‘I didn’t think you would,’ she said, shifting gears as they leveled off into the uplands, the night approaching swiftly. ‘At least your father’s new girlfriend wasn’t there,’ she added, and let out a fake laugh.

James smirked. His mother noticed.

‘Keep an eye out on your side for roos, won’t you?’ she said.

He continued staring straight ahead, enjoying this new-found unwillingness to respond to demands from either of his parents. Mum retreated into a series of her big, unanswerable sighs, underscored by a long Blues track. She reached over as though she was going to ruffle her son’s hair or pat his arm, but stopped her hand and spoke instead.

‘Your father gave up on me too, you know.’

James’s anger surprised even him. ‘But Dad never sent you away,’ he said.

He watched as she struggled to form a reaction. ‘No, he didn’t.’

‘Then why are you sending me away?’

Before she could answer, the dented white drums of the letterboxes appeared, and Mum aimed the car down Brandt Lane.

‘Your dad has always wanted you boys to go to the same school as he and your Uncle Bill. Tony went there and he seemed to enjoy it.’

‘I’m happy where I am. I have friends at my school,’ he lied.

‘Well, when you go into the senior years, you often make new friends,’ she said, negotiating the dip to the stream. ‘It’s a big school, too. It’s bound to have plenty of good stuff for your writing.’

He scoffed at her offerings just as the empty farmhouse slid by silently on his side. As she turned onto Deloraine’s cattle grid and he spotted the solo light burning by the homestead door, it lit her face, revealing a kind of calm.

This was real, he thought, as she stopped the car near the dogs straining on their chains: she had already decided to let him go.

Fifteen 2005

FIFTEEN
2005

James needed somewhere quiet to look at the contents of the courthouse envelope. The main street was empty like it always was mid-afternoon, but the milk bar was still open.

‘What would you like, love?’ one of the waitresses asked.

‘Flat white, please.’

‘Be with you as soon as possible. Just had a big coffee order from up at council.’

James nodded and gestured towards the booths. He sat at the very last one, back to the street, and opened the envelope with his thumb.

He’d waited for two decades for someone in the family to give him answers about his mother’s criminality, and here was the court case, in approximately fifty pages of material held together by a clamp at one corner.