room through to the verandah, so Beck started picking things up.

Straightening bed linen by herself at the far end of a farmhouse in the early golden light reminded her of the quiet times over at The Mulgas. If she didn’t disturb the sound of innocent breakfast coming from the kitchen, then nothing could be wrong.

Daniel inhaled the welcome scent of the coffees Doris put down in front of him and Bill at the kitchen table.

‘Why the Gold Coast?’ she asked.

‘Well, that’s where Tony and Leanne have gone,’ Daniel said, slurping at his cup.

Doris reached for the kettle to make herself another pot of tea. ‘But you don’t know for sure it’s him.’

‘Nine times out of ten, these things are right. Tony’s gone over to the coast, and Jamie would’ve known about that,’ Daniel said.

‘Yeah, I suppose,’ Bill said vacantly.

Doris was fussing around at the fridge as per usual, like she didn’t want to turn around and reveal a hint of anything in her face.

‘What do you reckon, Doris?’ Daniel asked.

She took her time, shrugged as she crossed back to the table, and retreated to the bloody fridge again.

‘We all spoke about it, of course,’ she said. ‘Everyone goes to the Gold Coast for their honeymoon, or Norfolk Island.’

‘Know where they’re staying?’ Daniel asked.

She slammed the fridge.

‘Where’s that flyer love?’ Bill offered.

‘What flyer?’

‘We had a flyer around, of the hotel where they’re staying,’ Bill said.

‘I’d hate to bother them with any of this,’ Doris said, fast and high. ‘We weren’t planning on dropping in on the newlyweds, or writing them a letter, you know?’

‘I reckon the best thing is to get over there,’ Daniel said. ‘We don’t want to scare him off, if it is him. Kids can sometimes...’ he looked at his niece reading on the terrace and dropped his voice. ‘Well, they can keep going, if you don’t bother going to get them.’

‘Don’t be surprised if Rebecca’s not how you might expect,’ Doris said.

Daniel noted the hint of unkindness. Something had happened overnight, but it could wait. ‘Would you look after Alan, if I get her to come with me today?’

‘Of course,’ Doris said.

Daniel waited until she looked him in the eye, and he held her gaze until she felt the need to repeat it, just as Beck appeared, fully-dressed, in the hallway door.

‘I’m ready,’ she said, briefly looking Daniel in the eye. Her hair was a mess.

‘We can go across to Wishaw, then up the coast. Roads are better that way,’ he said, seeing her calculate directions in her head. ‘Tell Alan we’ll be back tonight.’

Bill nodded. ‘Number one son can come out with me. I could do with a hand, with Tony away.’

‘Oh Bill, don’t go on,’ Doris said. ‘Let him sleep in, poor kid, all this fuss and nonsense about nothing.’

Beck went straight outside. Daniel grabbed his keys and followed her before the screen door could slam shut.

Beck watched Deloraine disappear in the side mirror of Daniel’s car. He jiggled his leg against the gearstick and cleared his throat all the way to the creek. When they turned onto the main road he shifted his backside, pulled the seat belt across his bulky frame, and looked at her.

‘We’re gonna find him, you know that?’

She couldn’t take in his face, so just nodded into her lap.

They’d searched for a missing child once before. The car moving towards any reliable report of Jamie was all she needed.

He sighed and flicked the radio on.

‘We’ll stop in at the Wishaw station and see if there’s been any more news.’

The weather report blared out. Rain was forecast from the Western Slopes to the Border Ranges. The newsreader made a stale and hopeful joke about it being enough to fill everyone’s tanks.

Beck smiled and nodded at the policeman behind the counter at Wishaw when he gave them the latest news, but only because she wanted him and Daniel to stop looking at her.

A teenage boy had been seen getting out of a truck heading north at a service station over the border. The same kid had been spotted shoplifting, dropped the goods and run off when the woman at the till had questioned him. Her description was a good match for Jamie.

‘Thanks,’ she said, and went for the car while Daniel wasted more time chatting with his colleague about cop bullshit.

Despite the hopeful news, the endless forested ridges of the ranges did nothing to improve her agitated state. She kicked the interior of the footwell so intensely that Daniel reached for her leg and stopped her. She flicked his hand away, folded her arms across herself and just watched the view.

Every time Daniel bashed the gearstick with a closed fist she couldn’t help wincing. When he wasn’t doing that, he was punishing the car into negotiating the bends, and none of her purposefully heavy sighs seemed to mean anything at all to him.

Daniel hoped Beck wouldn’t ask him what Macca had reminded him of at the Wishaw police station, about the odds of a missing person running further after attempting any sort of crime. There were plenty of options for Jamie to escape the Gold Coast before they got to him, if it was him, and if he was intent on giving them the slip.

Little bugger, Daniel thought, giving a couple of disappointed exhalations and accelerating past the queue of caravans waiting to turn onto the Dangar Road, before the water could form at the corner of his eyes.

The increased speed pulled both of them back.

Beck didn’t stir, but her head fell forward, so he looked and noticed she was asleep. Daniel dragged a towel out of his footy bag on the back seat and gently tucked it against the window, over her seatbelt, in time for her to come to rest on it. She shifted, noticing the comfort.

At the border, he was determined to stick to the speed limit. The cops up here wouldn’t be forgiving, and Beck’s criminal record would probably show up on the police system. He’d have to leave the Queensland boys out of it, just find Jamie and get back home.

As Daniel waved to the guy in the quarantine booth, he wondered if the fellow assumed they were happily married and heading off for a holiday. He hoped so.

TWENTY-ONE
2005

It was almost eight when the roadhouse on the coastal bypass came into view. James pulled in, parked Tony’s Ford and went in for something to eat.

The waitresses were already cleaning out the servery and prepping for the breakfast shift, so he bought another bag of chips.

Back in the car, he ate them so quickly they scraped his throat, so he twisted one of Tony’s beers open and washed it all down. Laughter in the distance drew his attention, and he watched a truckie hoist himself back into his rig as one of the waitresses was emptying a bucket outside the back door.

The truck pulled away and the roadhouse lights flicked off, leaving only illuminated petrol prices and a solo light shining above the public toilets by the shadowy creekside.

Just minutes after both waitresses took to the one car and headed off, the utes and cars started to slow down off the main road. Some of them emptied and people went through the motions of refuelling. Now and then, a man would make the journey to the toilet. Some checked to see if anyone was watching, others kept it quick.

James downed more beer, burped and wiped the salt off his face. By then, he needed a piss. Before he could move, a four-wheel drive pulled off the road and made a slow circuit of the wide car park, then came to a stop between Tony’s car and the toilets.

All was still for a few minutes. The four-wheel drive, the two utes by the back door of the roadhouse, the van closer to the road, and Tony’s Ford may as well have been just empty vehicles containing nothing but fuel.

The movement through the trees was so sudden it drew James’s attention. A guy had emerged from the four-wheel drive. James followed the glowing pin of his cigarette through the shadows, then the light above the toilets showed his white shirt on a body that looked good, before he passed into the darkened door.

James cleaned his greasy fingers on the seat cover, watching as another guy emerged from the van and strode to the toilets.

He would just go in for a piss. He needed one, after all. If they were doing anything, they’d stop and give that guilty look at the urinal, that pretend stance, eyes on the wall or the ceiling.

Stepping quickly out of the car to prevent too much light falling on him, James had only taken a few steps towards the toilets when the guy in the white shirt returned to his car. Trapped, James turned and walked back towards the Ford.

‘Hey,’ the guy said, low but direct.

James kept walking, but as he turned past the bonnet the white shirt quickly closed in. The interior light revealed everything for a moment, then James was inside again, before the knocking started on the passenger window.

‘Hey!’ the guy repeated. He looked like a politician, or a bank manager. ‘You know me, remember?’ he added, pointing to his angular face.

James reached to press the door lock down, but realised too late the guy was already half in.

‘Haven’t seen you for a while, mate,’ he said, and turned to look at James, while one broad hand reached across James’s thigh.

‘I’m not him...’ James said.

‘What?’ the guy said.

‘I’ve got to go.’

‘Come on,’ the guy said, as James slid the key into the ignition and turned it, intending to drive away regardless.

‘Get out,’ James said.

A river of disappointed expletives flowed out of the suddenly ugly mouth, making James wince as though he’d been splashed by vomit.

The guy got out of Tony’s car, slammed the door and strode to his vehicle. He attacked his own door and ignition until the four-wheel drive — its child carrier visible in silhouette in the back seat — was gone.

A lonely figure watched from the doorway of the toilets in the distance.

James reversed and swung the Ford back onto the road. The lights at the roundabout filled him with a temporary sense of safety, until he passed underneath the railway bridge and accelerated into the darkness.

After another kilometre, he turned off the highway at the sign to Dangar and the coast, then started looking for somewhere to pull over and empty his bladder.

I’m not him.

TWENTY-TWO
1985

James noticed how people sat on their towels in the little booths by the hotel pool, slightly out of sight from the main lounge and the restaurant. During the quiet time after lunch, he took his place in one of them.

In the harsh light of a high sun, dark places revealed themselves. The shadows underneath the baking benches, the space behind the changeroom doorways, and the deep hedge of hibiscus. Now and again, people would come and go on their way into the iridescent water, or leave it for the seclusion of the rooms in the hotel tower set against the crisp sheen of a cloudless sky.

Somewhere in this playground, Tony was waiting to come down for a swim.

The thought of his cousin in nothing but skimpy swimming togs made James’s legs tingle. Perhaps Tony would emerge from the change rooms and wade slowly into the pool? Or would he be coming straight down from his room? Would Leanne be with him?

Just then, the sun moved a little across the top of the low wall which divided James’s vantage point from the rest, and the heat hit him, sending beads of sweat across both temples. A woman glided in the water wearing a red swimming cap. He imagined the coolness on her skin as her arm struck the surface, then she fell through the light that reflected upwards into Jamie’s eyes. His pants clung to his legs.

After she’d swum back the other way, he slipped out of his clothes and into the water in just his underpants. The silence quickly engulfed him as he descended, the dust and angst of a night on the road in his wake.

He was a good swimmer. He could hold his breath longer underwater than any of the older boys at school. Ever since summer swimming lessons at the Kippen town pool, the smell of water had reminded James of his little brother. Here was the weightlessness that Gregory could never have felt, feet still on the earth, face in the inch or two of water that snuffed out his life.

Beck woke just as the farmlands were giving way to long patches of coastal rainforest. The thud of windscreen wipers had roused her.

Daniel was silent, only turning to her every few minutes to offer a cautious smile. As they reached a series of large junctions, he shifted and muttered that they were nearly there.

The rain cleared as they reached the first outer suburbs. Despite the signs of what had been a clear, hot day, deep pools of rainwater gathered wherever there was a low place.

Neon motel signs flickered into life. Beck rubbed her eyes and stretched the stiffness out of her neck.

‘I’d kill for a cuppa,’ she said, wanting something to take the dryness of vulnerable sleep out of her.

‘We need fuel anyway,’ he said, and pulled into the first service station.

When she tried to give him some money, he said he wasn’t going to let her pay for either the tea or the fuel, and instead of telling her to make it quick, like he’d always done, he said to order whatever she wanted.

‘Just dig out that flyer of the place where Tony and Leanne are staying,’ he added.

She nodded, ordered, and retreated to the table beneath a terrible mural advertising the sun and fun of a holiday at the coast. Wrapped around itself, shoved into the inner pocket of her sling bag, Beck found the leaflet. It was the colours of sunset, with a tower rising from a cluster of palms, proudly promoting the Sunset Grove as “The Gold Coast’s Finest Destination for Honeymooners”.

Her tea was ready. Daniel smiled at her as he paid, brought it across to her, and went outside to clean the windscreens just like he always did, leaving her to wrangle the boys.

Only there were no boys. She watched Daniel through the rain-flecked glass. He was going about his tasks with a quiet confidence she’d not seen for many years.

When the job was done, she noticed herself smiling as he smoothed down the ends of his light jacket, and she laughed a little as his hands searched for his car keys by patting down his pockets and his bum, and the way he shook his head when he finally found them inside the chest of the jacket.

‘You’ll enjoy the Sunset Grove,’ the waitress said, clearing a table by the door and following Beck’s gaze towards Daniel. ‘You’ve got a nice one there, love.’

Beck looked up and stifled a laugh, shrugged and nodded. ‘Is there a ladies’ room?’

‘Around the side,’ the woman said. ‘You’ll need this,’ she added, and retrieved the orange plastic pineapple the size of a brick with a key hanging from it.

In the stark light of the single bulb, Beck avoided looking at herself in the tiny mirror and sat to pee. Her exposed clothes sent the smell of sweat up into her nostrils. She flushed, washed her hands and used a handful of towelettes to wipe out her armpits. With two over-confident swipes, she replaced the colour on her lips.

Back on the road, Daniel was patting his knee contentedly with the flyer.

‘It’ll be on the main strip, this place. We can start by dropping in on the honeymooners, see if they’ve got any light to shed on the case of our missing kid,’ he said.

It made the whole thing solvable, all in a moment. Beck smiled to let him know it made her feel a bit better, then turned to look out her window. Couples were on the move everywhere, interspersed with well-scrubbed, sunburned children, filling the brightly-lit restaurants.

The words sprang out of her like water: ‘Hey, how did you know about the flyer?’

He didn’t answer immediately, so she looked at him.

‘Cop secret,’ he said, and playfully poked his finger into her thigh while he changed gears, just like he’d done when they’d started dating.

Beck thought about asking after the mystery girlfriend who hadn’t shown up at the wedding. At every motel sign came a chance to bring it up in conversation, but she didn’t.

After a few more blocks, Daniel cleared his throat.

‘When we find him, best not to run up to him straight away, Love,’ he said, and looked at her like he was making a confession. ‘We don’t want to spook him.’

Beck didn’t want to say it out loud. She’d given up on pointing out anything to Daniel years ago, but what had clearly spooked their second son was the idea of being shunted off to boarding school against his will.

James had stationed himself on a deckchair underneath the landing between two staircases. It had been a sun trap all afternoon, concealed from the foyer by a tall bank of flowers. Here, he’d dried his undies and watched people passing, oblivious to his presence.

He’d also consumed a few half-eaten sandwiches before the waiters could collect the plates, and most of a crumbed fish and chips abandoned when a child had a tantrum and was dragged away by his mother.

As the afternoon wore on, the leftover drinks he helped himself to went from fizzy water and lemonade to the dregs of alcohol, while the sounds went from poolside games to the music that drifted in from the restaurant.

Consequently, when Tony and Leanne descended hand-in-hand down the very stairs under which James lay, he had the same sense of being not quite there that he’d felt at their wedding two days ago.

Tony was wearing a cream safari suit with a red shirt that looked new, showing up his bronzed neck and face. Leanne was in a flowing green dress, her skin the lightest shade of pink. They crossed the marble-covered landing and floated down to pool level, bodies obscured by the bright flowers that matched the colour of Tony’s shirt.

Through the windows of the pool terrace, James noticed Tony’s hand go to his wife’s back and guide her as they reached the threshold of the restaurant, where couples were laughing to upbeat live music.

A waiter in a white jacket seated them at a table with a view of the pool. Leanne smiled as her chair was tucked in behind her. Tony held the menu up and decided for them, before he pressed her hands in his. Leanne seemed aglow. It reminded James of how he’d felt after a night in Tony’s arms, only she’d had more than one night by now.

The waiter returned with a beer and a tall, multi-coloured cocktail for Leanne, who smiled and sipped, moving her gaze between Tony and the musicians.

A blonde singer in a dark velvet dress introduced herself before launching into pop songs James recognised from the radio. Her voice filled the restaurant and the poolside terrace, until he found his foot tapping on the deckchair. Some couples were already dancing, and the singer encouraged them with jokes that led, each time, into another romantic song.

A crowd of hotel guests gathered at the doorway and started obliterating James’s view of Tony, so he crept past the flowerbed into the shadows where the deck chairs had been pulled aside by the pool attendants. From there, Leanne was hidden by the column behind their table.

A myriad of tropical reflections played across Tony’s face, and he gulped as the singer started another song. Perhaps Leanne had suggested a dance? He turned his body but kept his gaze on Leanne, and started some animated talk, pulling faces.

Suddenly, Tony’s gaze went up and he turned his head. Leanne must be going to the bathroom. A couple moved through the door onto the pool terrace, where they melted into one another with the rising lyrics of a new song. Others followed, taking over the space with their languid confidence.

Tony’s face was wide-eyed, like he didn’t know where to look.

James made his move as the singer went into a long, full-throated note with a broad confidence that drew every eye. She was so euphoric at her achievement that she gave the rest of her smile to James as he entered the room.

He turned to find his cousin’s table. Tony gave him a momentary look that revealed nothing, and then peered down at his drink as though it was the only place to hide. As he approached, James suddenly felt he might have gotten it all wrong, that what he’d experienced was just a hopeful dream imagined by a needy boy who’d shared a room with his older cousin. But when Tony looked back, his thick neck pulsated around a slow swallow.

James’s own throat had gone tense as he hovered. He felt a sudden need to plant his fingertips on the very edge of the table so that he didn’t keel over, just as every trace of alcohol and junk food rose out of his body in a wave.

Tony watched with horror as the singer looked back at the band, pulled a face, then stepped off the low stage to help.

‘He must’ve eaten something that doesn’t agree with him,’ she said, then laughed as she grabbed the edge of the tablecloth, holding it to the side of Jamie’s head while the kid vomited into its folds.

The group at the next table made an awful, offended sound. Tony heard liquid hitting fabric and the unmistakeable back-of-the-throat retch.

The singer turned away. Tony caught a glimpse of her face, like Mother when she couldn’t decide if she was angry or sympathetic.

Suddenly a waiter dropped to his knees, mopping-up dark vomit from Leanne’s chair. Another approached with a fresh tablecloth and covered most of Jamie and the chair. The singer started brushing bits of vomit off her front, now laughing angrily, unable to do much with more sick on her hands.

‘Aw, bloody hell kid,’ she said.

‘We’ll have this cleared up in a moment,’ one of the waiters announced.

Tony noticed one sleeve of his new suit had copped a spray of spew. Below it, Jamie’s face was staring up at him, imploring, so he knelt and started patting his cousin’s hand.

‘It’s alright, mate,’ Tony said, not wanting to look at his cousin.

There were bubbles at the corners of Jamie’s mouth, but he was looking past Tony with a gaze so compelling it made Tony turn and look too, straight into Leanne’s eyes.

Shit!

James tried to avoid all the hands pulling at him. When they held him, he tried telling them to just leave him alone, but the sound that tumbled out of his mouth was an insensible groan. The singer looked down at him sympathetically, but James noticed the way she frowned whenever she thought he wasn’t looking.

‘You’re going to be alright,’ Tony kept saying.

Leanne suddenly appeared in the row of faces above James, asking why he was here. Nobody gave her an answer, they all just started trying to lift him, but he felt that if they managed, worse would come out of his guts.

Deeper than that feeling was the realisation that if they took him away, Tony would be taken away too. After coming all this way he didn’t want to be separated, so James reached for his cousin’s shirt collar, twisted the red fabric into a knot, and held tight.

‘Alright love, you’re in good hands now,’ the singer said, patting his arm and checking her dress for more signs of spew. She signalled to the band and clicked her fingers to count them in. Just before the light hit her face, as she searched for the microphone at her feet, she lifted her features and encouraged applause.

‘Come on ladies and gents, give it up for the kid! He’s having his first big night out on the town!’.

The music swelled while Tony and one of the waiters lifted him, but James ached to be out of the way. Leanne trailed them into the darker foyer.

‘Stay here, love,’ Tony said to her, and she smiled sweetly as they carried James towards an open door from which light spilled.

James closed his eyes as Tony and the waiter dropped him roughly onto a vinyl-covered bed against the far wall of the narrow room.

‘I should see if the boy needs anything,’ the waiter said, turning to the first-aid cupboard.

‘I’ll do it,’ Tony said. ‘You can go now,’ he added, and the waiter made a confused sound as Tony shoved him out and forced the door shut until the lock clicked. Through the wall, the singer’s uplifting chorus continued.

It was vaguely romantic. James whispered: ‘Come here.’

Tony didn’t react immediately, so James opened his eyes and saw his cousin leaning face-first against the closed door. At first it was almost imperceptible, but soon Tony started grinding his forehead like he was in pain.

‘What the fuck are you doing here, Jamie?’ he said.

James noticed his cousin’s back filled the suit jacket to its limit, his big shoulders heaving and collapsing. ‘I came to see you,’ he said.

‘Do your parents know where you are?’

‘I don’t care.’

‘Listen, you can’t just-’ Tony said.

But James cut him off. ‘If you tell them where I am, I’ll tell everyone what happened.’

That stopped him. Tony turned and gave a complacent look. ‘You’re not going to tell anyone, are you,’ he said, but it was not a question.

James shook his head and opened his arms. ‘Come here,’ he whispered.

‘We’re gonna have to call your mum and dad, and we can just say that you and I got chatting about the Gold Coast.’

James nodded.

‘You got it into your head that you’d just come over.’

‘I hitchhiked,’ James said, arms still reaching towards his cousin.

Tony didn’t move, but he looked James in the eye properly for the first time since they’d lain together in the early light of the wedding day. Noticing the glistening in his cousin’s eyes, and remembering the harsh journey back to that gaze, James let out a sob.

‘Don’t cry, Jamie, it’s okay...’ Tony said, but the tears came heavily and James’s arms bounced onto his thighs.

‘No, it’s not,’ James said, and ran the back of his wrist across his face, sensing the obvious bulge of his penis and the harsh light draining him of anything that Tony might have found attractive. ‘I need a hug,’ he added.

But Tony had noticed the flecks of spew on his jacket. He hung it carefully on the back of the one chair and sat. The tight, bright shirt made him look gorgeous.

‘You’ve got to put it out of your head, Jamie. You just put it out, and then you get through the day, and if you find that it comes up, well, you just do something about it, you know...’

His cousin’s hands hung in the air between his knees, trembling like the end of his fringe, which hid the rest of his face. Only a silver chain shone out of the darkness beneath his neck.

‘Come here...’ James whispered.

Tony moved fast and took the boy’s hand.

James closed his eyes, waiting for the rest of Tony to lean onto him, but the hand just squeezed, and squeezed.

‘You’re hurting me,’ James said, trying to wrench free.

Tony formed a fist and pulled his arm back. ‘If you tell Leanne, or anyone...’ he said, letting his fist hang in the light.

TWENTY-THREE
2005

As soon as James found a place where Tony’s Ford would fit safely by the side of the road, he stopped, got out, ripped open his trousers in desperation and pissed into the deep ditch by the fence.

But the sound of his stream startled him. It was not a ditch he was straddling, but a watercourse sliding past in the near total darkness. Another step and he’d have fallen forward over the tall stands of grass that screened the river from the road.

This long night carried a scent of risk. A stolen vehicle. A lustful stranger in his car. A near silent pitch into dark water. James exhaled and pushed against his pubic bone to empty his bladder, zipped up, and backed carefully away from the edge, feeling the water seep through the sides of his shoes.

Back in the glow of the car radio, he reached for his phone. Dylan would still be up. Flicking it open he saw the large number of texts, most of them from his boyfriend, the last only minutes before. Further down the list, they started getting desperate.

Where are you? Where are you? Where are you?

There were two earlier calls from his father, and three from the same unidentified number, probably the car hire company.

He looked at the clock on the dash. It was approaching nine o’clock. Dylan would be pissed off. He hit the number and waited. Four rings, then four more. His partner was making him wait.

‘Hello,’ came Dylan’s voice, eventually. ‘Where are you?’

‘I dunno, nearly at the coast,’ James said. There was pop music playing in the background. ‘Where are you?’

‘Out. I went to the airport and waited for three hours,’ Dylan said, coldly.

‘I missed my flight.’

‘You did,’ Dylan said. ‘How was the funeral?’

‘Well, it-’

‘Actually, I heard all about it from your aunt. I found her number and called a few hours ago. She couldn’t tell me what you were up to. She didn’t even know who I was.’

‘Listen, there’s stuff I have to do, at the coast.’

‘Say again,’ Dylan said, the music pulsating.

‘Are you in the city, or near home?’

‘Well, I thought I may as well hit the town, with my wayward boyfriend on the run.’

James pictured his partner in one of those clubs they hadn’t been to for years, trapped between the edges of the crowd with all the middle-aged guys, yet drawn to the younger ones on the dance floor, shirts coming off. The image appalled and attracted him as much as the beat by the service station. He snorted out a shocked noise, and started to shudder.

‘I can’t tell if you’re laughing or crying.’

‘Dylan, listen to me.’

‘What? Are you okay?’

‘I’m fine,’ James said, and swallowed. He had to say it all now. ‘Dylan, I need you to know I have been faithful to you for all our time together.’

Judging by the sounds, Dylan had moved away from the noise. ‘O-kay,’ he said.

‘I didn’t do anything with anyone,’ James said, ‘but I just went to a beat, by a roadhouse.’

James could imagine his partner’s face pressed into one hand, eyes on the brink of betrayal. He realised he’d been punishing the back of his head against the car headrest.

‘I went to one last night too, at Kippen,’ he said. ‘That’s where it happened.’

‘Where what happened?’

‘There was a bashing. I got away, but I don’t think Tony did, in fact I am fairly certain he didn’t.’

‘What?’

‘I think there’s been at least one murder.’

Dylan took control and started getting loud. ‘Where are you now? Are you safe?’

James looked ahead and behind, along the lonely road. The musty smell of his cousin’s car was competing with the scent of the river on his shoes. He flicked both doors locked. ‘I’m safe,’ he said, which stopped Dylan repeating the question.

‘Okay, that’s the main thing. Now, don’t go sniffing around any more beats. Just let the police know you were threatened. Isn’t your dad a cop?’

‘He is,’ James said, sighing with frustration. ‘They know about the bashings, but they’re not doing anything about it!’.

‘Well, you don’t need to go looking in places like that, just come home.’

‘I didn’t just go looking for evidence, I went because I wanted to be there. I haven’t done anything like that for years. I’m sorry, I feel disgusting,’ James said, trying to hold the sobbing back.

‘Jamie, it’s okay...’

‘Do you still want to marry me?’

Dylan laughed. ‘You don’t get off the hook that easily.’

‘It’s probably the anxiety,’ James said. ‘Maybe I should get more help?’

‘Look, do you remember that conference I went to last year, in Canberra?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, I could have gone to bed with a guy then. We all got pissed, and he was gorgeous, and things had gone far enough when I put the brakes on, but I wanted to be able to look you in the eye and give you an honest answer to an honest question,’ Dylan said.

James pictured his boyfriend, pushing forty and filling out, in his best jacket with one of those expensive shirts that he always turned the collar up on, flirting in that defensive way when someone was coming on to him. He did it with women, and with men, and when James was there it always ended with Dylan’s hand coming to rest around his waist, or on his shoulder, or through the spaces in James’s fingers. It always left the other party smiling; but while it was funny, it also made things very clear.

‘Other guys are always going to try it on. I don’t mind, as long as you always come home to me, and look me in the eye.’

‘Sorry,’ James said.

‘Don’t be. Why do you think I want to marry you?’

‘I don’t know. So you can keep me off the market?’

‘Well, there is that. Maybe I don’t have a very good reason,’ his partner added, suddenly serious. ‘Maybe I just want the same chance to fuck it up, like straight people do. I don’t know. It isn’t legal anyway...’

‘One day, surely we’ll be able to.’

‘Maybe I don’t want to be forty and alone, still fooling myself that I look twenty-five,’ Dylan added.

They both breathed through a silence. ‘I imagined all sorts of things, when I couldn’t get you on the phone. Don’t go hanging around places like that, Jamie. It only validates the closet cases.’

‘I know,’ James said.

‘Just come home. We can fix it all from here.’

‘Could you please let work know I won’t be in for one more day?’ James asked. ‘I have to do something for Tony, then I’ll ring you.’

‘As long as you do.’

James knew how to take Dylan’s worries away. ‘The funny part is, I seem to have inherited two farms on this trip,’ he said.

Unflappable whenever a conversation turned humorous, Dylan said, ‘Goodo.’

‘Well, in my family, when you get married, you usually get a place set up for you. There’s a house. My grandparents used to live there,’ James said.

‘What’s it like?’ Dylan asked. James sensed that he’d left the club and was waiting for a taxi.

‘It’s a farm. They’re all sure I’ll just sell it, but if I don’t, they expect me to fill the place with children.’

‘Those farmers should know you can’t get a calf out of two bulls,’ Dylan said, laughing.

James laughed too. ‘There’s a beautiful view.’

‘Describe it for me.’

James closed his eyes, shutting out the night, and painted the beautiful skies and slopes of Brandt Lane across his vision.

‘You’ll just have to come and see it for yourself,’ he said, and Dylan made that murmur of contentment James realised he’d been yearning for since leaving his partner’s side. ‘I’ve got to get going. I don’t know where I’ll stay, but I’ll see you by the end of tomorrow.’

‘Okay.’

‘Dylan... you’re my only achievement,’ he said. ‘I stuffed up my chance of going to a big school. Just scraped through my cadetship. I hate my job, and it turns out I’m not even a very good poofter.’

‘Me neither,’ Dylan said, and laughed. ‘I’m supposed to share you with anyone who wants you, and we’ve got to act like boys forever, even when we’re old. The very thought tires me to my core.’

In the silence, all their arguments dissipated.

‘Do you love me?’

‘I do.’

Reasons this trip home is unlike any trip home, ever:-

I finally know where home is.

Home is Dylan.

TWENTY-FOUR
1985

Daniel was about to raise his voice and demand the concierge get his boss, but he didn’t want to lose it in front of Beck. ‘We don’t need a room,’ he said, and winked at his ex-wife. ‘We want to be put in touch with my nephew Anthony Brandt. He’s a guest at this hotel.’

‘Alright, Sir. I’ll be with you in a moment,’ the kid said, going to help someone at the other end of the long counter.

Daniel took a slow look around the foyer. A singer was performing in the restaurant. A few couples were eating. Others were dancing out by a pool. Fancy place.

Beck was scanning the figures in the lounges near the bar. Even though she’d tidied herself up a bit while he’d filled up the car, they probably both looked a little country bumpkin-ish, Daniel thought. He had yesterday’s clothes under his old black leather jacket, and Beck looked like she could do with a shower.

Just then, the woman being helped by the concierge said something loudly, and Daniel realised she was trying to get his attention.

‘It’s Leanne!’ he said, tapping Beck as Leanne came up to them.

‘Have you seen Jamie?’ Beck shouted.

A great relief seem to flood right through Leanne, as though their being here was the answer to some terrible question.

Leanne cleared her throat. ‘In the first-aid room. He’s a bit crook I’m afraid.’

She pointed across the expanse of carpet to a door subtly positioned between rows of indoor plants.

Beck raced across, hoisting her handbag over her shoulder.

‘We’re the family,’ Daniel said to the stunned concierge, and followed.

Daniel had witnessed this type of reconciliation a few times on the job. First, the mother moved to smother the child with kisses and hugs, then the child would start to cry oceans of tears, and the mother would run her hand over their hair and curl it beneath their ears.

Then there would be space for the inevitable questions, which would come thick and fast if the situation was typical. Next, the blank expression would return to the face of the child; ’the slapped look’, Daniel called it.

In the minutes since they’d entered the first-aid room, Beck had traversed all these emotions and Jamie had let her express every one; but when his moment came, their son barely had time to register it, because Beck drew her hand back and stung him across the face with an actual slap.

Tony kept trying to get away, mumbling about having to pay their bill for dinner, but Beck kept interrogating anyone she could get an answer out of.

‘Did Jamie eat dinner with you?’ she asked.

‘No, I told you,’ Tony said. ‘I first saw him half an hour ago.’

‘Then where did he stay?’ she said, eyes finding their targets in his.

Tony shrugged.

‘Where did you stay last night, Jamie?’ she repeated.

The kid turned to the wall, still sullen.

‘Anyway, now that you’re here, I’d best get back-’ Tony said, stopping short to prevent a collision with Daniel, who kept his arms folded just in case his ex-wife had more questions.

‘Answer me, Jamie. You’ll answer me or I’ll bloody well leave you here!’ Beck said.

‘I don’t care if you leave me here. I didn’t ask you to follow me.’

‘Jamie, you’re only fifteen, you can’t-’

‘I’m nearly sixteen.’

‘Don’t answer me back! Do you realise the fuss you’ve created? Did you even think before you ran off how worried I’d be, how we’d all be beside ourselves?’

‘Oh, who?’ James said, looking at his feet.

‘Your father for one,’ she answered.

Daniel raised his eyebrows, because she didn’t sound in the least convinced.

Beck looked between them all. Jamie’s head was turned away, but his eyes were searching for reactions.

Daniel didn’t plan on altering from his calm approach, because everyone was doing pretty well without him interfering, but Tony was redder than sunburn from his neck to the top of his head.

Tony was starting to get really bothered by a scent in the air. It was a subtle, warm smell that gave him feelings of fulfilment and fear. His uncle was leaning against the door, leaving Tony nowhere to settle unless he was standing close to Jamie or sitting in the far-too-small chair beneath the wall-mounted cabinet sporting the red cross.

He tried to sit, but due to the cabinet there wasn’t enough room for him to lean back, so he hunched forward; only his pants were too tight, and after standing again and sorting himself, he decided to just stay standing.

Aunty Beck let loose on Jamie whenever she wasn’t grilling Tony. When the focus wasn’t on him, he found himself nodding, which his aunt picked up on, and even said, at one stage: ‘See, Tony agrees with me!’

But that made Jamie look at him, and when Jamie looked at Tony, that weird scent filled his nostrils again and he was forced to turn away.

He couldn’t work out if it was him or his cousin who was exuding the stink, but his concern was that it was the same smell he noticed whenever he walked into the sex shop over the border. It was the odour of well-trodden carpet and furtive sex, and whenever Tony noticed it, he knew that some men in his vicinity could tell he wanted to fuck.

Shit!

Images of Jamie came thick and fast, underneath him, on top of him, around him.

Whenever Tony looked at Uncle Daniel, the visions threatened to appear in the room so that they could be seen by everyone. Tony decided on just not looking at anyone, and if he stood back out of his cousin’s field of vision, those hurt eyes couldn’t find him.

God, he wanted out of that room. Leanne would be wondering what was going on.

She’d been great so far, especially in those awkward moments when they were waiting for their meals to be served, when he didn’t know what to say or even think.

But she’d started up that questioning look whenever they’d been in bed. He’d already gotten into the habit of turning her over and giving her one just to stop her trying to find his secrets; but that morning she’d actually said: ‘You’re very quiet, what’s on your mind?’

Tony feared it would never change, that she’d already found him out when his eyes might have unconsciously lingered on the men around the pool. Couldn’t a man have any bloody secrets? Did women have to be so fucking inquisitive?

Aunty Beck was still getting in Jamie’s face. Tony actually felt sorry for the kid, who looked like he wasn’t going to spill anything.

He relaxed then, but as he inhaled, the smell came at him again. Intense, like he was walking up the steps under the neon lights, where someone would be waiting in the dark booths at the back of some seedy shop.

He’d been working too hard, but he sorely wished he could be back at Father’s side right now. Tony imagined some timeless season when the two of them would be about to set light to the wheat stubble, somewhere far away from the farmhouse, just he and Father and a really big burn. They’d stand on top of the ridge while the farmlands blazed long into the night, and they’d make a campfire by one of the tanks and cook up their own tucker. If one of the fires got away, Tony would tell Father to stay in his swag and he’d go and beat the flames flat with a wet sack, or with a spray from his backpack.

He loved those days when the hills were wrapped in smoke. He felt like a powerful shadow, stalking across their land, the hose like some weapon from a storybook.

And when all the hard work was over, Tony knew he could just tell his parents he was off to a mate’s place to help him fix up a shed or something, and just nip over the border to get what he needed with some stranger’s body in the dark.

The best times were when you could convince some good-looking farm boy into the long grass and you could both have it away for as long as you wanted; and he’d had some corkers who’d gone off loud as cockies in gullies and in ditches up and down the border country far from home. There was no way he was ever going to try getting any at the Kippen Bridge, like poor bloody Brian Fryer and all those old fools who sniffed around during the day, waiting for someone desperate enough to take a risk.

Fuck that!

‘Tony?’ Uncle Daniel said, with that stern copper’s gaze that brought him back into the room, where a question Tony hadn’t heard was still hanging in the air.

Aunty Beck turned to him for the answer, and then so did Jamie.

‘I dunno,’ he said, and swallowed. ‘Excuse me,’ he said, grabbing his jacket, pushing his uncle out of the way and twisting the door handle.

Beck felt like she’d been shouting at her son for hours, but she still had more to get out.

‘See what you’ve done to Tony?’ she said, noticing how Jamie’s face was starting to mottle with the blood she’d raised in her attempts to slap an answer out of him. ‘Tony and Leanne come up here for a lovely honeymoon, and you run up here after them and spoil it all. What did you think you were going to do?’

In the silence, she wished she could take that one, terrible swipe back. Her son hadn’t looked her in the eye since it happened, like she’d jolted his eyes out and they’d skittled away from her forever. Her hand stung with the pain, so the red place on his cheek must still burn.

All she could think to do was to repeat what she’d done a hundred times in the last few minutes: she looked from her son to his father. Daniel only nodded and stood still. Jamie only held his head lower.

She’d had enough of this constant silence.

‘If you don’t tell me what you’ve been up to, Jamie, I don’t know what I’m going to do,’ she said, reaching for her bag and going through the motions of searching for the cigarettes she’d given up years ago.

But it became a search for some higher authority.

‘Actually, I do know what I am going to do,’ she muttered. ‘I am going to send you to that fucking boarding school your father is so keen to pay for.’

Thinking she’d achieved a victory, she turned to Jamie, only to find him smirking at the wall.

‘If you send me there, I’ll just run away.’

Beck laughed, but immediately gulped it back. He’d been true to his word only a day and a half ago.

She had nothing left, so she heaved her bag over her shoulder. ‘You work it out,’ she said to Daniel.

Crossing the foyer, Beck gave a little wave to the helpful concierge, whose attentions were raised by the speed of her escape. Tony and Leanne were long gone, and the restaurant was starting to empty, but there were a few people moving to the lounge bar where the lighting was softer and Beck figured she could order herself a very strong drink and sink into the comfortable folds of one of the large chairs.

The barman indicated she should take a seat, then came to her side just as she shouldered her way into the thick padding at her neck, which seemed to hold her up like no chair ever had before.

‘Scotch and dry,’ she said and flicked him a smile, noticing the swish of the arms and the total lack of interest in her breasts.

Brian Fryer had swished like that. He’d drifted in and out of her mind ever since Doris mentioned the funeral. When he’d been Jamie’s age, Brian had sometimes come to cards with his mother, hanging around in the same way Jaimie had started hanging around Beck, like she was supposed to show him how to grow up.

As the waiter returned, set the glass down precisely, and asked if there was anything else he could do for her, she had to admit there was something about his walk and his manner that was Jamie all over.

She smiled, shook her head, and watched as he returned to the bar, thinking that sort of boy didn’t belong anywhere near Kippen, or boarding school for that matter.

For a few moments Daniel and his son breathed in silence.

Jamie had returned to staring at the wall, and Daniel to leaning against the door, blocking any chance of anyone returning.

But he noticed the signs of others. The vinyl chair below the first-aid cabinet had been left askew. So worn out, he assumed, that the imprint of Tony’s dumb arse was still apparent.

His ex-wife’s departure was marked by the scattering of some of the contents of her bag across the floor, including a lipstick and a phone bill.

Daniel bent to scoop them off the floor, taking in the impressions left by her shoes. They were just subtle imprints with a smattering of sand she must have picked-up from the garden bed she’d rushed across on their way from the car park to the hotel.

As he got himself upright, he pushed the errant chair into place. It hit the wall with a sharp knock that made his son’s shoulders flinch.

‘If you try running away from boarding school, you’ll be back at The Mulgas living with me before you know what’s hit you,’ Daniel said, calmly.

Jamie’s shoulders slackened like he was about to speak.

But Daniel drove right over him. ‘If good farm work doesn’t knock all this nonsense out of you, then we’ll get you some professional help,’ Daniel said. ‘There are ways to fix boys like you, Jamie.’

It would all come tumbling out when he placed a hand on his son’s shoulder. Just as he did so, Jamie began swallowing, trying to keep the truth inside. There: the back of the hand going to the nose to wipe away the first of the flow. Textbook guilt mixed with the relief of discovery. Daniel patted his son and returned to the door, folded his arms, and gently came to rest against it.

‘So, shall we just go home?’ he said, reaching into his pocket for his car keys.

He would avoid any nonsense with the hotel manager, and they’d just get on the road in ten minutes. All he really wanted was his son asleep in the back of his car, and his hand on his wife’s thigh, a secret for a while between the two of them.

James kept his eyes on the wall and nodded to give Dad his answer. It was clear now he could never tell anyone what he and Tony had done. James closed his eyes, squeezed them shut so tight that tears escaped, trying to recapture the feel of his cousin’s skin, the way Tony shuddered when he laughed or collapsed in pleasure.

When he opened them, he saw his father standing with his back to the door, one foot up, arms crossed, the solid lumps of his punishing hands half hidden in the folds of his dumb jacket.

James needed one thing, one assurance that would get him away from this constant attention from everyone in his family. He already knew how to blend in. He could make himself even less noticeable if he really had to. He lifted his chin and looked his father in the eye. ‘It’s alright Dad, you don’t have to worry,’ he said. ‘I’m not a poof.’

TWENTY-FIVE
2005

James woke with his face pressed against the long back seat of Tony’s car. It was starting to get light and as he lifted himself upright, he saw the seagulls that must have woken him, fighting over the bin at the far end of the car park behind the shops. Beyond it, the pale shapes of boats showed along the Dangar marina.

He checked his phone and noticed the battery was getting low. It was almost six. He’d arrived in town around nine last night, too late for anything to be open. The motel lights had been off and he hadn’t felt like rousing anyone to get a smelly room, so just cleared out Tony’s car, swallowed another beer to settle himself, then put his head down.

Looking over the ocean he could just make out the horizon. A couple of men were fishing off the beach, visible by their little portable lights. Beyond the grassy dunes in the other direction, the headland crouched against the lightening sky. In its shadow, patches of the estuary were becoming visible, flowing from the hinterland.

James checked he had the yacht key in his pocket, pulled out the flyer from Tony’s funeral, locked the car and made his way along the sandy track that led between the trees to the small network of jetties.

The picture of Tony on the yacht gave little away about the Home Free. It was a large white seagoing yacht, that’s all that could be gleaned from the one photograph. None of the boats moored at the jetty looked right, and one or two out on the water had potential, but even in the scant light James could see the names were wrong.

A lone sailor was pitching water over the side of a medium-sized vessel in the middle of the channel, steam rising from her mouth. Judging by the way she stopped and looked, his presence alarmed her, so James kept walking along the shore. A cluster of other boats showed against the dark surface of the water in that direction.

His legs ached from being cramped in the car. Fatigue coursed up his spine, across his scalp and down his shoulders, so he stopped and tried a yoga stretch he hadn’t done in years: hands together, arms pushed to the sky, then a long bend until his palms met the ground.

They didn’t quite reach, but as he shook himself out James felt better. After a few deep breaths he wondered about chucking in his job so he and Dylan could take on the farm. His partner hadn’t pushed against the idea of moving to a completely new place. What was that about?

The thrill of it gave James a confidence that he could do almost anything and get away with it. While the mood lasted, he started scanning the boats.

Another jetty lay just ahead, a couple of old-looking fishing trawlers at the end, nets hanging like shrouds in the damp air. There was a small brick building, more of a lean-to with a crooked roof, faded advertising signs and stacks of bread crates. A rusted chain hung across the threshold.

James stepped over it and followed the gangway running beneath the webs of nets. At the end was a cluster of tinnies bearing names. One of the boats in the distance was going to be the right one. Hopefully the light would increase enough once he’d gotten a dinghy into action.

He chose one that looked abandoned, with its canvas cover barely held by rusted studs. Part of the edge tore as James heaved it aside, unleashing the oars. He got in and worked the old wooden boat free of its moorings. The shallow pool of water at his feet was worrying, but its colour made him decide it was probably rainwater, gathered beyond the very last rib of the hull.

As soon as he leaned into the oars the boat began a slow spin, so he evened them out and pulled again. It started to glide, but where? After the next pull he turned his head in search of the right boat.

A bit closer now, he saw a few options. Most of them bore names he wasn’t looking for, but one boat was facing the shore as though shy of showing its side. He pushed his arms forward again and worked at rowing, altering his direction towards the possibility.

Small waves lapping against the vessel made a glugging noise that was louder than James’s breathing and the beating of his heart. A couple of times the dinghy scraped against the hull, but James buffeted it with one hand, and pushed.

There, slightly above his eye level, he saw her name: Home Free.

The little boat overshot the ladder at the back of the yacht, but James managed to grab a rung, pulling his shoulder as the two boats united at an awkward angle. He was up and off the small vessel before he realised he’d forgotten to secure it with the rope, and watched it drift further out into the estuary, with no one to see or retrieve it.

He dropped into the little sunken area by the hatch, behind the platform where the wheel stood, and found the lock, untouched for an age while Tony lay dead in the reeds below Kippen Bridge.

It turned easily. James separated the doors, dipped his head and moved inside.

The stench hit him, a mixture of spoiled food and shit, its source not immediately apparent; but light from the narrow windows allowed him to observe his cousin’s territory.

There was a small fridge, but he imagined opening it would make the smell worse. A table was strewn with maps that had spilled out of the shelves above, as though they might have been knocked out by severe pitching. A broken plate and some cutlery on the floor seemed the result of something similar.

But this place was already the antithesis of Tony’s flat. This had the unkempt air of someone who felt entirely at home. James ducked his head again as he passed through a hatch towards the front of the boat. Here were three small doors, a bathroom behind one, the source of the fetid air.

One room gave onto a darker place which was all bed, linen strewn across it. James immediately noticed the bold, dried stains of sex just where they ought to have been, and laughed, imagining Dad finding this most obvious of signs.

Stuffed into the hatches and holes were brochures, books, more maps, and magazines. Their pages revealed the physical gods that James was drawn to on occasion. It was nothing like the revealing porn he’d stashed in his day, but tamer scenes of eighties muscle men with chunky moustaches and bulging scooped shorts.

The makeshift desk mounted onto the wall at the pointy end of the yacht drew him. A shallow, uncluttered drawer contained a few envelopes. Letters and postcards were stuffed into one, with a faded photograph of a dark-haired man who looked as though he could have stepped out of the pages of one of Tony’s magazines.

James scanned the postal marks, dated more than a decade before. He read the words ‘My dearest Tony’, ‘Tony, my love’, and ‘Tones’, with photographs enclosed of sunny days in years past, swimming off the boat in exotic places, barbecues on faraway beaches, this man with his arms around Tony, and Tony’s arms around his. In one shot they were kissing, Tony’s neck thick with enthusiasm.

Underneath, inside an old passport containing a picture of Tony looking exactly as he had at the Gold Coast the year of his wedding, James discovered a few more photos. Some of them were the spares from the passport photo machine. In them, Tony was mucking around, his golden curls spilling down either side of his face. Below those was a strip of images of Leanne, taken the same day at almost the same moment, looking as though her new husband had been trying to make her laugh.

One last photo slid into the heel of James’s hand. He could already see it had been torn from a group shot of Tony and Leanne’s wedding. As he carefully let the others fall away, James recognised himself.

He was wearing Tony’s school uniform. It didn’t fit him well at all, but he didn’t appear to really care. Tony was standing just in front of him, smiling that winning smile for the camera, but all there was of Leanne was the very edge of her white dress. The rest of her had been torn away leaving just Tony and Jamie.

He would have been almost sixteen, just a few inches shorter than his gorgeous cousin. Time out on the farm that week had tanned his face, and his nose and brow had already started to mature. James was struck for the first time by the possibility that he might have been handsome.

Tony had selected him and torn away the others. In the photo, James was not smiling but he was not glum either. He gave a knowing look to the camera, and he wondered if that was a glimpse of the promise his cousin had noticed.

‘Thank you, Tony.’

A thump on the hull made the Home Free shudder and James heard his father issuing orders. Angered by the unwelcome company, James closed the door to Tony’s room and returned to the kitchen.

‘He’s here,’ Mr Jones said, his face appearing at the top of the ladder, peering into the gloom. ‘You’d better come up and help with the dinghy; your dad won’t listen to me.’

James emerged and danced awkwardly around the unexpected passenger in the confined space by the wheel.

‘Take the line would you, Jamie,’ Dad called from below.

On the second attempt, James caught the wet rope, hauled his father back towards the ladder, and tied it off.

‘Thought you were supposed to be back in the big city,’ Dad said as he reached the top, where there was now even less room. ‘We parked next to Tony’s Ford. That where you spent the night?’

James nodded.

‘If you’d waited and come with us, you could have had a whole room to yourself at Andy’s weekender up on the headland,’ his father said, starting to scan James with his harsh cop eyes.

Both of them were dressed in the kind of clothes country men would assume was right for a day at the coast: short-sleeved shirts that were too small, shorts, boating shoes and light jackets. Mr Jones had spilled food down his front. Dad seemed to have bought himself a stupid new fishing hat.

‘Have you had a look?’ he asked.

‘Yep,’ James replied, and thrust out one hand, challenging them to enter.

Dad went ahead while Mr Jones paused and glanced along the length of the yacht.

‘Nice vessel,’ he said, nodding and obviously taking mental notes.

Below, their sounds of disgust about the stink were immediate. By the time James caught up with them the agent was rifling through the maps while Dad hovered around log books at one end of the table.

‘These charts are worth a bit,’ Mr Jones said, pulling reading glasses out of his shirt pocket. ‘Looks like he sailed all ‘round Australia, maybe Asia too?’

‘It’ll all be in here, if he kept proper records,’ Dad said.

‘Tony’s room is through there,’ James said, indicating the door at the end of the short passage to the front of the boat.

More light was starting to show through a translucent hatch in the ceiling above the bathroom door as James herded them through it.

Their view was even sharper than his own had been: the bedsheets, the unwashed underwear, the porn. Mr Jones immediately turned back and pushed past to get out.

‘Private family things,’ he said. ‘Not much of interest there.’

James let him go but watched as his father analysed the evidence.

‘See, Tony did have a life,’ he said.

Dad let out a dismissive grunt, prodding at paperwork with one arm of his sunglasses.

‘Look at it,’ James commanded.

‘This will take some cleaning up,‘ Dad said, pulling a box out from under Tony’s desk and dropping a pile of magazines into it. ‘Take this up top,’ he added, handing it to James. ‘I’ll open the hatch and pass more out to you. We’ll start with anything we wouldn’t want Bill and Doris to stumble on.’

‘Like what, the truth?’ James said, taking the box.

His father muttered something, but James was already passing Mr Jones, who was busy inspecting navigational equipment in the corner. At the top of the ladder, he saw the gold slash of sunlight shimmering at the horizon. He edged around the mast and found the open hatch, more magazines being thrown out of it, and started piling things away from the hole.

Dad followed and quickly searched the deck, finding what he wanted in a narrow sunken area right at the front of the Home Free.

‘I knew Tony’d have a barbie,’ he said, opening the lid of a rusted old barbecue and pulling out the grill. ‘Must be a gas bottle somewhere,’ he added, and went below to find it.

In minutes, his father was dropping images of naked men into the flames and poking at them with barbecue tongs. ‘Think I got ’em all,’ he said.

James nodded, but then he noticed the yellow court envelope his father pulled out of his back pocket and pushed into the fire.

‘That belongs to me,’ James said gravely.

‘I read your little notes. You’ve always been a drama queen, Jamie, but murder? That’s a good one!’ Dad said, laughing and pushing the burning paperwork deeper.

There would be no separating himself this time, no buying any of his father’s little acts. Remembering the sting of nettles on his ankles, and the shiver caused by Bobby Jones drumming the baseball bat down the side of the dog cage on his father’s ute, James allowed himself to cautiously state the truth.

‘There really was a bashing two nights ago, Dad,’ he said. ‘I was there. A gang of kids attacked a group of men in the park under Kippen Bridge. One of them chased me across the weir all the way to Tony’s place, where I rang you.’

‘What are you on about?’ Dad said, focussed on the flames.

James increased his volume: ‘You can burn whatever you want. I was a witness, and I’ll make a statement at the Kippen police station today, even if I get charged with soliciting.’

‘Keep your voice down,’ his father said, flipping the hatch shut.

‘Why did you even bring him?’ James asked.

‘He can help us sell Tony’s stuff,’ Dad said.

‘What if I don’t want his help?’

‘Andy’ll get you the best price, just think about it, alright?’

James stepped closer to his father and spoke very quietly. ‘Can I have your word that you’ll do your job about Tony?’ he said.

‘I don’t have to do anything, I’m retired,‘ Dad said.

Suddenly the hatch lifted and an armful of maps was shoved up through it.

‘Take these will you, Jamie?’ Mr Jones shouted from below. ‘You might get a pretty good price for the whole collection.’

James rolled his eyes.

‘He’s right,’ Dad said.

Mr Jones heaved himself up, one hand around more magazines. ‘Here’s some more of that poofter porn to get rid of.’

Dad flicked a cautious look at Jamie. ‘How’d you manage to get up so easy, Andy?‘ he asked.

‘Rope ladder, tucked up underneath,’ the agent said, planting his broad backside on the deck, holding up a batch for James’s father to burn.

‘Can I see those first, please?’ James asked.

‘No probrem, big boss,’ Mr Jones said, putting on a terrible Asian accent, offering the magazines to James. ‘You want poofta piccies, you can have dem.’

He took them, but the agent left the stupid look on his face and laughed.

Dad joined in, using the opportunity to drop another one of Tony’s mags into the flames. As the images of naked men started to disintegrate, James realised that unless he changed tack, nothing between these two old mates would break. He needed questions that were completely unrelated, something that might make one of them laugh just enough to put them off guard.

‘What are you planning to get up to now you’re retired?’ James said, checking through the porn Mr Jones had given him, then dropping it into his father’s fire.

Dad made an amused face and shrugged.

‘You and Andy could take up boating, like Tony, what do you reckon?’

Mr Jones snorted.

‘Ah, I don’t have the sea legs,’ Dad said.

‘Kippen boys don’t go sailing anyway, we go fishing,’ Mr Jones said.

James nodded. Talking about Kippen was good. ‘I heard they’re going to close the cop shop now you’ve finished up,’ he said.

‘Who said that?’ Dad asked.

‘Can’t remember. Someone around town,’ James replied.

‘Just gossip,’ Mr Jones said, chuckling while he eased himself upright.

‘That can’t have made it easy for you to give it all up,’ James said.

His father checked on the fire, dropping in another magazine.

‘Well, I’ve known for a while that I’d have let go eventually,’ Dad said.

‘End of an era,’ Mr Jones said, and leaned against a cable.

The subject of his father’s retirement lay between them now. James realised how oblivious they were to him picking up threads; but there was one date that remained unclear.

‘So, did you decide to retire after Tony went missing, or before?’

Dad looked at him and swallowed. Mr Jones dropped his reading glasses.

Bingo.

‘I’d been thinking about it since last year,’ his father said, too casually.

James nodded. ‘So Tony’s disappearance was the trigger?’

Dad shrugged. Mr Jones bent to retrieve his glasses from the deck.

‘And your big farewell booze up took place while Tony was lying dead in the river?’

His father licked his lips but remained silent. The timeline immediately snaked back across the decades. Dad’s retirement was at this end of things. What lay at the start, around the time of his marriage? All it would now take is one courageous question.

‘How old were you two, the first time you drove out to Kippen Bridge at night?’

Mr Jones looked at Dad. ‘What’s he on about?’

James pounced. ‘Ever “pick off any poofters” in your day, or was it just roo shoots on buck’s nights?’

The agent moved his head as though he was checking the distance to the dinghy, but James put one hand on the handrail, blocking the way.

‘You going to let him talk shit?’ Mr Jones asked.

‘It’s just family stuff Andy, nothing to do with you,’ Dad said.

‘Then I’ll leave you two to fight this out,’ Mr Jones said.

Dad threw the last of the magazines onto the fire. ‘Nothing to fight about. Everyone knew it went on.’

‘So you admit it happens?’ James asked.

Dad nodded. ‘Of course everyone knows it happens, but nobody up here cares about it like they do in the city.’

‘So the police just turn a blind eye to certain crimes?’ James asked.

‘Look, it wasn’t considered a crime in our day!’

‘But it’s a crime now, Dad. Someone either threw Tony off the Kippen Bridge, or he jumped trying to get away.’

His father started taking in very short breaths. ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about,’ he shouted. ‘None of the family had seen your cousin for weeks. He’d walked away from Leanne and the farm, even changed his will. Bill and Doris didn’t know whether they were coming or going.’

‘Maybe Tony had given up trying to talk to any of you?’ James said. ‘Which is bad enough, but maybe he had that opportunity taken away from him by someone?’

The malice popped into Mr Jones’s face and got rid of the comedy routine for good.

‘Sounds like you know all about it, Jamie. Anyone would be forgiven for thinking you’re batting for the other team,’ Mr Jones said.

‘Andy-’ Dad said, holding up the barbecue tongs.

‘I do,’ James said. ‘I’ve been living with the same man for over ten years. His name is Dylan. He’s the one who rang Doris last night, because he gives a shit about me.’

Mr Jones started laughing, right from his belly. The dismissive, careless chuckling of a complete arsehole, the kind James had run from his whole life.

But this time, he felt the spineless shell starting to crack and fall away. ‘Dad, ask this clown where his grandson was two nights ago with Johnny Jones’s ute,’ he said.

‘Leave my boys out of it,’ Mr Jones said, throwing an arm towards James and looking at Dad. ‘You seriously gonna let him just waltz into town and go around accusing people?’

But the cop just stared back, mouth shut.

‘What the fuck, Dan?’ Mr Jones said.

‘Bobby was probably home with his dad, right, Andy?’ Dad asked.

‘’Course he bloody was!’

‘What about Johnny’s ute?’

‘Parked in the garage, all night.’

‘And if I ring your boys now, they’ll tell me the same?’

‘Bloody oath,’ Mr Jones said, giving a few short, offended laughs into the silence.

Dad poked at the burning pages like all three of them were sitting around a campfire and someone had told a bad joke. ‘Jamie, give me your mobile phone,’ he said eventually.

James reached for it in his jeans pocket and handed it over, hoping there was enough left in the battery.

The agent started getting breathy. ‘We can sort this out later,’ he said.

‘Just tell me the number and we’ll sort this out, right now,’ Dad said.

Mr Jones shook his head and dropped his chin to his chest.

Dad pocketed the phone. ‘My boy is home less than a day and you arseholes come after him,’ he said.

‘It’s just kids mucking around,’ Mr Jones said, head still down.

‘I know what they get up to, Andy,’ Dad shouted. ‘But why is it that you lot always had to go just a bit too far?’

The heat from the barbecue rippled the air between the men. James went to break the silence, even reached one arm up to placate them now that the truth was out, just as Mr Jones shouldered the barbecue over. It landed against the open hatch with a crunch and burning magazines spilled inside the yacht.

The gas tank caught on the edge of the hatch and held. Dad shouted for Mr Jones to hold it but he moved too late and the agent stepped away as it toppled out of sight and the hose ripped free.

Mr Jones aimed one arm at James and one at his father, eyes flicking between them to see who would move first. Before anyone could make that choice, the gas ignited with a blast and forced them all to cover their eyes.

James’s father pushed him aside, dived for the rear of the boat and disappeared below deck. James followed as Mr Jones dashed around the other side of the mast, making for the dinghy.

In the kitchen, bright gas flame was shooting out of the bottle which was spinning on the floor outside Tony’s room. Burning papers from the barbecue had spilled everywhere and sparks were littering the maps.

Dad started ripping open the cupboards below the sink. By the time he’d uncovered a small extinguisher, fire was catching on the seat cushions. He aimed the stream of foam right at the gas bottle, dousing everything for a moment, but the flare burst back into life.

‘Take this,’ Dad said, handing James the extinguisher then wrenching a pair of metal buckets stowed by the steps. ‘Andy and I will fill these,’ he shouted, and disappeared into the open air.

Daniel spotted the tinnie a few lengths back towards the shore, with Andy struggling to row in a straight line.

He shouted. Andy paused and waved.

‘Get back here!’ Daniel yelled.

‘Thought I should go for help,’ his mate said.

Andy managed to spin the small boat around, so Daniel clambered down the yacht’s ladder, scooped up a bucketful of the greenish water and hoisted it back into the galley.

‘Look out!’ he shouted at Jamie, who wasn’t having much luck putting out the glowing blue jet coming out of the gas tank.

Daniel emptied the bucket onto the flame. Steam immediately filled the small space, but he didn’t pause to see if his efforts had worked.

When he emerged for another bucketful, the tinnie was back.

‘Take the rope,’ Andy said, throwing it badly against the side of the yacht.

Daniel caught it and tied it in two rock-hard half-hitches to the ladder.

‘Fill this and bring it up with you,’ Daniel shouted, bending for another load of water.

James squeezed the trigger of the extinguisher and aimed it right at the blaze rushing out of the tank, but after a couple of pumps the foam gave out. Unimpeded, clusters of burning particles started drifting up through the open hatch on the hot air, and the closest wall was blistering.

He retrieved a towel from the bathroom, now soaked with the water his father had thrown across that end of the room, then gave it a couple of flicks above his head to keep the flames back from the rope ladder.

Like a wave crashing against his back in the surf, water exploded around him. Because his body had taken most of what Dad had blindly thrown into the smoke, it had been ineffective against the fire.

‘Leave it,’ his father shouted, a dark form in the mixture of steam and smoke building in the stairwell, empty bucket dangling in his hand. ‘I don’t think we’re gonna get this out.’

James nodded, but he didn’t follow. He wanted to get Tony’s things.

Daniel took the full bucket from Andy and handed over the empty one, climbed the ladder at the back of the yacht and searched the dark shapes inside the smoke.

‘Jamie!’ he shouted.

Sounds came back to him, but Daniel couldn’t be sure if it was a voice.

‘He coming or what?’ Andy said from the back of the tinnie.

Daniel turned, noticing the bunch of Tony’s charts stowed with him at the far end.

‘I thought he was just behind me. Can you see him anywhere?’ Daniel said, hating the weakness in his voice.

‘That smoke’s not good,’ Andy said, pointing over the back of the yacht to the terrible black clouds that were pumping upwards.

The ridiculous fear wouldn’t let him go. Surely Jamie had just followed him up on deck? Daniel tossed the contents of the bucket into the clouds of steam and smoke.

‘Jamie!’ he shouted, and repeated it a few times, but there was no sign of his son.

When he turned back, Andy was pulling at the knot that held the line.

‘There’ll be fuel onboard. We should just get it free so we can get away fast,’ Andy said.

‘You bloody wait this time!’

Andy nodded, but there was no conviction in it.

‘If we have to, we can ditch over the side at the last minute,’ Daniel said.

‘I can’t swim,’ Andy said.

‘What?’

‘I can’t bloody swim,’ his mate repeated, refusing to look at Daniel, one of his hands now the only thing connecting the tinnie to the yacht.

‘Alright,’ Daniel said. ‘Just wait a moment, I’ll get him out.’

He took the rope and re-tied it with double the number of knots, yanking them tight. The outline of the door below deck was now dancing in a haze as Daniel eased back into the pit below the steering wheel, the memory of another lost child skipping at his heels. Heat rushed into his guts and turned him inside out.

‘Jamie!’ he shouted uselessly, because there seemed nothing else to do. ‘Jesus Christ! Why are all my kids taken away from me?’ he cried.

The strength of the heat threw him back against the ladder, far enough to see Andy’s shadow rising against the white walls of the yacht, something high in his arms for a moment, before slamming it against the back of Daniel’s head.

James rifled through Tony’s shelves, desperate to secure the photos from his cousin’s desk. The volatile air had moved things around a bit, but he uncovered the precious pile of letters and images and held them tight.

In the bathroom he searched for something to protect them. Under the corner sink was a medical-style sleeve containing prescriptions and other documents. James emptied it and sealed Tony’s things inside.

Sudden shouting made him look up. Mr Jones was reaching through the hatch, smoke coursing around him.

‘I’m here!’ James shouted, pushing the plastic zip-lock bag down the front of his shirt.

‘Give me your hand.’

He reached up and one large paw gripped his forearm. The agent’s face was red and determined from the effort of bending into the hole.

James looked down in order to get his foot onto the bottom rung of the rope ladder, but the force of Mr Jones falling onto his back knocked him to the floor. For a few seconds as they struggled, James assumed it was an accident, but then he felt sharp blows to his head. His hands went to cover his face just as the heavy kick sent him through the door of Tony’s room.

Another kick slammed James right on the jaw and threw him completely inside.

The door slapped shut. He kicked it, but the solid plywood panel wouldn’t budge. Ignoring the pain coming from his face and neck, James got his feet underneath himself and immediately pushed the curtains aside. The windows were long and narrow, giving glimpses of blue sky and water, but there was no way of getting them open. He reached for his phone to call for help, but his pockets were empty. Dad still had it.

Fuck!

He started shouting for his father, wrenching open cupboards looking for something with a bit of weight to break the door open, and found another small fire extinguisher strapped to the wall at the foot of the bed. There wasn’t enough room to get a good swing at the lock, but he threw the red cylinder with as much force as he could manage. The thin wood shuddered, and he landed against it a couple of times, recoiling at the heat coming off the surface.

‘Hey!’ James shouted, rattling the handle. Nothing but the sound of burning came back to his ears.

Soon enough, the door would open as it disintegrated, unleashing a wall of retribution that James might not make it through alive.

He fell back onto his cousin’s bed, feeling the plastic envelope inside his shirt. If Tony’s keepsakes melted into his heart as everything burned, so be it.

James’s name would be added to this deadly timeline. Brian Fryer would remain just another face in a police photograph, a young man who’d jumped his way out of life. Mark Beaumont would just stay quiet in the city and never speak of what happened to him. Andy Jones would get back to shore and lie to cover his tracks, an innocent man asked to appraise a yacht for a grieving family, the only survivor of a terrible accident after retired Senior Constable Brandt insisted on burning documents onboard.

Lies to cover more lies, stretching back as far as anyone could remember.

A sudden blast lit up the edges of the door and smoke started to leak through several gaps. James shoved himself against the wall to get away from whatever was about to come through it, but when the smoke started getting sucked back through the cracks, he started kicking at them.

They splintered apart, so he grabbed the extinguisher again and aimed it through a gap and pulled the trigger. The light of the flames dimmed a bit so he swung the tank at what was left of the door and burst through into the passage. It was so hot and dark there was no point in looking anywhere but upwards, where daylight showed between gusts of smoke.

James started coughing but managed to find the outline of the hatch and the remnants of the rope ladder, checked the plastic envelope and its sacred contents against his chest and heaved himself up onto the deck.

Once he was through the dark barrier the harbour revealed itself, lit by the sun shining unimpeded above the headland. But the terrible heat wasn’t coming from above, it was in the threads of smoke that rushed past James as the yacht started belching smoke.

James ran along the edge of the boat as it shuddered under his feet. Mr Jones stood in the tinnie, failing to untie the rope. At the bottom of the stairwell, smoke partially obliterating him, was Dad.

‘Get up!’ James shouted.

Dad’s eyes flicked open, pale slits against his blackening face. James slid down and lifted his father by the armpits.

‘Jamie, I thought you were gone.’

‘We’re both gone unless we get off this boat.’

Dad heaved himself up against James’s arms while heat belted their flesh. He wrapped his father tightly in both arms and hoisted him upwards. They’d reached the top of the steps just as the boat rocked again.

James was toppled to one side and grabbed the wheel to prevent himself from hitting it with his face. Dad got thrown towards Mr Jones and they both landed in a mess in the tinnie, sending it away from the yacht until a cruel jolt jerked it back, tossing the agent head first into the water with a cloud of maps landing on the surface around him.

James worked the rope free of the ladder and the little boat drifted away. He waited until he was sure it was clear of the yacht. Dad got himself upright at the prow, bloodied and burned, and started screaming for his son to jump.

The big eruption rivalled the sun for one brilliant moment, cleaving the Home Free in half just as James dived off.

He kicked his way underwater, sensing pulsations of light behind while he descended beyond the heat. Staying below for as long as he could, he levelled himself with a few broad strokes of his arms.

Gazing into the infinite gloom, James wasn’t cold. Suspended until the pressure started to work on his lungs, he felt a sensation deeper than the embrace of the water. Now that everything had been said, it was coursing through every limb and digit and he grew desperate to surface and turn his back on silence forever.

He glanced above and saw the underbelly of the dinghy that held his father, the broad shapes of the maps starting to submerge around it, and the two sections of the yacht drifting apart into the shadows; then James put his swimmer’s shoulders into the work of reaching the flailing form of Mr Jones.

EPILOGUE
2005

James opened his eyes and saw the gap in the floral curtains. A strip of blue sky and distant voices coming from along the hallway told him that he must have slept late. Someone, probably Aunty Doris, had placed a vase of daffodils on the table by the antique wardrobe. The dappled light from the French doors made the colours dance.

He blinked to shift the crust in his eyes, and when he moved his hand to rub it away, he felt the sting of burns on his fingers and face. One shoulder and one ear were very sore, but it was better if he lay with his head to the side and didn’t move his arm.

Sleep had been the best escape from yesterday’s events.

Dad had been in no state to drive, full of shock and rage at Andy Jones, who’d taken off as soon as they’d reached the shore and heard the sirens. James had agreed to wait for the fire crew so his father could tell them he was a policeman up at Kippen and would be in touch with the Dangar police. He’d bundled them into Tony’s Ford, retrieved a few rags from the boot to stem the flow of blood from the wound on Dad’s head, and hit the road.

All the way up the ranges his father had spewed out his rage, giving profuse apologies for his inactions, explaining his approach to policing again and again until James lost track of whether he’d been talking about Tony, or Brian Fryer, or any number of others.

By the time they’d stopped for fuel at Wishaw, both of them had stopped bleeding, but they’d been so hungry they’d ripped through takeaway sandwiches and chips. Dad had finally stopped raving and fallen asleep while James drove into Kippen. He’d pulled into the hospital and had to shout at the nurse to stop tending to his face and hands and just go and check his father over, still half asleep in the car. She’d looked worried about Dad’s unbalanced state, asking what time he’d banged his head; then there’d been a delay in finding a doctor to break his appointment list at Wishaw and drive over to Kippen to administer the emergency treatment they’d both needed.

James hated seeing Dad like that, and hearing talk of possible brain injuries. He’d woken many times in the night expecting to hear terrible news, like his father had slipped into a coma; but this new day seemed peaceful. The voices coming from the kitchen were calm, so he closed his eyes and counted all the sounds. Birds were chattering in the tree outside the window, water rushed through pipes as taps turned on and off, and if he really listened, he could hear the gentle rise and fall of the sheets as he breathed.

He must have fallen asleep again, because the next thing he heard was Dylan.

‘Cuppa tea, Darl?’ his partner said, carrying a tray with two mugs and a plate of toast. ‘Aunty Doris said there’s more where this came from, and to take your time.’

Dylan was wearing an old jumper and a hat that looked as though it had come from the rack by Deloraine’s kitchen door. ‘What are you up to?’ James said, trying to sit up.

‘Let me do that,’ Dylan said, putting the tray by the daffodils and piling pillows. He leaned over to kiss James on his forehead. ‘How are you feeling?’

‘Bit sore, but I’m fine,’ James said, squeezing one of Dylan’s fingers. ‘Any news about Dad?’

‘He’s out there, telling them the whole story,’ Dylan said, moving for their teacups and bringing one to James before sitting on the bed. ‘Now I know where you get it from.’

‘He okay?’ James said, sipping.

‘Checked himself out of hospital this morning.’

James snorted, noticing his partner had someone else’s boots on. ‘What are you wearing, Dyl?’ he said, laughing.

‘I’m going out on the farm today,’ Dylan said, holding his mouth in an excited smile. ‘Uncle Bill asked me to go help him clear the yard over at the old house.’

‘Listen to you,’ James said. ‘Talking like a local already.’

Dylan laughed. ‘Aunty Doris is making coffee, then we’re off in the truck. You can lie here as long as you need. Work has been told to get over themselves and stop calling you, the dogs are being looked after for as long as we need, I’ve extended the car hire agreement and you need to put this on every couple of hours,’ he said, reaching for the tube of aloe vera on the side table. ‘Just don’t look in any mirrors today, alright?’

James chuckled and allowed his partner to rub the gel over the red patches on his forearms. ‘How did you get here?’ he said, eyes closed, loving the feel of Dylan’s hands.

‘Your cousin picked me up from Wishaw airport. You were tripping on painkillers by the time I arrived.’

‘Yvonne?’

‘Yes, and she’s lovely. We can all have a catch up later. For now, boyo, just rest.’

Daniel waited until Pete had taken the girls for a walk to the creek before getting onto the serious stuff.

‘Doris, I’d like you to come and sit down please,’ he said, easing himself into a chair and slapping a folder of papers onto the kitchen table. If he didn’t lower his chin too much, the ache at the back of his skull stayed fairly dull. The prickling on his face and hands felt like nothing more than bad sunburn.

‘I need to make a start on lunch,’ she called from the pantry.

‘Mum, come and sit down,’ Yvonne said. ‘I’ll help you make something when Uncle Daniel’s had a chance to talk things over with us.’

Daniel nodded at his niece and she nodded back. Yvonne had been a bloody trouper with her mother all morning. At the other end of the table, Jamie was finishing his second coffee. Doris and Yvonne settled into the empty chairs. After a morning of pleasantries and brekkie chat, it was time to talk turkey.

‘Now listen, young Sam Bailey said the boys over at Dangar put a call through after we left. Andy Jones must have beaten us back up the hill, because he was spotted refuelling his truck in Kippen around lunchtime yesterday,’ Daniel said, looking at his son wrapped up in Bill’s dressing gown. ‘Jamie, if you and I give statements about what happened on Tony’s boat, they may be able to charge him with arson, at least.’

Jamie nodded. Doris had her eyes down like she just couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Yvonne kept looking between everyone.

‘The other stuff is going to be a lot more difficult,’ Daniel said, tapping the file he’d kept in his hand since arriving from the Kippen Police station. ‘There’ll be paperwork. Plenty of it. Doris, you are the next of kin, you and Bill, now that Leanne’s off the scene, and I’ve got the first of it here,’ he added, looking at each of them again. ‘If we want to do right by Tony, we need to act fast.’

Doris piped up first. ‘Don’t show Bill, please,’ she said, looking at her hands. ‘You just tell me what you need us to do, and then I’ll tell him later, in my own way and time. He’s not going to understand any of it at first.’

Daniel was already nodding. His sister-in-law was a tough old bird and she’d always known how to do things right.

‘That’s not a bad idea,’ he said. ‘Tony’s safe where he is for the minute. It’s the investigation we’ve got to get going on, and I’ve already had a chat with the boys. Young Sam will go around to the Joneses’ place today to take statements from Bobby Jones and his dad, about what went on two nights ago at the bridge. Jamie, you need to be ready to tell what you know. Today. Let them come out here and sit with you for an hour and take your statement about all that too, alright?’

His son nodded again, his mouth clamped shut.

But Daniel wanted more. He needed a sign that his son knew he cared, and he reckoned he knew what might cut it.

‘Now about all these other names, Jamie,’ he said. ‘The Fryers moved away long ago, but we’ll look for them. If we can get Mark Beaumont to talk, I reckon I should be able to get a file on the right desk somewhere in the city.’

‘Let me talk to Mark,’ Jamie said. ‘Don’t just call him out of the blue or let anyone in uniform turn up at his door. In some of these cases, it’s the cops who did the bashing.’

Daniel felt the anger rising in his throat, so he looked past his son into the paddock between Deloraine and Glen Alpine; but there was no escape there. Beyond the newly-sown furrows, Daniel spotted Dylan, the city slicker behaving like he was the newest member of the family, going out with Bill for the day dressed up like a farmer after spending the night fussing over Jamie. Not one part of this was the path Daniel would have chosen for his son.

Ever since they’d driven home from the coast, he’d felt the guilt coming in waves. He’d tried to talk it off with the nurses, then sleep it off, but in the first light that morning while looking over Kippen from the hospital window, he’d realised there would be no escaping it.

‘Alright,’ he said, eyes on the forms that led to Andy Jones’s punishment.

Out of the silence, Jamie looked up with that quiet determination he’d shown on the boat yesterday. Daniel felt a tinge of pride at what a persistent little bugger his second boy was. Forgiving, too, like his mother; so this time, he’d better not take it for granted.

James sensed that Yvonne was waiting for him to say something, so when Dad had gone home to rest and the girls were having an afternoon sleep, he joined his cousin and her husband, who were talking quietly on the terrace.

As he lowered himself into one of the cane chairs, Doris asked if anyone wanted a cup of tea,

‘Yes, please,’ Yvonne said, putting down her cigarettes and settling into the end of the lounge. Pete called for one too and sat by her, blinking like he didn’t know what was coming. ‘Dylan’s so nice,’ his cousin added. ‘We’re so happy for you, Jamie.’

James laughed it off. ‘He’s pretty keen about farm life today,’ he said. ‘But the shine will come off quick enough.’

‘I’ve already told him he’d be able to choose whatever teaching job he wanted at Kippen Primary,’ Yvonne said. ‘It’s hard to keep teachers out our way, if they don’t have local family.’

James went to make another joke, but he’d underestimated Dylan enough this week. ‘We need to work out what we’re going to do, with the farms,’ he said, just as the phone rang.

‘I’ll take it in the office,’ Doris called.

Pete looked at his feet, as though he’d been told to keep his thoughts to himself. Yvonne took his hand. ‘Mum and Dad are going to let us take on the old manager’s cottage here,’ she said. ‘It needs a lot of work, but we’ll have some money left once we sell up and see to our debts.’

James looked her in the eye. ‘That what you really want?’

She nodded without hesitation and took James’s hand too. ‘I think Tony would have liked it this way, had it ever come to this.’

James noticed his own tears forming. Tony’s unexpected generosity had been a startling idea for him to get his head around. Perhaps it was a blend of his cousin’s guilt about that one night they’d spent together, and all the fallout; or maybe Tony reckoned James was the only one in the family who’d ensure everything was arranged as it should be. ‘I’ll just sign Deloraine over to you both, alright?’ he said.

Yvonne relaxed back into the chair. Pete closed his eyes tight.

‘Alright,’ she said, just as the kettle started whistling on the stove.

Doris emerged. ‘It’s your father, Jamie,’ she said. ‘He wants to talk with you. The Joneses have been stopped in a truck headed for the Queensland border, all three of them,’ she added, excitement and anger brimming out of her while the kettle screamed.

At dusk, James finally got a moment alone with his aunt. Yvonne and Pete had taken the girls into Kippen to collect takeaway pizza for everyone; Dad and Uncle Bill were having a drink with Dylan on the terrace, so when Doris headed up the hallway with an armful of linen, James followed.

She went into Tony’s old bedroom, turned the light on in the bathroom, and was hanging towels as James entered that room for the first time in twenty years.

‘Need a clean towel?’ Doris said from the sink.

The girls had been sleeping in the narrow beds and their toys and books were scattered around, but the room still held remnants of Tony. His twenty-first birthday key hung above the mirror, its shine long faded. On the chest of drawers were school trophies and photos of his cousin playing rugby, his powerful body captured hurtling in the air, one arm out in front, jaw locked in determination.

‘No, thanks,’ James said.

If he stepped any closer towards the bathroom, he sensed his aunt would feel cornered, so James lingered by the drawers until she appeared in the doorframe.

‘How are you feeling?’ she asked, looking James up and down. ‘We’ve got painkillers somewhere. Shall I dig them out?’

James shook his head, feeling for the photo in the pocket of Uncle Bill’s dressing gown. ‘I want you to have something, Aunty Doris,’ he said.

‘Oh?’ she replied, biting her bottom lip.

It seemed right to just place the picture with Tony’s other things, so James picked a spot where one trophy would hold it up, while another would hide the face of Tony’s lover.

The image had survived fire and water and bore the tell-tale creases of the journey from the Home Free back to Deloraine, but none of that prevented Tony from beaming at them. He wasn’t as young as he’d been the night he’d held James in this room. He was maybe thirty-five or so, and he had his arm around the dark-haired fellow, who had one hand resting on Tony’s bare chest, their faces closer than mates would have allowed. His cousin was looking straight down the barrel of the camera lens, his joy launching out with a brilliance that completely impaled James.

Doris inhaled and one hand covered her mouth. James could hear the air coursing between her fingers as though feeling its power too. The other hand reached out directionless, like she had nothing to hang onto, so James gently took it in his.

His aunt brushed it aside and pulled the photo from behind the trophy that blocked the face of the man Tony had chosen to be with.

‘He looks so happy,’ Doris whispered. She went to say more, but the words disappeared on a deep exhalation of regret and confusion, and she let the image go.

‘They sure do,’ James said, pressing the trophy back against the photograph.

‘Your father tells me Bobby Jones is claiming he only wanted to give Tony a scare,’ she said, and judging by the trembling of her head she looked about to collapse.

James took both her hands now. ‘Tony wasn’t easily frightened, he would have put up a fight,’ he said, feeling his throat tightening. ‘We need to be prepared for a long wait for justice, Aunty Doris,’ he added. ‘But he was worth it.’

She found his eyes and seemed to regain her sense of balance in them. ‘Thank you for bringing him home,’ she said, giving their hands an encouraging shake before releasing James and taking herself quietly from the room.

James felt his tears again and looked back at the image of his cousin. There was nothing of Doris and Bill’s weathered disappointment in those features, only the shining hair and satisfied smile that would make the front pages one day, the centrepiece of an article so revelatory that the truth could never be denied again.

There was a headline somewhere in all this torment. The words ‘love’ and ‘loss’ formed in James’s mind, so close in shape and significance that they’d work perfectly together on the page.

But he preferred to hold onto just the image of Tony, looking out from the top of his chest of drawers for as long as Doris and Bill kept their boy’s adolescent milestones suspended in expectation. His cousin’s gaze was far more powerful than that, so James adjusted the angle of the picture to meet the window, allowing Tony to always see the morning coming, and sometimes glance across a golden field ready for harvesting.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I embarked on writing this novel in 2011 while living in the Blue Mountains of New South Wales. The first few drafts were completed on Queensland’s Coochiemudlo Island in outer Brisbane. After moving to Deepwater in the New England region in late 2017, the final shape of Tank Water really emerged.

Along the way I had assistance from several people.

My heartfelt thanks go to the writers who assisted me in identifying the strengths and shaping the impacts of this story from its very earliest drafts: Mary Moody, Patsy Trench and Sarah Michell. Writer and editor Elizabeth Ferretti’s assistance with detailed reads and edits was immense. Thanks for your generous, long-term support, Liz.

I first met Anna Solding of MidnightSun Publishing when she travelled from Adelaide to a New England Writer’s Centre pitch session at Armidale in 2018, a very rare chance for a regional writer to meet an interstate publisher. The team at MidnightSun was incredibly generous and supportive throughout the publication process, and I will forever be grateful to Anna for taking a risk on edgy subject matter.

My sister Jenny has always been a great listener during my long raves about storytelling. This book would not exist without her belief that I would one day manifest a novel. My husband Richard witnessed all my hope and despair over the many years it took to get this manuscript completed and picked up for publication. I am grateful for his love and support throughout the journey.

I pay my respects to the Gundungurra, Dharug, Quandamooka and Ngarabal peoples, on whose traditional lands this work was written; and to the Kamilaroi people, in whose country it is set.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

The country towns and gay-hate crimes in Tank Water are fictitious, although the incidents are based on my research into gay-hate crimes that took place in rural regions of New South Wales.

While country cases don’t always make the news like several high-profile murders and attacks in cities, rural incidents of this kind have been documented. They appear in academic works, reports and archival records, and the submissions to the NSW Inquiry into Gay and Transgender Hate Crimes Between 1970 and 2010.

The journey to uncovering the truth was started by others long before I embarked on writing Tank Water, and still has some way to go. I commend all those who have researched, spoken and written about these attacks and killings, and encourage survivors, families and friends to keep doing so when it feels right and safe.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Photo by Max S Harding

Michael Burge is an Australian author and journalist who lives at Deepwater in the New England region of NSW with his husband and their dogs.

After graduating from the National Institute of Dramatic Art, Michael undertook media studies in the United Kingdom.

His non-fiction debut Questionable Deeds: Making a stand for equal love lifted the lid on familial and institutional homophobia in Australia during the marriage equality campaign.

Michael has written, edited, directed and broadcast for Fairfax Media, Intermedia, United News & Media, Margo Kingston’s NoFibs and a range of lifestyle mastheads. He is director of the annual High Country Writers Festival in Glen Innes.

His complete works can be found at www.burgewords.com.

Tank Water is his first novel.

Table of Contents

- Title Page
- Copyright
- Dedication
- Prologue 2005
- One 2005
- Two 1985
- Three 2005
- Four 1985
- Five 2005
- Six 1985
- Seven 2005
- Eight 1985
- Nine 2005
- Ten 1985
- Eleven 2005
- Twelve 1985
- Thirteen 2005
- Fourteen 1985
- Fifteen 2005
- Sixteen 1985
- Seventeen 2005
- Eighteen 1985
- Nineteen 2005
- Twenty 1985
- Twenty-One 2005
- Twenty-Two 1985
- Twenty-Three 2005
- Twenty-Four 1985
- Twenty-Five 2005
- Epilogue 2005
- Acknowledgements
- Author’s Note
- About the Author