When he opened them, he saw his father standing with his back to the door, one foot up, arms crossed, the solid lumps of his punishing hands half hidden in the folds of his dumb jacket.

James needed one thing, one assurance that would get him away from this constant attention from everyone in his family. He already knew how to blend in. He could make himself even less noticeable if he really had to. He lifted his chin and looked his father in the eye. ‘It’s alright Dad, you don’t have to worry,’ he said. ‘I’m not a poof.’

Twenty-Five 2005

TWENTY-FIVE
2005

James woke with his face pressed against the long back seat of Tony’s car. It was starting to get light and as he lifted himself upright, he saw the seagulls that must have woken him, fighting over the bin at the far end of the car park behind the shops. Beyond it, the pale shapes of boats showed along the Dangar marina.

He checked his phone and noticed the battery was getting low. It was almost six. He’d arrived in town around nine last night, too late for anything to be open. The motel lights had been off and he hadn’t felt like rousing anyone to get a smelly room, so just cleared out Tony’s car, swallowed another beer to settle himself, then put his head down.

Looking over the ocean he could just make out the horizon. A couple of men were fishing off the beach, visible by their little portable lights. Beyond the grassy dunes in the other direction, the headland crouched against the lightening sky. In its shadow, patches of the estuary were becoming visible, flowing from the hinterland.

James checked he had the yacht key in his pocket, pulled out the flyer from Tony’s funeral, locked the car and made his way along the sandy track that led between the trees to the small network of jetties.

The picture of Tony on the yacht gave little away about the Home Free. It was a large white seagoing yacht, that’s all that could be gleaned from the one photograph. None of the boats moored at the jetty looked right, and one or two out on the water had potential, but even in the scant light James could see the names were wrong.

A lone sailor was pitching water over the side of a medium-sized vessel in the middle of the channel, steam rising from her mouth. Judging by the way she stopped and looked, his presence alarmed her, so James kept walking along the shore. A cluster of other boats showed against the dark surface of the water in that direction.