I don’t have it in me to keep up our stand-off. So I tell him about Abby and Mark, Maria and Beau. Everything. To the mundane and rhythmic sounds of my turkey friend Lenny scratching up leaves outside the open window, a magpie warbling, and the washing machine chugging.

Dad doesn’t respond the way I’d imagined he would. He doesn’t want to come to Brisbane to see Beau. ‘What for? It was my job to get him out of that hellhole but I’m not going to mother the boy. Abby will do that.’ He shrugs off Beau’s bumpy entry into suburban life.

‘Abby had to lie to the principal to get him into the local school,’ I tell him. ‘They asked where he’d come from and she said he’d been home-schooled. On his first day there Beau cracked it about the guinea pigs being in a cage. Then kept wandering away from his desk. Normal life freaks him out.’

‘He’ll adapt,’ Dad says. Even the issue of Finn’s potential return meets with a clipped reply: ‘I’m sure Mark and Abby will sort something out. Mark’s a clever fellow.’

His stubborn insistence on treating our conversation like a news report, one in which he has no vested interest, is infuriating. He cares. At least, I think he does. But once I’ve answered his few questions, we fall silent. I know what’s coming next, though.

‘If you think driving up here to tell me this, or your sister taking Beau in, redeems you, you’d better think again. You’re lucky I let you in. You’re a murderer. Your sister’s a scheming liar.’

I lean forward and speak as calmly as I can. ‘Dad, we are genuinely sorry, but insulting me –’

‘Insulting you? You bloody baby,’ he shouts. In an instant, his forced composure vanishes. His voice is shrill, wounded. His face is red.

I want to get up and leave. But I force myself to stay and take his stream of vitriol. Because my visit to the farm has two goals: tell Dad about Beau; man up and fix what’s broken. So here goes.

I still don’t know the chick version of man up. Maybe it’s just what they do all the time. But it doesn’t matter, since on this occasion we’re both men. Point is, I need to offer Dad space to let rip at me, to say everything he needs to, and then own that I caused his pain. Me, not Abby. Me, not Finn.

And he does let rip. ‘Have you or your sister given a moment’s thought to what you’ve stolen from me? I’ve buried two women I loved. Your drunken childishness means the rest of my life will now be empty, lonely, meaningless. You took Skye, took our future, our child. And you’re sitting here feeling sorry for yourself because I called you a name? What did I do to end up with a son like you?’

The act of hurling abuse at me, and of putting his pain into words, quickly exhausts him. I stay quiet and listen. When he’s run out of things to say he sits panting, as if he’s run a marathon. I know better than to try to lighten this moment. No jokes, no switching to more comfortable topics. I agree with him that everything he’s said is true, tell him again that I’m sorry, and wait for him to break the silence.