It was nearly midnight, but Charlie was waiting when I stepped onto the platform. He nodded at me. He was still very tall, though he looked emaciated now. We hadn’t seen each other for nearly twenty years, just once since my father’s funeral, but he did not make a fuss about this. He seemed to be guarding himself against sentimentality, as if he expected his generosity to be abused. Taking one of my bags without comment, he led me into the tiny gravel carpark behind the station. I looked around, trying to understand where I was. I saw lights among the palm trees, and a distant orange glow, where the cane fields were on fire. Then we drove, with the windows down, through thick, rushing darkness.

‘How’s your mother?’ Charlie yelled above the sound of the wind.

I slept badly that night in Charlie’s spare room and woke, thinking that Sylvie was crying nearby. I checked my phone. Seven missed calls from Sarah. No messages. It was 4am. When I called, no one answered. I got up and walked out into the silent kitchen. The door to Charlie’s room was ajar, and I could see his wife, Lucy, sleeping beside him with her face turned towards me and her mouth open. Weird to see someone sleeping before you’ve even met them. I drank a glass of water and opened the fridge, which was filled with small plastic bottles of medicine, but almost no food.

When I woke again, it was late, a warm winter Queensland morning, and I could hear voices in the kitchen. Lucy smiled when I came out and we shook hands. Then she handed me my breakfast utensils one by one, while Charlie paced back and forth between the kitchen and the computer in the next room. The Brexit vote was happening. He was hoping for anarchy.

‘I’ll leave you guys to it,’ Lucy said sceptically, when I’d finished my breakfast. She’d never met my father. I was a messenger from an unpleasant world that had nothing to do with her. Charlie was Lucy’s third husband. She was Charlie’s fifth wife. His first, second, and fourth wives were far away, and didn’t speak to him anymore. His third wife, Rochelle, lived in an aged-care facility across the road. He went and read to her every so often. Rochelle had Alzheimer’s and didn’t talk to him either, because she didn’t know who he was. This was probably for the best, Charlie admitted. ‘I don’t think I was very good company, while we were married. I certainly didn’t try very hard not to be an alcoholic.’

Of course, Charlie didn’t know why my father had killed himself. He didn’t know why he was so angry. He didn’t remember him being angry at all. He’d loved my father.