Something deep in that face. Something primal. Dad puts the paper down on the table. He looks confused, lost for comfort solutions to the unexpected display of that unsettling womanly eye wetness known in more human circles as tears. I move to her. I hug her. ‘I’m gonna wear a nice jacket, Mum, all right,’ I say.
‘You don’t own a nice jacket,’ Mum says.
‘I’ll grab one of the work ones they have on the emergency rack.’
The shared emergency rack of hanging black coats for parliament and the magistrates court that all smell like whisky and cigarettes.
‘You’re gonna be there, right, Eli?’ Mum says. ‘You’re gonna be there tonight?’
‘I’m gonna be there, Mum,’ I say. ‘And I won’t be cynical, Mum.’
‘You promise?’
‘Yeah, I promise.’
I hug her tight.
‘This is a great day, Mum. I know it is.’
This is a great fucking day.
*
Judith Campese is the public relations woman from Queensland Champions. She’s been helping me all week with the feature spread I’m writing for tomorrow’s newspaper about ten winners from tonight’s glittery gathering in Brisbane City Hall.
She phones me at my work desk at 2.15 p.m.
‘Why are you still at your desk?’ she asks.
‘I’m just filing Bree Dower,’ I say. Bree Dower is the mother of six who ran around Ayers Rock 1788 times in 1988 to celebrate Australia’s bicentenary and raise money for the Queensland Girl Guides. Not the greatest twenty centimetres I’ll ever write. My story begins with the hamfisted introductory line, ‘Bree Dower’s life was going around in circles’ and I stretch the long bow of this entry point about how she quit her dead-end job as a real estate agency secretary all the way to how she found her purpose in life going around in circles at Uluru.
‘You better get a hurry on,’ Judith Campese says. She has a royal British undercurrent to her voice, sort of Princess Diana if Princess Diana managed a Fosseys fashion store.
‘Thanks for the advice,’ I say.
‘Just a quickie,’ she says. ‘Can you give me an idea of the questions you plan on asking Mr Broz?’
‘It’s not really policy for us to flag questions before interviews.’
‘Just ballpark?’ she sighs.
Well, I figure I’ll open with the gentle ice-breaker, ‘What did you do with Lyle, you twisted old cunt?’, then move seamlessly to, ‘Where’s my fucking finger, you animal?’
‘Ballpark?’ I say. ‘Who are you? What do you do? Where? When?’
‘Why?’ she says.
‘How’d you guess?’
‘Oh, that’s good,’ she says. ‘He really has a lot to say about why he does the things he does. It’s kinda inspirational.’
‘Well, Judith, I look forward to hearing about why he does the things he does.’
Across the newsroom, I can see Brian Robertson marching my way, staring at me as he approaches, so filled with steam his head needs a blast pipe.
‘I gotta go, Judith,’ I say, hanging up the phone and returning to the Bree Dower piece.
‘Bell,’ Brian barks from thirty metres away. ‘Where’s the Tytus Broz copy?’
‘I’m just going out there now.’
‘Don’t fuck it up, all right,’ he says. ‘The ad reps say he might come on board with some serious ad money. Why are you still at your desk?’
‘I’m filing the Bree Dower story.’
‘She the Uluru nutter?’
I nod. He reads the piece over my shoulder and my heart stops momentarily.
‘Ha!’ he smiles. I realise I’ve never seen his teeth before this moment. ‘“Bree Dower’s life was going around in circles.”’ He pats me on the back with his thick, heavy left hand. ‘Rolled gold, Bell. Rolled gold.’
‘Brian?’ I say.
‘Yeah?’ he says.
‘There’s a real big story on Tytus Broz I think I can write for you.’
‘Great, kid!’ he says, enthusiastic.
‘But it’s not an easy story for me to—’
I’m cut off by Dave Cullen calling across the room from the crime desk.
‘Boss, just got a quote from the Commissioner . . .’ Cullen hollers.
Brian rushes off. ‘We’ll talk when you’re back, Bell,’ he says, distracted. ‘File Broz a-sap.’
*
Waiting for a taxi to Bellbowrie. It’s forty minutes away in the outer western suburbs. I’ve got to be there in thirty minutes. I stare at my reflection in the glass entrance to our building. Me standing here in the floppy oversized black coat I yanked from the newsroom’s spare coat rack. Hands in deep coat pockets. Do I look that different as an eighteen-year-old from how I looked at thirteen? Longer hair. That’s about it. Same skinny arms and legs. Same nervous smile. He’s going to recognise me instantly. He’s going to spot my