‘Daddy’s got afriend!’ the child sings, swinging her mum’s hand and raising everyone’s blood pressure as she presents us through the lens of total innocence—all ‘met in the sandpit’ vibes.
‘Gosh, aren’t you a busy little bee!’ I exclaim, and she seems delighted by the descriptor. ‘I’m not afriend, exactly—’
Not of Daddy’s, anyway.
Then, as if I weren’t already overwhelmed, we look over to where, fighting off a large posse of fans, posing for selfiesand signing autographs, Joshua emerges from his most recent epicentre of triumph.
Rach, who has rushed through the park from her office across Marcus Clarke Street in her stylish, espionage-esque tailored whites and beiges, turns to Fraser, winks, and says in a sultry tone, ‘Hello, my beloved.’ I’m almost envious of the way that he smiles at this, except that his mother, not clued in on the fake-fiancé joke and clearly battling to understand what fresh hell this is, glares at Rach, while his ex-wife fires daggers at us both.
Joshua, meanwhile, has ditched his clamouring devotees and is searching intently through the bustling crowd. Finally, he pushes free from the throng and locks eyes with me, and my heart thrashes. I’ve spent more than a decade imagining this precise encounter, replaying versions where he doesn’t recognise me or hates me or sweeps straight past and ignores me. In every one of those scenarios, I never predicted this unfurling reality: Joshua Miller approaching me after a performance, charged atoms of unresolved conflict leaping between us, taking me right back to that head-spinning moment when he crushed me.
‘Good to see you, Sully,’ he says in a low, gravelly voice as the Miller clan holds its collective breath. His hand reaches for my waist as if he wants to pull me into a hug he doesnotdeserve and back into a fictional world where we’re still friends. Does he really think he can fly through this interaction the way he flew through all the others—on class A charisma and my unrelenting streak of goodwill? We’re not twenty-two anymore. I’ve stored up twelve years’ worth of fury!
I pull away, ducking from the attempted embrace, unpractised rejection playing across his features with a flash of red. Then, after I’ve cut the power from his confident pose, everythinglands in my mind with belated clarity. This man’s career soared. Mine lay stagnant. For more than a decade, I’ve allowed this fact to eat my potential alive, and it needs to stop. Tonight. Or I will never get my life back.
8
FRASER
T hisis Sully? The musician Josh was obsessed with at university? The one he described back then as his ‘musical soulmate’, so crucial to the upward trajectory of his career that he’d kept her hidden from us throughout the whole, fiery affair? Former divorce-firm office manager Audrey Sullivan—friend of Zoe, saviour of Rachael—isJosh’s Sully?
She had disappeared back then, abruptly. That’s how we really met her. Through the space she left in my brother’s life. A great, cavernous hole the size of a football field into which he had plunged hard. It all fell apart just as his star was rising, pressure mounting, publicity peaking. He’d been abandoned right when he needed her most—to help usher him through the biggest break of his life.
At least, that’s the story we got at the time.
Well, that’s composers for you, Mum declared, fired up in his defence. The ghost of ‘Fickle Sully’ haunted our dinner table every time Joshua experienced even the slightest setback. Performance off?Fickle Sully.Bad reviews?Fickle Sully.Medicating with various substances while leading on half of the woodwind section?If Fickle Sully hadn’t left him, he would have settled down …
I’d seen enough of Josh on boys’ nights out to know it was less about ‘Fickle Sully’ and more about ‘Laddish Miller’, who firstdiscovered a talent for breaking hearts in high school. The only thing ghostly about her now is just how pale she has gone in his company. Wow, he really did a number on her.
I try not to appeartoodelighted at the sight of my brother fumbling through the overdue comeuppance of a foiled embrace. Or at the fact that Audrey won’t meet his gaze but will meet mine. When she does, it’s an intriguing mix of deer-in-headlights panic, unbridled rage and some sort of natural high. I can’t work her out. And increasingly want to, because nothing about the woman I watched fall apart in the wings tonight aligns with a single accusation this family has flung in its twelve-year smear campaign.
‘I’m going to be a musician one day!’ Parker announces, pulling at Josh’s sleeve and breaking the tension.
‘Parker, youarea musician,’ he corrects her, scooping her into his arms. ‘I remember what you could do on the Fisher-Price xylophone as a toddler!’
My attention sweeps along a still-infuriated chorus line of Mum and Maggie and Rachael. Each has been observing the same situation, fuming for a different reason. Dad is oblivious, or pretending to be. He’s the classic ‘bystander’. Never said a bad thing about ‘Sully’ all these years, though also never intervened in the trash-talking, and isn’t that just as damaging? Finally I land on Josh, who, with my daughter in his arms, has clocked where Audrey’s attention has drifted.
‘Congratulations,’ I say, extending my hand. ‘That was great work.’
While he accepts this professional compliment, I can see in his eyes that he’s slating an inevitable heated confrontation about how it is that I fled his concert hall this evening with his former muse. It’s like engaging with a charging bull.
‘Do you need a lift home?’ I turn and ask Audrey, ignoring my brother, knowing there was talk of a post-concert family dinner, but if we don’t disperse soon, we’ll hand the arts critic a salacious postscript for his article.
Rachael lights up and says on behalf of them both, ‘Thank you! We were bussing it home otherwise, and it looks like rain.’
It doesn’t look anything like rain. I can’t tell if Maggie is glancing at the moon as it beams in a cloudless sky or rolling her eyes. Either way, I send her a silent plea not to overreact.
‘Good to see you again,’ she says, dispensing hugs all round for her ex in-laws. Ordinarily she’d have attended tonight’s performance, but we’re still in the part of this split where we’re disentangling our calendars, shaping new social identities, and trying not to confuse Parker, whose hand I hold now as I walk with them both to Maggie’s car. It’s a journey we take largely in silence after Parker, looking thoughtful, says, ‘Your new friends are really pretty, Daddy.’
Maggie, probably struggling to unpack which aspects of the last ten minutes have annoyed her most, stays uncharacteristically silent. Frustrated, too, no doubt, that we’re so deeply entrenched in the lore of this failed relationship that I can still read her mind.
That’s the thing with divorce. You can break apart.Implode.Yet somehow, in the centre of those crumbling ruins, a library stands, with all the knowledge the two of you ever shared.
I open the car door and help Parker into the seat the way we’ve done countless times. Maggie jogs to the other side, and I know it’s because the belt latch sticks, each of us leaning to kiss our daughter.
It’s like a dance, choreographed by subtle data that once oiled every interaction, now a bittersweet reminder that even this wasnot enough, that everything can tumble and split, but here the two of us stay: grand masters in each other’s lives, alert to every moving piece, watching for the tells.
‘Fraser—’ she begins, trapping me with a judgemental gaze over the car roof.
