I have spoken to family and friends who knew Toby. In his short life he made an impact on everyone he met. Beloved by his immediate and extended family, Toby was an enthusiastic, excited and adventurous little boy. Toby’s parents have asked his Uncle Conor to say some words on their behalf.
It never occurred to Finn his father wouldn’t come. But since the first phone call, when Finn broke down completely trying to convey the news, he hadn’t spoken to his father. He’d called, but John could never come to the phone. Helen, who’d stayed in Hobart to be with him, took the calls and tried to reassure Finn. ‘He’s in shock,’ she said. ‘You know he’d be there if he could.’
Edmund and Conor, his agent and his brother, were the ones who stuck hard by him. They let him go only at the end of each evening, when he dragged himself upstairs and joined Bridget and they lay in numb silence. Finn would grope for her hand, or pull her into his arms. They’d cry together. But it was like she wasn’t really there.
Even today, as they’d dodged hurriedly into the front row of the chapel, Bridget had let him go in first and then allowed Jarrah to sit between them. There was no arrangement of their reduced family that could be right for this, but Finn wished Bridget were next to him. He couldn’t even see her properly.
When the celebrant nodded at Conor to indicate it was time for him to come up and speak, Finn glanced back as Conor stood. As they’d walked in, he’d half noticed the chapel was crowded, but he saw now there wasn’t an empty seat anywhere. People were standing at the back. Apart from the people in the first two rows, Finn knew no one.
As Conor fumbled with his notes and tried to steady his voice, Finn found himself blanking out.
Home was Hobart. How had he ever thought he could live elsewhere? They’d had friends, good friends. Family. He hadn’t been able to walk around the Farm Gate Market on a Sunday morning without stopping every few metres to catch up with someone. Hobart knew them. He hadn’t put in the effort up north. Thought there’d be plenty of time once they settled. He hadn’t made a single proper friend, he realised. He was an alien in Murwillumbah. It had been wrong from the start.
He had to collect Toby’s ashes and then figure out how to get the family back home. He’d take what remained of his son and they’d climb the mountain and scatter him at the top and know that he looked over them always.
Sandra had called, the day after Toby died. The news must have flashed around Hobart and found her. Finn’s sister Mary, tasked with answering the endlessly ringing phone at their house this past week, had come and found him with the handset.
‘Oh, Finn,’ Sandra said when he took it. Two words, full of compassion, and they were enough to bring him undone.
He took the phone outside, onto the grass, and she waited silently on the end of the line while he sobbed, and even the silence was somehow different, was somehow laden with knowing and understanding and not needing words.
After what felt like forever, Finn recovered enough to blow his nose and breathe.
‘I’ll come, if you want me,’ she said.
Finn had looked up at the house. Bridget stood in the doorway. She wasn’t even watching him. She was staring blankly into the far corner of the garden, as if he didn’t exist.
‘I don’t know,’ he said.
Sandra paused. ‘Hans can’t understand why I’m not there. He sends his love to you both. God, I’m sorry it’s such a mess. I wish I could just get on a plane. I wish I could help.’
Finn heaved a shuddering sigh.
‘Should I call her?’
Finn looked over at Bridget again. ‘I don’t think she can handle anything else.’
‘If it feels right, tell her I’m sending my love.’
‘I’d better go,’ he’d said. Hung up and felt the most alone he’d ever been.
Except, perhaps, for the funeral. As Conor read, Finn heard the sounds of weeping echoing through the chapel. People who didn’t know them, who didn’t know him or Toby or their family. Were they the same ones who came in the night and laid down flowers and teddy bears and battery-powered candles in little glasses? The ones who’d left the notes about their little angel, the ones who’d promised to pray for them, who’d turned the front fence into a shrine?
He didn’t want it, this kindness from strangers.