MIKE WATCHES HIS CHILDREN paddle in the shallows. His son, the oldest of two, is turning eight next month, just old enough to see how unhappy his parents are. His sister is easier to deal with. She’s still carefree. Everything’s a surprise to her.
His wife is Sonya.
High school sweethearts. Married at twenty-two. Separated three months now.
Sonya doesn’t show for the drop-off at his weekly visitation. She sends the nanny instead: Marta, the Polish teenager, from next door.
‘That boy is too skinny,’ Marta says today, shielding her eyes as she looks at the water.
‘I was like that as a kid,’ says Mike.
‘My mother says she doesn’t feed them enough.’
‘She feeds him. Christ. How is your mum?’
‘Terrible. Sore hands.’ Marta makes her hands into claws. ‘It’s called something.’
‘Arthritis.’
Marta doesn’t seem convinced. ‘She used to be a florist. That’s what did it.’
‘Moving flowers around wrecked her hands?’
‘I guess so.’
Mike’s son runs up the beach. ‘Dad, can we go in the surf?’
‘Sure. Give me a minute.’
The boy sprints back to the water.
‘It’s too cold for them to be swimming,’ says Marta.
‘Never.’ He takes his shirt off. ‘Dare I ask how Sonya is? I haven’t laid eyes on her in weeks now.’
‘She’s unhappy.’
‘She’s always unhappy. Is there anything else?’
‘You mean gossip?’
‘No, I mean does she need anything?’
Marta chuckles, nods at Mike’s Speedos. ‘She needs a husband who can keep that thing in his pants.’
Mike wants to say something more, but that’s about the shape of it.
Sonya kicked him out after the second affair. Getting caught once was bad luck. Twice is sabotage, and both of them knew it. The weird thing is, Mike still loves her. Sonya gave him the kids. Sonya gave him everything. And now she won’t take any part of it back. Not a stitch, not a cent. That’s how he knows things are different now.
It’s a message.
She’s not going to forgive him anytime soon.
Mike’s son floats beside him in the water, out past the breaking waves. The boy doesn’t say a word. He isn’t big on talking, never has been, even before all this.
‘You like it down here, mate?’
He nods.
‘I love it,’ says Mike.
It wasn’t like this when Mike was little. There were no weekend trips to the beach with a Polish nanny. Mike grew up in Inala with wall-to-wall deadshits. Nothing dramatic—no unjust beatings or abuse—but no big plans, either. Just the slow grind of working-class poverty in an unclean house.
‘I want to move us down here,’ Mike says.
‘Mummy doesn’t like it.’
‘She’ll come round, mate.’
Marrying Sonya was trading up. She was from good stock. Well-spoken, extravagantly educated, great-looking. Her father was in car dealerships, but Mike wanted more than his father-in-law’s hand-me-downs, and once Mike started getting it, he couldn’t stop himself. The National Party of Australia made him more than all that. It was his golden ticket, not the marriage. Turned out the Nationals had plenty of political talent back then—a lot of smart kids and farming money—but the government needed something else to hold on to power. They needed men like Mike who could get along with anyone and didn’t give a fuck about the rules and regulations. Loose units to keep the figureheads clean. It was the perfect place for Mike. All he had to do was go where the wind was blowing, a strategy that had served him well his entire life.