The Lodge, which we owned mortgage-free, became unoccupied after Noel’s death in 2000 during the Ocean City Olympic Games Torch Relay, for which he partially completed the Northern Beaches leg. Noel’s death, televised on the nightly news as he got the staggers up Bluebird’s shopping strip to hand the torch to the president of the BSLSC Tony Eastaugh (who received it from the teetering brake fluids king and, in true Olympian spirit, sallied forth without a backwards glance), emancipated my gift for sharp business practice. It was I who engineered the nifty tax-efficient restructure of assets into family trusts that sugar-highed the Chidgey fortune. Upon Noel’s death, two of the trust shares in The Lodge went to me and one to Kelly. The vanished Carl was summarily disinherited, but for Kelly there was a catch: I held the trust’s sole voting share, which meant that she could not sell, add to or borrow against hers without my express permission, which, I made clear, would come in my own sweet time.

Whatever I did with The Lodge, I was too smart to tinker with the engine of Chidgey wealth and soul of the community: the Bluebird Hilton. I had the Hilton to make the money, The Lodge to have fun with. After Noel’s death, I lost the taste for the sewer of prejudice and resentment that was Bluebird and fled to more congenial climes—my son from my first marriage, Tino, required my loving attention in Thailand—leaving my properties to be managed by my conveyancer and probate solicitor, Douglas Oscar Gilsenan. Empty, The Lodge fell into disrepair and became a de facto clubroom for the conveyancer and his cronies, the locals Noel had still perceived through memory-tinted eyes as his children’s playmates, but who had ripened into the underemployed, sun-damaged, life-raddled dead-enders who could not let go of Bluebird, the last hold-outs grimly defending the beach’s last unrenovated property. The ghosts of those rehabbing diggers returned to The Lodge to possess its denizens, who bear the war wounds without the war.

I’m not so bad, am I? I might not have held much belief in this family, but I believe strongly in Family. After Kelly’s act of sabotage against her marriage, my responsibility was to keep Family together. Gifting a share in The Lodge to Gordon was the very least I could do.

But alas, although my extraordinary munificence has enabled Gordon to move into The Lodge and remain with his family, he struggles to feel as grateful as he thinks he ought. Most nights, as he lies awake fretting over cost and complication and compromise, he fears he has been lured into a trap by his love for this house. Conserving history and saving his family feels like an unbearable burden. He is too ashamed to ask me for help.