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Sneak peek:
I’ve never seen my dad scared before.
It must be why I agreed to do this. It’s the only reason I can come up with for why I chose to follow him out to the car five hours ago, why I agreed to climb in and partake in whatever the hell this is. In all of my sixteen years I’ve only ever known the unshakable slab of a man his mates call Tugger, the rough-and-ready bloke who loves a beer as much as car racing on the TV.
But at lunchtime I found him whimpering.
And shaking.
Honestly? Curiosity has driven me here as much as fear.
I needed to keep a brave face in front of Kannika when Dad barked at us to drop everything and leave the holiday house immediately. My sister’s only six years old. She was getting antsy about the way the adults were arguing, puzzled by weird words like ‘traitor’ and ‘nutjob’ being hurled around. I kept assuring her things would blow over soon – grownups disagreed sometimes and things would settle down. “Just a little drive,” I told her. “Around the neighbourhood.” It’s what we used to do when Nika was a toddler, when croup got on top of her and she got so worked up she could barely breathe. Mum would bundle us into the car at midnight and tune into the classical music station, then drive us up to the edge of the mountains and back until Nika calmed down and drifted off. I came to appreciate the lulling cocoon of our slow-moving car, the smear of traffic lights through heavy eyelids.
So I assured Nika it was okay to crawl into the back seat with nothing but her stuffed bunny in one hand and a half-eaten muesli bar in the other.
Uncle Marty would be okay, I promised. A little drive would definitely calm Dad down.
And then, wouldn’t you know it, they both went and made a liar out of me.
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