Depth

Sydney was always full of rich colours; the deep greens of the parks, the houses set into the bush, the brilliance of the beaches, the harsh sun blanketting the west. She's rich, Asian, in her 50s, drives a smart car; stake her out. But the description could fit thousands who have colonised the gated or semi-gated communities and wealthy ridges of the north shore; and the chances of finding her were minimal. We reconnoitered, buzzed on a buzzer, appearing once again on CCTV, waited without hope for no response, sat in the car in blistering heat swapping notes on how pointless the job was, the vagaries of our private lives.

I had regarded my own childhood on the far northern beaches as a nightmare against green, unfair though that may be. The silence of the house morphed into the screach of the cicadas outside. The belt snaked out and the scars that left would remain for decades. It might not be fair, but these were the memories that spilled down the decades, more than the happy times down the deadend mucking around was the growing horror of growing up; the impervious horror of a father who was always angry, always the enemy; who barely spoke to me, the embarrassment that I was.

In later years, when I was better known and other tragedies made him keen to appear normal, he would try different tacts. It didn't matter. In his own life he tried to stick to different principles; and when he betrayed them chaos ensured. It wasn't right, what happened, he knew that now; the desolation as he walked away from the house, leaving home. They couldn't even drop him to the bus stop. And that was that. He was on his own. He always would be.