JOSS SLICED THE last crust from Charlie's Vegemite sandwich and wrapped it carefully in cling film until the bread could no longer be seen through the swathes of plastic. It occurred to him that his little girl might never be able to get her lunch out of the wrapping. He smiled, warmth spreading in his chest as he imagined her conscientiously trying.
'Someone will help her at preschool,' he told the sandwich, as he tucked it with a mandarin into her yellow lunchbox. He snapped the box closed, and as he'd been privately doing since she started school, asked the smiling sun on the front to keep his little girl safe. He smoothed the tape upon which her name was printed in Isobel's neat writing. Charlie Rymill. Her mother's surname. Good.
Joss had always hated his name. Throughout his thirty-four years, his first and last names had jockeyed for the position of most despised. For the first thirteen years of his life, his first name had held a slight degree of street cred, associated in some way with hashish, but he kept his double-barrelled shocker of a last name to himself whenever possible. No one was going to run in fear from Joss Preston-Jones for godsakes.
At thirteen, when the voices had told his mother to throw herself in front of a car, Joss's grandparents had put him in a private school. There, 'Preston-Jones' was completely unremarkable, but 'Joss' had earned him more than one bashing. After school, he'd joined the infantry corps. Within a couple of months, his peers had learned not to exploit the many opportunities to ridicule either name. He had a reputation for never knowing when to stop in a fight.
Since the home invasion at Andy Wu's, Joss had never been more thankful that Isobel had retained her own surname when they'd married, and that they'd given it to Charlie. Those psychos had never learned her full name – Isobel tossing her handbag into the boot of the car before heading into Andy's place for dinner had meant that the offenders had no ID for either of them.
Well, nothing formal.
The worry tape in his mind took up where it had left off before he fell asleep the night before.
Then his girls walked into the kitchen.
Shiny was the first word that came to mind. Charlie's golden hair shone, her four-year-old skin was translucent. She had on a yellow dress – favourite colour – and red shoes. A couple of weeks before, she'd begun to insist she could dress herself.
Charlie launched herself into his arms.
'We're late again, Daddy!' She sounded thrilled. She pretty much always sounded that way.
'Well, you're just going to have to drive fast then,' he said to her beaming face. He turned her around in his arms and deposited her in a chair at the table.
'Go and get dressed, babe,' said Isobel, trailing her fingertips carefully over his bruised face as she passed. 'I'll take over here.' She smoothed a dark lock of hair into place. Damn he loved her wearing that suit.
Joss groaned and headed towards the stairs.
It'd been ten years, and he still couldn't get used to wearing a suit. When he'd become a civilian again in ninety-seven, he'd thought he would never find a job. Do your twenty years, everyone told him. Get an army pension and take a while to make your next move. It wasn't a bad suggestion. But then again, no one but Isobel and his former commanding officers knew about his medical discharge on psychiatric grounds. People thought his tour of Rwanda had changed him; they had no idea how much.
Turned out, though, that his skills were in high demand in civvy street. The ability to lead, proven discipline and analytical expertise – he'd had a choice of jobs. He'd taken a role as fraud investigator for an insurance company, because he thought it sounded boring and he wouldn't have to work in a team. He'd kept these motivations out of his comments in the job interview.
He walked quickly past the mirror, avoiding catching a glimpse of his black eye. The intern at the hospital had told him that they could operate on the cheekbone, insert a screw. Nerve damage was a risk, though. Joss figured his cheek had healed okay the last time he'd fractured it, in Rwanda. He shook his head a little to disperse the memory. Forget surgery, he'd told the doctor. Well, you probably should avoid breaking it again, the specialist had returned dryly.
Downstairs, he got Isobel to do his tie. Six years of private-school uniform had made him an expert at tying knots, but each morning saw him feigning helplessness to his wife. Isobel, amused and frustrated, especially when they were late, like today, would expertly tie the knot, kiss him on the mouth. For two minutes, every morning during this ritual, he breathed her in. A couple of times he'd undone the tie, turned back to her with a look of shocked innocence, like, how did that happen?
Not today, though. They really were late.
As soon as the car turned the corner, carrying Charlie to preschool and Isobel to her office in North Sydney, Joss was again lost in images of the robbery. Isobel had wanted him to take some time off, get some counselling, let his face heal. But the last thing he needed was to sit around with nothing to do but think. She knew him well enough to let it go.
Preparing for work last night, he'd presented Isobel with some scenarios to explain his black eye to the other insurance assessors: a water-skiing accident, a fistfight with his mother-in-law; caught up in the latest home invasion? He thought he'd go with Isobel's suggestion in the end: I fell off a ladder, painting the house.
He joined the queue for the bus into the city. Usually, he liked catching the bus, people-watching, the relaxed pace of it. It made more sense than getting a lift with Isobel on her way to work, and there was plenty to distract him from his memories of the past: Balmain looked nothing like Rwanda.
Since the thing at Andy Wu's, however, his mind had hardly visited Africa at all.
Those eyes. He'd never have believed you could recognise someone you hadn't seen in twenty-three years just from two eyes staring out of a balaclava. But he had.
Henry Nguyen. Cutter.
Until his first tour of duty, until the Kibeho massacre in Rwanda, Joss's nightmares had all been about the last day he'd seen Cutter.
At age thirteen, two days after the last time he had seen Cutter, Joss and his mum were out the front of Fairfield shopping centre, waiting to cross the road. His mum had told him that they had a meeting scheduled with Jesus. His whole life she'd been telling him stuff like that. He was eight before he realised that people didn't really come into their house each night to poison their food; he'd stayed up one night to check. So, when she wanted to take him to talk to Jesus, the only thing he was worried about was that she didn't start the meeting right there on the pavement in front of Franklins. But she'd grabbed his hand and run into the street. He'd pulled away.
How could he have pulled away?
He used to get so embarrassed when she showed up at the school, wasted, falling asleep in the principal's office. Or when she'd accuse him of being Satan's messenger in front of his friends, screaming into his face, froth on her lips.
Is that why he'd let go of her hand?
Thing is, he knew deep down that he couldn't have known she would run into the path of a car. But a little voice inside asked, couldn't you have guessed? Maybe you knew she was going to do it? Why did you let go of her hand?
His mother had survived, but she'd been scheduled to a psych hospital, and Joss's grandparents had stepped in. He'd moved from Cabramatta to Mosman, changed schools, and had never seen Cutter or any of the others since.
Until Andy's house, the previous Saturday night.
Joss knew Cutter would not have been overjoyed to renew their acquaintance. The feeling was mutual. But that was not the problem.
If Cutter figured out that Joss had recognised him, Cutter would come and find him.
He had to.
Andy Wu would never walk again, and Joss could put Cutter away.