The wedding was a flurry of pink organza, the twittering of Mina’s old chorus-girl friends, and an embarrassed-looking groom. It was all over now, Brian and Mina were on their honeymoon, the kids had gone back to Queensland. I was sitting on a wharf in Balmain dangling my legs over the side. Alone.
I looked across to the suspension bridge being built to replace the Glebe Island bridge, one of the last opening bridges in Sydney. Nearby were the silos of the former container terminal, now bearing the distinctive squiggly ribbon of the Olympic Committee and Sydney 2000.
My father would never get to see those Games. I don’t know why that should have filled me with a sense of melancholy, he was never overly interested in sport. I have a photo of him as a child, one of those school photos which look the same whether they were taken ten, twenty, thirty years ago. He would have been David’s age, and looked a lot like him only more studious, not so cheeky. I stared into the face to see if it revealed anything of the man he would eventually become. But he looked like all the other kids. Big teeth, eyes squinting in the sun. It was a small country school, the whole school assembled for the photo, all fifteen kids, most of them barefoot. A couple of photos and a dinner set which, like my mother, I would probably never use, were the only solid evidence I had that he had ever existed.
I sat gloomily looking into the water. Well at least I was sober. Yeah, that was a real comfort.
I would get the death certificate. Perhaps seeing it in print might give me the sense of finality I needed to break the old habits. Like my son, I wanted ‘proof’.
I pulled my legs up just in time, narrowly avoiding the wake from one of those stupid little jet skis. Mopeds on water. Only the people who speed along in them wouldn’t be seen dead on mopeds. I stood up. Tomorrow I was meeting a prospective client, that was something to look forward to. Sure. As if anyone comes to a private investigator bearing good news.