‘That’s miles away.’
‘Yes, and we’ve been landed with it.’
‘Why?’
‘Because the victim’s got an apartment down on Maroubra Road, so she lives full time in our area command. It’ll be a joint thing. One team here, one team out there. There are no local coppers in Redbelly Crossing who are detective rank or higher.’
I rose to my feet. ‘Okay, look, before you go any further, Gail, it’s a no. I’m not doing it.’
‘Yes, you are.’
‘Gail—’
‘Let me remind you of two things, Russell. First: it’s “Superintendent Caplan” while we’re at work. And second: you don’t get to pick your gigs; I do. And I’ve picked this gig for you, because less than twelve hours ago, you assaulted a member of the public.’
‘I’ve got Bridie this week! You know that!’
‘Yes, and you should have thought about that before you started swinging fists, shouldn’t you?’ Gail barked. ‘You punch-happy sack of shit!’
‘You’re telling me you’re gonna send me on an out-of-area homicide’—my voice was rising, echoing across the locker room—‘on myscheduled week off, just because—’
‘Because you punched a drug dealer in the mouth?’ Gail put her hands on her hips. Her voice was as loud as mine. ‘Yes, Russell.Hellyes. And I’m well within my rights to do so! You need to be seen being held accountable for your actions! You can’t go around socking low-lifes in front of witnesses whenever the hell you feel like it!’
‘Listen—’
‘No!’
‘Listen, please.’ I lowered my voice, told myself not to grab her by the shoulders. ‘I’m on leave. I asked for it months ago. And I don’t want to go out there. I’m serious. Gail, I’m serious! I’mfromthere, okay?’
‘No, you’re not. You’re from Maroota. That’s an hour from here, and Redbelly Crossing is, what—half an hour further again? Don’t try to give me that, Russell. I’m a Hawkesbury girl too, you know. I need you out there by midday.’
‘But my dad’s out there, and my brother’s out there, and I don’t want to run into either of them,’ I said.
‘Too bad.’
‘But Bridie—’
‘Too bad, Russell!’ Gail snapped.
We watched each other, fuming. It was starkly silent in the locker room now. Gail Caplan and I were the two biggest, scariest motherfuckers in our command area, and we didn’t go toe to toe on much, because whenever we did it had the effect it was having now. Earth-shaking. Our disagreements not only rattled people but news of them spread like wildfire, and inevitably the stories being told about the conflict needed to pick a winner. Gail had me in a corner. Her eyes were telling me there’d be biblical levels of pain in my future if I kept on. Punishments that far exceeded disappointing my already overwhelmingly disappointed child and possibly running into my estranged brother and father.
Gail walked off, so I lost by default. I slammed my locker and kicked over a bin to let the eavesdroppers know I wasn’t happy about it.
I don’t like delivering bad news to my teenage daughter. Because over the past ten years, that’s all she’s got from me. Towards the end of my marriage to her mother, as I started withdrawing from my family life and hiding in my work, I was the father too busy to come see her receive an award at school. Too distracted to listen to tales of her friendship dramas. Too tired to stay up late watching a new Netflix series with her. I was retreating into myself, yes, but I was also using tiredness and busyness as an excuse to avoid being with her. Because a part of me knew the end was coming, and I needed to soften the loss of her father for her somehow. Just after Bridie turned thirteen, I delivered the news to her. That while I loved her mother as a person, I didn’t want to be her husband anymore.
I was gay.
And I was leaving.
The five years since had been rocky. At eighteen years old, Bridie had spent almost a third of her life watching her mother grapple with the idea that I’d been lying to her for our entire relationship. There was nowhere in the house to hide from Georgia while she weathered the surprise and humiliation and grief of being abandoned by a man who apparently had discovered all of a sudden, at the ripe old age of 48, that he was a homosexual. It wasn’t fair, what I did to Bridie. Or Georgia. But I did it anyway.
I’d moved out of the house immediately but stuck near enough to my wife and child to witness their pain and explain what I could. I tried to balance that with giving them space to recover from what I’d done. No matter how close I lingered, a great crevasse opened up between us. Them on one side, me on the other. Bridie and I were like strangers now, and Georgia and I were down to texts only. This week had been planned as a radical bonding session between me and my kid—suggested to Bridie by her therapist. I’d been thrilled by the idea when she told me. We’d organised for her to come and stay at my apartment in Newtown. I was weirdly excited for her to see my place. We were going to eat Thai food and go to the movies and make fucking eye contact for once. Start trying to piece back together this utterly pulverised thing.
Now I arrived on the doorstep of my former family home in Eastwood, in Sydney’s north west, and stared at the welcome mat, preparing to tell my child that this week wasn’t going to be the end of the awkwardness, sadness and disappointment that characterised our relationship. The door opened. Bridie was there, taller and older and more shockingly beautiful than she’d seemed when I last saw her, six months earlier. She’d done something new with her hair, but I didn’t know if saying something about it would be odd, so I just said, ‘Hey.’
‘Hey,’ she said to my shoes. She pulled the door open and backed away apologetically, like I was a plumber there to remove a dead rat from the laundry drain. ‘Mum’s not here.’
‘Oh.’ I braced against the dual waves of guilt and relief. ‘She’s not?’
