I looked hard at his parents, just before giving myself a mental slap. Their ‘boy’ hadn’t been a child for rather a long time. Geeta stepped forward to put a hand to my forearm.

“Things move on, Mike, but you have had so much on your plate, and our son… Dal was terrified that it might make things worse for you, bring up old ghosts”

She suddenly laughed, much more easily.

“I can see one thing, though”

“Which is?”

“Ah, it’s a common thing with mothers, that their child, no matter how big and hairy they get, remains for always and ever their baby. Here. With you, our boy is still a teenager talking about the navy”

Dal chuckled.

“Lot simpler being in the electronics field, and I don’t have to sleep in a bunk”

Maz was much more on the ball than me, as usual.

“How did you two meet?”

“Ah, ‘Lissa teaches theatre, drama, that stuff. I got the tasking to set up the lighting and recording rigs for one of her productions, or rather supervise my students while they did so. Bit of work to remove the fire risks. We spent a lot of time bouncing her requirements around and, well, stuff. Been seeing how it goes for about two years now”

Kul was in a rare serious mood.

“Mike, mate, you were… Maz?”

“Yes?”

“He was absolutely lost without you. Not really the subject for tonight, but I suspect we could have had World War Three and he’d not have noticed, and Ish, sorry, lad, but you were no bloody better. We just agreed, our family, not to rub your noses in things, that’s all. Anyway, the lad has already seen how it is going, so we’re making plans. We’d like you all involved as well. As I said, though, tonight is for relaxing. What was the other UK letter, by the way?”

Geeta laughed.

“We had already guessed who the first one was from, isn’t that right, Ishmael?”

Our son called out, “You’re all teasing sods!”, but he was still grinning.

“Tell them about the letter, Dad. The family one, I mean, not mine”

“Oh. Right. Well, all that stuff over in Albany, up in York, the BBC are doing a follow-up programme, flying the Horvaths out to England. Thing is, they want to include our own story, as a sort of linking theme”

Kul was suddenly Mister Smiley Beard once again.

“I am going to take a punt here: they are NOT flying any of you back, are they?”

I shook my head, my own grin in place.

“Not a chance, mate. Aussie staff will visit us”

A thought struck me.

“Kul?”

“I hear, O Sahib”

“That other Town That Starts With L: how is the family about, you know?”

I waved out of the patio doors towards our barbie, where Dal and his ‘intended’ were getting everything ready for burning our food, and Kul rubbed his eyes.

“Not well, Mike. I mean, the boy dumped the Mock Turban ages ago, and he’s shaved since he was twenty, and that was bad enough. Evil white witch tempting a good Sikh boy away from the proper way of doing things, well, you know how it goes. That was another reason we kept schtum; too close to home for you”

He was right, I realised, only now recognising how close to the edge I had been skating until Diane and her crew had delivered our family from the hell my in-laws had prepared for us. Never mind; the past could remain just that, past and bloody gone. Maz kissed me on the cheek, and all was well.

Once everything was sizzling, we settled in a mix of patio and camping chairs, the Doctor blowing, as beer and wine did their work together with our own non-tropical Aussie hot buffet. Melissa proved to be easy to talk to, if a little nervous at being delivered to our family almost like a girl from one of those giant cakes. I got to the crunchy bits quickly.

“Right, you lot, diary time. Where we were staying in Cairns—laptop, please, son---there was a little bouldering facility just over the road. Our girl, though, asked when we could go back to the big climbs. I suspect she means places like Idwal, but that isn’t happening in the foreseeable. So: we are looking at a visit to Statham’s or similar next weekend, plus a stay down by Maggie River come LC’s next school holidays, so we can hit the granite. Now, Melissa, please don’t say you don’t climb”

She looked embarrassed, and as she shook her head, I gave Dal a mock glare.

“And, boy?”

“And, well, we don’t know yet”

Maz perked up at that.

“We have to ask the other question, darling: what does she think about birds?”

The girl looked at her man.

“Is this some sort of trap, love?”

He shook his head, his grin as broad as his father’s, but without the beard.

“I’ll answer for you, love. Maz, ‘Lissa does voluntary guiding at King’s Park, especially in wild flower season. She’s particularly good on which birds use which plant”

My wife flipped a dismissive hand.

“Who cares about the climbing, then?”

“I DO! HANDS AND FEET AND JAMMING!”

Mother turned to daughter.

“And what else, darling?”

“SNORKELS!”

I took that as the cue to start working through our photos, once Dal-the-expert had done his thing with the big screen. SNORKELS it was.

The following weekend, we did hit Statham’s, Vern there for work, so of course we had Chad along, and Melissa got towed up a couple of the simpler routes, but in the end, she wasn’t a climber, spending the day keeping Geeta company. By contrast, Kul held the fort a couple of months later, when six of us took one of Rod’s surf school specials down to Gracetown. We did get some decent climbing in, but I made sure that we kept as close as possible to decent swimming spots so that Dal’s girl could have something to do while we clambered.

To no surprise on my part, my dear wife seemed to spend more time with Melissa than she did on the rock. Bloody birds.

Once home, however, we were straight into the interviews for Tom Edwards’ project, with a perfectly-groomed woman called Annabeth (what sort of name is that?) in front of a crew of about six technicians, cameraman, director, make-up woman, god knows what else, and we gave our fifteen minutes of fame speeches separately and together. Various legal forms were produced and signed, we did some ‘routine’ outdoors stuff such as dropping LC off at school and posing at the climbing wall, and that was it.

We heard nothing more for another two months, and then the e-mail dropped into my account: the documentary was ready, and attached were all the clips that mentioned us. Were we happy with it? A quick family vote found no issues, and so off went our agreement by return mail. A week later, a set of discs arrived, with a covering letter. The programme had aired the day before the discs were posted, so for good or bad, it was now out there. Maz rang the Butts. We’d share the discs with other friends later, but first, well, they were family in our eyes. Kul had literally been there from my first days in Australia as well as my start at the new job in Sheffield. I still remembered, with a pang, that day at Lesmurdie Falls.

Family, far more than my in-laws would ever be.

We sorted out drinks, nibbles, extra chairs, eight of us together in our living room. I noted Melissa giving me a slightly uncertain look, so I explained, as simply as possible, that as far as the Rhodes were concerned, the Butts were family.

“That goes for you, now. Same as our son’s girl. Pass me a Toohey’s, please”

I took a swig from the requested bottle, then slipped the disc into the player Dal had linked to our trusty big screen.

“All ready?”

I pressed play.