CHAPTER 59
That said all I needed to hear. Two days later and we were finally off to the reef, which was a surprisingly long ride, around an hour and a half, in a large catamaran with the entire back end forming a full-width staircase. LC made it very clear that the boat should have had sails, while Maz simply settled into her bird-naming trans, bless her. I didn’t care; Ish and I stretched out on the sundeck while our girl was treated to a high-chair on the bridge.

I was impressed with that, and asked one of our dive guides if that was a common treat for kids, and he just grunted.

“We know who you are, Mr Rhodes. It was big news. Little bird tells me it’s your boy’s birthday, as well”

He made an attempt to look inscrutable, but couldn’t hold his grin.

“Got him a cake for the lunch stop, ey?”

We finally arrived at the mooring, and got the final team talk, mostly aimed at the people in full-on wetsuits and weight belts. Almost everybody had been outfitted with a shorty wetsuit, even LC, together with fins, mask and snorkel, but they didn’t have them big enough to fit me and the boy. Instead, we were fastened into something like a cross between a coverall and pyjamas, which our guide called a stinger suit. We’d given Ish his present that morning, a digital underwater camera, and he was keen to get going, so: spit in the mask, wash it out, fins on and awkwardly down to the platform---and splash. I handed LC in, a float pack round her middle, and wow.

The Frankland Islands had nothing on it, but it was all so, so familiar, one of those places you have seen so often on TV or film that it is almost an old friend. Lots of fish with yellow flashing, which the guide said were called something like ‘fusiliers’, and then looming out of the distance a fish he had warned us about, with the clear emphasis that it was absolutely harmless. Difficult to keep in mind when confronted with a Maori wrasse the size of a small car, but it did nothing but stooge around the boat, obviously looking for a handout. LC asked if she could ride him.

So many fish, and all sorts of live coral, with embedded giant clams with brightly coloured lips and a few turtles. Several times I watched a parrot fish crunch off a piece of coral, and then a little later shit a long, cloudy plume of fragments.

LC was laughing like an idiot at that, but I suppose children and poo jokes have always gone together. Maz borrowed the new camera, diving down to snap some clown fish in an anemone, and this time it was me laughing, as she repeatedly failed.

Swim down. Frame picture. Stop kicking to steady the photo. Get hauled straight back up by the wetsuit’s buoyancy. In the end, Ish took the photos for his mother, as his stinger suit had no effect on his ability to stay under.

Two hours in the water flashed by, and then we were served another typical ‘tropical Aussie’ cold lunch buffet, similar to what had been offered at the island. Once the first round of munchies had been grabbed, our guide shouted out, “Can Ish Rhodes stand up, please?”

Our lad looked a little lost, but he rose to his feet just as one of the crew brought out a small cake with a single sparkler fizzing away on top.

“Happy birthday to you…”

A collection of utter strangers joined in, cameras flashed, and our little girl ran over to hug her big brother. Ten minutes later, we were all back in the water, and I only realised how engrossed I had become when LC and me turned out to be the last to respond to the call for reboarding our boat at the end of the trip.

I sat on deck, dozing in the sun, as we motored back to Cairns, and for once my darling beloved wife wasn’t equally engrossed and muttering bird names but actually cuddling into me, eyes closed, with a happy smile locked in place. We shared a shower when we got back to our apartment, while Ish, the sensible young man, took his sister across the road to the play park.

We only had a couple of days left, so I used one for a drive back up towards Atherton, where Maz got another bird fix and we all got a waterfalls-and-flooded-calderas fix, with an afternoon swim in Lake Eacham. Our final day, naturally, was yet another morning of bouldering and afternoon at the ‘town beach’, where some of us swam and one scanned the mudflats. That evening we ate once again in the crocodile-serving pub, just for the silliness. The next day, I was asleep almost all the way back to Perth, apart from the Uluru stopover, but I am reasonably sure that whatever vestige of consciousness I managed to feign there fooled nobody.

One of Phil’s girls met us at the airport, Geeta had topped up the fridge, and Kul had left a note.

‘Don’t care how knackered you all are, cobbers, but we’ll be round at six with the necessaries later. Got booze and barbieaceous stuff. Sorted your mail; two from UK’

Typical! Maz got the car out, of course, so she could run down with Ish and LC to the bottle shop and LGA, while I sorted the mail. As Kul had said, there were two from the UK, one looking rather official, the other handwritten and addressed to the boy, so I could make a decent guess as to the sender. The other, however, was addressed directly to ‘The Rhodes Family’, so I decided that both could await their return.

They weren’t that long, some loud clinking confirming how well they knew the Butts, and Maz set to work preparing a couple of salady things while Ish fettled our barbie and LC did things on her little wall.

“Dad?”

“Yes, love?”

“When can we go back on the big climbs?”

I made a snap decision and opened my laptop.

“Next school holidays, love, but we can do the quarry here at the weekend”

Click through the map section… website…

“Maz!”

“Yes, darling?”

“Got the dates for Carolyn’s next school break?”

“Two seconds…”

She sat down next to me, our kitchen wall calendar in hand.

“What’s your thinking, man of mine?”

“Our girl wants some big climbs. I am looking at a weekend soon, up at Statham’s, but thought we might camp down by Gracetown again”

“Ooh! Yes please!”

I fed in the dates, and yes, they had room. Bish, bosh, booked.

“I might run that one past the Butts, love. Anyway, we have two letters from the UK, one of them for the lad, the other for all of us. Give him and LC a shout?”

I shut the laptop, and when the boy appeared, passed him his mail, which turned out to be a birthday card, which I was expecting, and a thick bundle of notepaper, which I had also expected but assumed would not be shared with the rest of us. Young love, oh dear.

“This other one looks official, and is addressed to us as a family, so that’s how I am opening it”

I slipped a finger under the flap and pulled. The letter inside was on BBC headed paper, so I scanned for a signature. Tom Edwards.

“It’s from the man who did those documentaries and… hang on… Oh!”

Maz looked worried.

“And? Don’t leave us hanging, darling”

“He says he wants to do a whole programme on Trudi and Susie”

“We already know that”

“Yes, but he wants to include us. You. The whole story. Says it all ties together: Trudi, her Dad, that Melanie, Stewie McDuff, the whole shebang. And before you ask, Ish, he isn’t offering to fly any of us back to the UK; we’d be interviewed by their Aussie unit. He says he’s already got Diane on board, as well as the Horvaths and Susie’s lot. There’s a lot of padding here, but he’s quite clear that this is set to be something for the international market, not just Britain”

Maz took the letter from me, scanning it quickly.

“Yes… Darling?”

“What are you plotting?”

“Well, simply that Malaysia takes a lot of BBC output, Singapore even more. There’s a good chance my mother will get to see the programme, and almost a certainty that someone who knows her will. What better way to show her who the real losers are?”

It made perfect sense, and we drafted an email to Edwards giving our agreement, hitting send just as Kul shouted “COO-EE COBBERS!” through our letter box. I mean, he already had a key, but he would always be Kul. Geeta simply used the key in question, pushing past him to deliver some eskie bags to our kitchen.

“We’ve got some lamb, Maryam, plus special sausages from Soapy Joe’s, and I’ve done a mix of samosas. He Who Must Be Ignored is straining himself with the other two to bring in the liquids”

‘Other two’?

Dal shuffled past, followed by a young woman with fair hair in a ponytail, round glasses before smiling eyes and, with a wrench to my heart, dimples. Once Dal had delivered his clinking load, he popped back into the living room.

“Sorry, all. Um, this is Mike and Maryam, their son Ish, their little girl Carolyn and her bear Kawan”

Maz simply said, “And?”

“Er, this is Melissa. My, um, intended”