Back Burning

I’m on a flight from Sydney to London and beneath me a haze veils the Opera House. I’ve just buried Ralph, my mother’s husband.

I move to the vacant seat by the window and think of my husband and daughters in England. I think of another man in my life, of the two men my mother loved.

I’d gone to Sydney for my stepfather’s funeral, my head filled with visions of brush fires and burning. The outside of the white bungalow, the house I’d grown up in, had still been the same, just the paint on the guttering had started to peel.

My mother and I were in the lounge and she was swaying gently on the settee. ‘He was my big love,’ she said. My tears were brimming as I sat down beside her. ‘But your father was a good man, too,’ she said.