The pity was that his travelling companion didn’t seem to appreciate how lucky they were. Ron was extolling the engineering genius of Chester Dam—the beauty of the sluices, the water-carrying capacity, the life-giving boon for the people of the region—but his companion was silent, even morose. No gratitude. Ron put aside his irritability. He was in too fine a mood—driving! There’s a life-giving boon for you!—so he decided to regale his companion with stories of camping at Chester and other locations, back in the day. Mostly these stories ended up in complaint about how his son was as useful as a priest on a honeymoon, and how when Norma wasn’t nagging she was whingeing. Never mind though. Like two tidal waters rising over a sand spit, memory and expectation converged to drown out experience, which, old men knew, was only a brief and painful illusion.

Ron’s commentary on the unreliability of memory brought a disapproving growl from his companion. Two hundred miles to go, and the man was offside already.

‘But you remember the last trip to Chester, don’t you?’ Ron said. ‘The trip after we lost our boy.’

As his companion shrivelled into the passenger seat, Ron pressed the accelerator to the floor. God, driving was good. He felt sorry for every human born before the automotive age. Speed! He tried to wind down his window and feel the breeze on his cheeks, but there was no winder. He eventually located the button, but that only lowered the window on the passenger side, and when that window slid down Ron’s companion shrieked in alarm. So Ron found a way to close it and gave up trying to open his own. He would fix that at the petrol station. He checked the gauge. Quarter of a tank. At least he thought that was the petrol gauge.

‘We’ll fill up at the next service station. But no snacks, all right?’

His travelling companion murmured sulky nothings.

They were at the lights turning onto the highway when Ron started thinking that maybe he shouldn’t have swung by the firehouse to collect his passenger; he should have taken this trip on his own. What’s the use of a travelling companion who only snarls and slobbers and shows no appreciation? What is the bloody use? Those other trips, with Norma and the boys, came back to Ron. To be honest—and if he wasn’t going to be honest now, when would he be?—he hadn’t wanted them with him and they hadn’t wanted to be with him. That was true in Ron’s expectation of those trips, it was true in his memory, and it was most certainly true during the events themselves. Torture for him, cruel and unusual punishment for them.

Even for Owen, when they had him. That boy was the image of Ron, every bit his father’s son.