Chapter Eight

Forty-four hours later he stood on the Gold Coast Highway at Surfers Paradise at eleven o'clock in the morning with a duffel bag at his feet.

The light came off the glass towers and off the water and off the bonnets of the cars, and it was so bright it made his eyes stream.

Later he told rooms this was the moment he knew.

The truth is he was homesick for nine weeks, slept badly, lost four kilos, and rang his mother on Sundays reverse-charge and lied to her about everything.

But he was right about one thing, and the thing he was right about carried him for a quarter of a century:

The Gold Coast in 1992 was a city built entirely out of the gap between the presentation and the substance.

Marble-look tiles over cement sheet. Ocean glimpse. Resort-style. Executive. Names hammered into the ground in the hope that people would start to believe them — Paradise Waters, Isle of Capri, Sovereign Islands, Broadbeach Waters.

A whole city of signs at the bottom of driveways.

He was home.