Just when he was beginning to worry that he'd gone completely off course, Joss found the area he'd been searching for and pulled an axe from his belt. He set to work chopping branches from the fallen tree, the timber dry and covered in papery bark, perfect for firewood.
He didn't stop until there was way too much to carry back. He doubled over, hands on hips, and caught his breath, staring at the sandy soil around his feet; he studied a rivulet of sweat slipping over an ankle and into his sneaker. Fitter than he'd been in a long while, he recovered quickly and straightened, then set to gathering all the wood he could carry into a sling he'd brought for the purpose.
Striding from the scrub that bordered the isolated beach, Joss was forced to squeeze his eyes tight when the brilliance threatened to overload his senses. He opened them again, blinking, and made his way towards the camp. The colours were amazing. The perfect white of the sand and impossible turquoise of the ocean ahead; the honey-tan of Charlie, now five, shovelling sand into her little yellow bucket; and the molten-red of his wife's bikini. She lifted her huge sunglasses and winked at him, a small smile on her lips.
Once he'd stacked the firewood near the tent and the embers of last night's campfire, he kicked off his shoes and walked back through powdered sand. He dropped onto his towel next to his family, and grabbed the bottle of water next to Isobel. As he drank, an image of cold beer flicked up, a mental advertisement, but he quickly changed the channel. He leaned back in the sun, his mind again shifting through scenes of life before today.
There was no way he'd ever have consented to go to rehab until he'd reached the point where he simply had no resistance left. That night, pulling up behind the detective's vehicle at the house in Mosman two minutes before the troops arrived, he'd left Isobel and Charlie in the car. Finding Cutter missing part of his head on the floor of his old bedroom was just too much.
That had been seven months ago. He'd spent three of them in an inpatient unit with around thirty other thirsty vets. He'd left some new friends and old habits at the hospital, along with a couple of the worst memories. He'd also left the person he'd become closer to than anyone else in his life, other than the two people with whom he now shared the beach. Carrie, his therapist. In her office at the hospital, she'd done combat duty with him, walked through his memories, exploring, in exhaustive detail, the experiences he feared had almost pushed him into the madlands his poor mother had inhabited.
Carrie had been at his mum's funeral last month, Isobel holding onto her tearfully before they left. Isobel and Carrie had also done a tour of duty together, during individual and family therapy sessions.
He'd left the bill for the treatment to Veterans' Affairs.
Not that money was an issue now really. He could be retired today if he felt like it. He'd never have believed the house in Mosman would have sold for so much.
But taking the winter off to holiday in the Top End would do fine. He smiled lazily, watching Charlie scratch an itch on her pink zinc-covered nose, the action sticking sand to her face. She scratched again, and more sand smudged into the pink cream.
She'd start school next year, they'd decided. And he'd go back to the insurance company. As much time as you need, the partners had insisted, sending a monthly bouquet of flowers out to him at the hospital. He'd given them to the nurses before the other guys had seen them.
Isobel told him that his work colleagues had telephoned her and offered their support, expressing their shock when they'd learned he'd served the country in Rwanda. Great, he'd thought more than once since then; they were the type of guys who'd want war stories every lunchtime, but wouldn't eat with him again if he told them the real deal.
Charlie stood from her sandcastles and moved around to the left side of his chair; she carried her bucket with her everywhere. Her nose was now completely covered in pink sand, and she swiped a tentative finger at it every couple of moments, gluing on some more.
'Um, do you want to go for a swim, Daddy?' she said. 'I'm hot.'
'Yep. Me too,' he smiled at her. 'But maybe you should go and show your mum your face before we go swimming. You've gotta do something about your nose.'
She gave him a look of quiet indignation, then half-dragged and half-rolled herself across his stomach, the most direct route to her mother.
'Mummy,' she said, standing proudly, pot-bellied in her yellow bikini, her bucket by her side, 'Could you please fix my nose? I'm not decent.'