CHAPTER NINE

Tuesday 10 December 1974

Charlie

A funeral without a body seems supremely weird to me, but Donna says the ceremony will be a farewell, not a funeral. I don’t know how Dad will cope with being around other people. He barely has the energy to shower, and stands in the hallway in his pyjamas, confused about why he’s there.

‘She’s with me in the morning,’ he tells me. ‘When I wake up, I wait before I open my eyes because Skye is here. I smell her rosewater spray, see her moving around the room, casting a shadow on my lids. I feel her sitting on the bed.’

He moves from reverie to lists of chores, telling me straight after this that I need to call Ed. ‘Tell him not to drop the other chickens over after New Year like we’d said. I don’t want them now.’ I say I’m sure Ed will understand.

But Donna is adamant there will be a send-off here, so early Tuesday morning, two weeks before Christmas, thirty odd people gather in Dad’s backyard to farewell Skye.

I do mean thirty odd people, too. There are craggy farmers dressed in their best who’d sought Skye’s advice on painful corns and cuts, teary pregnant women sad she won’t be in the room on their big day, a quiet and spotty teenage boy. There are tanned men in polyester paisley shirts and wide ties, women in kaftans, and kids in all kinds of garb, from ironed shirts to tutus. It’s a motley crew. Donna and her friends are wearing nondescript dresses of apricot, turquoise and beige, with hats that seem, to my untrained eye, relics from the Second World War. Maybe the first one.

‘You look nice, dear.’ Donna squints in the bright sunshine, adjusts my collar. I’ve borrowed a short-sleeved mustard-brown shirt from Dad and combed my hair. ‘Not a cloud, is there? It’s weather for a wedding.’

And then she heads into the kitchen, where I know Abby will be, doing whatever it is that needs to be done. I’m sure my sister is feeling as churned up as I am today but we don’t discuss it.

‘Donna,’ Dad says, walking towards the house. She stands a few feet away from me now, accepting a plate of lamingtons from a recently arrived mourner. ‘I can’t. You’ll have to do it.’

She hands me the plate, takes my father’s hands and holds them in her own. ‘No one expects you to have prepared a speech. Say what’s in your heart.’

He shakes his head.

‘You listen to me, John. If you stay silent today you’ll regret it forever more. You don’t need to use fancy words or important quotes. You need to say goodbye.’

She leads him by the crook of his arm to a clearing under a gum tree, where she’s set up an altar of sorts: a fold-out picnic table covered by a white cloth and topped with a vase of lilies, a silver pen and an open book in which some guests have written their memories of Skye.