‘You know, you left a hole in our lives when you up and buggered off to Sydney like you’d found something new and shiny to play with. We missed you for a long time … and then we got used to not needing you anymore.’
All this time this is how his siblings had felt about him leaving? ‘I went to uni. I got a job. I grew up, Will. The world is bigger than Clarence.’
‘Sure it is. I’ve travelled all over it myself. But the difference between you and me, Joey, is that my world still had Clarence in it. It was like you’d forgotten how to find us on the map.’
‘That is so not true. I was here for Robbo and Patty’s fiftieth birthday bash. I was here with Kim every now and then.’
His brother rolled his eyes. ‘Kim. Couldn’t get outta here fast enough every time she visited. One whiff of a cattle truck on the highway and she was jangling her car keys and spritzing herself with Chanel and stuffing her overnight bag in the boot of your car.’
‘Come on,’ said Joey. ‘She wasn’t that bad.’
‘Mate, her overnight bag was pink crocodile skin. She’d had her initials painted on it in gold freaking paint. Who does that?’
Joey laughed. ‘Okay. You’ve got me there. She sure loved that bag.’
Will turned on a burner and the smell of gas filled the kitchen. He flicked a match and the whoosh of flame banked down when he banged a well-loved frypan on it.
Joey sighed. ‘You’re right. I need to be more involved. I guess … I cut myself off when I left. It was … easier.’
‘Emotions can be hard to handle when we don’t understand them.’
He narrowed his eyes. ‘Is that what they taught you in social worker school?’
Will speared a steak with a knife so big it could have had a role as a secondary character in an action film. ‘We’re not talking about me; we’re talking about you. If you really are ready to come back to Clarence—I mean,reallycome back, emotions and everything, not the half-alive Sydney version of you—then it’s not me you need to be talking to at the moment, Joe.’
The conversation he’d overheard at the workshop … Daisy and his mum in a huddle. His guts went cold. ‘There’s something wrong with Mum, isn’t there?’
Will gripped his shoulder. ‘It’s not Mum.’