Chapter 8
“Shit.” Raco’s eyes were heavy with guilt as they dropped to the handful of missing person flyers still clutched in his fist.
Falk had managed to give out the last of his by the time they approached the vineyard stall, but Raco had mostly seemed to forget he even had them.
He’d been unusually subdued as they’d made their way up from the reservoir, battling back through the festival crowd along paths that were lit up now that night had fallen.
As they saw Charlie’s stall ahead, Raco frowned at the remaining flyers in his hand.
“Here.” Falk beckoned and Raco gratefully passed him half the sheets, and over the next few minutes they worked together to press them onto every person who passed. Most barely glanced down before shoving one in their pocket or bag.
“This feels—” Raco’s voice was resigned. He didn’t finish his thought.
Falk knew exactly what he meant, but they stayed anyway until their hands were empty.
The stall was still busy, Falk could see as they finished up. The large man who’d been stacking boxes in the back of the tent earlier was now positioned up front, alongside the two young women. He was pouring samples for a big group, and nodded a greeting as he saw Raco approach.
“They’ve gone on ahead, mate.” The bloke put down the wine bottle and wiped his hands on his jeans. He batted away a persistent moth hovering around a light near his head. “Zara wanted to get there early. Charlie says to call him when you’re near the stage.”
“No worries,” Raco said. “You coming?”
There were potential customers circling, but the man’s eyes fell instead on a stack of flyers lined up neatly at the edge of the table. Kim Gillespie gazed back at him from the printed paper.
“Yeah, look, I wouldn’t mind.” He turned to the employee nearest him, who was already nodding. “You’ll be all right, will you? Twenty minutes?”
“Absolutely. All good, Shane.” The woman stapled a flyer to the receipt she was about to hand to a waiting couple. “Take your time.”
“Great. Thanks.”
The man eased himself out from behind the table, having to duck his head to avoid brushing the tent canopy, and joined Falk and Raco on the path.
“Did you two meet last year?” Raco asked as they began to walk. “Aaron—” He stopped as his phone lit up. “Sorry, this is Charlie now.” He lifted it to his ear. “Yes, mate, we’re heading over—”
The guy extended a large, calloused hand to Falk. “I don’t think we did meet, did we? Shane McAfee.”
“Yeah, I know, actually.” Falk introduced himself. “I saw you a few times at the MCG. Great player.”
“Oh yeah? Thanks, mate.” Shane McAfee’s tone was light, but Falk could tell he was pleased. He had an interesting habit of pausing slightly, as though considering the words before he chose them, and was more softly spoken than Falk would have expected. “That’s going back a bit now.”
Twenty years at least, by Falk’s reckoning. Shane was his age, but with all the height and breadth of a professional AFL player. He was clearly still fit, but with the softened, stocky look of a former elite athlete now left in charge of his own meal plans and exercise routine.
“You into the footy, then?” Shane asked as they walked.
“Yeah.” Falk nodded. “Since I was a kid. I grew up in regional Victoria, so…”
“Pretty much inevitable?”
“Pretty much. Plus my dad absolutely loved it. Played a bit himself when he was young, country league stuff, you know. Liked to go to games, watch it on TV. We were at that grand final, actually,” Falk said. “The year you—”
“Yeah.” Shane smiled at the memory. “Yeah. Now that really is going back. You probably weren’t barracking for us, hey? Being from Victoria?”
“Well, no. The other guys.”
“I owe you an apology, then.” Shane’s face broadened into a grin. He didn’t sound the least bit sorry, but Falk could hardly blame him.
It had been the kind of game that Falk still felt lucky to have seen in person, despite the result.
He’d been living near uni then, deep into his studies and barely making the fifty-minute trip back across Melbourne to his dad’s place even for holidays, let alone weekends.
If Falk had been forced to stop and consider his relationship with his father, he’d have said honestly that a bit of distance had been good for them.
Their interactions had been laced with a polite formality, and it was only years later, after his dad had died, that Falk reflected that good was probably not the right word for it at all.
Falk had been flipping unenthusiastically through a textbook in his student house when his dad had called.
His voice had been filled with a pure energy that Falk hadn’t heard in years.
A raffle had been drawn at the agricultural supply business where Erik Falk worked, and guess who was now the proud and lucky owner of a couple of tickets to the grand final?
The thrill was instantly infectious, and Falk’s desk chair had clattered to the floor as he rose and punched the air.
It was also only later that it occurred to Falk there were literally dozens of other people his dad probably could have invited to that game—workmates, neighbors, his dad might even have had friends, Falk didn’t really know—and any one of them would no doubt have jumped at the chance.
But footy, especially this kind of footy, transcended family drama—that went without saying—so Erik Falk had of course invited his son.
They’d met at Flinders Street Station wearing their identical team scarves.
The careful, loaded courtesy that usually hovered between them evaporated over four quarters, somewhere between the celebrations and commiserations.
Afterward, they’d crammed into a pub for a few beers together and picked over the game, agreeing with mirrored passion that it should have gone their way.
At the train station, they’d hugged goodbye in a movement both spontaneous and instinctive.
Falk had inhaled. His dad’s footy scarf had smelled exactly the way he’d remembered from when he was a kid.
And all those years later—far too late by then—Falk thought it had been one of the best days they’d ever had.
“That was a great game,” was all he said now to Shane McAfee as they walked side by side. “A good day.”
“Yeah.” Shane sounded a little wistful himself. “Really was.”
Shane cleared his throat, and Falk wished he knew him well enough to ask what he was thinking.
What would all that have been like for him?
The pressure and adrenaline on field, and the emotion and energy coming from the stands.
Shane would have been barely into his twenties, pretty much the same age as Falk had been, but instead of being one of a hundred thousand faces in the crowd, he’d experienced it all from the heart of the action.
One of the sweaty, dirty, victorious chosen few who got the chance to run on that ground.
If Shane was reliving it at all now, he gave no sign, focusing instead on the busy path ahead as he walked. He didn’t really need to, not with his bulk. The crowd tended to part for him.
What had happened to Shane McAfee? Falk tried to remember.
He felt he should know, because the guy had been an exceptional player.
Injured out, it had to be. Precisely because Shane had been such an exceptional player, and yet after that game, Falk couldn’t recall thinking about him ever again, right up until last year when Raco had pointed him out, working behind the table of Charlie’s vineyard stand.
“You grew up here, then?” Falk said now, easing his way around a noisy family who had stopped dead in the center of the track.
“Yeah, mates with Charlie. Greg, too.” Shane nodded at Raco, who was a pace ahead of them, still on the phone. “I worked in Melbourne for a while after the footy, did a bit of radio commentary, things like that, but—” He shrugged. “Ended up back here. It’s good,” he added quickly.
“You still play at all?”
“Not really. I tried the social stuff for a while, but it’s not the same.”
“No.” Falk pictured the crowd at the MCG. “I bet.”
“Plus it wrecks my knees. Not worth it, end of the day, not for the social stuff. I coach the local men’s team, though.” Shane ran his eye up and down Falk. “You play? Like your dad?”
“No.”
“Used to, though?” Shane continued his appraisal. “Look like you’d have the foot speed.”
“Just at school, a bit at uni,” Falk said. “Nothing serious. And not for ages.”
“Everyone says that.” Shane looked faintly amused. “Never too late.”
“I’m really not sure that’s true,” Falk said, and they both smiled, slowing on the path as Raco paused in front of them.
“Yep, all right. See you there.” Raco hung up and turned to Shane and Falk. “Charlie says they’re over by the left side, near the speakers. This way, I think.”
They fell into loose single file as they picked their way through a sea of picnics toward a large central stage.
The music was getting louder, and up ahead a band bathed in spotlights was playing a fast number.
Falk saw Shane bend to pick up something from the ground, then straighten again, barely breaking stride.
He held a crumpled flyer, a dusty boot print stamped over Kim’s face.
Shane ran his large thumb over the dirty mark, then folded the paper carefully into quarters and slipped it into his back pocket.
They found Charlie and Zara by the stage, along with a group of the volunteers Falk recognized from the vineyard stall.
Zara was clutching a page of handwritten notes, her eyes moving over the words.
Joel stood at her side, his arms folded across his tall teenage frame, reading over her shoulder.
Charlie was frowning at his phone, managing to seem oddly alone amid the crowd.
Glancing up, he saw them approach and clicked off his screen.
“Hi, mate.” Shane had to raise his voice over the music. “The girls are looking after the stand. I’ll head back soon, I just wanted to—”
“It’s fine.” Charlie waved a hand, then checked his watch. He looked like he’d rather be anywhere else. “Time this got started, anyway.”
As if on cue, the band struck their final chord, the note ringing out as the stage lights changed from bright blue to a soft yellow.
A sound technician beckoned Zara over to a set of stairs leading up to the stage, where she was joined by Rohan Gillespie and Sergeant Dwyer.
All three listened intently as the tech guy demonstrated where to find the on-off switch on the handheld microphone.
You ready? Falk saw rather than heard the man say, and the three of them nodded. Sergeant Dwyer was the only one who looked like he meant it. The technician squinted across the stage, raised his hand, and signaled to someone on the other side. Good to go.
Falk knew before he knew. He felt it even as he turned his head and looked up across the empty expanse of stage to the darkened wings. And he was right. Because there she was.
Gemma Tozer’s hair was cut a little shorter sixteen months on, and the navy winter coat and patterned dress had been swapped for dark jeans and a linen shirt.
As he saw her now, Falk allowed himself to admit—completely silently and just to himself—that he’d been half looking for her all night.
More than half looking, really. He exhaled.
“All right, mate?” Raco’s voice caught him by surprise. Falk had briefly forgotten he was there.
“Yeah. Why?”
“Nothing. Thought you said something.”
“Oh. No,” Falk said, but Raco wasn’t paying attention, anyway, his focus fully on Zara, who was scanning her speech rapidly now, her brow furrowed.
Falk turned back to the stage. Gemma was currently bathed in an absurdly flattering golden light, giving her the effect of a warm, glowing aura.
Oh, for God’s sake. Falk watched with a touch of amusement. That hardly seemed fair.
She signaled something back to the technician, then turned, her gaze running out over the crowd. Falk suddenly felt acutely conscious that he was staring and dropped his eyes to the ground.
Jesus Christ. He almost laughed, embarrassed on his own behalf. He wasn’t sixteen.
Stay.
He leveled his gaze. Gemma’s attention had returned to the stage.
And it was ridiculous, Falk told himself. Because it was dark, and there was a bit of distance between them, and his face was one in a hundred, and there was maybe—probably, to be honest—some serious wishful thinking at play on his part. But still. He looked at Gemma standing in the wings.
What was different? A tiny change in her expression, or a shift in her posture?
Maybe? Basically nothing. But at the same time, Falk’s skin was tingling like there was a faint new charge in the air.
It felt, as the golden light on stage lifted to a crisp, clean white, just close enough to something.
And he wondered if, a moment earlier, she’d been looking at him, too.