It happened on a Sunday at the swimming pool. Benny was standing behind the block, waiting to dive. He watched the kid in front make a slick efficient entry and didn’t notice Moses and Adam sidling up and exchanging glances. As he stepped onto the block, they mouthed, ‘One two three,’ and pushed. They were a half-moment too early to push him clear into the pool, and his foot caught on the edge. He tripped, windmilling forward. It was another Chaplin sequence, this time in lurid colour. Benny’s block was near the side, and the angle at which he fell meant his head struck the edge of the pool. So did his arm; I winced to think of the graze. Then he was facedown in the water and his head was bleeding, releasing an ink-red plume into the turquoise pool.

That was the moment when things changed again for Benny, when his mild brain damage became something more severe. He lay in a coma in Canberra Hospital for three months. The swelling on his brain would certainly have killed him if not for the quick actions of a visiting specialist, a South African surgeon who was an expert in head trauma. He excised a four-inch section from the front of the patient’s skull then sewed the flap of skin back over his forehead. His brain expanded to fill the gap where the bone had been. When the swelling went down, Benny woke up and the doctors patched his skull with a special metal plate.

I had seen what happened at the pool. I saw Moses jerk backwards. Adam McDonagh visibly shrivelled, losing his bantam chest. Their movements brought other movements, which came in quick succession. Two bigger boys running up and lifting Benny from the water. Mr Sedden rushing over, dropping the apple he’d been eating. And then the man who ran the pool sprinting over too, to start the CPR he had once shown us on a dummy.

Shortly afterwards Mr Sedden, as the first adult on the scene, asked me to write down what I had witnessed. He was distracted as he gave me a pen and paper, too distracted in that moment to distrust what I would write. My statement was to be given to a policeman, who had already been called and was driving down from Cooma. But before I could write anything, I saw Mr Noffey through the wire fence. He had just pulled into the car park and was doing that thing he did, taking a breath and drawing himself up. He didn’t know anything yet, he was oblivious. Then I turned to see Moses, who had so far gone unnoticed. He was standing in the shade of the liquidambar trees, close to the gathering knot of people and yet apart from them.

It was an accident, I thought. It could happen to anyone. Then I looked at the page and wrote what I had to say.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to: