CHAPTER 3
“Take a seat. Please”

He slumped into one of the armchairs, setting his briefcase upright on the floor beside him, where it promptly fell over.

“Harry… “

He stopped abruptly, looking down at his clenched hands, then slowly relaxed his fingers before looking back up at the two of us on the settee.

“There have been rumours, you know. I wasn’t sure… Short form, then. Mary, could I have that tea after all? Please?”

She brought an extra mug from the kitchen, and the three of us sat silently as she poured and handed him the cup.

“What do I call you? Harry seems a bit awkward”

“What everyone else does”

“Ellie? I always did wonder about why you pushed that one. Bit too glib, I thought, and I was right, wasn’t I? So, please, executive summary”

I looked quickly at my wife, then jumped in. Soonest humiliated, soonest over.

“Lots of cliché stuff, really, so I won’t go into the usual rigmarole”

CHAPTER 14
I did the honours with the fresh bottle, and when Ox had popped my cork, I returned to our table, where Hira was interrogating the others.

“So it is the tall man who is the baker?”

Alicia was taking question point.

“Yes, as in he is the one with the bakery, over to Cathays. Nana Deb’s his wife, and she runs a, well, a girls’ home. That’s where I live”

CHAPTER 13
Amina pushed the door open, looked around for a spare table and then led us directly there.

“Drinks?”

I peered over towards the bar, where Lil already had her hand on a familiar pump handle.

It was a twisty, busy road, lined with what looked like mango trees, piles of old fruit under each one. We’d left Ish and LC back in Cairns, with instructions to use the day as they felt best. The conversation with our son had warmed my heart.

“This is a present for your Mum, son. I think LC would get bored, and it’ll be a full day. You sure you don’t mind looking after her?”

“She’s my sister, Dad. What else would I do?”

CHAPTER 56
The flight back was a quiet one for my family, partly through the effects of too much booze, but mostly in reaction to the revelations about Susie’s adopted father. I knew there was more to be told, but all I could think of was the contrast on that ‘Sharp End’ programme between that infantryman and Gerald himself.

The former had spoken with true venom, while Gerald had almost looked ashamed. That, I believe, was the message I took from it all: how the hell had he kept his sanity?

CHAPTER 54
I looked to my right, and Maz simply conformed to habit, her smaller binoculars already out of her handbag to be slung round her neck, and a quiet litany of bird names commencing. Susie laughingly said, “Didn’t realise you were a twitcher, Maz”

“I’m not. Welcome swallow”

I spent the next week seeing how well I could juggle, for Gwen’s wedding was set for the weekend before we were due on my secret squirrel trip. It would be a hell of a drive to Albany, about five hours, but there was a flight If I did that, thank you, Suleiman, we’d need less extra time off from work, and would avoid the frazzle of trying to be neat and tidy for the do. That, and not have to drive with a hangover, of course. Our team would only have to cover the extra Friday for our trip down, and that was really an admin day, so we were fine.

We had a family meeting, Ish mailed his friend, and we were sorted. At least until the Tuesday before the wedding.

CHAPTER 11
“Ah!”, my wife said, grinning, “How about this one?”

It wasn’t what I expected, which would have been a swimming costume shot, but rather one from one of our restaurants, with Lil pulling a face at some crustacean or cephalopodian thing.

“We experimented with the food, girls. And boys. Why go all the way down there to revisit Chippy Lane?”

CHAPTER 9
I could see exactly what she meant, for it had made up so much of her debate with Maria: if things went wrong, each could lose a friend. I had never seen anything really nasty in Maria, apart from a certain blinkered aspect when she saw something she wanted. Like Alwen.

“Got to go, love, for the quiz. Chat after?”

“Please. It’s, well, I know you see things clearly. Might help me do so”

“Later, then. Promise”

The next morning was a recovery day before two of us became wage slaves again, but the kids had a few more days of grace before they started their next round of indoctrination. Ish was happy to big-brother LC through the next day, and as Maz and I were travelling together, we arranged to collect them both from ‘our’ beach café, or rather meet them there and pay for unhealthy food. Just as I was finishing breakfast, Ish showed me his laptop.

“Clara sent me a mail last night Dad. Last night for us, I mean. It’s okay to read; nothing…”

“Personal, son?”

That remark brought a proper laugh, but Nora managed to wind it back down.

“Ah, teenagers: who’d have ‘em, ey?”

Her face fell.

“Sorry, Maz. Didn’t think”

My lover simply smiled.

“Water and bridges, water and bridges. Got him back now, and not letting him go again. Anyway, got his sister to get through it in a few years”

“Swap notes then, love?”

That Summer was a blisteringly hot one, with no real rain until nearly March. As a consequence, a lot of our time was spent at the beach, but I noted one slight change in the dynamics, in that both of our offspring were spending their own chunks of that time away from us, or at least beside us but not actually with us. Each was building their own social circle, and I was pleased beyond words, especially for LC.

NEIL
There was no sign of Anth at breakfast, just the kitchen staff to serve me, and it appeared that I had either missed all the other guests or there were none. Apple juice. Tea. More tea. Cereal. Tea. Then the fry-up, which got easier to eat with each mouthful. Then…

One of the kitchen girls brought me more tissues as I sat looking at the crumpets I had just toasted.

“It’s okay, Neil. Nobody else here, aye? Anth telt us what you’re up for, today, like, so no shame. We all remember her, and we all saw the news. For what it’s worth… no point to cards or flowers, we thought, but will you take a hug for her? For Maddy?”

NEIL
I wasn’t relaxed. How could I be? I had managed to get a room at the Twice Brewed with no issues at all, as they seemed glad to have me back, but the alternator on the Kwak had needed replacing, and I couldn’t decide whether to trust the new one or simply switch all my luggage over to the Beemer, and all of that had been even more stressful due to the e-mails and phone calls about the other shots, at Cawfield. Would it work in monochrome? Could I handle colour as well as…

CHAPTER 7
Jenny looked a little surprised at that, and I realised how much of Lil’s problem went both ways. How must a trans woman feel, when so much of the world was shouting that same ‘imposter’ directly into her face? I did a rapid blessings count, giving my wife’s hand a squeeze, before waving in the general direction of our departed arseholes.

CHAPTER 6
That day was one for bimbling. Sunscreen slathered, floaty dresses and floppy hats donned, or shorts and T-shirt in Lil’s case, and it was a slow amble past a wide variety of shops and tourist traps, with the occasional pause for ice cream, or a cold soft drink. We eventually emerged at the seafront, where all the usual sorts of souvenir cabins and eateries lined one side of a broad footpath, the other dropping onto a sort of beach.

CHAPTER 4
Lil sat in silence for a few seconds, staring at the mug of tea Alwen had just delivered. When she did speak, it was far more hesitant than I was used to hearing from her.

“What if… This is all sponging, stuff, yeah? If…”

She stopped once again, clearly seeking the right words before trying once again.

“If this is meant to be the start of proper things, proper COUPLE things, aye? How can I start on the basis of her paying for everything? And what if it doesn’t work out? How do I pay you all back?”

CHAPTER 3
I could hear the sirens now, taking the opportunity to slip a canula in as Tom played with the gas: why add more pain? I couldn’t get my head around the lack of blood flow from that leg, and wanted Naz more than a little out of it before I had a poke. If it was what I suspected, he could risk a toxic shock if and when the juices did start flowing.

Sirens; closer, thank fuck. I dropped a unit of morphine into the patient’s arm before nodding to Tom.

“Cavalry, I hope. I’ll hold off on back boards till we get their decision. On the other hand… Bryn?”

“Aye?”

“Could you tug out the back boards for us? You know where they are. I’m going to be very busy in a few”

We had a fortnight or so to get back into reality, of course, which meant some serious time at the State Government offices on St George’s, catching up with the usual suspects, and not just Bobby and Colleen. Our first few Proper Working days were nominally spent in a conference room with a group of around fifteen delegates from various ‘hubs’, which summed up what could be called Western Australia’s human geography. Like the rest of the country, people flocked to the bigger cities or the coast, and in most cases that added up to the same thing.

He knelt down so that his head was just about level with hers.

“I can be, if you’d like. What about your bear?”

LC shook her head.

“Kawan can’t be an uncle!”

They did indeed have some suitable cracks. Mostly a little wide for her palming jams, so it became FISTS for LC. The place was apparently an old water pumping station, tricked out in the old fashion to look like an extravagantly Gothic Castle, the huge chimneys embellished as ‘towers’. Apparently they run courses inside them for very long abseils; the sort of trick used by those nutters seen on the end of a rope window-cleaning on glass skyscrapers.

There was a great bouldering area on one floor, overhanging hugely in the centre over a serious crash mat, lead routes of a decent length with fixed ‘quick draws’ for those who wanted to lead rather than toprope, and those walls ranged from reasonably easy angles to overhanging. There was also a plethora of ground anchors. It would do me.