1

On the day of Emmett Brown’s funeral, Tuesday the tenth of January, the temperature is 40.4 degrees in the quivering shade. Out the front of Gilberts Funeral Parlour in Footscray, someone suggests that there’s no need for a crematorium to dispose of Emmett, just leave him hanging around in this heat and he will surely self-combust. Smiles, sly with memory, surface like fish rising up in wide rivers. People fan the slow, thick air around their hot faces with funeral programs, and by degrees the smiles fade.

Gilberts lost most of its land when the snaking concrete overpass the locals call Mount Mistake went up and now the front yard is an odd shape because it’s truncated and almost tucked underneath the thing. The funeral parlour is a creaking old Edwardian joint full of corners and bow windows and little fireplaces lined with cracked tiles.

It’s right across from the Western Oval, a patchy green heart glowing in the dull streets where both Brown boys played footy as kids. Rob remembers it best. He’d been a middling footballer, one who liked being in the team more than he liked winning, who loved the thought of footy more than the game.

He remembers walking past Gilberts and those mornings, full of the loose strands of the day, still stand out sharply because they were rich with anticipation. He still believes hope is the best part of everything.

And even now if he closes his eyes he can see himself and his mates, small shapes against the pale winter skies threading through long treeless streets where the houses are low and hunched, backs always to the weather, bouncing the footy and talking fast.

After a frost there might be puddles sealed with panes of glassy ice that Rob and his mates would break with their heels so as not to wet their feet and all the while the boys yapped on constantly, boasting about how much beer they’d be able to drink when they were grown, about how much their fathers drank and about whose father was the biggest pisspot. (Rob won hands down.)

Sometimes the talk was more mundane, about where to get wheels for billycarts or who really was the best footballer even though this always boiled down to Ted Whitten.

They dragged everything into the conversation but no matter where they were in the river of talk, they always hurried past Gilberts because it gave them the creeps. One of them would start running and soon enough, another would break into a sprint and then they’d shoot past the place, hearts banging around in the caves of their skinny chests, and they’d show up at footy puffing and blowing.

Now Rob is forty-five-years-old, standing under the eaves of Gilberts being watched by the sole terracotta dragon still hanging onto the roof, and his past is washing by him like sticks set down on a river. Yeah, he remembers those footy days, but mostly he remembers his father, Emmett. Every bloody inch of him.

He looks up at the dragon and into the oven of the sky and he steadies himself for the task of burying the old bastard. About time it all ended he thinks. Something has made him recall George Harrison’s ‘All Things Must Pass’. He secretly likes the song but doesn’t mind stirring his sister Louisa for declaring George her favourite Beatle. How could anyone go past Lennon? For a smart girl she’s still pretty damn wet. Yet, he concedes, today George you got it spot on. I am ready to enjoy the passing of all things.

After Emmett died his wife, Anne, was determined that there be a quick funeral. No mucking around, she said, and this despite the fact that Louisa, the eldest Brown, was in Italy. No, the thing would proceed. Funerals aren’t a big deal, they are just something to be done with. What’s the point of waiting, she wanted to know, especially in summer.

No one seriously argued with her, though Rob did mention that it was possible to put bodies in fridges these days, they made them big enough. But without Louisa there to laugh, the crack fell flat and was ignored. Anne was never one for jokes and in better times was stumped that anyone would want such a troubling thing as a sense of humour.

So plans were made. Louisa would hurry home with some urgency and three quotes for the disposal of the earthly remains of Emmett Brown would be sought. The three quotes were for form’s sake because Gilberts was the only place really considered. In Anne’s opinion, only locals could really be trusted at such a time.

Outside the funeral home while they wait for the others to arrive, the Browns keep to the narrow cut of shade cast by the overpass wall. They edge back as the sun erases the shadow and from above they look like a string of beads.

They’re waiting for Peter, the second youngest Brown, to arrive but it could be a long wait because Peter’s idea of time has always been elastic. Still, there’ll be no funeral without him, so the wait goes on.

Though it isn’t a big turnout, maybe thirty or so, some people drift towards the Browns in dribs and drabs and hands are shaken and cheeks are kissed and remarks about the baking weather are made. Then the hot, heavy arms of the day take them.

Standing by the radiating concrete wall, Anne’s hot but she’s not letting on. She’s never been much bothered by heat. People make far too much of such things, she thinks. Heat is heat and the best thing to do about such extreme displays is to pay them no attention. This makes things more bearable. So she doesn’t fan herself with the funeral program she’s already collected, she simply takes her mind off the heat by reflecting on the miracle of her children.

In that trench of shade, dressed in her reliable fawn pants-suit and her new tan sandals with soles like tyre treads, she marvels that these people are actually hers. They’ve grown up so well, all things considered. And so tall, given that she just scrapes in at a bit over five feet. For the children she silently thanks Emmett. Without him they would not be who they are.

In the sky, the glare dulls as if someone has turned it down and twigs carried so far by the wind are tossed at their feet like offerings. Against it, some people clutch hats to their heads and women hold their summer dresses down as the gust swells skirts like sails. Some raise their voices over the bullying wind, remarking about the strength of it. The Browns seem outside of such things, they just watch and wait for Peter.

Rob Brown grew later than most of the others but now he reaches nearly six feet. His shoulders are broad and because of his outdoor work he’s fit and strong and lean. He keeps his hair longish (can’t be bothered with hairdressers) and it suits his broad face. He shaves when he remembers.

His dark eyebrows are wing-shaped and it’s acknowledged that Rob has the best eyes of all of the Browns, they’re lighter than both Emmett’s and Anne’s and though there seems something Nordic in them, the aquamarine colour is a gift from his English grandfather, George Alfred Griffin, the kindest man Rob ever knew.

Rob is an arborist. Today he reckons the best perk of any outdoor job is that you need decent sunglasses which give you a place to hide. And even though his hands are hard from years of handling trees, today, standing there in his suit, face shaved, dark hair slicked back, the sunnies make him look sophisticated. He wouldn’t mind keeping them on all day.

He stands beside his sisters Louisa, forty-six, and Jessie, thirty-two, both of them handsome dark-haired women who seem to be clinically observing the arrival of Peter as his car rattles and lurches into the yard. Even though she appears to be concentrating, it’s possible that Louisa is not because today she is porous and possibly the only active thing about her is the sweat slipping from her temples. But then the burring sound of Peter’s old car awakens her.

‘For God’s sake,’ Rob says at the farting of the van’s engine as it cools, ‘that old kombi can’t possibly hold out much longer and anyway, the bloody thing handles like a dog on lino.’

Out of old habit, Jessie snaps, ‘We’re not all as materialistic as you are Robert,’ as they examine the faded orange pop-top kombi with Anne’s floral curtains, noting a rainbow sticker, another one reading ‘I ♥ Footscray’ and a surfboard leaning on the back window. Tyres are a bit down too.

Rob, a tad wounded by Jessie’s go at him, grumbles, ‘Come off it Jess, even you drive something built in the last ten years.’

Jessie pulls her handbag in close over her shoulder. ‘At least it’s not a fuel-guzzling V8,’ she sniffs, and considers that she might be allergic to something around here.

‘And neither is mine,’ he replies indignantly, lifting his hair with one hand and wiping the sweat from his brow with the back of the other one. He flicks a few drops onto the concrete and watching them disappear he reflects that such arguments are typical of the incendiary one. Always has to have the bloody last word, he complains to himself, and wonders whether all families have flame-throwers, even at funerals. If not, he’d be willing to hire her out.

Louisa pays no attention to their bickering, it’s background noise and even kind of comforting in its way. No, she has other concerns. Actually, she thinks she might be hallucinating. When she looks at Peter’s car she swears it’s changed colour, wasn’t it red? And he’s been driving the thing forever. Can he really have got it when he was twenty-one? Scrambled eggs, she thinks with a sense of panic, my brains are scrambled eggs.

Anne was the first to declare that Louisa was overtired. As soon as she clapped eyes on her last night, she summed her up with, ‘That girl needs a good long sleep.’ But considering she’d just stepped off a plane from Italy, Louisa didn’t think this particularly insightful. And it had been a long time since she was a girl.

She’d had one day in Venice when the call came through late that first night announcing the end of Emmett, so she’d packed up and headed straight home, and after flying for nearly forty-eight hours she had been bowled over by jetlag.

At Melbourne airport there was the usual jostling of passengers to be the first in to grab bags from the carousel. With a sinking heart Louisa entered into the fray with the men and minutes later, elbows out, she lurched back dragging someone else’s bag. Of course. A big bloke helped her set the thing free again, but in the end she was the last person standing at the deserted carousel. It seemed her luggage was lost.

After long laps of circling time, some kind of officer stepped forward wearing a shining badge and a shirt the washed-out buff colour of Australian officialdom. His broad hat was slightly tipped back and a fine film of sweat bubbles glazed his big face.

‘Everything all right here Miss? You’ve been here quite a while,’ he said, planting his big feet. And all of a sudden, at that plain voice, Louisa felt she was home. And the lump in her throat was now a boulder.

When it became clear that her bag really was lost, for some reason she strangely and unexpectedly let slip to the officer that her father had just died and tears spilled over and she found herself sinking into sentences that wouldn’t hold and she stuttered to a halt. It took a serious harnessing of all the shreds of her composure to stop herself from leaning into him and weeping.

‘I’m very sorry to hear such sad news Miss,’ the officer said and briskly led Louisa from the labyrinth of the sprawling airport. She trailed him like a lost child.

Outside in the bright day, with cars trundling past as though they were on tracks, he found a canary-yellow cab and got her into the back of it, took her name and address and said he’d see to the lost luggage. Then he stood up and like a magician, tapped the top of the cab three times to send it on its way.

From the speeding car, the flatness of the landscape lassoed Louisa’s tired heart. This was bleached, practical country. Nothing flashy going on here, just parched land and thirsty air and it hadn’t changed much in three days.

A flock of milky cockatoos lifted from a paddock and scattered upwards like seed on the wind. Louisa watched listlessly. The last few days had taken a toll. The skin on her lips was as dry as Cornflakes and her hair badly needed a wash. A solid magenta pimple had emerged near the corner of her mouth and had begun to throb. The volcano is ready to blow, she thought dully.

Louisa felt the reality of life. Father dead and here she was ageing fast, almost visibly, but she spoke sharply to herself about getting a grip. She’d hated her father and now she was getting weepy in front of strangers. Still, she argued, at times the old man could be okay. Sinking into the comfort of memory, she remembered the red children’s encyclopaedias he bought for them and how he’d seen something special in the story of the ugly duckling and said sometimes there’s a little ugly ducking in each of us. And later there was the time he’d won the double and given her money so she could lay-by the black dress covered with small flowers. The dress she wore when she got married.

The taxi driver, whose name according to a curling card sticking up on the dashboard was Hussein, had noticed her sniffling in the rear-vision mirror and put his foot down as if there were an emergency. Soon enough the paddocks were gone and Melbourne could well have been any of ten Australian cities, anonymous and closed up against the heat.

In Footscray, after Louisa leaned over to pay, the driver said in stumbling English, ‘Please Miss, I hope you will be well,’ and looked away tactfully. Didn’t seem much, but she was felled by him and couldn’t speak. Kindness always made her feel guilty; she doubted she deserved it. To explain it she harboured the strange thought that Hussein and the airport official might have been angels.

Still, seeing herself through Hussein’s eyes, she realised she must look a sight so she smoothed her clothes, pushed her hair back and got ready for all that was coming. She mumbled thanks and gave him a mighty tip which made her feel exposed as a fool and then watched his cab move into the distance, a small bright piece of disappearing kindness. Then under the verandah next to the overflowing rubbish bin out the front of her mother’s shop, she stood like a dolt. She was just getting her bearings.

That Anne still lives in the shop even though it’s long been closed is an outward sign of her inner stubbornness. She sold all the stock but the shop itself was harder to shift. The idea of renting it and living upstairs was inconceivable. Anne likes her privacy. So, because she couldn’t stand the thought of renting it to strangers, she decided to use the shop as a lounge room; the old display dummies in their skew-whiff wigs stand around in the background looking into the distance like family ghosts, their wrists forever at right angles.

It wasn’t too long before the door burst open and Peter was dragging her inside. In the cool dark of the old shop her brothers and sister held out arms as though they were harbours and Louisa sailed right in; even the warmth of their hands on her back was comfort itself. So much had happened so fast.

Sadly though, she didn’t wait long enough before she told them about the airport officer and the lost bags. The reticent girl was long gone, these days Louisa was a blurter. ‘It was his accent that finished me off. I missed it so much, it was so good to hear one of us again.’

Pete and Jessie nodded; they understood. But Rob narrowed his eyes ever so slightly and said brusquely, ‘For God’s sake Louisa, you’ve only been gone a couple of days.’ Blabbing about Emmett to strangers in airports was not on. And neither was whingeing.

Louisa read the message from Rob but it was too late, she was fully committed. She ploughed on, ‘Well, he reminded me of Dad,’ she allowed herself to say and knew this was worse than lame, that she was revealing, even in this sideways fashion, that there might be more than just hate at work here.

The agreement between Rob and Louisa was being stretched but she was too tired to get into it. He’d always forgive her anyway. Always. She rubbed her raw eyes. The lack of sleep made them hot and it seemed all her history was crushed behind them. Time she went to bed.

The funeral was the next day. Rob said he’d drive her home. Gingerly, as though she were fragile cargo, she loaded herself into his ute, her legs moving heavily. Nothing was real and she was absorbing everything. He tried to ruffle her dirty hair but it stayed resolutely flat. They drove in a comfortable kind of silence.

‘I’m glad you came back for the big day,’ he said as the car slid through the streets. When they stopped, she put her hand on his shoulder, didn’t want to let go. Tried a smile. ‘See you tomorrow mate,’ she said and stepped into the hot air.

From the front porch she watched the ute disappear and then, in slow motion, she let herself into the house, heading to the bedroom thinking, I have been awake for a thousand days. Didn’t change, just lay down on the bed and pulled the bedspread up, glad her children were still at their father’s.

Next morning, she’d driven to Gilberts in a state between sleeping and waking, hot-faced, gripping the steering wheel hard and driving with so much caution that she was beeped twice. But today she didn’t even notice the impatient headshaking of other drivers. The world was surreal this morning, the city tender from the weight of the heat and the sky the colour of roses.

As usual Louisa hadn’t really looked in the mirror, just a glance to check that she didn’t have toothpaste trailing from her mouth. She wasn’t in the mood to be fussing with make-up, it was too damned hot and tears were expected. And anyway, she’d already had one miracle that morning.

Her white linen shirt had been hanging clean and ironed in the wardrobe and finding it had been such an enormous relief that it had felt like a gift. Small things, she muttered to herself as she forced on her good grey trousers and sucked in her stomach hoping the seams would hold. Though it was so damn hot, she’d have to wear the black shoes, she had no sandals apart from thongs. The endless little negotiations with the tyranny of everyday things.

Louisa had spoken to her kids at their father John Keele’s house. No, they didn’t want to come and though at heart she was disappointed and a sense of loneliness swam up around her, she didn’t let it show, she just agreed with the kids that it would be for the best. Louisa never pushed things with them.

There was no suggestion that John would come, even though he had known and even liked Emmett. Ah people, she thought, when you get down to it, who really needs them? And how like mum that sounds, she realised and smiled.

So when that morning at Gilberts she looks up to see her former husband, John Keele, for the first time in nearly a year leaning blithely on a car in the blanched sunlight, she feels assaulted by the shock of him. He’s wearing a grey jacket and his hair is long and fair and, unfortunately, he looks pretty good. ‘Hi,’ they say to each other smiling tightly. ‘Thought you weren’t coming,’ she says. He shrugs and looks down Geelong Road, following a swaying semi.

Striding away from him she catches her heel on something and stumbles slightly. Jessie reaches out and grabs her sister to steady her. Louisa gestures towards John, and Jessie nods and says, ‘I’ve already spoken to him, vile toad.’ Jessie loved John as a child but when he left Louisa, she hated him. Loyalty is simple for Jess, though this wasn’t always so. ‘Don’t even think about him,’ she says fiercely and pats Louisa’s shoulder. ‘This is about getting rid of Dad, not him. His turn will come. All the bastards will go down in the end.’ She smiles, grimly, Louisa thinks. They hold hands briefly. This is not what they usually do.

Louisa finds herself wondering what John’s thinking and whether any of his poems have been published. Jessie grabs her arm harder than she means to. ‘Louisa, this is not the day for ex-husbands,’ she says firmly, looking her right in the eye. ‘This is the day for burying fathers. Come on. We’re doing it for Mum.’

Soon enough Peter is striding towards them, tall, dark and shining in his ironed white shirt, a shield against the heat. And almost immediately on seeing him, there’s a release in Louisa. Here is Daniel’s twin and while Danny is lost to them, Peter holds them together. Though they don’t talk about it, they all believe he’s the best of the family. Lou holds onto him as though he were a tree. ‘Shoosh now,’ he says, assuming all these tears are about Emmett. ‘Shoosh Lou. It was the right time for him to go.’ Jessie pats little circles on her back and the wind lifts her hair like a wing.

In the moment of being held by Peter there in the yard at Gilberts, Louisa understands this as the purest relationship she will ever have. Brothers and sisters want nothing from you. They know who you are and they love you anyway. These are the ones who know and in the war against Emmett, they’d been in the trenches with her.

Jessie scans the yard like a sentry. Rob and Anne watch while Peter and Louisa head inside Gilberts, then they follow. Inside, the dull light swallows them and Emmett’s coffin dominates the room. Native flowers are splayed across the dark wood. Red waratahs so perfect they might be plastic lay upon gum leaves shaped like long tears. But no shiny metal gleams on Emmett’s coffin because while Louisa was flying home it was decided that such folderols would be a waste of money and the one thing the Browns do not waste is money.

The family moves to the front of the big room and relatives and friends and old codgers who wouldn’t miss a funeral for quids drift into the seats behind them. Rob walks to the wooden podium and slides a sheet of paper out of his breast pocket, unfolds it and somewhat reluctantly it seems, takes off his sunglasses.

He clears his throat tentatively and then in a calm voice says, ‘Thank you for coming here today on this very warm day, it’s much appreciated by all of us.’ He pauses, smoothes out the folds in his sheet of paper. Clears his throat again and pushes off into the deep.

‘In all the world Emmett really only had us four kids and Mum. He had two old uncles who were basically his parents but they died a while ago. He never knew his father and his mother put him into the orphanages when he was young. He did have a half-brother, Jimmy, and a couple of half-sisters, but they were fostered out and there wasn’t much contact there.

‘Emmett kept diaries on and off for most of his life. A few are still kicking around. I want to read something to you from one of Emmett’s diaries, this one from February 25, 1974. Emmett was aged forty-two when he wrote, “When I die, I don’t want any mealy-mouthed, psalm-singing hypocrite talking bullshit about me. I just want my mob and I want them to cry for me. Cry for me, but not too much and, please, I ask you all now to forgive me for doing some of the wrong things I did. Remember me and laugh about the funny times. Laugh about me. Laugh at me. Doesn’t matter. Remember, I was nothing but a drunken old bum.’”

Rob looks up into the little room and sees the small crowd of mostly dark heads looking down.

‘We are Emmett’s mob and we are here to say goodbye. Emmett was a tough father and we had our problems, to be honest there were many problems. The best I can say is that I remember him clearly. Emmett was a teacher, always a teacher. He taught me how to cut an apple. He taught me how to bowl a cricket ball. He taught me how to make compost and he taught me a lot of things I would rather not have known.’

Rob is gripping the podium and holding on to his place in the flow of his sentences with one hand. He’s not sure there’s anything more to say. Emmett loved music so each of the kids has chosen a song for him. Sinatra singing ‘The Summer Wind’ begins and somehow the music brings Emmett to life. Tears start again.

As the music sways through the hot room, Rob walks stiffly from the podium and sits down next to Jessie, bowing his head to listen with the rest of them. Jessie puts a hand on his arm. He’s folded his speech and grasps it like he might want to hit someone with it. The music has got to him. He angrily dashes away a tear with the back of his hand.

By the time it’s Louisa’s turn to speak, she’s beetroot-faced and it’s becoming clear that she slept on one side all night because that side of her hair still prefers to be up. Louisa is known to be a truly terrible public speaker and the Browns are bracing themselves for her speech. They’ve seen it all before at weddings and even at small family birthday parties. Things begin almost normally and then with unnerving speed the speech veers off. Stretches of anxious silence arise in the audience, sympathetic murmuring and sometimes even clucks can be heard.

She once explained the terror to Peter. ‘When people look at me all at once I feel like I’m disappearing. Like I’m being eaten.’ He thought about this and put both hands behind his head. ‘Think of the sea Louie, the sea doesn’t panic. Sometimes you remind me of the sea.’ And Louisa said, ‘Yeah, vast and all encompassing,’ and laughed dolefully, swiftly dodging the compliment.

In most speeches, after a few words her eyes spring leaks and soon enough she’s actually crying, and not even at the sad parts. Today, the people at the funeral duly wonder when the tears will begin.

Louisa has written something and is damned if she isn’t going to read the thing. She’s the eldest after all, and she feels the magnitude of this. She launches into her speech with an uneven, ‘Hello, I am Louisa, eldest of Emmett’s children,’ then bizarrely qualifies with, ‘though Rob is only a year younger, so there’s not much in it.’

She takes a deep breath and ominously feels a sob rising like a big bird stretching its wings within her and the words stall. The audience thinks, and so soon and sighs a fateful sigh. With effort, she wrestles the sob down and after a pause begins again.

‘We spend a lot of time talking about Emmett in the Brown household and much about him will always be inexplicable because he towered over us. He was a giant and giants, you’ll agree, are unusual creatures.’ She doesn’t look up but holds the paper in front of her as if it were a screen between herself and the audience and she reads fast to beat the tears. ‘He encouraged my love of words and that’s how I ended up in my first career in journalism, so I’ll give him that. When Dad was in a good mood he’d wander around, making a cup of tea checking on his “System” stats and sometimes saying “branch” again and again because he loved the bloody sound of it. When I asked him once why he kept saying “branch” he said he “liked the song the word made in the air”.

‘And he wanted us to love words too. When Rob and I were kids he got us to define words. We tried so hard to get them right.’ Here her voice rocks unevenly and tears slip from her eyes. She tries to push them back in but it doesn’t work, so she clears her throat, takes a sip of water and ploughs on. ‘He taught us to spit properly, none of that dribbling. He said, “If you’re going to spit, make it straight and fast.” We are all excellent spitters,’ she says to an unexpected wave of laughter which she reads through, head down, galloping like a riding school pony in sight of the home gate.

‘And he taught the boys to shake hands like men. He said, “Look people straight in the eye and then one shake and release – hand fully into the palm, none of this fingertip bullshit.”’ Again laughter falls softly about her and startles her, making her look up so she loses her place and for a moment the thudding of her heart is all there is. She finds the place again and races on.

‘He told me reading was the best way to understand the world, no bloody doubts about that. He believed writing was the greatest art form. Though he thought dancing was an art too and that Rudolf Nureyev was as great an artist as the footballer Alex Jesaulenko. He loved anything written by Hemingway, Steinbeck, Tolkein, by Henry Lawson, or by his beloved Banjo Paterson, and his favourite music was by Tchaikovsky and Beethoven.

‘He was a man who loved to feel things strongly. I want you to hear this simple little song by Cat Stevens because I remember listening to it by the old radiogram in the front room one day when Dad walked in and I thought he’d yell at me and tell me to get out, but he said the music was nice. This is ‘The Wind’ by Cat Stevens. Also the other choice, the 1812 Overture, would probably take up a bit too much time.’

When she comes back to the wooden seat, Anne clasps Louisa’s hand in her own knotty hands. Louisa knows this is clearly the worst speech she’s ever given but by now it doesn’t even matter. There is a wrenching going on within her. Some kind of old pain is finding its way out right there in the little chapel at Gilberts and while she’s shuddering with grief, she is also honestly beyond caring. That her children won’t see it is the only thing that matters.

Beside her Jessie is sobbing steadily, her shoulders rocking. The tissues in her hand are a mesh of snot and tears. She barely raises her head. Peter doesn’t want to speak. Says he can’t think of anything that hasn’t been said. The odd tear slides down his face as he sits with an arm around Jess.

Outside the hot north wind pounds the ragged little funeral parlour and whips under the overpass. The palm tree out the front stoops before the wind and sheds papery fronds that curl on the hot concrete. Eva Cassidy is singing ‘Fields of Gold’ as Louisa and Rob and Peter and Jessie carry Emmett’s coffin down the length of the chapel, and the music gives them strength.

Apparently there are those who believe that women shouldn’t carry coffins. Well, thinks Louisa, here they bloody do. She looks across at her sister and is glad at last that there’s another woman in the family. They feel each other supporting their father and now that the load is shared, he seems a lighter man.

Turning right with the coffin isn’t easy. There’s some mild straining and the sweat flows. Outside, the silver hearse shaped like a bullet is ready to take Emmett away. They wait for the back to open and then in a slipping moment the coffin is lowered and swallowed by the wide mouth of the shining vehicle and then the door comes down and Emmett Brown is stowed away forever.

Outside Rob slips his sunglasses back on and waits for Anne to emerge. He studies the sky intensely. Notes that the dust storm is edging closer. A blotchy Louisa reckons the coffin in the hearse seems far too final for something connected to Emmett.

She looks over at her mother and her brothers and Jessie, slim and tawny as a lioness today, and thinks, well, freedom opens many doors and we will be free of him. She walks over to Rob and Peter and puts an arm around each brother. There’s a space in them where the tears have been sheltering. Each of them feels exposed, there’s been too much crying today and all feel weakened by the display. The worst of it is that they know people believe they’ve been weeping for their father and that they are simply bereaved by his death.

The truth is something else. Louisa closes her eyes and sees a flash of him in the kitchen, the light streaming in, making them fill his beer glass and God help them if they spilled a drop. Beating them, terrorising them, humiliating or exalting them – and she still doesn’t know which was worse.

And the sad irony is that she realised this wasn’t love only when she was far too old to have such doubts. She feels a pulse of rage at the pathetic man in the coffin. And then recalls his shaggy grey head, sees him old and stumbling in the hostel before he died, and once again pity for the poor old bastard takes the place of rage.

And she realises how tainted is anything connected with Emmett. Themselves included. With their arms around each other, their heads down, the four of them so different, yet so united by their father. They feel the strength of each other. They meet eyes and recognise their oldest grief – for a stolen childhood.

Before the hearse moves off, Peter reaches out and puts his hand on the back of the thing. He doesn’t want to let him go, wants to keep Emmett with him, and he couldn’t explain it even to himself but he understands there will be no slowing this completion. A wash of boiled afternoon sun is sifting through the gauzy dust as the hearse moves off slowly and makes its way towards the crematorium at Altona, further west again. As it climbs Mount Mistake, Peter is the only one of them to be glad that the old man will have one last view of his great, flat, baking city before the darkening sky closes over them, but then Peter has a forgiving nature.