According to the writer Douglas Adams, there are two hundred and thirty-two types of rain. Grief is the same. It comes in droplets and squalls, drizzle and downpour. I felt as if I was submerged and all noise came at me in a weird slowed-down soundwave that I couldn’t understand.
I remember Max getting out of the car. I remember finding JC breaking down out by the rhododendrons near the tennis court and holding hands with him as we walked back inside. I remember Max holding me and me holding Max. I remember being hugged by Ella and Grace.
At some point I was sitting with Stephanie and the girls at their kitchen table. Stephanie and Max were trying to discuss funeral details with me. The archbishop from St Mary’s came, but I can’t remember what was said. Frank Pringle came and went and JC poured us all whisky. Stephanie fed us chicken soup. Max came and crawled into bed with me and stayed all night.
It was on the front of the paper the next morning, a picture of Dad from his life as one of Australia’s longest-serving elected representatives. There was a picture of JC, me and Max with Dad when we were kids. From all sides of politics, Tasmanians had liked Angus Coleman. There was going to be a state funeral. He wasn’t ours in this moment; he became everyone’s.
In the morning I went with Max to clean out his room at the nursing home. We didn’t need to do it so soon, but we both felt we had to. We wanted to be with whatever was left of him. We packed up his books, the photos, folded his clothes. We packed up his bathroom items. A toothbrush. A hairbrush. A comb. The soap he liked—Imperial Leather.
When we got back to JC’s with Dad’s stuff, I got a text from Dan Macmillan. It said: So sorry about your dad. I’m in town this afternoon if you’d like a lift down.
I read it a couple of times and then I replied Yes. I sent him the address. He sent back: 3 pm? I said perfect. And then I remembered that, despite everything that had happened in between, this was the night Edward was dropping the documents to the Bruny house at 6 pm. And the final road section was being delivered to the bridge. All of it came back to me in a crushing, roaring wave.
Suddenly I was hearing again. I needed to be in action.
‘Thought you might stay in town,’ JC said.
I looked at my brother standing there in his blue denim shirt and his chinos—his Saturday uniform, as he called it—and I saw him for what he was. A turncoat. A thief. A liar. A traitor. Someone who had duped me and was going to dupe Tasmania. What was his election slogan? Growing a brighter future. What a joke.
‘What?’ he said.
I gathered myself. People’s lives relied on my discretion now. He would guess Becky in a flash.
‘I’m sorry, JC. I’m distraught. I need to go hide for a day or two. I’ll be back Monday. I’ll miss Sunday lunch tomorrow. I’m sorry. I need to be alone.’
Dan came up the driveway and I was out the door with my bag before he’d stopped the car. I knew everyone’s eyes were on me and Dan and they’d all be thinking they’d missed something. But let them think what they liked.
‘You rescued me,’ I said.
‘Good,’ he said.
And we didn’t talk after that. Not until the ferry, when he handed me a pouch of rolling tobacco.
‘How did you know?’ I asked.
His blue eyes regarded me. ‘Anyone who rolls a joint as well as you do has clearly had practice. Thought it might be time.’ I had smoked for years, until I had the children. After Ben and I split, I’d often rolled a cigarette or something stronger when I poured a glass of wine at the end of the day. Coming back to Tasmania, I’d determined that it was a slippery slope, and I needed to give it up. But it was perfect right now.
I went through those familiar motions of paper, tobacco and filter then I got out of the car. There on the top deck, I lit, inhaled, and looked up the channel to the bridge. It was getting precariously close to being finished.
They’d completed the roadworks from the Hobart end, too. Not opened—but all ready to go. The final stretch of the Dennes Point road from the top of the hill down to the bridge would be finished next week.
The nicotine and the salt air rushed through me, along with the despair. My father was the first person I would have told about the deal with China. He was the first person I’d rung with any news. Passing my uni subjects. Getting engaged. Being pregnant. First steps and words for Paul, first steps and words for Tavvy. When a UN mission did or didn’t go well. Getting divorced. Now I couldn’t. There was no-one to confide in. I tried to imagine what he might have said, but there was only silence and the breeze.
Dan came and stood beside me. ‘You going to be okay to come down and watch the last section go in? I’d like to see it, but we can stay home if you need to.’
I shook my head. He put his arm around me and pulled me close.
‘I’m really sorry about your dad,’ he said.
And then I leaned into Dan Macmillan and cried on the Bruny ferry.