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wouldn’t recognise me, the Premier of Victoria I’ve known for a long time but I don’t see much of. It’s usually on public occasions. We commiserate about golf for a minute or so. Also, he once asked me about a horse I had an interest in.
    Whether it would win?
    No. He liked its name. Momus. He wanted to know what it meant.
    The camera went to Linda.
    And could you tell him?
    Levesque: Could you have?
    Linda: Odd to name a horse for the god of ridicule, isn’t it?
    Tough point won. She smiled, showing her nice teeth. My lips knew those nice butted-up teeth. You could see why she was a big hit, why the Sydney Morning Herald TV
    guide called her the best interviewer on television, why the Sun-Herald said she was a thirty-something spunk who paralysed the channel-surfing finger. Belatedly, Linda was having the career success she deserved.
    I understood that the only place she could have that success was in Sydney. Melbourne hated success. It didn’t match the weather. Melbourne’s weather suited introspective mediocrity and suicidal failure. The only acceptable success had to involve pain, sacrifice and humility. Sydney liked the idea of success, achieved at no cost and accompanied by arrogance.
    24

    In this room, I had said those things. And I’d said, ‘For Christ’s sake, take the job. It’s only a couple of hours away. If you don’t, you’ll spend the rest of your life thinking: What if…?’
    Steven Levesque was saying: I’m an ordinary member of the party and from time to time, people in the party ask my opinion on something and I give it. I imagine they seek opinions from dozens of people. And so they should.
    Last July, the Premier of Victoria took a ten-day holiday in the Caribbean. He stayed at a property on Guadeloupe called the Domaine de Thierry. My information is that you own the property, Linda countered.
    Steven Levesque laughed, a real-sounding laugh.
    I don’t. A company I’m involved with does. It owns three properties in the Caribbean.
    They’re for hire. Anyone can stay there. You can stay there, Ms Hillier. My understanding is that the Premier was the guest of someone who hired the Domaine.
    May we know who?
    Another laugh. Even if I knew, Ms Hillier, and I don’t, I certainly wouldn’t tell you or anyone else.
    I drained my glass. Now I could spend the rest of my life thinking: What if I hadn’t encouraged Linda Hillier to take the offer from Channel 6 in Sydney? Would it have been happiness ever after? What kind of idiot encourages a woman he loves to move away in pursuit of media stardom?
    It doesn’t pay to ponder a question like that. I switched the TV off and went to my cold and lonely bed.
    The bed warmed up after a while, the soul stayed cold. Deep in the night, I saw images of people loved. I saw their smiles, heard the sound of voices now stilled, heard our uncontrollable laughter, and felt the touches, the kisses, the hugs, the hand run lovingly over my hair. All gone. Utterly, irretrievably gone.
    I awoke before dawn, unrested, got up, made tea, went back to bed and read the last chapter of an English novel in which people were, generally, pretty despondent about the way their lives had turned out. Looking around, noting the terminally unhealthy colour of the sheets that draped me, the soiled socks dotted around the room like the droppings of an exotic animal, the white shirt sleeve hanging from the laundry basket like an inadequate surrender flag, I could sympathise with that view.
    I got up, showered, thought about how to pass the day. The days. While I was thinking, they passed. Saturday, shopping, cleaning. Sunday, lunch with my sister.
    25

    One sister is a difficult thing. Two would be easy. Three, you’d start confusing their names. Four, you’d be the team mascot. But one sister is your mother, writ smaller and without the uncontested authority, but nevertheless equipped with the means to make you feel guilty.
    My sister has a special look. It says many things: