the channel. He leaned back in the sun, his mind again shifting through scenes of life before today.
There was no way he'd ever have consented to go to rehab until he'd reached the point where he simply had no resistance left. That night, pulling up behind the detective's vehicle at the house in Mosman two minutes before the troops arrived, he'd left Isobel and Charlie in the car. Finding Cutter missing part of his head on the floor of his old bedroom was just too much.
That had been seven months ago. He'd spent three of them in an inpatient unit with around thirty other thirsty vets. He'd left some new friends and old habits at the hospital, along with a couple of the worst memories. He'd also left the person he'd become closer to than anyone else in his life, other than the two people with whom he now shared the beach. Carrie, his therapist. In her office at the hospital, she'd done combat duty with him, walked through his memories, exploring, in exhaustive detail, the experiences he feared had almost pushed him into the madlands his poor mother had inhabited.
Carrie had been at his mum's funeral last month, Isobel holding onto her tearfully before they left. Isobel and Carrie had also done a tour of duty together, during individual and family therapy sessions.
He'd left the bill for the treatment to Veterans' Affairs.
Not that money was an issue now really. He could be retired today if he felt like it. He'd never have believed the house in Mosman would have sold for so much.
But taking the winter off to holiday in the Top End would do fine. He smiled lazily, watching Charlie scratch an itch on her pink zinc-covered nose, the action sticking sand to her face. She scratched again, and more sand smudged into the pink cream.
She'd start school next year, they'd decided. And he'd go back to the insurance company. As much time as you need, the partners had insisted, sending a monthly bouquet of flowers out to him at the hospital. He'd given them to the nurses before the other guys had seen them.
Isobel told him that his work colleagues had telephoned her and offered their support, expressing their shock when they'd learned he'd served the country in Rwanda. Great, he'd thought more than once since then; they were the type of guys who'd want war stories every lunchtime, but wouldn't eat with him again if he told them the real deal.
Charlie stood from her sandcastles and moved around to the left side of his chair; she carried her bucket with her everywhere. Her nose was now completely covered in pink sand, and she swiped a tentative finger at it every couple of moments, gluing on some more.
'Um, do you want to go for a swim, Daddy?' she said. 'I'm hot.'
'Yep. Me too,' he smiled at her. 'But maybe you should go and show your mum your face before we go swimming. You've gotta do something about your nose.'
She gave him a look of quiet indignation, then half-dragged and half-rolled herself across his stomach, the most direct route to her mother.
'Mummy,' she said, standing proudly, pot-bellied in her yellow bikini, her bucket by her side, 'Could you please fix my nose? I'm not decent.'
